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demeter918Title: "Stop, Rewind"
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
demeter918
Disclaimer: X-men and its collective entities, interests, and related material does not belong to me.
Notes: For the long-sufferingheeroluva, who bid on me months and months and months ago in the Haiti auction. It took me longer than a pretentious wine to get the right rhythm and this became the Looming Elephant In The Room. All I have to say after this unforgivably long time? I haven't worked this hard on a fic in years. And after all that writer's block? I have been feeling a lot more juice (ew, fluids) in these hands o' mine.
Not that, um, it means I have anything new. -_-;;
ANYWAYS.
ONWARDS. TO THE FIC.
______________
It's a Thursday. He knows it's a Thursday because the ratty, ripped wall calendar says it's a Thursday, in the year of 19XX.
Actually. He's not sure if it's a Thursday, because he's pretty sure that calendar is wrong and that he's in a room with an out-of-date calendar. Typical, eh, bub? (bub, bub, why would he ever use that word? But it tastes familiar on his tongue, a melting pot of guns and metal and snow) He growls a little and tosses the blankets away. How many days does he have left? How much longer can he afford to stay here? He pads to his worn-out jeans and roots through several pockets until he finds his wallet, the only clue he has to his identity. The leather is worn and faded, as if he'd taken it out of his pocket a million times before. The leather is supple, well-made. A simple design (what is it? What is it? What is it?) adorns the side and he knows it's fucking significant and he knows it must mean something but what?
Logan stares down at his hands and growls. The wallet tells him as much as his hands. What does he do with these hands? The skin is calloused and thick, almost yellow with roughness. When he touches his nose to it, he smells cedar, oak, wood, wood, wood; was he a logger? But he detects metal, an odd lavender sweetness, the smell of –
she smiles, even when she's dead
- and he rears back. It's confusing; he doesn't understand what this smell reminds him of.
But he knows he doesn't want to wash it away. But he has to. The dirt is starting to flake off his skin and he can see greasy oils mix with blood (it hurts every time those damn things come out of his skin) and dry in all the little crevices in his hand. The blood dries, the wounds close, and it's like he never shredded the skin of his knuckles open with razor sharp claws (bonebonbone) made of adamantium.
(what the hell is adamantium?)
How long can he afford this room?
It's (not) a Thursday.
______________
Victor (Sabretooth) swallows against the dryness in his throat and rattles his chains. Not literal, but he needs to lay low until the howling for blood ends on the streets. He knew he shouldn't have killed that kid, but the kid deserved it, he fucking deserved it. All the kids he picked on would agree. They should agree. They will agree, even if all he remembers is screaming.
He wants to leap out, to bare claws and teeth and show that he is not afraid; he is not afraid. Victor hears the sound of people in the woods and the muscles in his heart tense up so hard, he feels the cataclysm of a shotgun.
No. Victor shakes his head. His sheets are disgusting. But they're all he has and he burrows in the nest he's kicked up; Victor (Sabretooth) tries not to think about his brother, about Logan, tries not to think at all.
______________
"I bet I can eat this faster than you!" Bulging mouthful.
"Nuh UH, I bet I can eat this faster than you!" Chipmunk cheeks.
"No way, I can totally eat this faster!" Slight choke.
Their mom slaps them both on the back. "I'll kill you both if you choke to death on your ice cream."
One of the boys turns to his mum and makes a face she smiles fondly at before pinching both cheeks. He yelps and the other snorts ice cream out his nose as laughs. It's a warming scene.
Logan is not sure why this doesn't seem familiar. Doesn't he have a family that act(ed) like this? He stares down at his coffee, at the black depths and he realizes that he doesn't even know if he likes cream and sugar with his coffee. Does he? (small boy, small boy, but bigger than he, don't cry, don't cry, Victor, it's just a dream, he doesn't mean anything.) He takes a sip and thinks he likes it black and bitter.
"Coffee and cream, sir?"
