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When Logan wakes, the juxtaposition of where he is versus where he’d just been is jarring enough to make him dizzy. He remembers drowning. He can still feel the blood and water mixing in his lungs as he tries to fight his way out of the rebar and water prison that Magneto crafted for him.
But the sheets around his body are warm and soft and the muffled sound of voices that reach his ears from beyond the room are calm. There’s no sense of danger or urgency in the air.
He takes a deep breath and relaxes as his lungs fill with sweet air that smells like home. His scent is so intermingled with another that he can only barely pick them apart. The scent is familiar like an old faded memory, but he can’t quite place it. There’s a flavor of ozone and spice, warm and clean. It’s nice in a way few things have ever been in his life and Logan relaxes even more, the memory of blood and death fading away completely.
His eyes blink open and he almost expects another person to be in the bed with him, the scent is so strong, but he’s alone.
He sits up and looks around the room. The curtains are heavy, but they’re pulled back and bright sunshine floods the room. The sound of music draws his attention to the strange clock by the bedside. It looks like nothing he’s ever seen before, but the tune is one he knows.
For all that the pillow has obviously been in his possession for a long time, there’s no real sense of personality in the space he finds himself in. It looks more like someone tried to cross an office with a library and tossed a bed in for good measure.
It’s still comfortable and welcoming, but it doesn’t scream home the way the pillow does and Logan is tempted to lay back down and bury his face in the scent again.
But he knows that he can’t do that. Obviously his mission into the past managed to change something, or else he wouldn’t be waking at all, but he needs to know more. He’s lived long enough to know that sometimes peeling back the calm veneer reveals a whole heap of desperation underneath.
He also knows that Charles will provide a sanctuary for as long as he’s able, regardless of what the world at large looks like. It’s one of the things Logan has always liked best about his friend, one of the things that had been so shockingly missing from the Charles he’d met in the past.
Rolling out of the bed, he glances down, surprised to see that he’s fully dressed. Even his boots are still on. He tugs the shirt hem up to his nose and takes a sniff. The clothes smell like his, but aside from his little sojourn into the past, it’s been years since he’s worn anything besides his X-Men uniform. They’d been engineered specifically to make mutants harder for the sentinels to find and after the school had been razed to the ground with most of the staff and students still inside, the survivors had needed that small bit of comfort and safety.
The t-shirt and jeans are worn. Comfortable. The boots, too.
Looking around, he makes note of the books that line the walls. History books, mostly. Some of them are old, the scent of their age clinging to them. Others look like new purchases, the ink still smelling fresh. It’s another change that eases something inside him. No one has bothered printing books in years - not in the future he remembers.
The bed doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the room. It looks like a last minute addition that someone threw in to give him a place to sleep.
He wonders at that. Does he not spend enough time at the school to have a place of his own? Is he new here?
That’s disappointing, but he supposes that he hadn’t really started sticking around until the world had started falling down around his ears the first time around, so it’s not really a surprise. He hadn’t really understood just how much the mansion had come to mean ‘home’ until it was gone.
Logan glances down at his hands. He hesitates for a moment, not sure if he really wants to know. It’s an easy flex and he feels the slide of his claws pushing through the skin.
The familiar gleam of adamantium is a punch to the gut and he retracts the blades from one heartbeat to the next. There’s no reason to be upset that he hadn’t managed to avoid that particular mistake. Adamantium has only ever been a handicap against Magneto and airport security.
He can’t help but feel weighed down now that he knows for sure, though.
There’s a bag tossed onto a nearby chair that looks old and worn, like something he might have carried around back before he’d thrown his lot in with Charles Xavier and his band of misfits. Back when wandering from place to place had been due to the restlessness that crawled underneath his skin and not a simple necessity. A quick check through it doesn’t give him anything new. The address on the Canadian driver’s license he finds is a post office box out of Edmonton, Alberta. If he has a passport - and he must have a passport, right? - it isn’t with his things.
The desk shoved against the wall in a corner is locked. It’d be a simple matter to break the lock or even just jimmy it open, but Logan doesn’t want to risk damaging anything that isn’t his just yet.
There’s nothing else to be found in the room.
At the door, he hesitates. If changing the past hasn’t managed to keep him out of Stryker’s hands, what else is the same?
The answers aren’t in this room, though, and he needs them. No matter how good or bad they may be, Logan’s lived long enough to know that knowledge is it’s own kind of power.
He takes a deep breath and pushes open the door.
The artificial light in the hall is just this side of too bright to eyes that have adjusted to room just barely lit by softer sunlight and the noise solidifies into the chatter of students rushing to and fro.
It’s almost too much to take in. The kids are smiling and laughing, milling around him like he’s just another part of the familiar scenery. He thinks one of them says hi, but before he can focus on it, a pair of figures catches his eye at the end of the hall.
Bobby Drake looks just the same as he had only a few days ago, a little lighter, a little freer, but essentially the same. It’s the woman that steps up beside him that really hits Logan like a solid punch to the solar plexus.
He remembers exactly when he saw Marie last, over a decade ago when she had died in his arms. The mutant ‘cure’ might have dampened down powers, but it hadn’t actually reversed anyone’s genetics. When the sentinels had appeared, all those powerless mutants had died in the first swarm.
Seeing her now is enough to make him dizzy with both disbelief and heady relief. She hadn’t been his first loss or his last, but it had killed a part of him just the same.
She smiles at him before pulling Bobby away and Logan shakes his head, trying to clear it, to move forward and touch her, to prove that she’s as real as she looks.
It’s like trying to swim upstream, though, with the mass of students. The swell of teenage hormones and perfumes is overwhelming, dizzying even.
Someone knocks into his shoulder with a rushed apology and when he straightens again, Marie and Bobby are gone.
Familiar voices catch his attention and he glances into the nearest classroom. A dozen or more students are watching Kitty and Peter with rapt attention. He doesn’t understand the subject, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is how relaxed they both look, how settled the students are.
The complete lack of fear and paranoia says a lot about the world around them, he thinks. The sense of constant danger that has become so familiar in the life of the few remaining mutants in the world is absent. These students and their teachers are safe. They know it and they take it for granted.
Logan isn’t sure if the mansion ever felt like that in the world he remembers. Even in the beginning, long before war had arrived at their doorstep, the mutant registration act had been hanging over everyone’s heads.
“Morning, Logan. Late start?”
He turns, gaping slightly as Hank McCoy strides past him down the hallway, confident and larger than life.
The burn of tears makes Logan blink a few times as ghosts of the past rush up at him. Hank had held on longer than Marie, had built them a better blackbird, better sentinel-shielded uniforms, an arsenal that had allowed them to fight back. But he’d fallen like all the others, had sacrificed his life so that the rest could escape.
Logan’s dizzy as he continues on, almost stumbling down the stairs without the steady solidness he usually moved with. It feels like the ground beneath his feet is shifting and he can’t quite find his footing.
Perhaps this isn’t real at all. Perhaps death has finally found him.
If that’s what’s happening here, if Magneto killed him and this is what’s waiting on the other side?
His fists clench at the thought, the bite of his nails and the sting of his claws edging into his knuckles reminding him pointedly that his life doesn’t work that way. He’s ‘died’ so many times, just in the forty or fifty years that he can remember. Yashida had managed to temporarily suppress his healing factor in a way that had felt like mortality, but even the sentinels hadn’t successfully managed to put him down for good.
He doubts that Magneto could have succeeded.
Taking a deep breath, Logan tells himself that this is a changed timeline, that this is real. It has to be. He doesn’t think he can stand it if it turns out to be anything less.
