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Logan was sitting on the edge of Wade’s bed in the small bedroom of his apartment. He was slouched over himself, head nearly bowed to his knees, and the only sound coming from him was his breathing, jagged and irregular, as he stared down at his hand — or rather, as he stared down at the adamantium bullet in it, resting innocently in the curve of his palm.
Shifting slightly where he sat, he rubbed his thumb over the gleaming length of it in an almost curious motion before letting it fall back into the curve of his hand, the small object rolling back and forth before settling in between the lines of his palm; at rest, for the time being. Unassuming and still.
Logan had forgotten about it — which wasn’t, all things considered, a surprise, but if it had been, it would have been a welcome one. The bullet barely weighed anything at all, but the burden it carried — for Logan, for the Wolverine — was enough to stagger a beast.
In between being dragged through universes, having every atom of himself torn to shreds then pieced back together again, and tumbling headfirst into some kind of domestic fucking ending in an apartment in New York City — all in what felt like a day, and may as well have been — warranted his forgetfulness, though, he thought. And, truly, it had been a blissful sort of ignorance; he had still carried the weight that the bullet represented, but the object itself was a stark reminder of his sins that shot through his chest just at the sight of it, crushing him until he could barely breathe.
Logan had been changing out of his half-destroyed suit; he had wanted to just scrap it, but Althea had shaken her head at that and said she could fix it, which he hadn’t questioned despite his heavy doubt on the matter. Wade had given him privacy (despite whining and pouting about it), directing him to the small shower connected to the single bedroom and telling him to wear, “Whatever you can find in the closet, babygirl, what’s mine is yours now.”
(The man certainly was a . . . character. And to be frank, Logan didn’t know if he meant that in a good way or not; with Wade, the word seemed to have a new meaning every other moment.)
He had peeled off the charred fabric, wincing at each tear and stain and scuff in the suit he had cherished as the last piece of his family for so long, only to pause at the feel of the hard press of the bullet. It was tucked and hidden in the suit’s breastplate, in the midst of the shredded fragments of it that remained, which he had shoved into his cowl for safekeeping as he and Wade had stumbled from the Time Ripper’s chamber.
He had put it there, that morning. Or — several mornings now, he supposed. It all felt like one. But then again, his days always had; they blurred together, smearing like a bloodstain over time as he staggered through each hour, always running from the voices of those he had failed.
He had stared at it for a moment — the small piece of metal, so unassuming, so innocent. Unblemished and clean. He had stared at it, and then he had torn his gaze away, folding the shredded pieces of his suit the best he could and placing the bullet neatly on top of it with hands that shook before ducking out of the bedroom and into the bathroom to force himself into the tiny shower that he barely fit in.
It was selfish, he had thought; that he was all but ignoring the inevitable, the weight he would need to once more pick up and carry. It was cowardly. But he was so tired, and everything still ached, and he needed to scrub the blood from his skin before he started clawing it off.
Logan had shuddered as he had stepped underneath the searing spray of hot water, tipping his head back with a rasping sigh as blood that both was and wasn’t his dribbled down his skin and circled the drain, staining the white tile a brownish red and painting the air with a heavy metallic scent.
He had parted his mouth wide in a groan of relief that rumbled all the way through his chest, closing his eyes and letting every muscle of his body go lax underneath the feel of the water burning his skin to the bone, soaking him to his core. His mind had gone pleasantly blank as he had breathed in the steam from the heat, and had remained as silent and empty for the ten minutes he had stood underneath the spray until the water swirling at his feet was clear and the tile was no longer smeared with blood.
He had looked down at himself, as he had turned off the shower with hands that still shook; his body was clean, unblemished and unmarred, but as he looked down at his palms, he still saw his hands stained with the red that would never be washed from them; the red that bled into him, down to his very soul.
The blood on his hands, of all of those he had failed.
(He was soaked in it.)
Logan had shaken himself dry of water with a full-body shudder behind the shower curtain before reaching for a towel to dry himself fully, tossing it over the top of the door to dry when he was done before making his way back into the small bedroom.
He had dug around the closet and drawers before settling on a pair of gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt with a band logo on it (two of the only normal things Wade owned; apparently; half of his closet was pink crop-tops, for Christ’s sake). They weren’t exactly comfortable, far too tight on his larger body, but he didn’t care much either way. There was much more on his mind than a shirt being a little too snug.