His nose twitches and he tries not to inhale the smell of lavender perfume, because it makes him inexplicably angry and he can't get angry, not here, not now, not when…
"Sir? Sir!" The woman calls after him, her voice squawks with surprise as he tosses some money (too much) on the table and jumps over the railing guard to escape. He hits the ground running and Logan feels himself being literal, and what does it mean that he runs away from a waitress who smells like lavenders and drinks coffee, black, because that's the way it's offered to him. How does he like his eggs?
Logan doesn't know so he runs faster.
______________
Sabretooth (Victor) stalks his prey. Quiet. Quiet, you animal. His ears twitch and the leaves giggle. There, there. The heaviness of human sex and lust and it flares the head in his blood. Two people (kids, children) press themselves against the dry bark of a maple tree. His hind quarters tense. He edges closer and the birds fall silent, one by one, a lone red fox flees across floor and moss, silence, it's silence in the woods, and foolish foolishfoolishfoolish children are there and he ---
"Yo, Laura! Paul! We're gonna leave you two behind if you don't get your asses back to the bus!"
Giggle, giggle, they peel themselves away from the dry bark of a maple tree, brush dust and dirt from the girls' butt and walk toward the main road and Sabretooth (VictorVictorVictor) subsides. He swallows down the dry ache in his throat, the emptiness in his stomach. This is not for him.
The lone fox still runs, but the birds chatter again and it's quiet. Quiet, in the forest of teeth and fear. His claws retract. He buries his bloodlust in the soil, the animals, but the lesser beings (humans, humans, lesser) are safe, for now.
______________
Sometimes, Logan dreams.
He remembers wars, long bouts of quiet and silence in between gunfire and machines; they burn in his mind, and he wonders why he would dream of this, of any of this, because the machinery, the mechanics are always changing (flying in one, horseback in another, this is impossible, but then) and it's not hard to eventually realize that he's lived a long (too long, it's impossible) time and he'll live a long time after that. Taboo.
He slices himself on the arm and watches the wound dry, congeal, and heal. All within moments of his time that now seems immeasurably long. Logan doesn't believe in immortality, but knowing that he heals and how nothing every seems to hurt him for long, he thinks he might very well be immortal.
(Oh, sweetheart.)
War dreams, he might dismiss, but not those, not with soft tones and betrayal and lavender so strong he could throw---
He learns to ignore. But they're a constant, so he learns how to latch onto a memory without ever seeing it. They must mean something; it must mean that he knows someone. That he is (was, will be, can be) important to someone out there in the world, and more than the tags, more than anything else, it is easy for Logan to take a measure of cold comfort from it.
And yes, he has tags. Physical, dull metal things. The tags say his name is 'Logan'. That's it. No address. No pictures. Not even a fucking last name. That's how pathetic the tags are. But he clings to them anyways, keeps them around his neck at all times; in the shower, in the cage, up and down the road he goes and he never stops to take them off. Sometimes.
Sometimes, he wonders (questions, queries, suspects) that they're nothing more than chains, no one who loves him would leave him with just tags, it's a ploy to keep him pliable and less suspecting.
But someone must love him; otherwise, he wouldn't even have a name.
______________
The man known only to him by the name of 'Gambit' cocks his head and raises one furtive eyebrow. "So, mon ami, you really don't remember anything, do you?" A card flips in and out of one hand with ease and he scrutinizes Wolverine up and down. "That's what we'd call a 'pity', I do think."
Logan glares at him and a muscle in his nose twitches when he scents the smell of cigs and smoke and New Orleans on him. This man, this mutant knows him, somehow, somewhere. He wonders, his claws come out in a flash of metal and Gambit quirks the corner of his mouth. "I see you haven't changed." He tucks the cards away, but his hands continue to wander restlessly through his pockets. "Didn't think you would."
Words can be a touch and he physically staggers at the weight, the history, the meaning of words so easily said and discarded. This stereotype of a Louisiana man knows him, he knows who he was (is). Logan steps forwards, hates the fact that he feels so off-balance, that he burns to know what Gambit does. "You know. You knew me?" Logan doesn't beg, he never begs. (But he will. He will if it means the truth.)
