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“Logan.”
“Chuck.”
Charles smiles, crows feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Walk with me, will you? I feel we haven’t spoken in quite some time.”
Logan only grunts in response, neither confirmation or denial of Charles’ request. But, when he urges his wheelchair forward, Logan falls into place beside him.
They head outside, following the paved path winding through the school’s grounds.
“How are classes going?” Charles asks, watching from a distance as a group of students play a friendly match of soccer. Kurt, playing as goalie, teleports in front of the ball before it can go in. Logan can hear the groans that go up in response.
“Fine,” Logan grunts, only sparing the students a brief glance as they continue down the path. “Still not sure why you put me in charge of history though, not like I know fuck all from before the civil war.”
But Charles only smiles. “I forget sometimes, just how old you are, Logan.”
“Most people do,” Logan grunts, hiding the twitch of a smile tugging at his lips.
“Do you?” Charles asks, “Ever forget, that is.”
Logan is quiet for a time, hands stuffed in his jean pockets, staring out at the treeline. “No.”
“I can’t imagine how much things must have changed. To have lived through all of mankind's greatest technological advancements,” Charles continues, sounding almost reminiscent. “I lived through my own fair share, but you— I can’t even imagine.”
Logan huffs, stuffing his hands further in his pockets. Still, he indulges the man’s curiosity: “They didn’t invent planes until I was 70. Flying felt more incomprehensible to me than bein’ an undying mutant did.”
That startles a cough out of Charles, their pace showing for a moment. Logan raises an amused brow at him.
Charles clears his throat. “Is that why you… loath flying so much?”
But Logan only barks out a laugh. “No,” he answers, unable to hide the smile on his face. “No, had a plane shot down over Japan back in World War II, left me impaled on a piece of scrap metal for thirteen hours before some enemy troops found the wreckage and pulled me off.”
Charles grimaces in sympathy. “It’s amazing to think what you were already up to when I was still only a child.”
“You act like you’ve never met someone older than you.”
“Most people older than me are no longer with us, Logan,” Charles replies calmly, “And certainly no one old enough to have participated in that war now besides you.”
Logan falls silent.
Charles stops his chair, turning to look at him with a concerned furrow to his brow. “I’ve upset you.”
Logan takes a breath, forcing the sudden tension from his shoulders. Talks of the past usually did that. “No.” A cheer goes up from the students as someone scores a goal. Logan keeps walking, the other forced to follow behind. Logan slows his pace just enough for him to catch up.
They continue in silence for a time before Logan grunts: “If you’re that interested you could always take a look.”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“Nothin’ you could do would hurt more than what’s already been done,” he scoffs.
But Charles sighs. “It’s not a case of possibly hurting you more, Logan,” he stresses, “It’s hurting you at all. I’ve caught glimpses in the past. Living through that pain once was enough for you, I believe.”
“I—” Logan stops walking altogether, Charles pausing alongside him. He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated— stressed, he’s not sure. “I want you to see it,” Logan forces out. “You’re— damn it,” he curses, turning away. “You’re the only one on this god forsaken planet that has any chance of bein’ able to understand any of the shit I’ve gone through.”
“And before you say it—” Logan cuts Charles off, sensing him getting ready to say something more. “I’m not suggestin’ we go waltzin’ through all the shit in my head, just—” His frustration petters out, leaving him with a hollowed feeling. “...It wasn't all bad.”
Charles’ gaze trails over the lines of the man’s back, the tension of his shoulders. “I understand,” he says softly. “Let’s find a place to sit, then.”
Logan doesn’t feel a hundred and eighty when Charles instructs him to lie back on the chaise lounge in his office. He feels more like a student if he’s being entirely honest.
“If you change your mind at any point I’ll pull away,” Charles tells him, wheeling around to where Logan’s head rests. “You can guide me through, but I must warn you,” he continues gravely, “Should your memories begin to stray, I may see things you don’t wish for me to.”
“Just get on with it,” Logan grunts, unwilling to admit his nervousness— knowing Charles can already sense it.
“We don’t have to do this, Logan,” Charles reminds him.