Unable to ignore the inevitable for any longer (and, truly, not wanting to, the heavy weight of the reminder of his sins feeling like an aged, old friend), Logan had sat back down heavily on the bed beside the folded pieces of his mangled suit.
He had picked the bullet back up, rolling it in his palm — and that was where he was, now, sitting there in silence. Pondering it all.
It was meant to have been his last drink. When he had sat down at the bar that day and all but begged for one more, exhausted and tired and so fucking beaten-down and sick of it all. It had meant to have been something to just get his nerves up.
“Just one more, then I’ll leave”, he had said, and he had meant it in more ways than one — and then the jabbering idiot in red spandex had shown up and dragged him into this mess, and all of his plans had gone down the drain.
(He had just wanted to see them all again. His family.
If only for a moment, as he fell through the split between Heaven and Hell.)
It might not even have worked, anyway. Probably wouldn’t’ve. Cockroaches, Wade had called them, and he hadn’t been wrong. Logan knowing what he knew now — that he could survive being fucking atomized, apparently, by matter and antimatter itself, whatever the hell that meant — knew that it almost definitely wouldn’t have, no matter how true he aimed with the bullet that was meant to tear through his skull and put him out of his misery like a sick fucking dog.
But, God, even if he knew there was a chance it wouldn’t work . . . if there was even a fractional chance that it could have . . .
He had wanted to, so fucking badly.
(Did he still want to?
Would he still do it, if he thought it would work? Even if he knew it wouldn’t?
. . . Would he?)
Rolling the bullet in the palm, rubbing his thumb along it like it was some kind of fucked-up good luck charm, squeezing a fist around it and closing his eyes . . . he found that he didn’t know.
The one thing, the one thing he had wanted since that night when he had stumbled home, drunk as a skunk, and had been forced to sober up in an instant when he had found Marie, and then Charles, and then Ororo, and then Jean and Scott and Bobby and Kurt and Hank and all of them, fucking all of them dead because of him — the one fucking thing he had wanted was to just fucking join them.
Or, no; not to join them, but to find them again, so he could beg for their forgiveness — before retreating into the pits of Hell where he belonged for the weight of his unimaginable sins.
And if Hell didn’t exist?
He’d carve a hole in the fucking universe to create it just for him to suffer all that he deserved for killing his own family, and then thousands more who had been nothing but collateral fucking damage to the fury of the Wolverine.
(There was so much blood on his hands, and he couldn’t even claw them off to rid himself of it; the limbs regrew, bloodier and bloodier each time, his red-stained palms smearing his sins over the very essence of his soul — a scarlet ledger.)
But then the red-suited fucker had shown up with his educated wishes, and he had, even if it hadn’t been his intention, given Logan purpose. He had given him a way to help instead of harm. To go against his nature. To become more than what he had become, as the Wolverine — as the Worst Wolverine. He had given him a way to be good again.
More than any of that, though? He had given him a family again, if not in so many words.
And Logan —
How was he supposed to fucking deal with that?
(Wouldn’t it be easier to just . . . not?)
Logan jerked from his thoughts with a start at the sound of a fist pounding on the bedroom door. Before he could bark out a hearty fuck off, Wade was swinging his way inside, expression annoyingly chipper. He wasn’t wearing his suit anymore, either; instead, he was wearing Hello Kitty-patterned pajama pants, and a pink T-shirt that said BLOW-J QUEEN.
Tasteful.
“You were in the shower forever!” Wade whined, making Logan’s eye twitch with irritation. “I wanted to take a peek in and see why but Al wouldn’t let me and she’s gotten really good at hearing me even when I walk super quiet.”
He flopped down on the bed beside Logan, chattering on about something or other that Logan couldn’t have cared less about as he clenched a fist down on the bullet in his palm, standing abruptly and grabbing his mangled folded suit with the other hand.
“Got somewhere I can put this, bub?” He asked gruffly, cutting Wade off. The man didn’t even pause, completely unfazed; he just nodded and kept on talking (how did he not run out of air?), throwing out a hand to gesture to a bin haphazardly labeled AL’S PROJECTS and brimming with dreamcatchers and the like, all with . . . interesting color schemes, which Logan supposed was Wade’s doing. He wouldn’t put it past him to scramble up Althea’s supplies for shits and giggles, the bastard.
Carefully, calloused hand uncharacteristically gentle, Logan lay the suit on the edge of the bin; then, because he felt awkward just standing there like a fucking moron, sat back down on the bed beside Wade, not bothering to so much as half-listen as he droned on and on.
