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Logan thinks Alkali lake would have been a peaceful place under different circumstances. The sky overcast, the water still as glass, mountains looming in the distance, shrouded in fog. It’s quiet, cool. Logan might’ve pictured himself building a cabin by the lake if it weren’t for the half-memories he keeps getting struck by. He’d been getting flashes since he’d arrived: falling, cold water, a door somewhere higher up. He has to all but scale the mountain just to find it, solid steel bent back on its hinges.
To any of the other x-men he’s sure the sight might’ve been a clue to who was lurking inside.
Logan hears them first, the soft thudding of feet, the low murmur of distant voices. He creeps carefully through the halls of the facility, occasionally assaulted by more flashes of memories: the faces of men he doesn’t recognize, guns, and uniforms, and lab coats.
The voice of a woman carries from an open room to his left: “—no telling how many mutants—”
Logan keeps his footsteps quiet, hard to hear even with his enhanced hearing.
There’s the voice of an older man: “—gather what you can—”
He peaks carefully into the room, catching a flash of blue behind a pillar. He waits for a moment as the soft sound of footsteps fade before slipping into the room, searching for any sign of movement. He finds instead an image from his nightmares.
Logan stumbles a step, clutching his head with a hand in phantom agony— of needles boring beneath his skin, of fire in his bones, of a man's voice carrying through the watery prison before him. He can see himself in that tank, can see himself thrashing, burning up from the inside for what must have been a small eternity. The rapid pounding of his heart searing itself against his ribcage. Logan remembers dying there— remembers coming back— remembers the voice of a man saying: “Erase his memories. We’ll start over.”
Logan grunts, free hand steadying himself against the wall.
“Seems we have a visitor.”
Logan blinks harshly, vision blurred and unfocused— he’s only able to make out the figure of an older man before his bones jerk forward beneath his skin, pulling him with it.
He’s levitated further into the room, out of eyeline of the tank from his memories.
“You’re one of Charles’, aren’t you?” The man steps in closer, keeping Logan suspended midair. Logan growls, attempting to thrash as he comes back to himself— pulling away from the haze of a past half-remembered. The mutant before him had only ever come up in hushed conversation within the X-mansion— like speaking his name too loudly might draw his ire. A radical man intent on condemning all of humankind for the sake of mutants.
Magneto.
“I’d heard he’d taken in someone new recently.” Magneto turns Logan, studying him with a careful eye. “Have we met before?”
Logan’s muscles jerk and twitch, but his limbs refuse to obey. “Fuck you.”
Magneto ignores him. “No,” he muses, “I would’ve remembered such an exquisite skeletal structure. Such a strange mutation you have—” He hums, looking him over, “Not that I haven’t seen stranger, of course.”
“I found some files you’re not gonna like,” someone says from behind Logan, just out of sight. It’s followed by the quiet steps of bare feet. A blue-skinned woman slips around his side, eyes lingering on him on her way towards Magneto.
“Thank you, Raven,” Magneto greets.
She slaps a folder against the man’s chest, attention now fully on him. She scowls. “It’s Mystique.”
“Of course, of course,” Magneto hums with an amused sort of half-smile, “My apologies.”
Even with the distraction he keeps a tight hold on Logan as he opens the file, pausing on the first page with a growing frown.
Charles had sent Logan here in search for answers— into his past, into the gaping maw of his missing memories. Magneto glances up at him instead, gaze lingering. “You were one of them.”
And Logan realizes all at once that the file Mystique had handed Magneto must include him. The answers he’d come looking for— what Charles seemed so sure he’d find here.
“S’ none of your damn business, bub,” Logan growls.
Magneto’s lips press into a thin line. “I’d heard Charles was looking into this place recently— couldn’t fathom why he would’ve been interested. He usually tries to avoid getting on the government’s bad side, you see.” Magneto turns to the wall of x-rays behind Logan, pulling him along. He pauses in front of two sets, ones that Logan distantly realizes are his own. One featuring the adamantium claws he bears now and the other— bone.
His gaze flickers between the two— an indescribable mix of emotions bubbling up from his gut. The confusion brings with it only anger.
Magneto watches him from the corner of his eye as Mystique appears at his side. “Logan, right?” She says it like a fact rather than an actual question. “Enhanced strength, speed, durability,” Mystique recites, “Retractable claws, adamantium skeleton, regenerative healing. Quite a list.”