But Logan takes a breath, forcing himself to relax. His eyes fall shut, though the furrow remains between his brows. “I know.”
Charles sighs, positioning his hands on each of Logan’s temples. “Then I’ll begin.”
Logan doesn’t remember much from his childhood. He remembers being sick often, remembers the night his abilities manifested, remembers fleeing with Victor, taking odd jobs where they could. He remembers the day they’d discovered just how far his healing factor could repair him.
Fifteen years old, doing quarry work for two thirds of the wage a man would’ve made. It was dangerous work, especially back then before all the rules and the regulations and the safety equipment. He’d wound up crushed beneath a falling slab of granite only a few months in alongside another man that Logan thinks he remembers disliking.
Only Logan had survived— his body pulling itself back together piece by piece in the hours after the rubble had been hauled off them. All he’d known was pain, indescribable, incomparable to anything else he’d ever experience until Stryker got ahold of him. Victor had clapped him on the back with a sick sort of pride on his face when Logan had crawled his way out of the half dug grave they’d tossed him in— covered in blood and dirt and granite dust.
He can feel Charles’ presence watching, whispering half-words to him as Logan wanders through his memories.
Logan remembers the wars the most, still occasionally dragged into nightmares that threw him violently into wakefulness— claws extended, searching for danger he wouldn’t find. He was haunted by the memories of soldiers he’d dared to befriend, of those lost to musket fire and bayonet blades.
Victor had chided him for it following that first war— reminded him not to make friends with things that only knew how to die. Logan had made sure not to make the same mistake again.
It’d been him and Victor for a very long time— brothers in blood, in arms, undying, immortal. They’d separate occasionally, sometimes for years at a time before inevitably finding one another again.
He tries not to focus on Victor. Pulls himself instead towards the years in between the wars and the bloodshed.
To his work on the transcontinental railroad. The clang of driving hammers, the rippling heat of summer, the washing away sweat and dust with more sweat as days dragged into nights back into days. Afternoon breaks spent lying in dry grass just to watch the clouds drift all peaceful like overhead.
To mining silver in the Nevada mountains alongside a crew Logan remembers fondly. Brewing shitty black coffee over a shared fire, evenings spent gambling stones when money ran short. The occasional night had in the nearest saloon, pissing their earnings away for a bit of laughter and merriment they’d regret come morning.
To being pulled by the hand around the Chicago World’s Fair: featuring all of man’s greatest man made oddities. It’d been full of things that Logan, and the rest of the world, were seeing for the first time.
Charles watches it all alongside him. The towering wonderment of the first ferris wheel, moving walkways, electric lights that reflected brilliantly across the lake as night fell. Food and dancers and music and magic performed by Harry Houdni himself— a mutant, according to Charles’ sudden delight.
“I can’t say I took you for the world fair type,” Charles says with a smile, rolling down the exhibition halls. Logan slows to match his pace.
Logan’s eyes trail to the ghost of a woman in front of him, her hands interlocked with his as she drags him through the crowds of people. “I’m not,” he grunts, nodding towards her, “But she was.” She’s turned away from him, a sun hat decorated in intricate flowers and other delicacies secured to her head with a sheer ribbon. It made her hard to lose in the throngs of people. “Mayor’s daughter,” Logan says, “Adelaide.”
She’d slapped him soon after this. Having found out, by some means or the other, that he’d been employed by her father to watch her.
Charles laughs when he tells him. “What a scoundrel you were.” It’s a nice memory to linger in— to share with someone other than the ghosts of his past. There’s a brilliant smile on the professor’s face when he says: “Though I can’t say I was much better in my youth.”
Logan raises an amused brow at him, a toothy grin pulling at one corner of his mouth. “I’m sure you had the ladies fallin’ all over you.”
“More than just the ladies, I can assure you,” Charles replies with a smirk, guiding his wheelchair past them.
Logan barks out a loud laugh, trailing after him.
