Chapter Text
He quickly realised that something had gone wrong, but didn't understand exactly what it was until he saw the source of the shots.
Logan's life had been adventurous in the good years and painful in the bad, so he wasn't surprised that someone would have the audacity to shoot him.
As the Professor explained the plan, Logan had tried to remember where he had been in 1973.
Unfortunately, Stryker's treatment had permanently damaged his memory, but something told him it must have been somewhere between the United States and Canada.
Instead, he woke up in a snowy landscape, which itself could have been Canada, surrounded by men in black uniforms, with clear insignia on their neckbands, and speaking a rough language that was definitely German.
Logan may have been chronically forgetful, but he was pretty sure the Nazis had never come to Canada, and there couldn't have been Nazis in uniform in bloody 1973.
His confusion made him less receptive to the angry shouts of who must have been their leader, a lieutenant or a captain, Logan had no idea what the insignia meant, but at that moment it didn't really matter because soon the shouts left the place of the shots and Logan felt his shirt tear and the pain spread across his chest.
In other circumstances, the young Logan whose place he had taken would not have escaped a fight to the death, but his mind was too busy trying to understand why he was there that he preferred to take each shot and pretend to be dead so that these assholes could go elsewhere and he could walk away safely later and then find a solution.
So he dropped back into the mud and closed his eyes, trying to relax his muscles. He was pretty bored, but he had a lot to think about.
He heard footsteps around him, then someone hitting him with the butt of a rifle. But he was quite confident. The Germans were known for their efficiency and bullets were expensive. They wouldn't have wasted ammunition to make sure only one man was dead, not least because they had hit him in several places in the chest, and a normal man would have died sooner or later anyway. They could have left him to die in the woods and the problem would have been solved for them anyway. Sure, they could have bayoneted him, but Logan wasn't even worried about that.
So there was absolutely no problem waiting for them to leave. Meanwhile, he needed to think.
Well, he was in the forest, surrounded by Nazis.
That made it pretty easy to at least identify the era he was in.
The Nazis had been disgusting individuals who had populated the world in a very limited and defined time. Just over ten years, from 33 to 45. The fact that they carried out summary executions in the middle of the woods meant that they were at war, and that narrowed the target even further. From 39 to 45.
How could Kitty have been wrong for over thirty years? And what was he supposed to do in the meantime? The plan was for Kitty to send him back and then he could go to Westchester to look for the Professor. Then he would have to find Magneto. That was the only data they had given him. Without it, Logan could only drown in confusion.
But it wasn't bloody 1973, so what did they think he was doing? Did he have to wait thirty years to change the course of events that would lead to the Sentinel programme?
OK. He just had to stay calm and keep analysing the little data he had.
He had more or less established the when, now he had to try to find out the where.
As he had thought before he was riddled with bullets marked Third Reich, he had established that the presence of Nazi soldiers ruled out the hypothesis that he was on the American continent.
There were no Nazis in the United States.
There were no Nazis in Canada.
The only place the Nazis were living in the glorious 1940s was good old Europe. Where in Europe, however, was difficult to determine, as the German occupation could foresee the presence of storm troopers in many countries, and Logan did not have enough geographical knowledge to distinguish one territory from another.
The footsteps moved away, as did the voices. Logan was soon certain that he had been abandoned.
When he opened his eyes, all he saw was a leaden sky and a few sparse, ghostly, bare branches.
So he had few certainties. One of them was that he wasn't where he was supposed to be.
The plan had failed completely. The only thing he could do was try to warn the Professor, his Professor from the future, that they had made a mistake and had to bring him back, and then start all over again.
But how did he get in touch with Charles?
Obviously his Charles had been born during the Second World War, but he was still a child and lived in Westchester, on another continent. Logan remembered that Charles' powers had manifested when he was nine years old. It was a crazy plan. Even if Logan was able to cross a war-torn continent to find a child and convince him to help him send a message to the future.
But it was the only plan he had.
If they had caught the mistake earlier, Charles might have decided to bring him back.
But Logan couldn't count on that. At that moment, the only thing that mattered to him was his strength and determination.
So he got up, wet and cold, and started walking on the other side of the sounds of war.
The first thing he had to do was find out exactly where he was. Then he would act accordingly.