Work Text:
Most days, Logan feels like the dust blowing through El Paso: displaced, dry. Dead.
He doesn’t know what he was expecting. This is the way it ends, the way it’s always fucking ended: with him crawling across hell, rubbing salt into his own damn wounds.
He drives a group of girls one night, all of them high off their asses, to a building with music so loud he can almost hear the cement cracking open. Then he glances into the rear view mirror and catches a glimpse of short, silver hair, and he nearly swerves into the opposite lane.
Ororo. It’s on the tip of his tongue, her eyes blue and bright and muscles in her mouth already twitching behind his open eyes, laughing at whatever she sees on his face. She was always good at that, staying one step ahead of him. Ororo.
It’s not her. The girl’s hair is dyed and shaved down on one side.
It doesn’t matter. Ororo is dead. Everyone is dead.
You walk around like you’re Hamlet, Charles told him once, fingers hooked in Logan’s collar, wearing death to punish yourself. You’re living just waiting to die—
Shut the fuck up and take your meds, Logan bit out.
How did we get here, Logan? His eyes were glassy, voice low. What happened?
Logan shook out the pills on Charles’s palm and waited for him to swallow.
Don’t ask stupid questions.
I let you down.
Stop.
***
“Jaime Logan Diaz Howlett. Lord, that’s a mouthful.” The man behind the desk clicks his tongue, as if trying to dilute the taste the words leave in his mouth. “You ever thought about cutting it down to something, you know, safe?”
“No,” he says.
“Really?” The man flicks his gaze back up so their eyes meet, the man’s eyebrows raised, mouth slanted. “How badly you want this job, kid?”
Something safe . Safe being synonymous with familiar, familiar being synonymous with something that won’t catch attention. It means: Not a communist . It doesn’t matter if they have the nationality wrong, that they have everything backwards, that he’s from fucking Texas. It doesn’t even matter that they don’t know about mutants yet. Old things will become new again. People don’t know what else to do with history but to recycle it.
What’s that thing people say about jackasses that walk in the dark, again?
The man interprets his silence with a dismissive shrug. “Have it your way.”
But jackass or not, backwards or not, Jaime needs the money. He can’t risk getting caught in another alley and being the only one to walk out. He’s leaving a scent, and he knows better than anyone how easy it is for someone to follow it.
“I need the job,” he says, just as the man gets ready to call in—someone. Security, maybe, to show him out. They don’t trust people who look like him.
The man’s mouth crimps up, amused. He’s used to winning. That’s clear to both of them. “James?”
“Logan.” It’s meant to be a compromise, except for all the ways it doesn’t fucking feel like one. How much can you give up until you become someone else, a stranger in the same skin? How long until it becomes a kind of murder?
***
His name is Logan.
***
His name is Logan. As in lo que será, será. As if that isn’t the story of his goddamn life. It’s Logan, as in the careful way his parents spoke English, as in the way government men showed up on their farm and told them the land had been purchased. As in the way they scrambled with the scraps of money they had left to Arizona, where people like them could still earn some coin.
As in the way Logan hands the man behind the fruit stand a handful of bills for the basket Laura tried to fucking swipe.
“You should really watch your little girl, paisano,” he tells Logan. To his left, Laura is devouring a pear as if he didn’t just feed her an hour ago.
She looks up at Logan, blinking.
“Yeah, I got it,” Logan says back, gruff, in the same language. He shoves the coins the man hands him in his pocket and starts walking.
Laura catches up to him. “You knew,” she says.
“Knew what,” he says, digging out the keys.
“You knew,” she says, this time in Spanish, “this whole time. Why didn’t you say anything?”
He doesn’t say what he’s thinking. That it gives him a sense of displacement. That it reminds him too much of things he’d rather forget.
He could say he’s rusty, but even he couldn’t make a lie like that ring true.
She’s still staring at him.
“Get in the car,” he says.
***
They get stopped on the highway just after Laura tries to empty a gas station. Logan swears as he pulls over into the dirt.
He hears Charles shift in his seat. “What does he want?”
“It’s a she,” Logan says, flicking through the folder wedged between the seats. “We were probably speeding or something.” He knows what Charles is thinking. He carefully doesn’t look at Laura. “Otherwise, there’d be a lot more of them.”
As the cop steps out of the car, he says, “I need you to try and not kill this lady,” this time looking at Laura. She stares back, impassive.
When Logan hands her his license and registration, he watches her clock the scars across his knuckles, snaking over his wrist and under his sleeves. Her eyes flick over his shoulder.
“This your daughter?”
Silence, then: “Yes,” Logan says.
The cop purses her lips. She tilts her face towards Laura. “What’s your name, honey?”