The machine hall is somewhere Logan’s sure Hank would’ve enjoyed. The humming whirr of moving parts, of chatter of genius inventors and visionaries that’d laid down the foundations of the technology they have today. Logan hadn’t cared for it much back then and he doesn’t care for it much now either. But all of it interests Charles to no end. He talks idly about the things they pass, ever the professor.
He was right when he’d said it’d been awhile since the two of them had talked. And though Logan would never admit to it, he’d missed it without realizing. The x-men were the only consistency Logan had in life anymore— the closest thing to a family he thinks he might ever have, Charles included, not that he’d ever admit to that either. But by the soft smile the professor casts him, Logan thinks he picks up on it anyway.
Logan groans, but there’s a fondness to the expression on his face. “Tell anyone an’ I’ll say you’re goin’ senile,” he threatens, pointing a warning finger at the man.
Charles’ continues down the hall, tone jovial. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
That is, of course, when everything goes to shit. There’s a loud bang of something backfiring in his memory, an engine of some kind, maybe a car from further down the hall.
It leaves their evening interrupted by flashes of the first world war, terrible and mighty— his first time overseas. The rattle of gunfire, the ring of artillery shells.
He tries to hold on to Chicago— to Adelaide’s hand, to the lights and the music, to Charles’ calming chatter. It works, for a moment.
“Logan,” Charles says, grounding him with a careful hand on his arm, “Focus, Logan.”
But there, amidst the crowds of people, is Victor— Victor who he’d tried so hard to forget. And suddenly they’re lodged in the trenches of war again, fighting side by side in a place where two brothers who couldn’t die would be written off as nonsense tales meant to scare the opposition.
The pointed canines of Victor’s smile lingers in his memory— the enthusiasm in which he tore into enemy soldiers.
“Logan.” It’s Charles’ voice, calling him back.
Logan wrenches himself from the memory, throws himself into safer waters. His first silent picture show. He’d been back in Alberta, hands stuffed into his jean pockets, paying more than he’d like for admission just to see pictures move. Logan’s scowl had been a coverup for the genuine interest he’d had in it.
Charles sits next to him. He doesn’t bring up the war or Victor, only smiles in that calm way he always seems to have. “Does it have a name? The movie.”
Logan releases a breath, eyes flickering up to the black and white projection. “Not sure,” he mumbles, leaning carefully back into his seat as he blinks away the afterimages of war. “Somethin’ French.”
Logan clings onto that memory for as long as it allows him, watching silent films with jaunty show tunes that bleed into memories of a drive-in theater spent on his Harley. Leant forward on the handles, smoking a cigar that has the kid in the car next to him cranking up his window. Charles sits in a car on his other side.
There’s a reminiscent smile on the man’s face. He would’ve been old enough to experience this kind of thing for himself and Logan wonders for a moment if he should find a different memory, something older for the man to marvel at like he’d originally intended but—
“I didn’t think I’d get a chance to experience this again,” Charles tells him softly, just loud enough to be heard over the speakers, “Thank you, Logan.”
So Logan holds onto this memory too, smokes his way through a cigar that never ends, and enjoys the movie.
“Jimmy.”
Logan jerks at the sound, finding Victor leant against the side of the car Charles is supposed to be in. “Why so surprised?” he drawls, “Not happy to see your one and only brother?”
They’re in a bar in Montana, somewhere close to the border.
Victor takes a seat on the stool next to him, flags down the bartender for a beer they both know won’t so much as get either of them buzzed. “I’ve heard rumors that there’s gonna be another one of those great wars,” he says, smirk playing at his lips. “I think it’ll be fun.”
Charles is watching from somewhere, trying to call out to him, to tell him something. But the world around him has solidified, more fact than memory: the sights, the sounds, the feelings. He’d been happy to see Victor here, claps him on the back with a grin to match his brother’s. “You sure you’ll be able to keep up, old man?”
He spent Normandy alongside Victor: battling their way up the beaches, boots churning over bloodied sand. Bullets beat into his chest, still, he keeps pushing past the barricades— pushing through the pain. Victor launches himself up the cliffside ahead of him, ripping a gun from the grips of an enemy soldier just to gun him down with a viscous smile on his face.