(As loath as he was to admit it, though . . .
Wade’s voice drowned out his thoughts. Drowned out the screams. Drowned out the cries.
For a moment, his voice even washed away the blood on his hands, because it was due to Logan that he was sitting there able to talk at all; because Logan had saved him, had saved countless others, and that felt like it was nearly enough to be the penance he had been seeking through the bottom of a bottle, and through the mouth of a gun.
Wade’s voice drowned out his thoughts, and he wasn’t thinking about the bullet anymore.
For a moment, anyway.)
“Whatcha got there, peanut?”
Logan shook his head a little to reorient himself and swore under his breath as he realized his palm had opened, and he had been absentmindedly rubbing a thumb along the bullet, the feeling burning the pad of his finger with the heat of the metal.
“Nothin’,” he grunted out, but Wade, the jabbering little prick he was, never left anything alone. It was just like with the fucking suit. And, okay, yes, that had helped, in the end, but that had been more thanks to Laura (which, by the way, Logan wasn’t even going to try and open that can of worms in his mind on his first fucking night in this new fucking universe, the fact that he apparently had a fucking daughter), and — well, he didn’t really think it would be productive to tell Wade fucking Wilson about his fucked-up mental state.
“Is it, like, a memento? I keep those from, like, all my fights. I have so many little trinkets that are just all over the place, Al hates it so much. I should probably clean up a little though, ‘cause I wouldn’t want Mary Puppins eating any of the human parts I’ve collected over the years as Deadpool. Bullets, though — those are good. In the first movie, I killed, like, fifty — okay, that might be an exaggeration, but still it was a lot — bad guys with twelve bullets. The cinematography was epic.”
Ignoring most of that (Jesus fucking Christ, this guy loved to hear the sound of his own voice), Logan just grunted again with a half-shrug of one of his broad shoulders. He looked up for a moment, meeting Wade’s gaze, and then his mouth moved faster than his mind did, completely disregarding all common sense and logic as he looked back down again at his clenched fist.
“Actually,” he responded, voice blank and flat, “I was thinking of shooting myself with it.”
Beside him, Wade went silent, and Logan looked up at him once more, eyebrows raised in anticipation of whatever response he would give. The man was staring at him, expression momentarily stunned; it was like Logan could physically see the cogs in his head turning, trying to make sense of what he had just heard.
“I mean, I — I’ve done that, too,” he said eventually, voice doubtful and unsure, the first time Logan had heard such a tone from him. “Pitched myself into a den of polar bears, once. Chugged bleach and flipped off a building, another time. A little extreme, sure, but, y’know. Sometimes, people like us just want that . . . break.” Wade shrugged, with a nervous little laugh.
“Closest I ever got for reals was drowning, but even that didn’t work. Why do you want it?” He nudged Logan’s shoulder with his own, his voice having gone slightly hopeful, as if he knew that his assumption was incorrect, but hoping it wasn’t, and was trying to speak it into existence. “A break? What if we made a date out of it? Held hands and jumped off the Empire State Building?”
“It wouldn’t be a goddamn break,” Logan grunted out through grit teeth, tearing a hand through his damp, gray-streaked hair. He still didn’t know why he was saying all of this. Maybe he was too tired to care, too wrung-out to give a fuck — or maybe, he knew that Wade stood the chance of understanding. More than anyone else ever could.
(He wasn’t the only one with a scarlet ledger.)
“This ain’t a regular bullet,” he added on at last, voice gruff and low. “It’s adamantium.” He lifted his gaze back up to Wade’s, looking at him with shadowed, darkened eyes, and repeated himself, his tone ominous and making the meaning of his words clear; leaving no room for interpretation, no room for hope.
“I was thinking of shooting myself with it.”
Wade stared back at him. He couldn’t pale, because of the way his scars were gnarled and twisted all over his skin, but he was blinking rapidly, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s as if he were caught between a word.
“Oh,” he managed eventually — and then, for one of the first times since Logan had met him, he went entirely silent.
(It gave the voices in Logan’s mind a chance to pick up their wrecked, wailing cries again, and he clenched his fist tight around the bullet, craving thrumming through his veins and nearly making him shake with the weight of needing his head to shut the fuck up.