“She doesn’t speak,” Charles cuts in, using the voice he saves for strangers: light, sweet, accent smooth and friendly. It’s a trick Logan remembers from when he was still a teacher, with the kids who still had rough edges. Like Jean, like Scott. Like Logan.
The cop is unfazed. “But she does have a name.”
“Laura,” Logan agrees.
“That your name, babe?” she says, again to Laura. She nods, which is when the cop asks, “Is this man your father?”
Laura doesn’t say anything, not right away, but under her seat, just out of the cop’s line of sight, she clenches and unclenches her fist. The second drags on, leaving Logan tense. Behind him, Charles is drumming his fingers. Waiting.
Laura nods again.
“All right, then,” she says.“You got a nice family. How about you keep them safe and try keeping it under 70 from now on?”
Logan says, “Sure.”
***
He buries Charles in the cleanest place he can find. It’s by a small pond, dry grass long enough to curl around his shoes. On sunny days, the nearby tree will cast a shade over the unsettled dirt, acting as a refuge from the heat.
For a guy born and bred in London, Charles always liked sitting outside in the warm, spring weather too much, his wheelchair digging into the soft earth. He wondered what Charles thought of when he did that, what memories swam to the surface when looking at the wide expanse of the school grounds.
“There’s water,” Logan says. Laura lifts her head from where she’s patting down the soil. There’s no reason for her to do it, with the ground this dry and rocky, but somehow, he can’t manage to be pissed about it. Only they, the lapping water, and the grave remain.
Laura’s hand stops half-way through smoothing it down. There’s no red around her eyes, but Logan can see where she’s been biting her lip.
Both of them still have dried blood on their hands, flecks of it staining their shirts. He doesn’t want to ask her how much of it is Charles’s. He doesn’t want to ask about the silence in her head, if it rattles like his.
The quiet is so loud.
A hot weight rises in his chest. He bites down hard on his cheek, but the images flood him. What had Charles said, before he died? What did he think, when he felt the metal slice through his chest, looked up, and saw Logan’s face staring down at him? Was he surprised, or had he thought it was only a matter of time?
(Logan. What have you done?)
“There’s water,” he tries again, but it shatters half-way through, breaks him open. What the fuck is he meant to say? What’s there to say? Who cares if there’s a pond. Charles is dead, and Logan killed him. Just another tick mark on an endless streak.
Laura walks over and wraps her fingers around his wrist. Gentle. Considerate. All the things Logan doesn’t fucking deserve.
That day, before Laura manages to hot-wire a stranger’s car, Logan takes a club to their truck.
He smashes in the hood and thinks about the first time Charles and Erik walked up to him, how young they all were, how fucking stupid.
He swings at the rearview mirror, watches the glass fly, and focuses on the memory of Charles’s face, when Erik died. He sat there for hours, with the body in his arms, motionless.
He knocks off the wheel cover, smashes in the handle, shatters all the windows, and thinks, Charles, which means I’m sorry , which means How could you have been so goddamn careless , which means I don’t know what I’m doing without you here , which means If it had to have been one of us, it shouldn’t have been you.
***
If they always got what they deserved. . .
***
Logan wakes up a few hours later, once the sun starts to cast its lazy, orange glow.
Laura is staring at the road, the bumps in the road nearly snapping her out of her seat. Her toes must graze the pedals, with the way she has to tilt her chin up to see over the wheel, body balanced on the edge of the cushion.
“I’m not the good kind,” he tells her. He doesn’t mean to, with his mouth as dry as it is. When he coughs, he tastes the blood that sticks to the back of his teeth. Old pennies fill his mouth. “I can’t be what you want.”
Laura doesn’t look away from the road, but Logan is getting better at reading her. She works her jaw and says, “I’m not the good kind, either.”
“Gimme a break.” He drags his tongue over his cracked lips. “You’re not the bad kind, Laura. You’re just scared.”
“Neither are you,” she says, with another one of those funny sideways glances of hers.
Logan is getting really fucking sick of her armchair psychoanalysis bullshit.
(Huh.
So this is what it feels like.)
***
The first thing Logan notices when he wakes up for the second time is the warm sensation of sunshine across his shoulders, filtered through the curtains.
The second is the kid making noises through his teeth while he smashes two action figures against each other.
It takes a few seconds before the kid notices Logan’s eyelids fluttering. He’s young. From this angle, Logan can make out all the baby fat still sticking to his face. Surprising, considering he doubts Pierce allowed these kids to have anything with sugar in it. For a single moment, Logan wonders how many times any of them ever got to do something as simple as play with a toy or sit in the sun. The thought sits and marinates with all the other fucked up shit in his head.
The kid puts the action figures down to his side, blinking. He says something—anything. Logan feels cotton balls in his ears.
“What?”
“Was he real?” the kid repeats. He holds up one of the action figures close to Logan’s face, not even giving him enough time to be shocked before asking, “Sabretooth?”