Storm’s voice floats up to him, breaking through the desperate thoughts that leave him shaky and uncertain. Looking down the stairs, his gaze catches on her shock of thundercloud hair. His heart throbs painfully, but it’s a good pain. She was there at the end, one of the last standing by his side. He’s fiercely glad to see that a changed timeline hasn’t taken her away.
“Storm…” The word is the whisper of a prayer on his lips.
She barely glances at him, but that’s okay. The closeness that had grown between them was one of shared tragedy and fear and determination to fight the hopeless battle ‘til the bitter end. He can live without that if it means she’s had an easier life this go around.
He hopes that all of them have had an easier life.
Before his mind can fully settle, a splash of red catches his eye and he freezes.
His lungs are burning before he manages to force himself to breathe again.
It can’t be.
He stumbles forward, unwilling to hope but unable to stop himself. A waft of scent reaches him, ozone and spice and so close to the one that had lingered on his pillow. It draws him closer as surely as this ghostly vision does.
“Jean…”
The figure turns and smiles and it is her. “Hey, Logan.”
That voice has haunted his dreams and his nightmares for decades. There are still mornings when he wakes up, sure that her blood is dripping off his claws. He can’t remember what it was like to not be haunted by this particular specter.
“Jean.” He’d be embarrassed by the thin sound of his voice, by the disbelief and the hope and the need, but he honestly couldn’t have stifled it if he tried.
She pulls herself up a little straighter and honest concern flashes in her eyes. He wonders what she’s making of the tangle of emotions she’s probably reading off of him. “You okay?”
“You’re here.” He’s not sure why it seems like more of an impossibility than any of the others, but somehow it does. Maybe because the guilt of killing her has been a part of him for so long that it seems wrong to be faced with the reality of her over the one that haunts his dreams.
Her grin returns and she rolls her eyes at him. “Where else would I be?”
He’s watched her die twice, but he can’t explain that.
Some foggy part of his mind realizes that she carries that scent of home on her clothes, but it isn’t actually a part of her own personal scent. Here, then, but not his and he never imagined that he could be okay with that, but he is. Because the here is so much more important than anything else.
His hand is moving before he can even think about it.
“Whoa.” Another hand catches his before it can reach Jean’s face. “Easy, pal.”
The oldest ghost of them all stares back at him, barely restrained jealousy and annoyance flashing under the usual cool facade and all at once everything snaps back into place.
For a long time, Logan had avoided attachments. Then there’d been Marie and the school and he’d found himself daring to hope for a life. Jean and Scott’s deaths had been the first in his memory that had mattered. He remembers holding Scott after Jean’s first death, sharing their grief, and how hard he’d tried to keep the man stable afterwards.
When they’d realized that Scott was gone, it had felt like a personal failure in a way that Jean’s first ‘death’ hadn’t.
“Well at least some things never change.” For the first time since he woke up, everything feels completely real. Solid. He claps Scott on the shoulder, suddenly happier to see him than anyone else. Good old Cyke, always good for keeping Logan’s feet firmly planted on the ground. “It’s good to see you, Scott.”
Simple jealousy becomes a cloud of other emotions too complicated to sort through.
“Uh huh.” The other man glances at Jean, but makes no move towards her. “See you later, Jean.”
Then he moves past them, careful not to touch either one. The scent of ozone and spice trails after him, solidifying the feeling of home growing underneath Logan’s ribs. It doesn’t make much sense to Logan that he seems to have stolen Scott’s pillows and that it’s the most stable thing he’s found to latch onto in this new world, especially given the lack of anything resembling warmth or affection from the other.
It’s strange, but Logan files it away to ponder later because now he can see that the room beyond is Charles’s office. The man himself is behind the desk wearing the sort of suit that Logan hasn’t seen him in since the mansion fell. “Professor…”
He looks every inch the man who welcomed Logan into the X-Men, who gave him a home so long ago. Logan takes a deep breath and ignores the traces of the ozone Scott has left behind to focus on Charles’ scent. It’s pure again, as it hasn’t been since the professor had had to send his mind out of his burning body to take refuge elsewhere.
“Logan,” Jean calls again. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah.” He isn’t sure how to explain that ‘all right’ doesn’t even begin to express anything around him. Things don’t quite add up just yet and it’s strange to see his ghosts made flesh and blood, but… This strange new world is better than he could have ever hoped for when he’d agreed to Charles and Eric’s plan. Stopping the war, yes. But to get back everyone he’d lost?
Not even in his deepest, most hidden fantasies had he imagined that they could change things that much.
Logan pauses and can’t help but smile at Jean, wondering if she’s picking up the fierce joy that’s bubbling up inside of him. “Yeah… I think it is.”
There are still questions in her eyes, but she leaves them unvoiced. She gives a simple nod of her head in acknowledgment and then she’s gone.
He pauses, but the urge to follow her never materializes. He’s had years - decades even - to come to terms with that loss and he has. The love is still there, soft and warm like a fond memory, but it’s nothing like it used to be. Time, it seems, does heal all wounds.
Another few moments passes as he stares at Charles, gratitude and something that feels a lot like family nearly overwhelming as he watches the man read. It’s always down to Charles, he thinks. Every single good thing that he can remember having has been because of the professor’s innate goodness and refusal to accept when they were beaten.
It seems funny now to remember that he’d ever doubted the other man.
“You did it.”
Charles doesn’t even look up at first, distracted as he is by whatever book he’s reading. “Did what?” The book snaps shut and Charles tosses it down, his chair sliding easily to the side. The chair is familiar in a way most of the other things in the mansion haven’t been. Eric’s design, operated by a power not unlike his own, to aid in Charles’ maneuverability as they’d come back together to fight the sentinels. It’s not necessarily the same one, but Logan is pretty sure that answers the question of whether or not Eric has survived. Despite the rebar through the chest, he finds that he’s mostly okay with that. “Logan, don’t you have a class to teach?”
“… a class. To- to teach?” He wonders whose bright idea it was to make him a teacher. Even before the world had gone to shit, he hadn’t been the most patient man in the world. If anything, he’d been even less so back in those days.
“Yes. History.” Charles is calm if not a little exasperated. He doesn’t seem to recognize that there’s been a significant shift in Logan, but then, the telepath was ever polite about avoiding peering into the minds of those around him when it wasn’t a matter of life and death.
“History.” Logan’s lips twitch, but he suppresses the smile. That explains the books in his room, at least. He suspects it was probably someone’s idea of a joke, but he finds that he doesn’t mind it as much as he could have. It could be worse. It could be art. Still, Charles has given him the perfect opening. “Actually, I could use some help with that.”
“Help with what?”
Logan considers the best way to answer that. “Pretty much everything after 1973.” He can see the moment the realization hits Charles, hears the sharp inhalation. “I think the history I know is … a little different.”
“Welcome back,” Charles breathes out.
“It’s good to see you, Charles.” This is real, he tells himself as he feels the careful brush of his friend’s mind over his own and lets himself believe it. “It’s good to see everyone.”
There are others he’s curious about, of course. Friends and enemies that he can’t help but wonder about and hope for. Even Eric and Mystique he wishes well, in spite of how they’d been in the last moments he’d seen them. He remembers how old and weary Eric had been as he listened to Charles outline the plan. He hadn’t believed, not really, but he’d been willing to try for Charles’ sake.
He doesn’t even know for sure when Mystique had died, just that her death had been a heavy burden on the hearts of both men.
The smile that settles on Charles’ face is warm. Pleased. “Well, I had a promise to keep.”
Logan remembers his own words, his plea for Charles to pull the X-Men together no matter what and he can’t help but smile back. Of course Charles had kept his promise.