He remembered stumbling home, back to the X-Mansion; he remembered smelling the blood from miles away, there had been so much of it. He remembered staggering up the steps, and seeing the door ajar, a bloody hand curled around the frame as if the person it belonged to had been trying to drag themselves to safety.
That person had been Marie.)
“Do you still want to?” Wade asked suddenly, and Logan jolted a little, a faint growl rumbling in his chest as he blinked away the images of glazed-over, cloudy eyes and mouths parted in silent screams, the bullet holes painting the countless bodies that may as well have been marks from his own claws.
“Never said I wanted to, bub,” he responded gruffly. “Just that I was thinking about it.”
“Oh,” Wade said again. His voice was oddly subdued as he continued; it was uncharacteristic of him, and Logan thought he hated it. “Well — are you, y’know,” he tried, “leaning one way or another?”
Logan shrugged. He opened his fingers, turning the bullet from one palm to the other. “Dunno,” he grunted, and Wade slumped even more at his side, almost as if he were wilting.
“Oh,” he repeated, for the third time. He seemed to think about that for a moment (but, mercifully, not long enough for Logan to stumble back into his mind and come across Scott, and Jean, and Ororo, and Charles), then spoke again. “Well, why then?”
“Why, what?”
“Why were you thinking about killing yourself.” Wade said it so bluntly, so unflinchingly, which, Logan thought, was why he was talking to him about this in the first place, even if his big dumb mouth had moved faster than his mind to start with.
It was because Wade didn’t look away from suffering — at least, when it was someone else’s. He stared it dead in the face and asked it what the fuck its problem was.
Logan huffed a heavy breath through his nose, clenching his fist around the bullet once more, rolling it in his palm and feeling the reverberations of the metal thrumming against his skeleton.
“‘Cause I’m the worst fucking Wolverine,” he growled out, staring down at his hands, down at the slots in between his knuckles that were nearly always stained with blood. “‘Cause I got my family killed — every last one of ‘em. ‘Cause all I was doing, every fuckin’ day, was drinking myself to what would be death if I could. ‘Cause everyone hated me, and I hated everyone, and the only way to scrub the blood from my hands would be to use ‘em to point a gun to my forehead and pull the fuckin’ trigger.”
He shuddered out a heavy sigh as he finished, closing his eyes and hunching over, resting his head against his knee. Tentatively, fingers brushed over his shoulder; when he didn’t growl or move away, Wade lay his palm over Logan’s back, pressing down gently.
(Logan loathed admitting it, but Wade’s touch anchored him.
Kept him from stumbling back into the bloodied halls of the X-Mansion. Kept him from finding the rooms where the kids slept. Kept him from checking each small body for a pulse, desperately wishing, selfishly wishing, that he wasn’t left alone.
Kept him from finding that last body, and standing over it for a moment, before stumbling back out the way he had come and beginning to kill.)
“I don’t think you understand,” Logan rasped out eventually, filling the silence with the haunted ring of his deadened words that echoed with the screams for mercy from the thousands of people he had stolen the lives of, “how fucking terrible I am, Wade.”
“I understand how terrible you think you are, peanut,” Wade responded softly — more softly than Logan had ever heard him, he thought, save for how he talked to the dog. “But we’ve all done shitty things, and you’ve —,” He stopped for a moment, seeming to backtrack before starting again.
“Look, Logan, you saved the universe. Not just that, but every universe. That’s — so many people, so many lives, it makes my head hurt.” Wade patted his back gently as a shudder passed over Logan’s broad shoulders. “I don’t know much about redemption, ‘sides from watching, like, Avatar, but that’s — that seems like it is one.”
Logan shrugged. He squeezed the bullet in his hand, and the hard press of it against his calloused palm felt —
Usually, he would say it felt good, but right now, it just hurt. And not the kind of hurt that felt good, but the kind of hurt that made him want to vomit until he choked up his soul.
“I didn’t wanna feel the way I did for the rest of my miserable existence, an existence that I didn’t even deserve” Logan rasped out, eyes closed, bullet clenched in his fist. “And I sure as hell don’t deserve a happy ending. We saved the fucking universe, but I — I still couldn’t save my world. My family — not that I have any fuckin’ right to call them that. I couldn’t save them, Wade.” He snarled, the sound tearing through his chest like the sob he wished he could let loose from his throat. “I’m fucking terrible.”
Wade seemed to struggle to find a response for that, before he sighed, hand rubbing a little down Logan’s back. It felt strange, with the scarring that covered every inch of the man’s skin, but in a good way, even if Logan would never admit that.