"Once, I suppose, a while ago. You… hm. I see." He fumbles in his pockets and fishes out a cigarette and the end glows from gleaming silver lighter. Gambit takes a long drag. And exhales. "No. No, my mistake. It's been a long day, friend, and the dusk makes for potent mistakes, you see." He stares at his burning cigarette and then drops it onto the floor and grinds it out beneath a heel. "You looked like someone I knew. My mistake." He repeats the last part and turns away and Logan leaps forward, his claws come out, but Gambit is even quicker (quicksilver, thief) and presses himself into shadow and corner and is lost.
That night, Logan almost kills two men in the ring, but at the last moment, he bites his tongue until blood flows out. He won't. He's not an animal. He won't.
It's no surprise his blood tastes like bog and swamp.
______________
The man known as Sabretooth snuffles at the grass. Food. Close. He follows the scent to the brush. He stops and crouches. Listens to the sounds of the forest and how the birds die out, and the insects stop their buzz, and it's so quiet, it's like the end of the world.
He leaps and comes down with a crash that frightens the birds, crushes some insects, and the world resumes, bright and colored. The sounds of the deer is cut short and he tears open the ribcage to the slow pumping heart and drinks from the hot blood and feels like he is alive and in the world.
Busy as he is, it doesn't take him more than a second to know that there were two pairs of eyes watching him. Sabretooth snarls, turns around to loom over his food; he'll kill anything and anyone who takes his meal away. What he says wants to die in this throat. It's an old man and a blue woman.
Mutants.
Sabretooth tenses; outwardly, they are no threat to him and his claws, but he knows. He know the old-man-in-the-impeccably-clean-clothes is more dangerous than five of him put together. There are few mutants that that can be said of.
(Wolves.)
He is wary.
No mutants have been in the area for a long time. (the last time, laboratory, cave, diamonds, optic, claws, claws, claws, adamantium) He stares. Something tickles the back of his mind, like a sneeze.
"Hello, Sabretooth," says the Old Man in Clean Clothing.
The Blue Woman wrinkles her nose. "Ugh, what is that smell?"
He feels shame, hot and thick, run through him. Sabretooth tries to lick off the blood that mats his beard but only succeeds in smearing it. He doesn't have to look at himself to know that he is soiled and covered in mud and dirt and… Sabretooth glares. He doesn't care.
"Dear, it's the scent of nature and vitality. Quite appropriate for who he is to the world."
The Blue Woman obviously does not think so with the slight curl to her lips, but she strides forward and bends down to touch his head. Sabretooth ducks and growls, a little, but all she does is slap him on the side of his arm and say, "down, boy." She examines the cuts and bruises that litter his rag-tattered body and frowns. "Well, he'll be useless to us if we don't feed him." She examines a bruise that looks like a shoe print and her eyes narrow. "Humans," she sneers. It transforms her face into something severe and stern.
"Waste, to be sure. Now, let us go Sabretooth." The Old Man in Clean Clothing turns to go, but there are still traces of Victor in him. (Somewhere)
"Who the hell are you?" he growls. His voice is rusty from disuse and it grapples with sound.
The Old Man in Clean Clothing looks down at him (down, down, down) and smiles. Comforting, it is not. It is swathed in cold history and unbending truth.
"My name is Magneto and I shall destroy humanity."
______________
He is always being arrested.
He is always slicing his way out. He never resists; it seems the quickest way to draw attention to himself and attention is something he can't afford right now, not if he wants to continue his comings and goings between Canada and the USA. (attached, he's getting attached. He shouldn't get attached, it only means trouble)
It's far easier to slice and dice his way out of a cell. It's quiet and easy and no one ever need to know that he was there.
(forget.)
They'll forget he ever existed.
______________
Then, one day, because of a girl and her clumsy attempts to hide in his hitch, his life changes.
Logan still wonders whether it was good or not; he's gained nakama (nakama, nakama, nakama, what the hell is nakama?), but he's lost a bit of his freedom. There will always be someone in his head now. And he doubts he can ever see red hair again and not think of Jean Grey.
But really. It's the girl. It's the girl and her naivete. She still trusts the world, even if the world's shitted on everything she could love. He wants to tell her that memory seems less and less important now that he's known her and his new world. He wants Marie to know that she brought him to the mansion, inadvertently gave him Jeanie and Storm and Cyke and old Professor X and does she realize what that means for him?