If he’s ever broken one, Logan doesn’t know about it.
“We have … a lot of catching up to do,” Charles continues, shaking his head at the enormity of it all.
The affection and the happiness and the hope is almost overwhelming. He’s never been one for crying no matter how shaky his circumstances have left him, but he can feel the prickle of tears in his eyes again from nothing more than the sheer joy of knowing that they succeeded.
This is real.
“Yeah.”
Leaning forward, Charles’ voice drops and his expression is nothing less than pure enthusiastic curiosity. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Logan hates to be the one to dampen down that enthusiasm - it’s been so long since he’s actually seen it - but he won’t lie. Not to Charles. “Drowning.”
That gets a nod and a grimace. “Indeed. For what it’s worth, I believe that Eric has had occasion to regret that action over the ensuing years.”
“So he’s still around?”
“For a given value of ‘around’.” Charles shrugs and gestures towards a chair. He waits until Logan has settled down to continue. “Most of his time is spent in Genosha.” He must notice Logan’s confusion because he waves a hand towards a map that adorns the wall, pointing at a small land mass northeast of Madagascar. “It was established as a small mutant country almost fifteen years ago, now. The last census counts the population as upwards towards five million, almost entirely mutant citizens. Technically, there are elections every five years, but Eric is their savior. He’s won every election by a landslide, thus far.”
He leans forward again, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial level. “Between you and I, I don’t think he’s even attempted to rig the elections.”
Snorting, Logan settles back in his seat. “A country of mutants run by a terrorist. How’s that working out?”
In the timeline he’s familiar with, such a country would have been shut down with extreme prejudice before it could have even gotten started. If it’s lasted so long in this one, things are better than even Charles had hoped for.
Charles smiles, steepling his hands under his chin. “There are still issues that need fighting on a political level, but in the day to day, most attitudes have changed, Logan. In many countries, mutants are governed by the same rights and rules as any non-mutant. Here in the US, we’ve even seen the laws banning mutants from public office overturned recently. I suspect Kitty has plans to run for the Senate soon. It is a better world than the one that you showed me all those years ago, old friend.”
“I’m glad,” Logan replies. There’s so much more he could say, jokes he could make, questions he could ask, but Logan’s a little overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. He’s not sure where he would even begin.
Luckily, Charles seems to guess that. “I should have someone take over your classes for the week until we’ve gotten you all caught up. Jubilee usually covers your lessons whenever you are away.”
The name is vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite place it.
“Yeah…” Though Logan hesitates for a moment, he decides to just get his question out of the way. “About that… There a reason I’m sleeping in an office without a change of clothes?”
The telepath makes a faint sound of surprise, looking wide-eyed and sheepish. “Oh, dear… I’m afraid I’d forgotten about that. My glimpse into your world was brief and so very long ago. It’s all still here,” he taps his forehead lightly “But years of difference have sort of.. Filled in on top. Forgive me, Logan.”
Logan just arches a brow and rolls one hand. “Obviously. Now what am I forgivin’ ya for, Chuck? It’s not like I had a room here for very long before everything went south. Just seems like that’d be different now.”
“It is.” Charles hesitates before brushing his fingers along his head in a gesture that would have run them right through the wild mane of hair his younger self had been sporting. It had been jarring to see. As ridiculous as it is, it had never occurred to Logan that the professor had ever not been bald. Not until he’d seen the evidence otherwise. “Or rather, it was. It’s all somewhat complicated at the moment, I’m afraid. Perhaps Scott should be here for this conversation. He will be affected by the change in your circumstance, as well.”
Logan wishes he could say he’s surprised, but he really isn’t. New future or not, it wouldn’t be his life if it wasn’t complicated.
Scott must not have gone very far because he’s knocking at the door and leaning in only moments later. “Professor?”
He doesn’t acknowledge Logan at all, but that’s okay. It gives Logan a chance to really study the other man.
Scott looks much the same as Logan remembers him. There’s even a similar layer of grief over him that makes Logan frown. Jean is still alive and he can’t help but wonder again about the way Scott had reacted.
Had this Jean made a different choice when Logan offered it?
“Scott, thank you for your haste.” Charles hesitates for a moment. “I’m not quite sure how best to… well, I suppose straight out is the simplest, isn’t it? Scott, while this is certainly Logan, he’s not quite the same man that you knew yesterday.”
It’s hard to really decipher Scott’s reaction to that. Between the man’s self-control, the visor that hides his eyes, and the decades between now and the last time they’d seen each other, Logan doesn’t have much to draw from.
There’re still little tells though.
The self-control has become absolute stillness. Logan isn’t even sure Scott is breathing for a moment. Once movement returns, his throat works around a swallow and his lips curl down ever so slightly.
The scent of ozone has soured to something closer to sulfur in a way that reminds Logan of that dark time of grief before Scott had died.
If Logan has to guess, he’d say that Scott is upset and confused with an edge of potential grief trying to break through.
“Professor?” his voice is controlled, though, nothing more than polite confusion.
Charles sighs. “In 1973, Eric and I were visited by a man claiming to be from the future. He said that he had been sent back to stop a war that would end both mutants and humans.”
“Time travel?”
Logan thinks that the skepticism in Scott’s voice is a little uncalled for. Even without taking into account the seemingly unlimited pool of mutations in existence, the mansion itself should be full of ‘impossible’ technology.
Apparently Charles agrees. He arches a brow. “We’ve had travelers from alternate dimensions, Scott. I hardly think that time travel would seem so farfetched in the face of that.”
Part of the professor’s mutation has to be the ability to make a person feel instantly chastised. He’s certainly managed it with Logan often enough. It doesn’t appear that Scott is immune to it, either. His head dips slightly and he mutters an apology and motions for Charles to continue.
“I didn’t believe him myself, of course, but his mission was to save Raven and well… I couldn’t take the chance that I was wrong, now could I?”
Logan shifts and settles into the chair, content to let Charles deal with storytelling time. It gives him more time to observe Scott and try to sort out what it is about him, exactly, that manages to relax something in Logan that he hadn’t even realized existed.
~*~*~
“So you’re saying we’re… married?”
“Were.” It feels like there’s a weight settled across Scott’s chest at the sheer disbelief in Logan’s voice. He still manages to force out the correction, but it’s hard.
“Were married….” Logan looks as confused and lost as Scott has ever seen him and it stirs every feeling that he’s ever had for the man. Logan isn’t made to be lost or confused. He’s confident and in control and a dozen other things, both good and bad. Even when he is confused, he doesn’t show it easily like this. “Why the past tense?”
Across from them, Professor Xavier shifts uncomfortably. He’s done his best to stay out of their personal life out of respect for the fact that he cares for them both.
Their separation makes everyone uncomfortable because no one knows whose side they should be on. That’s what happens when they share the same friends and the same home, he supposes. He can’t be too bitter about it. Most of them tend to lean towards Scott’s side by default, anyway.
He clears his throat and shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Apparently you’re not the man involved.”
And isn’t that a tough pill to swallow? Scott is the one who’d finally put his foot down and said enough was enough, that they were destroying whatever good feelings they had towards one another.
When it’s good between them, it’s great. When it isn’t… Scott doesn’t like to think about the times when it isn’t good.
So yes, he filed for divorce, but it’s never been because he didn’t love Logan. He isn’t even sure he knows how to not be in love with Logan anymore.
To be told that the man he loves is gone forever, that he’s been replaced by another that shares his face, but none of their history good or bad… Experience makes the man and this may be Logan but it isn’t his Logan. His Logan is gone so thoroughly that he might as well have died - no matter the evidence otherwise sitting beside him.