“I meant it when I said you’re the best Wolverine,” he said quietly, still with that uncharacteristic earnestness to his voice. “You made mistakes. People died. We all have blood on our hands, peanut. But I know that if they were still alive, not a single one of those X-Men would’ve wanted you not to live.”
Logan thought about that, turning the words over in his mind along with the bullet in his palm.
He tried to picture Charles getting angry with him. Tried to picture Jean, Ororo, Kurt, Marie — any of them. Scott, even. Any of the ones he had found lying dead at his feet, mouths half-parted as if they had tried to scream, faces gaunt and pale and streaked with blood. He tried to listen for their voices screaming at him that he didn’t deserve to live, after what he had done.
But . . . he couldn’t.
Because it wasn’t their voices in his head screaming at him; not really. It was his own — it was him who was saying you should’ve done more, you’re a fucking coward, you don’t deserve to live when they’re all six feet under in the mass graves you dug for days with your bare hands on your bloodstained knees, the graves you dug weeks after that night because you killed and killed and didn’t fucking stop.
“You asked why I wore the suit,” Logan rasped out, eyes drawn back to it, to the mangled, destroyed pieces of his shame, the same shame that weighed down the bullet in his palm. “And I — I said it’s because I’m an X-Man, but it’s more than that. It’s a reminder. A reminder of what I did.” He was bearing his heart, and he could only hope that Wade wouldn’t ridicule him for it; God knew he wanted to ridicule himself.
“I wore it every day since I got them all killed; a mark of my shame. Of the people I didn’t save. Of the blood on my hands. And then it tore off in the Time Ripper, and it was like I had done it. I was free from that shame.” He looked down at his palm, at the bullet lying innocently in it.
“But then I found this, and . . . I don’t think I deserve to be. My guilt, my shame . . . it’s what feels right.”
Wade hummed, seeming to give that thought — a rare occurrence — before speaking. “You do, though,” he said, blunt and to-the-point. “Deserve it. And not to speak for them, but they’d literally all agree with me. They wouldn’t want you carrying your shame, even if it feels good — you think everything that feels good is good for you?” He paused for a moment, considering that. “Well, I shouldn’t be talking about that, I don’t think, I’m much worse in that regard — but not the point.
“They’d want you carrying them with you, like — like doing good, like they wanted you to do with them. That’s what you did. When you saved the universe, they were doing it, too.”
“But they should have really been doing it,” Logan ground out, nearly getting whiplash from the other man’s ease at changing his tone so quickly, rubbing a hand down his face. At his side, Wade seemed to refrain from rolling his eyes.
“Then you wouldn’t’ve been there with them,” he pointed out with a little halfhearted shrug. “They’d — they’d be proud of you, alright?” He sounded almost frustrated, as if angry with himself that he didn’t know what to say, what to do to make this better. “They’d be fucking proud of what you’re doing. And you —,” Wade broke off, shaking his head.
“Look,” he started again. “I wanted you to help me to save my world, alright? When I popped up outta nowhere at the end of that montage, and dragged you off your barstool and into the shitstorm of my bullshit, I wanted you to help save me, and I didn’t realize that you —,” Wade’s voice wavered, his hand shifting on Logan’s back.
“I didn’t realize that you needed saving, too.”
“I can save myself,” Logan grunted, grinding his teeth together, familiar anger that was nothing but grief and pain and guilt surging up into his chest, telling him to lash out, push him away, don’t let him get too close or his blood will be on your hands, too, you fucking animal —
“Will you, though?” Wade challenged, breaking across his thoughts, and Logan stiffened under his touch, the curtain of anger slipping away to reveal the pain beneath. He turned the bullet over in his hands, passing it from one palm to the other and heaving a heavy sigh, his head dropping low in between his knees.
“I dunno what the hell I’m doin’, Wade,” he mumbled. Wade patted his back with a pity that Logan hated.
“You wanna elaborate?”
Logan ground his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and growling deep in his chest.
“No.”
Wade shrugged, as if it were that simple — because, with him, it was.
“Alright, then.”
The hand on Logan’s back slowly moved up to his neck, and then to his hair, beginning to pet through the shower-damp strands of dark brown and gray. Logan shuddered a little, pressing into Wade’s touch; it grounded him, kept him anchored, and kept his mind so blissfully quiet.