Family. Friends. (Nakama)
It surprises him the first time he scents lavender and doesn't want to throw up.
______________
Sabretooth snarls against the bars. He's locked in. He hates this. He hates Magneto. He doesn't. Magneto is good. He saved him. They all saved him. He could have lived on his own. He will live on his own. (blood, blood, blood) He saw the wolf. The wolf in another man. (quiet, James, he won't hear us from here).
He wants to be free. He pulls the bars apart. He goes into the hallway. He snuffles at the walls. He hears the echoes. He.
He licks his claws. He can taste the filter of lightening and soft skin on the very tips and he swears that it'll soon be marrow and blood and salt, salt, salt.
Sabretooth (victor) grinsnarls. He's going to hunt later. Little lightning witch.
______________
Logan circles around Sabretooth and hesitates. It's not like him, to hesitate. But the mutant fighting him right now requires hesitation. Adamantium. He reminds Logan of himself, before he joined up with the X-men. Logan wonders if this is what he eventually would have become, all snarl and violence, if not for Marie and the others. If not for –
K-
It's like the world shrinks away and the flashstep image of a girl dying with a grin on her face spurs Logan into action. Doesn't matter she isn't Marie or Jeanie or Storm or any of his family. This girl haunts him, haunts him more than she should, and he knows (he knows) once upon a time (but he doesn’t believe in fairy tales), she was the world for him.
Lavenders.
Sabretooth (Victor Creed, tortured, murderous, a crazy sonuvabitch) snarls at him, and the eyes are animalistic ("run, James!") and the sounds are unfamiliar and Wolverine laughs. "Is that all you got, bub?" A snickt and his adamantium claws unsheathe themselves from the flesh of his knuckles. (like bone and lumber) The wounds heal before the blood sprays the ground. He launches himself forward and their battle begins (again).
(Stop, rewind.)
Victor and James play in the dirt next to the woodpile, and they have no clue that one hundred and fifty some years later, they will try to kill each other on top of the Statue of Liberty and not know they are brothers.
(they've made their choices and their choices follow them)
- fin -
By:
demeter918Disclaimer: X-men and its collective entities, interests, and related material does not belong to me.
Notes: For the long-suffering
heeroluva, who bid on me months and months and months ago in the Haiti auction. It took me longer than a pretentious wine to get the right rhythm and this became the Looming Elephant In The Room. All I have to say after this unforgivably long time? I haven't worked this hard on a fic in years. And after all that writer's block? I have been feeling a lot more juice (ew, fluids) in these hands o' mine. Not that, um, it means I have anything new. -_-;;
ANYWAYS.
ONWARDS. TO THE FIC.
It's a Thursday. He knows it's a Thursday because the ratty, ripped wall calendar says it's a Thursday, in the year of 19XX.
Actually. He's not sure if it's a Thursday, because he's pretty sure that calendar is wrong and that he's in a room with an out-of-date calendar. Typical, eh, bub? (bub, bub, why would he ever use that word? But it tastes familiar on his tongue, a melting pot of guns and metal and snow) He growls a little and tosses the blankets away. How many days does he have left? How much longer can he afford to stay here? He pads to his worn-out jeans and roots through several pockets until he finds his wallet, the only clue he has to his identity. The leather is worn and faded, as if he'd taken it out of his pocket a million times before. The leather is supple, well-made. A simple design (what is it? What is it? What is it?) adorns the side and he knows it's fucking significant and he knows it must mean something but what?
Logan stares down at his hands and growls. The wallet tells him as much as his hands. What does he do with these hands? The skin is calloused and thick, almost yellow with roughness. When he touches his nose to it, he smells cedar, oak, wood, wood, wood; was he a logger? But he detects metal, an odd lavender sweetness, the smell of –
she smiles, even when she's dead
- and he rears back. It's confusing; he doesn't understand what this smell reminds him of.
But he knows he doesn't want to wash it away. But he has to. The dirt is starting to flake off his skin and he can see greasy oils mix with blood (it hurts every time those damn things come out of his skin) and dry in all the little crevices in his hand. The blood dries, the wounds close, and it's like he never shredded the skin of his knuckles open with razor sharp claws (bonebonbone) made of adamantium.