“Come on, Jimmy!” Victor growls with a laugh, blood splattered across his cheek.
There’d been blood splattered across his cheek in Vietnam too— that same wicked smile donning his face as he’d torn into their own team. It stung of something like betrayal, but he’d fought alongside Victor anyway. Because they were brothers, the only bit of consistency he’d had in a hundred and twenty years.
The bite of bone claws piercing his skin, surrounded suddenly by men he would’ve trusted to have his back in any other circumstance. He hadn’t wanted to hurt them. Hadn’t wanted to stand before that firing squad, for once, at a loss for words when Victor asks to wake him when it’s over.
And there was Stryker, standing in the doorway of their cell. The man who’d make Logan into the Wolverine; who’d make a weapon where there’d only been a monster.
“You are not a monster, Logan.” It’s Charles' voice— Charles sitting where Stryker had once been— Charles reassuring him he’d never been what they’d made him.
But he can feel the drilling of needles into bone, the infernal fire of molten metal beneath his skin. Agony like nothing he had ever experienced, like nothing he would ever experience again. Thrashing against restraints, burning alive from the inside out as adamantium sizzled against his flesh. The cosmos had cradled him in that momentary death— granted relief for the first time in a hundred and thirty years. His body had pulled him back, like it always had, wrenching him from that peaceful womb.
Stryker had taken his past from him, his sense of identity. It’d taken decades just to recover any of it, to recognize his own name, to see Victor as something other than ‘enemy’.
“Logan.”
Logan snarls, whipping around in the sudden void of his memories, adamantium claws at the ready— ever the monster, ever the weapon they’d made of him.
“James.”
His mother had been the last to call him that. He thinks it’s fitting that the one to say it now is Charles.
“You’re alright now.”
Logan opens his eyes to the ceiling of Xavier’s office, blearily tracing the lines of golden light from the window. He feels his claws slide back under his skin, bones shifting to accommodate them.
“Welcome back, Logan,” Charles murmurs softly from behind him, hands easing from Logan’s temples.
Logan pushes himself up, turning towards him. There’s a deep sort of understanding in those blue eyes, soft with a gentle kindness that some buried part of Logan thinks he’d always wanted to be on the receiving end of. He hadn’t always been a weapon, after all. He’d been a boy once— longing for a mother that didn’t look on in horror, for a father that would understand.
“Sorry,” Logan grunts, looking away, fingers trailing over the rips in the upholstery his claws had left.
“That’s quite alright. I’ve been wanting a new one for a while, you know.” But there’s that smile on Charles’ face when he looks back, one that lets Logan know he truly doesn’t mind the tears, but that he hadn’t necessarily been wanting a new chaise lounge just yet.
Logan huffs, smile twitching at the corners of his lips. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Charles guides his wheelchair towards the other side of the room, stopping in front of the cabinet where Logan knows he keeps the good scotch. He pulls out two glasses, pouring a generous helping in each. He takes a sip from one, holds the other out to Logan. “I fear my mutation may have stifled my ability to lie naturally.”
Logan pushes himself up from his seat, taking the glass from Charles' hand. “Good.” He takes a swig of scotch, smiling over the rim of his glass. “Best keep it that way.”
Outside the sun has begun to fall in streaks of golden light, it fills the office, warming his back, catching in Charles’ blue eyes. He takes another sip of his drink, looking down at the man.
There’s a lot he wants to say to him, too much in fact. So Logan settles on a simple: “Thanks.” His voice is soft in the way he usually reserves for talks with Rogue. “For everything.” For giving him this home, this family, for being there.
“I know you do not always appreciate your mutation, Logan,” Charles starts gravely. His eyes flicker between Logan’s, a fervent sort of sincerity burning in the depths of them. “And I understand better than anyone why you would feel such way. But, for what it may be worth, I am ever so thankful it gave us you.”
Logan can hear as the students reach the mansion, the far off clamor of teens excited for dinner. He downs the rest of his scotch in one go, swipes an arm over his mouth to hide the upturn of his lips, though he’s sure the fond expression still shows in the soft line of his brows. “Me too.”