Maybe, he thought — maybe, if he stayed with Wade . . . the silence would stay. Or at least, it would get easier for him to — not ignore, but to live with. Things would . . . get easier, because Wade had given him the chance to be good again, and he had taken it, but now he had to choose to either keep doing good, or to put himself out of his misery.
And, really — wasn’t the latter him being the same selfish prick he had been, before that night? The same selfish prick who refused to step foot in the X-Mansion unless he had to, the same selfish prick who told them all they looked fuckin’ ridiculous and who insisted on being a lone wolf even though he had ached to just find a place to call home.
(Charles would want him to do good.
So would Scott. So would Jean. So would Marie, and Ororo, and Bobby, and Kurt, and . . .
All of them. They would want him to do good. To be good.
Wade had given him that chance.)
“Wade?” Logan’s voice was quiet.
“Yeah, peanut?”
Logan shifted himself upward with a grunt, keeping his head ducked low so that he wouldn’t dislodge the hand stroking through his hair. He opened his palm, and dumped the bullet unceremoniously into Wade’s free hand gently pushing the man’s fingers to close into a fist around it — not unlike how he had folded Marie’s hands around his dog tags, when he had first promised her he’d be back for them.
(She had worn them even in death, even if he didn’t deserve the honor, because he hadn’t kept his promise, not really; not until it was too late.)
“Why don’t ya hold onto this for me, bub,” he managed gruffly, turning his face away and patting Wade’s knee, the man having gone speechless once more. “You can put me down like Old Yeller if I ever get to be too much of a dickhead, how’s that?”
“That power is gonna go to my head so fast,” Wade responded with feigned eagerness, voice devoid of his usual gleeful, carefree teasing. He was looking down at his hand, where the bullet was hidden in his fist, and his eyes flitted back upward, seeking out Logan’s own gaze.
“Look, Logan,” he said softly — the absence of a pet name, Logan thought, was the most jarring part of this interaction so far, and that was fucking saying something seeing as he had essentially just dumped all of his bullshit problems onto the shoulders of Wade fucking Wilson — “I get it, alright? I do,” Wade stressed, when Logan scoffed slightly under his breath, “more than you probably know. Having people, though, it . . . it makes it . . . bearable.” His hand dropped down to Logan’s shoulder, and he squeezed lightly. An anchor.
“So give us a chance before you do anything I would do, alright?”
Logan raised a brow, lifting his head. “Anything you would do?” He repeated skeptically, and Wade shrugged.
“Anything stupid.”
Logan did laugh, then — a snorting bark of laughter that left his mouth in a wheezing puff of air, making a grin split over his shadowed face for a moment. “Not planning on it,” he grunted out, and the look Wade gave him — one of earnest compassion and worry and with gentleness that Logan knew he did not deserve but that he knew Wade would give him anyway — made something in his gut flip over.
“Good,” he responded fiercely. He squeezed Logan’s shoulder once more before letting go, standing back up with a stretch. Logan forced himself not to watch as the other man shoved the bullet in his pocket — “For temporary safe keeping, babygirl,” Wade explained when he caught Logan’s eye wandering anyway — and kept his eyes on Wade. Keeping himself anchored, through his arguably better-or-worse half.
“So anyway,” Wade said casually, as if they had been discussing the weather, “I came in here originally ‘cause me and Al watch Wheel of Fortune every night, and ‘cause I’m heating up leftover alfredo for us and the dog, and it’s cool if you don’t wanna since it’s your first night and all and I’m sure you’ve got the jitters, sweet-cheeks, but if you wanted —,”
“I could eat,” Logan interrupted, and he definitely didn’t feel a twitch upwards at the corner of his mouth as he watched Wade’s expression brighten into a grin and his eyes light up.
“Great!” He chirped, clapping his hands together. “It’s about to be on, starts at a minute after seven every night which always pisses Al off ‘cause she says it’s late or whatever the shit. It just seems like pretty convenient timing, if you ask me; sounds like the author just didn’t know how to finish this.” He shrugged, spreading out his palms. “But that’s just me.”
“You make no sense,” Logan grunted, hoisting himself up and cracking his back (ignoring Wade’s coo of “Big stretch!”, as if he were a goddamn cat or something, Jesus Christ) before following the other man out into the small living room packed with poorly-made IKEA furniture.
He stood awkwardly for a moment, shifting his weight from side to side, before sitting down all at once next to Althea, mumbling a greeting to her as she nodded in acknowledgement. A moment passed, and then Althea moved a hand blindly towards him for a moment before resting her palm on his knee.
