Chapter Text
I made a big decision a little while ago.
I don’t remember what it was, which prob’ly goes to show
That many times a simple choice can prove to be essential
Even though it often might appear inconsequential.
I must have been distracted when I left my home because
Left or right I’m sure I went. (I wonder which it was!)
Anyway, I never veered: I walked in that direction
Utterly absorbed, it seems, in quiet introspection.
For no reason I can think of, I’ve wandered far astray.
And that is how I got to where I find myself today.
- Bill Watterson
22 April 2005
3:47 PM
unnamed abandoned logging road
Yukon, Canada
Logan sighed, narrowing his eyes against the wind. His motorcycle roared down the road. Why did I decide to live all the way out there again? Oh, that’s it- privacy. His rare rides into town always drove him into a foul mood. All I asked for was a box of nails, not a hundred questions about my time in the Army or gossip or wild stories about how Wilbur said he saw Hulk footprints out by the lake. Next thing you know, he’ll be back to talking about Bigfoot. It was a small town, and the dusty old lady who ran the convenience store seemed to think that all he needed was more human contact. It probably didn’t help that his lie about being an army veteran reminded her of her nephew.
I’ve had all the human contact I need for a few lifetimes, thanks, he thought sarcastically. Then blinked, frustrated. Thoughts like that drifted by now and again, and Logan could never quite grasp where they came from.
Familiar trees and forest smells rushed by as he wound his way up the road. No one else lived out this way. That was, after all, the point. Four years of wandering and restless anger over his lack of memory forced Logan to rely on instinct. So far, it had led him west and north, where building a haphazard little cabin had made him the closest thing to happy he’d ever been. That he could remember, anyway.
Lately, when the loggers at the bar in town repeated their offer of a job, he’d wondered if he should take it after all. Odd jobs doing repair work didn’t pay all that well, and government work on the highway wouldn’t happen without legal identification. Even Logan got tired of hunting for dinner after enough days of rabbit stew in a row. Something about taking the logging job bothered him, though.
On the other hand, the sheer boredom of repeating this same line of thought over and over in solitude might just be enough to get him to accept the offer, if only to be distracted by something new. But new meant people and gossip and expectations and echoes of a past, echoes of a life he desperately wanted and utterly rejected in the same half-formed thought. And the shallow story he’d told them to make up for an absent past wouldn’t hold up day after day, but the idea of explaining the truth just didn’t appeal. He preferred his privacy.
Logan’s thoughts turned on this cycle a few more times before a new scent captured his attention. Something different: a man, but sour with something inhuman. A mutant, maybe. The strangeness didn’t seem right. He’d smelled mutants before, on his way west and north, and they were always odd, but it tended to fit together. This one… didn’t. The pieces of his scent didn’t match, like a bowl that was broken and put back together wrong.
One curve of the road later, the man came into view. He was naked.
Not entirely naked. He was clutching a mostly shredded thing that might be the remnants of a pair of jeans. The sour-broken man stumbled along, walking up the road. He was barefoot, dirty, and, from the scent of him, exhausted. Logan slowed to an idling roll as his bike came up beside the stranger. He didn’t look up. Didn’t even stop walking.
“Not a great day for a walk,” Logan offered. “Probably going to snow later.”
The sour-broken man kept going.
Dried sweat and maybe tears mingled with the unmistakable odor of multiple nights in the woods. Bone-deep exhaustion was clear in the slant of his shoulders. A leaf fluttered where it was caught in the mud dried into his hair. In spring, the mountains weren’t kind to unprepared wanderers. Logan couldn’t help but be concerned for the guy.“Is there any particular reason you’re walking up to my house?”
He stopped. Didn’t look up.
Logan stopped, too. “Nearest town is Destruction Bay. That way.” He pointed back down the road – opposite the way the man had been walking.
The stranger glanced up and down the worn gravel road, deftly avoiding Logan’s eyes. He paused, took a breath, turned around, and started walking back down the road.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Logan growled. Propping up his bike, he jumped off and trotted to catch up. “Listen. It gets cold up here. Really fucking cold.” No reaction. “It’s freakishly warm for April right now, but a cold wind’s coming in. You won’t make it into town today.” The bastard just kept walking. “I won’t let you.”
That got a reaction: the sour-broken man flinched and stumbled away, off the side of the road.
“Not like that.” Logan sighed. “I don’t want you dying on my road, you stubborn jackass,” he declared.
Hesitation.
“Look at me.”
He flinched. The sour smell flared.
“Please. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.” Logan tried to smile. It probably looked horrible.
The stranger glanced up, then back at his feet. He gnawed his lip for a moment, then looked up again, meeting Logan’s gaze.
Christ. What the hell happened to this guy?
He had big, deep brown eyes, empty of everything but defeat and misery. After a long second of eye contact, his brow furrowed and he looked away, shaking his head slowly.
Barely thinking about it, Logan shrugged off his leather coat and the jacket underneath, which he held out to him. “Here.”
The empty-eyed man glanced back and forth between Logan and the fleece-lined denim jacket.
“Come on. Take it.”
A trembling hand reached out and grabbed it. The sour smell began to fade.
“Go ahead. Put it on.” Logan winced at the strange man’s confusion. “One sleeve at a time, you know.” He demonstrated with exaggerated motions, putting his leather coat back on.
Trembling and clutching the baggy waist of his jeans with one hand at a time, the sour-broken man pulled on the jacket and clumsily fastened the buttons.
“There you go. Now, how about you let me drive you up to my place, and I’ll take you down to town in the morning? I’d take you tonight, but once is too many times for one day for me already.” Logan tried to smile again. It felt better this time.
The broken man’s mouth twitched, and he looked at the motorcycle hesitantly.
“I’m not going to crash,” Logan promised. “Really.” He strolled back to his bike. Climbing on, he grinned with relief when he felt the other man climb up behind him. “You’re gonna want to hold on to something,” he warned.
Stick-thin arms wrapped around Logan, hesitant, with pale hands.
As the motorcycle roared back up the mountain, the hands clutched his jacket, a muddy forehead buried itself in the leather between his shoulder blades, and Logan could feel his unexpected passenger shaking with emotion.
He sighed inwardly. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Logan? This guy needs help, not an amnesiac freak who lives like a hermit. Traces and fragments of toothy grins, gunpowder, soft candlelight, and wild roses danced through his head, flashing bright and instantly forgotten.