He swallows hard and pushes himself to his feet. His control is hanging by a thread, but he clings to it desperately, unwilling to break down in front of Logan. “I’ll talk to Jubilee about the history classes. It isn’t the first time she’s had to take over so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll send her down. If you’ll excuse me-”
Before he can make his escape, the Professor stops him. “Scott. Though you are undoubtedly the one that this most affects, Logan has been here off and on for decades. The others will notice that he’s not quite the same man he was yesterday.”
Scott nods. “We’re mutants. It’s not the strangest thing to happen to us. A simple announcement should suffice.”
People are already looking at him with pity and walking on eggshells around him. This will make it even worse, but there’s nothing to be done about it.
“Now, I have lessons to prepare for.”
And maybe a bottle of whiskey to cry in, if there’s any left from the night he served Logan the divorce papers.
With the luck he’s been having, he’ll probably have to go to town for a new bottle.
~*~*~*~
Dinner is weird.
It’s all teenage hormones and noise and side-looks and gossip.
Logan can’t remember the last time he saw so many people in one place, at least not outside of the government killing camps, and the noise is almost overwhelming all on its own.
The announcement had been made at lunch, but it didn’t seem to cause much of a stir. The kids just accept it as another thing that’s happened in the background of their lives.
Apparently they get a few interstellar and inter-dimensional drop-ins from time to time. Usually not dropping into the body of someone already here and usually not intending to stick around, but for most of them it’s a non-issue.
He can’t help but snort in amusement as he watches the way they flit about the cafeteria in little groups, each far too caught up in their own teen drama to worry about the idea that one of their teachers is a time traveller.
Kids. If it doesn’t effect them on a personal level, they don’t really care.
It’s comforting in its own way and he’s more glad to see it than he ever could have imagined. None of the mutant kids he’d known had ever been able to indulge in that kind of self-absorption. The problems of the world had affected them all on a deep and personal level.
The adults are another matter entirely, even if their unease is for a different reason than what Logan’s used to.
The wariness that they’ve shown him isn’t fear. These people don’t really know fear the same way that he does. They haven’t lived with it as their constant companion, always wondering if this was going to be their last moments or the last time they see each other.
They’re more worried about what the change will mean for Scott.
Even Marie had simply side-eyed him before turning back to her own table and the friends gathered around it. He doesn’t know her story here yet, but it seems like he’s not the hero his own Marie had held him as.
He’s surprised at the way that hurts, just a little.
It turns out that one of the few people wholeheartedly on Logan’s side is Jubilee. She accepts the sudden change easily and is happy to fill him in on anything he asks.
Gossip seems to be one of her favorite things to do and she’s been rattling off random details and tidbits about pretty much everyone they’ve crossed paths with since Scott had brought her to the professor’s office and abandoned them to each other that afternoon.
Her favorite topic is his relationship with Scott.
“Everyone was sure you guys would get back together,” she says in between bites of her burger. “I mean.. It isn’t the first time you broke up.”
“Oh really?” He shouldn’t be encouraging it. The Scott he’d known before had hated being the subject of gossip and pity. He doubts this Scott is much different in that regard.
On the other hand, everyone else is already talking about it. They’re not even trying to be quiet or sneaky as they gossip with their little clusters of friends. It wouldn’t take Logan’s sensitive ears to hear the not-quite-whispers.
It’s no wonder that Scott opted on absenting himself from the meal.
The woman across from him nods, pushing dark hair out of her face with the back of one wrist. “Oh yeah. You two are like… the posterkids for an on again off again relationship. Mostly your fault, I think. You can be a dick sometimes. ‘Course, so can he, so.”
She shrugs.
“If I’m such a dick, why are you sitting here spitting your food at me?”
She flicks a french fry at him before popping another into her mouth and talking around it. “Rude. You’re my friend. I wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t convinced me it was a good idea.”
Picking up the fry, he considers it for a moment before eating it. He pointedly waits until he swallows to say anything. “You do realize that I’m not the same guy, right? I don’t know you from Eve.”
That isn’t entirely true. He has vague memories of a much younger girl with the same scent of fireworks and bubblegum that used to hang out with Marie and Kitty. He hadn’t known her well, though, and she’d been one of the kids they’d lost when the Sentinels had destroyed the school.
There’s another moment of silence as she sizes him up, then she leans forward, elbows propped on the table. “Okay. Say you came across a gang of assholes cornering a kid with clear intent to do said kid harm. Kid’s obviously a mutant and probably all alone in the world. What would you do?”
“Bust their heads and bring the kid here,” he answers immediately, not even having to think about it.
She grins and points her finger at him, miming shooting it. “That’s weird. That’s exactly what you did. You’re still Logan, you’re just like… Logan with fifty years of amnesia.”
That makes him snort because she doesn’t know the half of it. He’s still trying to sort out the new timeline, but what he’s been told so far has been interesting. While he hadn’t managed to avoid Stryker and the adamantium, it sounds like he had managed to avoid his first bout of amnesia. Apparently it makes him a good history teacher.
According to Charles, he’s almost two hundred years old.
He’s got a long lifetime that he doesn’t know. The only thing remotely real that matches up is those few short days in 1973 with Charles, Eric, and Hank. Beyond that, he’s got about thirty or forty years of down in the muck struggling to keep his head above water that never happened here.
“So I saved your life and you decided to stick around, huh?” That seems to be a common theme for him in this timeline. Scott hadn’t been very forthcoming, but Jubilee had known a few basics about how they’d met.
Instead of walking away from his adamantium infusion without his memory, apparently he’d ended up with a jailbait boyfriend. Jubilee had been quick to reassure him that she was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything illegal or inexcusable, but it still seems a little hinky to him.
It’s strange to imagine a world where he and Scott chose each other instead of Jean, but apparently that’s what he’s facing.
It doesn’t look like it turned out much better for them here than the other way had in his own timeline. The scent of Scott’s grief still clings to him like a bad perfume.
It makes his nose itch.
Jubilee shrugs again with a grin. She’s a bright spot of color in almost violent shades of yellow and pink, but it suits her somehow. “What can I say, man? We just clicked. You’re the big brother I never had and I’m the little sister you never wanted.”
“Musta been my sparkling personality.”
His dry tone garners a laugh and she flicks another fry at him. He eats that one, too. The last decade or so had been lean years. There was never enough food and what there was of it tended towards bland and tasteless. Cold, too, more often than not. He hasn’t been able to enjoy the simple pleasure of a warm, salty french fry in a long, long time. “Exactly. But, no, really. You’re still just this awkward, gruff guy hiding all his mushy spots ‘cuz bad shit’s happened to you. You’re still you at the core of it all.”
He watches her for a long moment. Her confidence and acceptance loosens the tension that everyone else’s unease has been winding up in his chest.
“So. How long ya known me?” She’s easy with him in a way that few people have ever been without years of war binding them together.
His Marie, maybe.
She shrugs and leans back in her seat, eyes wandering up to the ceiling as her mouth moves in silent thoughts. “Lessee… you found me in… ‘03? About a year after my folks passed, so yeah. ‘03ish. Huh. Twenty years, now. Crazy. You just don’t think about how much time passes, you know?”
Ain’t that the truth?
There are months and years that he lost, time that had just bled into itself, one fight after another. He hadn’t realized the date until he’d woken up here.
Taking his silence as confirmation, Jubilee nods to herself and continues on. “It was hard for a while. I think Scott was torn between hoping you’d stick around ‘cuz of me and being jealous at the very idea. It made things… awkward.”