Logan doesn’t say anything, a knot working its way into his throat, unable to look away from the wall of x-rays, littered with more than just Logan’s own.
“Mutants have long since been at the mercy of evil men, Logan,” Magneto states. “Used and abused by those intrinsically weaker than them.” He turns to Logan fully then, eyes hardened by determination, by hate. “The world treats us as mere science projects— as something sub-human.”
“I don’t know what lies they’ve told about me in that school of Xavier’s. But my goal has only ever been to change that. To make a world where mutants do not live in fear,” Magneto spits. “You are a god amongst men, Logan.”
The words strike a nerve within him, discordant and long forgotten within some buried part of himself. He snarls, bears his teeth like a cornered animal. “Ya don’t know the first thing about me.”
Mystique steps around him. “I may have overheard a bit of your situation,” she admits, the blue of her skin shifting until before him stands the spitting image of Jean, long red hair, pretty brown eyes. It lasts only a moment before Mystique returns. “Sorry.” Logan recognizes its insincerity. “But it means we know the humans hurt you like they hurt us. It means we know what they took from you. You want them to pay. We understand that better than anyone.”
Logan drifts back towards the floor, feet landing softly on the ground before his body comes fully back to him— released from Magneto’s hold.
“We can help you,” Magneto states, “Better than Charles ever could.”
Logan stalks towards him, scowl heavy on his brows. “I don’t need your help.”
“Perhaps not,” Magneto hums, unbothered as Logan approaches. He holds the file out for him. “But I can prevent the men that put those bullets in your skull from giving them any more company.”
Logan grits his teeth until his jaw aches. “The fuck are you on about, old man?”
Magneto glances briefly at Mystique. “You don’t know?”
There were a lot of things Logan didn’t know, about who he was, where he came from, what he’d been doing when he woke up on that island in Pennsylvania some twenty years ago. There are flashes of this shit hole, of pain more excruciating than anything Logan had experienced since.
Magneto’s hand dips slightly, the file tips lower.
‘Weapon X Project’ is printed harshly on the cover, stained with water marks, stamped with a red ‘Confidential’ that’s faded over the years.
The sight of it pisses him off. Rage at the lack of recognition. Rage that these two seemed to know more about Logan than Logan did.
“My mutation grants me power over metal,” Magneto explains, “I can sense them, the bullets. They’re a matching pair— the same alloy as your skeleton.”
Logan takes the file from him more gently than he anticipates from himself, glaring down at it. He’d spent two decades clueless to his own past— his name a memory kept only by the dog tags around his neck. He didn’t know his mother, or his father, or whether he had siblings. He didn’t know how old he was, couldn’t even decide what month he’d been born in. What if he’d had kids? A lover?
Someone had taken that from him.
He’s greeted by a picture of himself on the first page. He doesn’t look any younger in it than he does now.
45825243-T78-A
Logan — Wolverine
There’s no last name, no age listed. There’s his years of service in Vietnam— in his involvement in something only referred to as Team X. And there’s a name: Major William Stryker.
“They turned you into a weapon,” Magneto says quietly as Logan reads through the file— through the experimentation these people had forced him to endure. “But we can help you wield it against them.”
“Shut up,” Logan growls, claws pushing through his skin, hands clenching around the edge of the file.
“You cannot change what has already been done. But you can use it to your advantage,” Magneto stresses, “Charles will not offer you the help you want, but the Brotherhood—”
“I said, shut up!” Logan snarls, swiping wildly with his claws, file forgotten in the rage that takes him. It’s an all consuming thing, directed at the world that had made Logan into what he was. Because it hits him suddenly, all the things they’d stripped away to leave the shell of a man Logan was now. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what he could’ve lost— who he could’ve lost.
His claws are caught midair, hovering a few inches from Magneto’s face as Logan struggles against the force of his powers. He looks at Logan with a disappointed expression, though Logan’s unsure whether it’s directed at him or not.
“I don’t like killing mutants,” Magneto states calmly.
“I can think of a few I wouldn’t mind puttin’ my claws through,” Logan growls.
“We’re trying to help,” Mystique snaps, stalking forward.
“An’ I said I don’t need it,” he bites back, trying to push his claws those few extra inches to no avail.