“I ain’t heard that idiot boy sound as happy as he is talkin’ to and about you in a long while,” she said to him quietly, as Wade bustled around in the tinier kitchen behind them, humming the theme song to some children’s show under his breath while Mary Puppins trotted around at his feet, too-long nails clacking against hardwood.
“Whatever you are to him, Logan?” Althea’s voice was soft, and Logan’s gut twisted. “Thank you.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Logan responded softly, voice gruff and thick. Althea patted his knee gently, before pulling away to turn up the volume of the television as if she had never said anything at all. But Logan wasn’t paying attention.
The words had seemed to rock him to his core, even if Althea didn’t know it; it was as if they encapsulated everything he ached to be. Someone’s protector. Someone doing good. Like Charles wanted for him. And Scott. And all the rest of them. Someone who did what was right; that was all they had ever wanted him to be, and now he finally was.
(“They’d — they’d be proud of you, alright? They’d be fucking proud of what you’re doing.”)
All at once, Logan was, in his mind, standing at the edge of the drive that led up to the X-Mansion. In the distance, he heard cries and screams, and he smelled the weight of blood heavy on the air, metallic on his tongue when he opened his own mouth to howl grief into the sky that was painted red with the sunset of the tragedy that he had caused.
He looked up the drive, and when he looked down, there was a bullet in his hand.
(“You made mistakes.” Wade’s voice echoed in his mind, and he shuddered, his eyes burning with a fierce grief, a fierce anger that burned with a vengeance. “People died. We all have blood on our hands, peanut.
“But I know that if they were still alive, not a single one of those X-Men would’ve wanted you not to live.”)
Logan looked back up.
And then he dropped the bullet to the ground and turned as the impact of it hitting the bloodstained concrete rang in his ears, walking away without looking back.
He was walking away, and then he was planting his feet back down to the living room carpet and anchoring himself to the present of the too-loud TV, of Althea’s mutterings about the new host of her game show, of the dog’s yipping in excitement as the microwave beeped, of Wade’s cooings to her and of Logan’s own breathing, loud in his ears along with his heartbeat but quieting and slowing as he ran a hand over the arm to the couch, feeling himself relax into it.
(“Give us a chance before you do anything I would do, alright?”
He would, he thought. He would give them a chance.
And he’d give himself a chance, too.)
“Here ya go, peanut!” Wade’s voice chirped loudly in his ear, and Logan didn’t even startle, just welcomed the bowl of warm, cheesy pasta into his hands and smiled, however fleetingly, up at the other man.
“Thanks, bub.”
“Aww, so you really can smile! Thought it was just a fluke, earlier.” Wade grinned down at him, ruffling his hair with a hand. Logan growled, but it was half-hearted, almost playful, and he moved over on the couch to make room for Wade before the sound even died out in his chest, grunting as the other man flopped down beside him and the dog jumped up in between them.
“Oh, just look at us.” Wade sighed, sounding almost wistful, or perhaps adoring; both were equally as disturbing. “Well — not you, Al, but — well, you in spirit. Look at us. We’re like — the most fucked-up little family you’ve ever seen.”
“Fucked-up is right,” Althea muttered, shaking her head, and Logan grunted in agreement between her and Wade, even as his mind wandered, because fucked-up or not . . .
He had never thought he would have a family, not ever again; not after what had happened to the X-Men. Not when he had so much blood on his hands. Not when all he had wanted to do for so long was to press the barrel of a gun to his head, and to know he wouldn’t survive the pull of the trigger.
But, despite all of that — here he was. In the midst of a ‘fucked-up little family.’
And, fucked-up or not, he was happy.
(When was the last time . . .?
Had it been after — no.
Before? Maybe.
Did he deserve it . . .? No.
Logan thought about that for a moment; about Wade’s words, about everything they had done together, about the good he was doing, was becoming.
. . . Maybe.)
Logan swallowed painfully, mouth having gone dry. “Wade,” he rasped out, glancing to his right and meeting the gaze of the man looking right back at him, dark eyes wide and soft. He played with the fork in his hand, squeezing down on it as a vice.
“Thank you,” he managed after a moment, speaking through gritted teeth; it was stupid how difficult it was to say, especially since he had just fucking said it, but Wade didn’t seem to care. He just smiled stupidly, his eyes growing impossibly softer.