(what the hell is adamantium?)
How long can he afford this room?
It's (not) a Thursday.
Victor (Sabretooth) swallows against the dryness in his throat and rattles his chains. Not literal, but he needs to lay low until the howling for blood ends on the streets. He knew he shouldn't have killed that kid, but the kid deserved it, he fucking deserved it. All the kids he picked on would agree. They should agree. They will agree, even if all he remembers is screaming.
He wants to leap out, to bare claws and teeth and show that he is not afraid; he is not afraid. Victor hears the sound of people in the woods and the muscles in his heart tense up so hard, he feels the cataclysm of a shotgun.
No. Victor shakes his head. His sheets are disgusting. But they're all he has and he burrows in the nest he's kicked up; Victor (Sabretooth) tries not to think about his brother, about Logan, tries not to think at all.
"I bet I can eat this faster than you!" Bulging mouthful.
"Nuh UH, I bet I can eat this faster than you!" Chipmunk cheeks.
"No way, I can totally eat this faster!" Slight choke.
Their mom slaps them both on the back. "I'll kill you both if you choke to death on your ice cream."
One of the boys turns to his mum and makes a face she smiles fondly at before pinching both cheeks. He yelps and the other snorts ice cream out his nose as laughs. It's a warming scene.
Logan is not sure why this doesn't seem familiar. Doesn't he have a family that act(ed) like this? He stares down at his coffee, at the black depths and he realizes that he doesn't even know if he likes cream and sugar with his coffee. Does he? (small boy, small boy, but bigger than he, don't cry, don't cry, Victor, it's just a dream, he doesn't mean anything.) He takes a sip and thinks he likes it black and bitter.
"Coffee and cream, sir?"
His nose twitches and he tries not to inhale the smell of lavender perfume, because it makes him inexplicably angry and he can't get angry, not here, not now, not when…
"Sir? Sir!" The woman calls after him, her voice squawks with surprise as he tosses some money (too much) on the table and jumps over the railing guard to escape. He hits the ground running and Logan feels himself being literal, and what does it mean that he runs away from a waitress who smells like lavenders and drinks coffee, black, because that's the way it's offered to him. How does he like his eggs?
Logan doesn't know so he runs faster.
Sabretooth (Victor) stalks his prey. Quiet. Quiet, you animal. His ears twitch and the leaves giggle. There, there. The heaviness of human sex and lust and it flares the head in his blood. Two people (kids, children) press themselves against the dry bark of a maple tree. His hind quarters tense. He edges closer and the birds fall silent, one by one, a lone red fox flees across floor and moss, silence, it's silence in the woods, and foolish foolishfoolishfoolish children are there and he ---
"Yo, Laura! Paul! We're gonna leave you two behind if you don't get your asses back to the bus!"
Giggle, giggle, they peel themselves away from the dry bark of a maple tree, brush dust and dirt from the girls' butt and walk toward the main road and Sabretooth (VictorVictorVictor) subsides. He swallows down the dry ache in his throat, the emptiness in his stomach. This is not for him.
The lone fox still runs, but the birds chatter again and it's quiet. Quiet, in the forest of teeth and fear. His claws retract. He buries his bloodlust in the soil, the animals, but the lesser beings (humans, humans, lesser) are safe, for now.
Sometimes, Logan dreams.
He remembers wars, long bouts of quiet and silence in between gunfire and machines; they burn in his mind, and he wonders why he would dream of this, of any of this, because the machinery, the mechanics are always changing (flying in one, horseback in another, this is impossible, but then) and it's not hard to eventually realize that he's lived a long (too long, it's impossible) time and he'll live a long time after that. Taboo.
He slices himself on the arm and watches the wound dry, congeal, and heal. All within moments of his time that now seems immeasurably long. Logan doesn't believe in immortality, but knowing that he heals and how nothing every seems to hurt him for long, he thinks he might very well be immortal.
(Oh, sweetheart.)