Magneto steps around them, studying him again. “Those bullets— I’m sure they cause you headaches.”
Logan only curls his lip in response, unwilling to confirm the man’s theory about the migraines he’d been having for the last twenty years.
Magneto only hums, steely blue eyes boring into Logan’s own. “I see myself in you, Logan. Angry at the world, at yourself, unwilling, at times, to accept help where it’s needed. Charles is a good man, but he cannot solve all the world’s problems,” Magneto says, hand rising. “This… may hurt,” he warns, “But I assure you it will be for the greater good. You may even thank me later.”
Pain strikes Logan full force before he can get another word out, a migraine unlike any he’s experienced before. He groans, trapped inside his own body, unable to move, unable to do anything to ease it.
It brings with it flashes of memories, of Stryker, of his brother, of the woman he’d loved— unrecognizable in the wake of the bullets that’d been buried in his head. Images of war: of the jungles in Vietnam, of the beaches at Normandy, of the trenches in WWI. Musket fire, the booming ring of cannons, the rattle of machine guns, the screaming groans of the men he’d fought alongside.
He feels his eyes roll back in head, the steely grip on his bones loosening as the pain intensifies.
“Collect any more files you find,” someone instructs distantly, “We’ll leave after.”
A hundred and seventy years of memories resurfacing, distorting around the bullets being pulled from his skull by Magneto. The strangers from his nightmares are given names. There’s his mother’s fear stricken face, his father bleeding out in the foyer, Victor, leading them through the woods at breakneck speeds. His brother that he’d fought alongside, that he’d defended for all a hundred and twenty odd years. Victor who’d betrayed him— Victor who’d lured him here.
Logan thinks he loses consciousness at some point, coming too only when the bullets are finally pulled free. Magneto seals the hole in his skull with a quick motion, his body healing around it without so much as a scar.
Logan finds himself kneeling on the floor, breathing heavily, covered in sweat.
“Perhaps that will help prevent any future headaches.” The bullets clatter to the ground in front of him, bloodied and bent in on themselves. “Consider this a gift to remember me by.” Magneto says, walking away, boots tapping sharply against the concrete floors.
Logan can’t muster the strength to go after him— can’t muster any words to convey what’s just taken place. Because he remembers, all of it, every hurt he’d endured, every betrayal, every person lost. He almost wishes he couldn’t remember, almost curses the part of him that’d gone searching for it. He thinks he could’ve gone the rest of his unending life without remembering.
But the footsteps pause at the door, silence heavy in the space between them. “The Brotherhood is always open to mutants seeking to better society— and to those seeking revenge against it,” Magneto tells him, voice softer than Logan thinks it’d been previously. “Whichever you deem yourself, we would welcome you, Logan. Don’t forget that.” He turns to leave again.
Logan’s tongue feels thick in his mouth. “I’m older than you, ya know?” Logan reaches a careful hand out to the bullets, staining his fingertips with his own blood.
Magneto pauses again. “I don’t recall your age being in that file.”
“It wasn’t,” Logan grunts, clenching the bullets in his fist. After a moment he adds: “…Thanks.” He doesn’t say for what, doesn’t let himself imply anymore than he likely has. Logan pushes himself up but doesn’t turn to face the other man. “Though I’ll have to decline ‘ur offer. I’ve fought for enough men who thought they were above others.”
“And I’ve suffered beneath enough men who thought themselves above me,” Magneto replies gravely, “Never again.” Logan listens to the swish of Magneto’s cloak as he turns on his heel. “I hope you found whatever it is you came here looking for, Logan. Do give Charles my regards.” Logan listens to his footsteps as the man retreats, meeting again with Mystique. The low murmur of their voices fade into the distance, leaving Logan alone.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there before he feels himself take a breath, the tense line of his shoulders easing a fraction. The fingers of his clenched fist unfurl and Logan looks down at the bullets in his hand, rolls them across his palm.
He studies the blood, now dry and flaking. He doesn’t have to go back to the X-mansion. He’d only stayed in hopes that Charles could help him recover his past. And he’d done that, in a sense. There was no reason for him to see any of them again. He could wash his hands of them— of Xavier’s school, of the x-men.
Still, Logan turns, retraces his path, and begins the long ride back.