Chapter Text
Looking out on the panorama of Hell’s Kitchen at dawn always made me feel nostalgic. The tall skyscrapers, the busy streets and the greyish air were charming in their own ways, but they couldn’t beat the blue skies, wild waves and dramatic landscape of my home. Scotland was home. Scotland was what made me myself. As cliche as it might sounded, you can take a girl out of Scotland, but you can’t take Scotland out of that girl.
Sipping my tea and staring out the window, I was lost in my thoughts so that I didn’t hear the slight knocking at the door. However, it grew louder and louder until it shook me awake. Walking through my open kitchen, I put my mug on the living room table and made my way to the front door. The knocking turned into a banging when I turned the locks and opened the door.
“Fucking finally, thought you were still asleep”, said a gruff voice while walking into the flat like he owned it. Plopping down on the sofa, Logan looked to smug for my liking. “What would you have done if I was still asleep?”, I asked while closing the door and returning to the sofa to sit down. “I would have come the same way as one of the red fuckers.” I laughed out loud: “I would have loved to see that, you, climbing up the fire escape. You would have woken up everyone in the building!” “Hah hah, Shannon, very funny.” “I know I am a comedic genius. Now what do you want, Logan? It’s too early in the morning to start drinking with me even for you.”
I looked curiously onto Logan who uncharacteristically shifted in his seat. His smugness from early was gone. He was nervous, something that I hadn’t seen many times in our century long friendship. “Charles… he wanted me to check up on you. Something about what he saw in Cerebro.” I sighed. Charles Xavier only wanted to protect me, as he wanted to protect all mutants but the fact that I lived more than 300 years without Charles’ interference kind of made his protection attempts a bit useless.
“And you are his messenger boy now? He knows I am fine. And the thing in Cerebro? We are in fucking New York City! What are you expecting? Of course, a bunch of mutants will turn up here, especially with the heroes, vigilantes and whoever that are running around freely and unbothered. New York is a dream city for us.”, I observed while standing and walking towards the kitchen.
“Shannon… He was frightened! There are mutants here that are powerful. Nearly as powerful as you are and we both know what might happen when they do something stupid! Especially now with all those other powered people around.”
Logan followed me through to the kitchen. His demeanour was serious, and he watched me intently. Something was brewing in the city that never sleeps and mutants were involved. I turned to him and shouted:
“And what does Charles want us to do? I am not searching for them, Logan, I am retired. Go to SHIELD or the Avengers, hell go to fucking Jessica Jones if you want to find them.”
Logan looked resigned, he knew why I didn’t want to get involved with any suspicious activities involved with powered people. The moment Tony Stark announced he was Iron Man, I put in my resignation to Fury and retired. I was tired. I wanted to settle down and live a life that I wasn’t able to have for the last 400 years. Now I was here living in Hell’s Kitchen living a relatively normal life, expect maybe the occasional drop in by the vigilantes and heroes of New York who needed healing. A boring life but not too boring, I thought.
Taking a deep breath, I composed myself from the outburst and explained calmly: “I won’t be doing anything actively, but you can tell Charles I will have an ear out and ask our powered friends if anything weird is going on. That’s it though. Nothing else.” Logan visibly relaxed. He nodded at me and gave me a side hug turning to go to the front door. He stopped shortly before opening it: “Your not-so-boring life suits you. Just 50 years ago, you would have been the first to run to find everything out.” I smiled at him sadly: “Running into danger is not my MO anymore. Having to fight your loved ones does that to you.”
Logan was about to answer when suddenly we heard a loud crash in my bedroom. Grabbing a kitchen knife, I followed Logan who ran across the room with his claws out. We stopped at the bedroom door and listened carefully. We were able to hear two muffled voices, female and male. The female was cursing while the male just grunted what sounded like in pain. I recognised them. Straightening myself up, I motioned Logan to stand down and opened the door: “Murdock, Jones! What the fuck are doing in my bedroom!” Matt Murdock, in his Daredevil suit, and Jessica Jones stared at me stunned. “You got a lot of explanation to do!”