“‘s just microwaved alfredo, babygirl,” he said cheerfully, wrapping an enthusiastic arm around Logan’s broad shoulders. “Nothing to fuss over, not that I mind it.”
Logan grunted, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “You know what I mean, asshole,” he muttered sullenly, not protesting Wade’s touch even as the man snuggled closer, the dog curling in between them and nuzzling her naked head against their chins. Wade sighed, patting Logan’s knee with his free hand and leaning his head against his shoulder.
“I know,” he murmured, and that was enough.
“God fucking damn,” Althea barked from beside them, making them both jump, “for the love of Christ, go be gay somewhere else. Or at least wait for the damn commercial break, Wheel of Fortune’s on and if I turn up the volume any louder, Cheryl’s gonna try to get us evicted again.”
Wade began to whine about homophobia and how their next door neighbor was just a raging bitch, making Althea snap back at him that “The last time the cops showed up to the door it was because you broke into her apartment covered in blood with two fucking baby limbs, you fucking dumbass”, and Logan, despite himself, began to laugh.
He laughed, and he laughed, and then he was wheezing, nearly crying, and it wasn’t even that funny but he was laughing and it was wonderful, and somehow the voices were even quieter than when Nova had been fucking her fingers in his brain, and it felt fucking good, because he felt home.
Of course (he thought, nearly hysterical), it had taken a fucking idiot in red spandex who couldn’t go a minute without the sound of his own voice to give him a reason to keep living. To give him a reason to take off the suit, to unburden himself from the shame.
To give him a reason to drop the adamantium bullet from his hand and to give him a way to quiet the screams in his mind that were not of those he loved, but were of his own hatred for himself.
Of course, it had taken fucking Wade Wilson for Logan to find a way to be good again. The man who couldn’t go five words without an innuendo. The man who loved a hairless, ugly-ass dog like it was his child. The man who was, by all meanings of the word, a man-child.
Fucking . . . Wade Wilson.
Thank you, Logan had told him — and he had meant it. He had meant it more than anything he had said before in his entire fucking life, in his entire fucking existence that had been miserable for more than two hundred fucking years, and that he had wanted to end, that he was going to end, before that fucking idiot in red spandex had asked him, “Why were you thinking about killing yourself?”, and had stared at Logan’s worst parts (all of him) without fear.
Had dismantled every part of him, one by one, and pieced him back together again, from the moment he had showed him that polaroid photo in the Odyssey and given Logan something to fight for.
Because of Wade, he had fought for something, for the first time in so fucking long. Because of Wade, he had done the right thing, something that had become foreign to him with the first taste of blood that had coated his tongue that night from stains on the air. Because of Wade, he really, truly had found a way to be good again.
Because of Wade?
He was an X-Man again, but more importantly, he had a family again. One that saw the blood on his hands that he could never wash away, but who didn’t turn him away for it, even though they should. One that cared enough to care about him.
He had Laura, once the TVA brought her back, and he had Althea, and he had the fucking dog, and he had Wade.
(“You — look, I wanted you to help me to save my world, alright? I didn’t realize that you — you needed saving, too.”
"I can save myself."
"Will you, though?")
And that family, however fucked-up it was, gave him a reason to turn down the barrel of a gun.
Of course, it had been Wade fucking Wilson who had saved the fucking Wolverine.
He was never going to live that down, Logan thought with a wry edge as he mused to himself, sitting on the couch in between an blind old coke addict, an ugly-ass naked mole rat-looking dog, and a man who definitely had no sense of boundaries and who had been dropped on his head several times as a child. His very own, fucked-up little family.
As his barking laughter tapered off into chuckles and he sank back against the couch with a wheezing breath, Wade’s hand moved back up to pet through his hair once more; Logan leaned back into his touch with a broken-engine purr beginning to rumble in his chest, making the man gasp and start cooing at him as if he were a kitten, and then making Althea begin to lecture them both when she heard the sound of Logan’s claws sliding out until her very enthusiastic swearing made him meekly slide them back in.
He resigned himself to lying back, half-lidding his eyes and listening with faint amusement as Althea and Wade argued over him, his hand coming up to pet the dog’s naked head as she licked his chin and Wheel of Fortune played in the background.
He was never going to live any of this down.
But . . .
He was going to live.
For Charles. For Marie. For Scott, and Jean, and Bobby and Kurt and Hank. For all of them.
For Wade.
And, maybe someday . . . for himself.