“You were just a kid, though, right?” He really hopes that Scott was the exception to the rule and he’d stayed away from any other jailbait.
“Yeah, but you don’t click with many people, you know? And up to that point, I don’t think Scott really had to worry about sharing you on any level. You mighta kept leaving, but when you were here, you were focused on him. Then suddenly you showed up with a kid and, shit. You know how much attention kids take up.”
Once upon a time he hadn’t. Before he’d run into Marie and followed her down the path towards the X-Men and everything that came with them. He wonders if there are children hidden in his past that he doesn’t know about. If there are, Charles never could find any trace of them.
“If we been together so long, I’m surprised we don’t have one of our own.” He has vague memories that Scott had wanted kids before he’d died. Jean was the one who hadn’t.
Jubilee shrugs and sucks her soda through her straw as obnoxiously as possible. The noise is a little grating, but there’s too much other noise around them for him to get too annoyed at it. “No offense, dude, but that’s your fault. Always running away like you do… that isn’t good for any relationship, but it’s definitely a no-go for a parental one. Even when the two of you were together, you were gone more than you were here, sometimes without any warning at all. I love you, man, but I can’t really blame Scott for putting his foot down and saying no more.”
And there it is. Scott had skirted around it even though it was obviously still a sore point for him and Charles had completely bypassed it.
Logan leans forward and props his elbows on the table. “So why do I keep doing that? Cuz frankly, this seems like the sweetest deal I’ve ever been offered. A real home, a job, someone who loves me, people who need me… Seems stupid to just throw all that away.”
“Sometimes you aren’t that bright,” she offers with a shrug, pushing her tray away. Part of Logan wants to insist that she finish every bite - food is a precious commodity and wasting it is criminal - but he forces himself to keep the commentary to himself. He can’t prevent the urge to reach out and pull the tray over to his side of the table, though. He’s long since finished his own meal, but he can easily finish hers as well. She watches him with a sad kind of curiosity, like she thinks she knows why but isn’t entirely sure if she should say anything about it. In the end, she keeps those thoughts to herself. “I don’t really know. You never said, specifically. You always seemed.. Restless. Like you couldn’t bring yourself to just settle down and stay put. And sometimes you could get downright mean to those of us that are closest to you. Usually right before you split again. Professor always told us it wasn’t us, just something inside your own head you were fighting. I guess some days you won and some days you didn’t.”
He remembers those years on the road before Marie had dragged him in from the cold.
He remembers how uncomfortable he’d felt at the mansion the first time around and how he hadn’t been able to make himself stay, not even for Marie or Jean. Leaving that first time hadn’t all been about finding his past or putting the temptation of a taken woman out of his reach.
Having people who cared could be a burden and it had taken him a long time and a lot of fighting before he’d been able to make peace with it.
How much worse would it have been if there hadn’t been any external fight to focus on?
A lot of his own battle had been due to demons he couldn’t remember, shadow ghosts that had haunted his dreams and stalked him into the waking world when he wasn’t careful.
Part of him wonders if the demons had been the same, only with names and faces this time around. It’s not that hard to ignore, though. He accepted a long time ago that the past only has as much power over him as he allows it.
It sounds like something the other Logan had never learned.
“So. Do you think there’s any chance I can get a room that isn’t also my office?”
She grins at him, accepting the abrupt change of subject without comment. “I’m pretty sure we can figure something out, yeah.”
~*~*~~*
It isn’t much of a surprise when Charles brushes Scott’s mind with a quick request that he come fetch Logan. Dinner has been over for a while, he knows, and it won’t be long before everyone but the night owls start heading to bed.
Scott’s world may have imploded, but it’s still a school night.
Whenever Logan - his Logan, not the stranger wearing his face - vanishes from the mansion, he tends to do so with little more than the clothes on his back. Logan has barely been around at all since Scott asked for the divorce, so there hasn’t really been any pressing need to set a room aside for him. They’d simply converted his teacher’s office into a place he could sleep whenever he was actually around.
It means that almost everything Logan owns is still in Scott’s room.
Scott hasn’t even gotten around to packing any of it up. Logan’s clothes are still mixed in with his own, both in the dresser and the closet, some of them shared between them so frequently that he isn’t sure who it actually belongs to anymore.
A katana still hangs on the wall, taunting Scott with a story of his lover’s past that he’ll never know. A hand drawn map of World War II Europe is framed below it, the initials SGR looped elegantly in the corner marking it as something more priceless than most art.
There are pictures propped on the nightstands on either side of the bed and only half are entirely his own. Two or three of them are war time photos from a time before Scott was even born, Logan and Victor at the center of several different special military units. They’re mixed in with the handful of family pictures Scott has managed to hold onto over the years. Pictures of Logan and Jubilee are settled beside pictures of Scott and Ororo.
Logan’s expression is the exact same shade of exasperation and disdain for the camera in almost every single one.
All except the wedding photos.
It’s the only time anyone has ever been able to capture evidence of the soft sweetness and gentle care that Scott has always known Logan is capable of. The expression on his own face is one he never sees anymore, full of the wonder of loving Logan without any of the bitterness that’s built up over the years.
The nightstand on Logan’s side of the bed is still full of the random things he’s tossed there over the years and the case of fancy Cuban cigars that Victor had given his brother for his last birthday is still tucked up in the back of the closet.
Scott?
The Professor’s mental voice is always as unobtrusive as he can make it, but it jars Scott out of his thoughts and reminds him that there’s still a task to complete before he can indulge in self-pity.
Coming.
When he pushes open his door, he can see Peter and Kitty moving a bed into the next room down the hall. They pause, giving him a look that’s half sympathy and half guilt.
“Umm.. The professor gave Logan my old room, Scott. Is that gonna be okay?” Kitty shifts uncomfortably, no doubt aware that he isn’t going to find the situation ideal.
It makes sense, though. Since most of the students and staff live in the mansion, there aren’t a lot of empty rooms left. Kitty’s is only free because she and Peter finally decided keeping two rooms is wasteful since they tend to sleep together most nights.
Shrugging, Scott steps to the side so that they can continue. It isn’t okay, not really, but it’s going to have to be. And it isn’t like it’s forever.
This Logan may not be the same, but he doesn’t seem to be any more suited to staying still than the man Scott’s always known. He doubts it’ll be long before Logan is out the door once more.
“It’s fine. He’s in the office?”
Kitty nods. “Yeah. We moved a second desk in there for Jubilee. They were going through stuff, trying to figure out what needs to come up here and what can stay down there. That sort of thing.”
“I’ll go get him, then. He probably wants his things.”
It’s gotten easier to ignore the way they wince and go soft with pity no matter how oblique of a reference to his divorce comes up.
Things had almost gotten back to normal, but it looks like this change has set them right back to the beginning.
“We should be done here in a few minutes if you need help with that,” Peter offers, his voice soft.
Scott just waves it away. “It’s not that much so I’m pretty sure we can handle it. Thank you, though.”
Over twenty years of a life together and Logan’s part will easily fit into a box or two. If that doesn’t say everything that needs to be said about their relationship, he doesn’t know what else does.
With a sigh, he heads down through the housing wing towards the corridor of offices and classes. There are a few students hanging out and he has to break up one tryst in an empty classroom, but no one really interrupts his trek.
He hears them before he reaches the open doorway and Scott has to pause for a moment as the familiarity of it hits him square in the chest.
How many times has he had to come down here to fetch his husband for bed only to find the pair lost in a discussion about history or complaining about the lack of appreciation most of the students had for the subject?
How often has he stood in this very doorway and just watched Logan grade papers, enjoying the way the older man muttered to himself as he worked?