Logan wants to say that they got the details wrong. Victor’s hair was closer to the scalp, eyes brown instead of blue. Instead he just stares, absorbing. At least they got the curl of Victor's snarl right.
“Laura said you said everything in the comic books was a lie,” he goes on.
“Not all of it,” he says. He turns on his side. It means the stitches stretch to a point of almost-pain, balancing, but it also means he can look up at the kid properly. “Yeah, he was real.” Logan’s mouth is dry when he adds: “We were in a program together. Like you.”
Silence, then: “So you did bad things?”
Logan licks his lips. “Yeah,” he says. Maybe. None of what’s being said feels like it’s coming out of his mouth. None of this feels real. He can feel the darkness at the edge of his vision reeling him in, like he's caught on the other edge of a fishing line.
He can still feel the sunlight.
“But you’re doing good things now,” he prods Logan, voice hushed. Logan doesn’t remember when they started whispering. “Right?”
Logan closes his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
***
He remembers things no one else does. Like the war, the death, Charles grabbing Erik by his shirt and shouting, You abandoned me! You left, and you abandoned me! The way it paralleled the look on Charles's face when Erik was in the room as if he was something just out of reach, as if any of them needed any more reminders of all the things they were hungry for and couldn't sink their teeth into. Poor Charles Xavier, the bastard who couldn't keep a single fucking thing from showing on his face.
Stay with me, he begged Erik, out loud, in his head, with his eyes. Come home, and stay with me.
He remembers Ororo grabbing him the same way, wanting to say one thing but saying When you get back, I won’t have to miss you anymore, instead. When she kissed him, she was saying goodbye. They’d been saying goodbye longer than they’d ever been saying hello.
He remembers the older hurt, the one where he begged Jean to stay. Shouting it, through the rushing wind, through the skin peeling off his bones, through the empty, dark glaze over her eyes.
There is nothing left of him but memories.
***
“You’re leaving,” she says in the same voice she says everything: simple, honest, accusing.
Logan shakes his shirt the rest of the way on. “I told you,” he says, “not to expect that from me. You have your friends back, you’re fucking Jonah, Victor, Vivian— ”
“You’re always leaving,” she cracks in. “All you ever wanted was the money.”
“I can’t stay,” he says, voice hard. “You get me, Laura? I didn’t lie to you. I’m not what the nurse told you I was.”
Logan can’t help but think how different things would be if Storm were here instead. Or Hank. Or even Erik, that son of a bitch.
She looks at him hard. “You didn’t kill Charles.”
“If I stay, you’ll die.”
“Not me,” she says, already turning away, already leaving, of all the hypocrisies.
(Distantly, Logan notices the scrunch between her eyebrows. Ororo used put her thumb on a similar spot on his forehead, smoothing it over. Don’t you get exhausted being angry all the time, tough guy?
He would scowl, swatting her arm away. Not as exhausted as being around you. )
“Only the people you love,” she says.
***
What are they to each other, anyway? Two sides of the same rusting coin. Two assholes too used to carrying too much baggage, too used to the sound skin makes as it splits open, too used to the smell of blood. Both of them without destination, without balance, without bottom. Wandering, debased. Cursed.
People like them never get the picket fence, the front yard, the quiet. Who are they fucking kidding? Better people have gotten worse. If any of them ever got what they deserved, they wouldn’t be stuck with each other.
***
Logan, what have you done?
***
Logan. You still have time.
***
Huh.
***
Laura won’t stop screaming.
Her hands are covered with blood, whether it’s Logan’s or hers or someone else’s, he doesn’t know. All thought has been erased from his head, leaving him hazy. It feels like honey running through his body; not quite sweet, but thick. Heavy.
“You should’ve said you’d stay,” she sobs, half-shouting. Figures that even when she’s trying to keep him breathing, she can only manage to sound pissed.
“You could’ve said you’d stay,” she chokes out. “Why didn’t you say it?”
“Christ,” he wheezes, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth, “you’re giving me a headache.”
“You could’ve—you never—”
Logan closes his eyes. “Laura,” he breathes out, but he doesn’t have the words, not in this language, not in any language. Instead, he reaches out. Puts his hand over her cheek, right where her hair sticks to her cheekbone. She’s standing in front of the sun, making the sweat and blood on her go bright. He can’t help but notice she has his eyes.
(Logan, what! Have! You! Done!)
“Papi,” she says. It sounds like a last-ditch effort. It sounds like bargaining.
Logan was never meant to be a father. His hands are too rough, his face too unused to smiling. At the end of the line, people like him are only ever meant to be alone.
But if they always got what they deserved, they wouldn’t have each other.
“Huh,” he murmurs. Something from behind his belly button pulls at him. He feels his muscles sag, all the wounds on him dulling to a low ache. “So this is what it feels like.”