War dreams, he might dismiss, but not those, not with soft tones and betrayal and lavender so strong he could throw---
He learns to ignore. But they're a constant, so he learns how to latch onto a memory without ever seeing it. They must mean something; it must mean that he knows someone. That he is (was, will be, can be) important to someone out there in the world, and more than the tags, more than anything else, it is easy for Logan to take a measure of cold comfort from it.
And yes, he has tags. Physical, dull metal things. The tags say his name is 'Logan'. That's it. No address. No pictures. Not even a fucking last name. That's how pathetic the tags are. But he clings to them anyways, keeps them around his neck at all times; in the shower, in the cage, up and down the road he goes and he never stops to take them off. Sometimes.
Sometimes, he wonders (questions, queries, suspects) that they're nothing more than chains, no one who loves him would leave him with just tags, it's a ploy to keep him pliable and less suspecting.
But someone must love him; otherwise, he wouldn't even have a name.
The man known only to him by the name of 'Gambit' cocks his head and raises one furtive eyebrow. "So, mon ami, you really don't remember anything, do you?" A card flips in and out of one hand with ease and he scrutinizes Wolverine up and down. "That's what we'd call a 'pity', I do think."
Logan glares at him and a muscle in his nose twitches when he scents the smell of cigs and smoke and New Orleans on him. This man, this mutant knows him, somehow, somewhere. He wonders, his claws come out in a flash of metal and Gambit quirks the corner of his mouth. "I see you haven't changed." He tucks the cards away, but his hands continue to wander restlessly through his pockets. "Didn't think you would."
Words can be a touch and he physically staggers at the weight, the history, the meaning of words so easily said and discarded. This stereotype of a Louisiana man knows him, he knows who he was (is). Logan steps forwards, hates the fact that he feels so off-balance, that he burns to know what Gambit does. "You know. You knew me?" Logan doesn't beg, he never begs. (But he will. He will if it means the truth.)
"Once, I suppose, a while ago. You… hm. I see." He fumbles in his pockets and fishes out a cigarette and the end glows from gleaming silver lighter. Gambit takes a long drag. And exhales. "No. No, my mistake. It's been a long day, friend, and the dusk makes for potent mistakes, you see." He stares at his burning cigarette and then drops it onto the floor and grinds it out beneath a heel. "You looked like someone I knew. My mistake." He repeats the last part and turns away and Logan leaps forward, his claws come out, but Gambit is even quicker (quicksilver, thief) and presses himself into shadow and corner and is lost.
That night, Logan almost kills two men in the ring, but at the last moment, he bites his tongue until blood flows out. He won't. He's not an animal. He won't.
It's no surprise his blood tastes like bog and swamp.
The man known as Sabretooth snuffles at the grass. Food. Close. He follows the scent to the brush. He stops and crouches. Listens to the sounds of the forest and how the birds die out, and the insects stop their buzz, and it's so quiet, it's like the end of the world.
He leaps and comes down with a crash that frightens the birds, crushes some insects, and the world resumes, bright and colored. The sounds of the deer is cut short and he tears open the ribcage to the slow pumping heart and drinks from the hot blood and feels like he is alive and in the world.
Busy as he is, it doesn't take him more than a second to know that there were two pairs of eyes watching him. Sabretooth snarls, turns around to loom over his food; he'll kill anything and anyone who takes his meal away. What he says wants to die in this throat. It's an old man and a blue woman.
Mutants.
Sabretooth tenses; outwardly, they are no threat to him and his claws, but he knows. He know the old-man-in-the-impeccably-clean-clothes is more dangerous than five of him put together. There are few mutants that that can be said of.
(Wolves.)
He is wary.
No mutants have been in the area for a long time. (the last time, laboratory, cave, diamonds, optic, claws, claws, claws, adamantium) He stares. Something tickles the back of his mind, like a sneeze.
"Hello, Sabretooth," says the Old Man in Clean Clothing.
The Blue Woman wrinkles her nose. "Ugh, what is that smell?"
He feels shame, hot and thick, run through him. Sabretooth tries to lick off the blood that mats his beard but only succeeds in smearing it. He doesn't have to look at himself to know that he is soiled and covered in mud and dirt and… Sabretooth glares. He doesn't care.