Leaning against the doorjamb, he lets himself get lost in the nostalgia. Scott’s been missing Logan for a lot longer than a day.
He’s jolted out of those thoughts when he notices the sheaf of papers Logan’s holding and the three obvious claw marks shredding them longways. He’s striding into the room and ripping the papers away from the older man’s hands. “Is that- Did you even- Son of a bitch.”
“They were locked in the desk, bub.” Logan steps back, hands raised in surrender. There’s something underneath the sympathetic look on his face, something curious or calculating. It’s hard to tell those two apart sometimes. “Guess we’re not as divorced as you thought.”
“Why would you- he- He said he’d drop them off at the court the last time he left. Signed. Why would he lie to me?” He wants to cringe out how lost he sounds, but it’s been a hard day. Scott doesn’t think he can be blamed.
There’s a soft sound as Jubilee excuses herself, but Scott doesn’t bother to look up to watch her leave. Logan hovers, shrugging when Scott finally focuses on him again.
“You’re the one that married him. Me? Us?” He sighs and scratches his jaw. His voice is wry when he finally offers his thoughts. “I’m not good at reaching out for things, but I’m just as bad at letting go of them once I have them. Well, real things, anyways. I’ve always been pretty good at trying to get things I know I can’t have.”
Scott’s sure there’s some insight to this Logan’s psyche in that, but suddenly he’s just far too tired to care about it. He clenches the papers in his fist and forces himself to take a stabilizing breath. He just needs to get this done so that he can make a final retreat for the night and try to figure out what to do about everything in the morning.
“Charles sent me to escort you to your new room and get your things from mine.”
Even though he looks like he wants to protest, Logan just gestures to the door. “After you.”
An uncomfortable silence settles between them as they walk through the halls towards the dormitory wing. Scott can feel eyes on him. He thinks of the way the other had clapped his shoulder earlier that morning, the sincerity when Logan had said it was good to see him.
He can’t remember the last time his husband had looked at him with anything other than bitter regret and resentment. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that this man isn’t the one that he’s known for so long.
The hall is quiet. Kitty and Peter have finished their task and everyone else seems to have found other places to be. That’s perfect because Scott isn’t sure he can deal with anyone else right now.
At the door to his room, he pauses, not sure he really wants to let any Logan back into his private sanctuary.
Logan seems to notice his hesitation because he puts his hands up in a gesture of peace. “I can wait out here.”
His Logan has been almost aggressively pushy since they’d split up. When he’d been at the mansion, he’d been pushing.
Even before, conciliatory and laid-back hadn’t exactly been well used words in Logan’s vocabulary. He had three approaches to problems - punch it, kiss it, and walk away from it. Scott’s been subjected to all three in the time they’ve known each other.
Thinking on it, he realizes that the unsigned, shredded papers shouldn’t be a surprise at all. Not really.
This Logan seems to be genuinely willing to let Scott dictate who does and doesn’t enter his space.
It’s different enough to jar Scott and he shakes his head. “It’s fine. You’ll probably have to stick around for a while to adjust to everything. If you keep walking around in the same clothes, Ororo will probably douse you to keep you from sticking everything up.”
There’s a snide undertone to his voice, but Logan just quirks a grin at him. “Yeah, wouldn’t be the first time ‘Ro decided I needed a bath, but I’d rather keep them warm in a tub all the same.”
There’s easy affection and warmth in his voice that makes Scott’s jealousy flare in spite of himself. “Were the two of you-”
He trails off, leaving the question open ended as he pushes open his door and gestures for the other man to follow him in.
“Me and ‘Ro? “ Logan’s eyes widen comically as he pauses, then he chuckles and shakes his head, continuing into the room. “Given how few of us were left, you’d think so but, nah. We never went down that road.”
Though he’d been offered an overview - sent to the past to save the future, paths diverged in ‘73, this isn’t the man you fell in love with - the details had been annoyingly scant. Logan hadn’t really offered any details of his own, content to let Charles do the talking. Scott’s man enough to admit that he’s curious about the world that could have been. He isn’t sure it’s a good idea to ask, though.
Kitty’s been exploring that side of her mutation for years and there’s been a lot of debate on the ethics and repercussions of sending someone’s mind back for anything other than testing and experimentation. One thing Jean, Hank, and Charles all agree on is that sending a mind back more than a few weeks would rip that mind to shreds. He can’t imagine how desperate they must have been to risk it, even with Logan’s ability to heal.
He chooses the easier question, instead. “Why?”
“Too many ghosts for the both of us. And let’s be honest. She’s way too good for me.” Logan shrugs and glances around the room. His gaze takes in the map and sword, but there’s no recognition in his eyes. It’s strange because Scott knows that both have been in his possession since before 1973.
It’s another question he can’t ask.
The pictures draw Logan’s attention and Scott doesn’t say anything as the other man drifts over to look more closely at them. He frowns and holds up one of himself and Victor. “Why am I all cozy with Sabertooth?”
Scott arches a brow. “I realize that the two of you don’t always see eye to eye, but he is your brother.”
There’s more than just simple surprise in Logan’s eyes. “Say what?”
“Victor?” Now Scott is just confused. “Your brother? Well. Half-brother.”
He and Victor have never been exactly friendly, but they’ve tried to tolerate each other over the years for Logan’s sake. The thought makes him wince. He really hopes that the professor sees fit to let Victor know before the man shows up here and finds out for himself.
Even though his control has gotten better and Erik keeps his grayer morals in check, Victor still gets a little intense when someone is threatening his baby brother.
Logan looks at the picture, the lost and confused look back in his expression. “I have a brother? Since when?”
“Well, he’s older than you, so I assume you’ve always had a brother.”
“I, uh…” Logan shrugs and sets the picture down. “I don’t have a lot of memories before the X-Men. Uh… before I came to the mansion, I mean.”
The X-Men are one of the few things that had been mentioned in the short briefing downstairs that morning. It seems strange to Scott that the professor would have suited up any of them and put them into such dangerous situations, but if the world was bad enough to send someone back in time to fix it, he can see why it might have been necessary.
“He’s kind of an asshole,” Scott offers with a shrug. “And he’s always spoiling for a fight, but I guess he’s okay. You.. Logan loved him, even when they were fighting. I don’t really know how well he’s going to handle… this.”
“Good thing I’m hard to kill,” Logan says. It’s obvious that he’s trying for a joke but it falls flat, all things considered.
Scott’s own voice is faint. “Good thing.”
It’s quiet as Logan looks at the rest of the old pictures with an almost hungry look on his face. It’s understandable, Scott supposes, if he’s really been living with amnesia. Scott can’t even imagine it, not really. Changed or not, those definitely belong to this Logan as much as they belonged to his own.
Before he can make any offers, though, Logan’s eye catches on the wedding photos that Scott hasn’t had the heart to take down yet. His fingers drift over the mahaghony frames as he looks at them. He finally picks up the one that’s always been Scott’s favorite. It’s just the two of them, looking at each other like they’re the only ones in the world. It wasn’t the only time that Scott had been absolutely sure that Logan loved him just as much, but it’s one of the few things that can really remind him of it after everything that’s happened since.
“How’d you end up with someone like me, anyways?” His lips twist in a kind of bitter amusement that doesn’t seem to be very funny. “Someone once told me that I was the guy you have fun with, not the one you marry.”
Even that makes Scott jealous, but it’s easier to ignore when Logan sounds so miserable. He’s always responded to this man’s emotions, even when he desperately didn’t want to.
He takes a deep breath and shrugs. “Same as anybody, I guess. Met, fell in love, decided to make it permanent.”