"Dear, it's the scent of nature and vitality. Quite appropriate for who he is to the world."
The Blue Woman obviously does not think so with the slight curl to her lips, but she strides forward and bends down to touch his head. Sabretooth ducks and growls, a little, but all she does is slap him on the side of his arm and say, "down, boy." She examines the cuts and bruises that litter his rag-tattered body and frowns. "Well, he'll be useless to us if we don't feed him." She examines a bruise that looks like a shoe print and her eyes narrow. "Humans," she sneers. It transforms her face into something severe and stern.
"Waste, to be sure. Now, let us go Sabretooth." The Old Man in Clean Clothing turns to go, but there are still traces of Victor in him. (Somewhere)
"Who the hell are you?" he growls. His voice is rusty from disuse and it grapples with sound.
The Old Man in Clean Clothing looks down at him (down, down, down) and smiles. Comforting, it is not. It is swathed in cold history and unbending truth.
"My name is Magneto and I shall destroy humanity."
He is always being arrested.
He is always slicing his way out. He never resists; it seems the quickest way to draw attention to himself and attention is something he can't afford right now, not if he wants to continue his comings and goings between Canada and the USA. (attached, he's getting attached. He shouldn't get attached, it only means trouble)
It's far easier to slice and dice his way out of a cell. It's quiet and easy and no one ever need to know that he was there.
(forget.)
They'll forget he ever existed.
Then, one day, because of a girl and her clumsy attempts to hide in his hitch, his life changes.
Logan still wonders whether it was good or not; he's gained nakama (nakama, nakama, nakama, what the hell is nakama?), but he's lost a bit of his freedom. There will always be someone in his head now. And he doubts he can ever see red hair again and not think of Jean Grey.
But really. It's the girl. It's the girl and her naivete. She still trusts the world, even if the world's shitted on everything she could love. He wants to tell her that memory seems less and less important now that he's known her and his new world. He wants Marie to know that she brought him to the mansion, inadvertently gave him Jeanie and Storm and Cyke and old Professor X and does she realize what that means for him?
Family. Friends. (Nakama)
It surprises him the first time he scents lavender and doesn't want to throw up.
Sabretooth snarls against the bars. He's locked in. He hates this. He hates Magneto. He doesn't. Magneto is good. He saved him. They all saved him. He could have lived on his own. He will live on his own. (blood, blood, blood) He saw the wolf. The wolf in another man. (quiet, James, he won't hear us from here).
He wants to be free. He pulls the bars apart. He goes into the hallway. He snuffles at the walls. He hears the echoes. He.
He licks his claws. He can taste the filter of lightening and soft skin on the very tips and he swears that it'll soon be marrow and blood and salt, salt, salt.
Sabretooth (victor) grinsnarls. He's going to hunt later. Little lightning witch.
Logan circles around Sabretooth and hesitates. It's not like him, to hesitate. But the mutant fighting him right now requires hesitation. Adamantium. He reminds Logan of himself, before he joined up with the X-men. Logan wonders if this is what he eventually would have become, all snarl and violence, if not for Marie and the others. If not for –
K-
It's like the world shrinks away and the flashstep image of a girl dying with a grin on her face spurs Logan into action. Doesn't matter she isn't Marie or Jeanie or Storm or any of his family. This girl haunts him, haunts him more than she should, and he knows (he knows) once upon a time (but he doesn’t believe in fairy tales), she was the world for him.
Lavenders.
Sabretooth (Victor Creed, tortured, murderous, a crazy sonuvabitch) snarls at him, and the eyes are animalistic ("run, James!") and the sounds are unfamiliar and Wolverine laughs. "Is that all you got, bub?" A snickt and his adamantium claws unsheathe themselves from the flesh of his knuckles. (like bone and lumber) The wounds heal before the blood sprays the ground. He launches himself forward and their battle begins (again).
(Stop, rewind.)
Victor and James play in the dirt next to the woodpile, and they have no clue that one hundred and fifty some years later, they will try to kill each other on top of the Statue of Liberty and not know they are brothers.
(they've made their choices and their choices follow them)
- fin -
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Date: 2010-11-03 08:57 pm (UTC)