The look Logan gives him says he wants to call Scott out for the generic reply that doesn’t answer the question at all, but has decided not to for some reason.
“You look happy,” he says instead.
Scott’s mouth twists slightly. “Sometimes we were.”
Logan nods, his gaze going back to the photograph. He’s quiet as he stares at it and even though he doesn’t say anything else, there’s a trace of curious wonder there that makes Scott realize what hadn’t been said. I look happy.
The answer is still the same, but Scott wonders if this Logan has ever had any happiness. The way he touches the glass, his eyes still tracing the lines of the image says that if there was, it was grossly overbalanced by the lack.
It tears something up inside him to realize that he can still read every expression that crosses that face, even if the mind behind it is completely different. This may not be the Logan he’s been in love with since he was sixteen, but it’s still Logan and he isn’t far enough past their separation for that to be easy to deal with.
Nothing about Logan is easy to deal with.
He needs to get the man out of his room, out of the space they’ve shared for the better part of twenty years, and he needs to do it quickly. He heads over to the closet and grabs a sports bag to pile clothes in. “Kitty moved in with Peter a few months ago. Charles put you in her old room next door. This should get you through a few days at least and I’ll pack up the rest of your stuff tomorrow.” A few steps to the dresser he hasn’t cleared out and he begins trying to sort through everything, wishing that he’d never let them get so mixed together in the first place. He can’t quite bring himself to wish that he’d never met Logan at all, but it’s a near thing. “Jubilee can help catch you up on your classes and share the load for however long you stick around. It was rude to expect you to just sleep in your office, regardless of anything else and I shouldn’t have-”
The urge to babble goes abruptly still as a hand settles on his shoulder. He has to take a deep breath, then another, but the burn in his eyes that should be tears is impossible to ignore.
“Cyke…” Logan’s voice is gentle, careful in a way that’s painfully familiar and aching strange all at the same time. “Scott. I realize that it ain’t exactly my place to poke my nose into your business, but… It’s okay to let yourself grieve, ya know. And if you need me to leave, I will. This is your world and your home and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve started over from scratch. But if you’re just expecting me to cuz that’s what I’da done before, then I’d just as soon stay if it’s all the same to you. I been going a long time and I’m just… tired. The school is the only home I’ve ever known and I’d like to try to see if maybe there’s still a place here for me.”
There’s a long pause as Logan waits, nudging Scott’s chin with a gentle fist so that he’s looking up. “But only if that’s okay with you, cuz best I can tell, you’ve got all the right in the world to tell me to fuck off.”
He means it, Scott can tell.
If Scott says the word, Logan will go back downstairs and say his goodbyes and this time he won’t come back.
The thing is that he’s never wanted Logan to leave. All he’s ever wanted is for the man he loves to be whole and healthy and happy, wanting to stay right here with Scott.
It seems a cruel twist of fate that those things are finally right there in his grasp and he can’t hold on and enjoy it.
“It’s fine,” Scott lies, shoving the hurt away for now. He can deal with it later, when he has the time and space to fall apart alone.
Decades of dealing with Logan has made him good at compartmentalization.
~*~*~
Night time at the mansion is just the wrong combination of quiet and noisy to keep Logan from actually falling asleep.
He’s gotten used to the distant hum of drones and the rumbling way the Earth itself seemed to protest its fate. To hear the sounds of nature at peace, the chirp of crickets, the croak of frogs… It’s unsettling.
It’s amazing, of course, because Logan had never thought he’d hear those sounds again, but it’s still going to take time to get used to it.
There’s the soft murmur of a television or computer program through the walls on one side of his new bed and Logan’s hearing keeps trying to settle there, to tune into the late night talk show that someone is watching. There’s only silence from the other wall, the one between himself and Scott, but earlier he’d been able to hear the man moving around.
Thinking about it reminds him of Scott’s bedroom.
Rolling over, he buries his face in his pillow and inhales deeply.
It’s a pale imitation of the heady scent of home and belonging that had permeated Scott’s room. The surface smells had obviously changed and all signs pointed to months having passed since the last time any version of him had spent a significant amount of time there, but that only made it more obvious how deeply entrenched and intermingled their scents were.
And the pictures.... He's never been married - not that he remembers, at any rate - and Jean was the only woman who'd tempted him to consider more. He'd wanted that with her enough that he'd only given Scott a cursory thought as he'd pursued her.
Not his finest hour, he can admit now, decades after the fact.
The happiness in those wedding pictures... the way that they looked at each other, like no one else in the world existed...
Those looks weren't for him, but Logan wants that for himself. That's two people he's wanted to keep for himself that have belonged to someone else.
It probably says bad things about him, but at least this time the only person he'd be stealing from is himself.
Sighing, he twists around again. There isn't a lot of point in thinking about it right now. Even Logan isn't so insensitive as to not realize that Scott has some serious issues to deal with that don't mesh well with being pursued by a man who shares his estranged husband’s face.
For now.
He's honest enough to admit - to himself, anyways - that he probably will see if there's any chance for something there in the future. Besides, he reasons, it's obvious that his predecessor had done some pretty serious damage over the years. It's only right that he fix his own messes, right?
Snorting to himself, he kicks the sheets off the bed.
Dwelling on Scott isn't going to help anything at the moment. It's not like he can make any decisions without knowing more. He'll think about it again once he's been here a while and he can see the lay of the land.
Instead, his thoughts turn to the other things Scott's room had revealed.
He may have let go of his search for the past when he’d chosen the X-Men’s side so many years ago, but few of the pieces that had fallen into his lap over the years since had gone well for him. To be faced with tangible evidence of the man he’d been before Stryker had tried to turn him into an animal borders on overwhelming.
He has a brother. He can’t help but be fiercely glad to know it, even if he doesn’t know what to make of the who.
The hair is shorter, the expression friendlier, but Logan has learned to be possessive of the memories he does have. Victor is the man he’d once only known as ‘Sabertooth’.
Had he known that it was his brother he was attacking? So many other things had changed for Logan that day that he’d barely given any real thought to anyone but Marie, Jean, and the asshole in charge of the other side. Magneto and Mystique had been the only mutants in the Brotherhood who’d really mattered to him and only then because they’d made the fight personal.
In retrospect, he wonders if it would have made more sense for Sabertooth to have gone after Logan than Mystique, if maybe he hadn’t because he hadn’t wanted to fight family.
Logan shifts around and buries his face in his pillow, snorting to himself at the thought. Even in the pictures, the expression on this Victor’s face doesn’t exactly scream ‘sentimental’.
He’s letting himself get caught up in ‘what if’ games and that never goes well. And it’s not like he can ever get any solid answers to his questions.
Sabertooth doesn’t even exist here. He’s only Victor, according to Scott, and spends most of his time in Genosha working for Magneto.
Would you care to join me for a drink, Logan?
He sighs and rolls easily out of bed. Hanging out with the professor beats chasing his own tangled thoughts around in circles.
Even the outside is different than Logan remembers, but that was the point of everything, wasn’t it? The air smells fresh and clean and the insects are even louder than they were from inside his room.
He can see stars.
The balcony runs along the length of the wing, looking more like a porch than anything else to Logan. A long row of steps lead up to another, smaller balcony outside of what he vaguely remembers being Charles’ master suite. On this level, there are a handful of small tables and fancy deck chairs outside the various rooms that are attached to it. Down past his own door, he can see another open a crack, the noise of a television spilling out faintly.
He can’t help but sniff the air a bit, curious, but he doesn’t recognize whoever is in the room.
Ozone and spice tickles his nose as he passes Scott’s door and he glances towards it, but there’s nothing but darkness to be seen.
“You’re up late,” he muses out loud as he approaches the table nearest the steps where Charles is holding up a second glass. He takes it and settles down in the chair beside his friend. “Figured it was past bedtime for everyone.”
Charles’ look is wry. “Between the two of you, there’s no rest to be had for a psychic tonight.”
Lips quirking in a grin, Logan shrugs and sips at the premium brandy. He takes a moment to savor it. He doesn’t think he’ll ever take the small pleasures in life for granted again. “Sorry. Didn’t realize I was projecting.”
He doesn’t do it often. Years of close quarters with Charles and a couple of other psychics and empaths had meant learning to keep all of his crap battened down in the hatches of his mind where it belonged.
“Given the circumstances, I’d be more surprised if you weren’t.”
Logan just shrugs. It’s not a deflection, really. He doesn’t need those with Charles. There just isn’t anything else to say.
He takes another sip of the brandy, relishing the way it warms his insides, and tips his head back to look up at the sky. He can’t help but smile a little. “You know… I didn’t think it’d work. Not really. Figured it was probably the craziest idea I’d ever heard.” He huffs in amusement. “Shoulda known better.”
“Certainly it was unorthodox.”
Slanting a look sideways, Logan grins and holds up his glass for a toast. “To unorthodox ideas.”
Charles echos the toast, their glasses meeting with a light clink of sound. “Hear, hear.”
The silence is companionable as Logan turns his attention back up to the sky. After a few minutes, he sighs, more content than he’s been in a long while. Charles is a warm presence by his side, someone who never demands more than he’s comfortable offering. It’s always made him easy to talk to. “I missed the stars, you know. You couldn’t see them anymore. Not anywhere in the world.”
He glances back over at his friend and finds that steady gaze still on him, patient and welcoming as always.
There’s no judgement there, never has been.
Taking a deep breath, Logan looks away again. “I didn’t believe your plan would work, but I’m damned glad it did, Chuck. This...” He waves a hand around to encompass the whole of the estate and the world beyond it. “This is good. Real good.”
He doesn’t need to look back to know the smile that will be on Charles’ face. He can hear it in the man’s voice easy enough. “It is. And I am very glad that you made it back to us.”
Logan nods, but the entire day has underscored how out of place he is. He’s felt the eyes on him, heard the whispers. It’s not enough to drive him away unless someone specifically asks him to leave, but it could make things damned uncomfortable. “You seem to be about the only one.”
The thing is, he isn’t sure it’s really about him.
Charles nods in agreement to the unspoken thought. “It will take time…”
When he trails off, Logan glances back over at him. This isn’t the smooth reassurance he’s come to expect from his friend. Excepting for his little foray into time travel, he’s never really seen Charles anything less than supremely confident. Even in the face of sentinels and a world at war, the telepath was always the calm center of every storm.
He appreciates that Charles isn’t one for empty platitudes, but his skin is feeling a little stretched thin and he thinks he could probably do with a few empty platitudes just now.
“I- he…” Logan rolls his eyes, wondering if that’s ever going to stop being weird. “If it confuses me, I can’t really blame anyone else for getting mixed up, can I?”
“I think that referring to him as Jim and considering him an entirely separate person will go a long way in alleviating that confusion.” Charles takes a sip of his own brandy and shrugs. “While you are undoubtedly almost identical at the core of some things, you are both quite different in many other respects. Jubilee is quite correct in that you are both good, kind men who wear a certain… shall we say… prickliness? as a defence against a world that hasn’t always treated you with the same kindness in return.”
Logan snorts in amusement. “Thought I was a wolverine, not a hedgehog.”
That gets an answering laugh from Charles. “You are many things, my friend.”
“So. Jim.” Logan stares down into his drink. “He musta been quite a jackass.”
Lips quirking, Charles sighs and looks up to the sky. “I wouldn’t say that. It would be more accurate, I think, to say that he never really allowed his defenses down far enough to let anyone besides Victor all the way inside. And given how tempestuous that relationship has always been… Well. One could hardly blame him.”
Logan thinks about the wary looks that he’s been given all day, about the careful way Scott had held himself. He thinks about how the only people who seem keen on welcoming him are Jubilee and Charles.
And Charles, at least, is fully cognizant of all the things that make him a different person.
It doesn’t say good things about his predecessor. “Seems like an excuse to hurt people.”
“Logan…” Charles trails off for a long moment before sighing. “I can see why someone on the outside would assume such a thing. I know that similar assumptions were made even by people who knew Jim well enough to know better.”
“Scott and Jubilee?”
Nodding, Charles lightly taps the fingers of his free hand on the table in front of him. His voice is thoughtful as he answers. “They could see the pattern as clearly as anyone, but being the ones most hurt by his actions, their view was somewhat skewed.”
Logan thinks back to the conversations of the day, particularly what Jubilee had said. There was only one thing that really seems to count as the kind of pattern that Charles is talking about. “The kid said I - that Jim got mean before he’d disappear.”
“Scott and Jubilee have both believed for a very long time that Jim lashed out to hurt them so that it would be easier for him to leave each time.” The look that Charles gives him is the kind of patient, leading look that he gives students when he feels like they know the right answer if he just gives them enough time to think it through for themselves.
He knows that he hasn’t always been the nicest guy, but he’s also never been the kind of guy who feels like he has to justify himself. If he wants to go, he just goes. If Jubilee and Charles are right, if he and Jim are more similar than not on a basic, animal level, then it made sense that his predecessor was the same way.
There’s a memory though, tugging at the back of his mind. He remembers waking up from a nightmare and skewering Marie on his claws, never realizing she wasn’t the enemy until it was too late. He remembers the way he’d felt torn between carrying her to a doctor himself and running as far away as he could.
He remembers how hard it had been to beat down the impulse, even as weak as Marie’s Rogue powers had left him.
If Mystique hadn’t sent her running, Logan isn’t sure he’d have managed.
“He left because he hurt them.”
There’s a sad cast to Charles’ smile. “Indeed. He loved them both a great deal. More than he really seemed to know what to do with at times. But Jim lived through every major conflict that North America had been in past the Revolutionary War. He fought in them, he died in them. He had to watch his brother lose himself to his animal side and then did his best to put him back together. He went undercover in some of the most militant of anti-mutant cesspools with no real hope of rescue. All of that strife left its mark on him.”
“PTSD,” Logan says, confident now. He and Charles have been working on his own issues with it for years. He’d been reluctant as hell at first to even consider it, but Charles is persuasive and they’ve been living in each other’s back pockets for a long time.
“And unlike you, my friend,” Charles replies, voice wry. “He was never forced to deal with it. He and Victor may not always get along, but his brother has always been happy to provide him with a place where he can hide in violence and whiskey.”
“I tried that. Never really worked.” Sighing, he tips his chair back and enjoys the way the night breeze ruffles his hair. It’s such a small thing, but like so many other small things, he’s missed it. “Still seems strange to me. This is a good place. Good people. Everything about Scott’s room screams ‘home’, even to me.”
The want hits him again, deep and visceral.
There haven’t been many things in his life that he’s let himself want like this. He’s not entirely sure he could stop the feeling, though.
A hand settles on his bicep and Logan glances back at Charles to see a faint smile of encouragement there. “I think that, given time and care, you can find those things here for yourself.”
Logan smiles back and dips his head in acknowledgement.
The stars twinkle brightly above them and the breeze carries the clean scent of a world that hasn’t been torn apart.
He lets his eyes drift closed and, for the first time in decades, lets himself hope.
~*~*~
the end... for now.