Chapter Text
"You've never looked better," Scott said with the same condescending smirk he had worn for as long as James had known him.
***
It wasn't until the early hours of the morning that things finally settled down enough to have any real conversation. Between classes, students too young to have ever met him wanting to get a glimpse, and the people he had once known and worked with all reaching out too touch, almost seeming surprised when their hands didn't go straight through, no productive talking had gotten done. James felt as though he had repeated the same answers a thousand times and he was getting sick of it.
The lights in the lounge were dim and all eyes were on James. All except Laura's, who had fallen asleep against his shoulder. After hours of energy she had crashed the moment they finally sat down. James beside her like a statue, against the tense and searching glares of people he used to know and his daughter's soft breathing. His own eyes darting between everyone's shocked stares.
Laura had a fistful of his shirt in her grasp her other arm looped through his and holding his hand. Her warm side pressed as close to him as she could possibly be, he didn't fight it. He had let her cling since the moment he had returned, had held her back in kind.
The way she had looked at him, clung to him, so different from how she had all those years ago. His hand in hers now warm and alive instead of the desperate grasp of dying man. The only thing stuck in his chest now was love and relief he didn't yet know how to breath around.
He knew nearly everyone in the room, people from his life, before. It was surreal to see them again, back in the mansion he never thought he'd return too. A place he had once half lived, with people he had once known, during what now felt like a whole lifetime ago. Their faces lined with age but still familiar.
A handful of them had been strangers, people he had never met, but Laura's bright eyed introductions had been all the convincing he needed to let them stay when everyone else who wanted to get a glimpse of him had been shooed from the room.
The team was a lot bigger then it once was. When he had first met them there had only been a few members, but that had been a long time ago, and even the ones he had once considered rookies were now old friends in his eyes.
"It's good to have you back. She's ben having trouble adjusting," Jean said in her soft voice, eyes glancing to Laura with caution.
"Apple didn't fall too far from the tree," Scott said through a sharp smirk.
James felt himself tense, instincts that refused to settle rearing their head again at the remark. Laura had refused to be separated from him by more then a few feet. Something James was grateful for, keen to keep her close as well. But while he spoke with his old friends she had hardly acknowledged them. Demanding of his attention, and bristling at the old familiarity they had with her dad.
James had hoped it was just jealousy for having to share his attention, a foreign idea to him, his own daughter who he had been no good too, vying for his attention. His fear of her not wanting him back, her being happy with the other Wolverine at her side and James staying dead, proved unfounded with her desperate need to hold him close.
Laura had been affectionate, almost childlike in her need to be close to him, but the way the team looked at her with guarded caution, and how she had glared back with a challenge in her eyes hadn't boded well for the peaceful life he had hoped she made for herself with them. Thankfully it seemed she had something akin to a peaceful life, just not in the mansion walls.
There had been nearly an hour after James had finally gotten Laura back in his arms before the news spread and the others began to swarm. The words he had managed to get from her in that time were minimal, mostly just her soothing purr interrupted by hiccupping sobs. The pieces of her life he had gotten were disjointed and confusing, fitting together in a puzzle James had yet to put together, but it felt much less urgent once he had her in his arms, whole and alive, and crying for him. He had held her. Gently cradled in his arms and rocked as though she was still small, as though holding her like that was familiar. He had breathed in her scent, filling his lungs with the reassurance that she was back by his side. His own chest rattling with uneven breaths but no purr bubbling to the surface.
"Having you back will hopefully be the push she needs to stay" Bobby said.
Bobby was older, they all were, but seeing the people he had once known as teens now so far into adulthood was uncanny. He was no stranger to watching people he cared for grow old, but the image of immature teens that never left his head conflicted with the grown adults that sat Infront of him.
Laura, was the worst of it. Asleep against his side like a child, but now older then Rogue had been when he first met her. Laura's hand in his was so much bigger then it had been last time he had held it. He had never realized how quickly children grew. Laura had been so small then, mind far too grown for her tiny frame, and James regrets that he couldn't give her the chance to be young when she needed him most. The last of her childhood slipped away while he was buried deep underground, none the wiser.
The teens he had known at the mansion had grown all the same, but seeing them so often he had hardly noticed. They hadn't changed month by month but looking back they had been changing the whole time, right under his nose. Though they had already been most of the way to adulthood by the time he met the majority of them. Not nearly as small as his own daughter had been.
They were all adults now, and staring at him with the same disbelief as everyone else had been that day. Marie glaringly absent from the group, apparently out of state. With her Fiancé. James wasn't sure what to make of that. Laura had said he was a good guy, and James was inclined to believe her on the man's merit. Though his mind stuck on a different detail.
Marie, the two felt decades apart, two completely different pieces of his life, but Laura had referred to her so casually. The thought of the two knowing each other, like Laura had walked right into his old life. Picked up where he had left off. Finding her way into his past and introducing herself to the people there. She had done it all without help.
Not James' help at least, but something similar.
Someone similar.
"And the other guy?" James asked, the elephant in the room that had hardly been glanced at.
Everyone looked at each other, waiting for anyone else to answer the question.
"We haven't gotten the chance to hear the full story unfortunately, but from my understanding he is you," Hank spoke up.
"Technically," Scott commented.
"Technically the same person, but the two of you couldn't be more different," Blink chuckled.
"He is a version of you from an alternate timeline," Hank compromised.
James shot a questioning look at him, one eyebrow lifted in unconvinced disbelief. The explanation sounded almost laughable, but at least it meant the guy wasn't an unthinking monster. It wasn't something James had even considered. He had thought he ran through nearly all the possibilities of who the man with his face was, but alternate timelines hadn't even crossed his mind.
"His version of the X-Men have passed, so he is living here now, from what I have gathered your..." Hank trailed off.
His eyes glanced at Laura, more worry then judgment, checking she was still asleep, unaware of what was being said.
"disappearance," He settled on, "disrupted something, and a different Wolverine had to be relocated here."
A different Wolverine.
James had fucked up so spectacularly that another Wolverine had to be sent over to clean up his mess. To raise his daughter. Laura, beautiful and healthy, loved in a way James hadn't been able too. This other Wolverine, showed up, given a second chance after losing his team, James' team given a second chance after losing him.
Despite whatever James had done wrong, Wolverine was so important to the world that a new one had to be brought over. Just not James, who hadn't stuck around, hadn't been reliable or good. Replaced with a version of him willing to do what James had refused.
Different, Hank said, the truth stayed unspoken.
Better.
So damn important he had to be brought from a different timeline.
To the timeline James had tried to save. After the world had gone to shit and James was sent through his own timeline to fix the past. It had hardly worked, the war staved off long enough to avoid the worst of it, but the poison laced into so many crops and the human on mutant manhunt, that followed so soon after his return, glaring evidence that James hadn't been able to fix anything. The world only righting itself after his death. Humans and Mutants living in relative peace and a better Wolverine in New York near the X-Men. A Wolverine who could actually save the timeline.
It wasn't anything he could mention. It was the kind of thing James had to learn to live with, not something his friends could explain or help with.
The questions James had and the ones his friends could answer were vast, but some stuck out like splintered wood.
"Couldn't be more different?" he settled on asking about what he could wrap his head around.
"It's been two years," Peter shrugged, "he's been here the whole time."
"not here," Jean said bluntly.
"He's been living in the city with Laura," Ororo said kindly, "and his partner."
"And by partner you mean," James left the statement open ended.
He could put together who they were referencing, the man in red. Deadpool, Wade. Laura had mentioned him, if only briefly, but his relationship with the other Wolverine remained to be specified.
"They are together, a couple," Hank clarifies.
It was essentially what James had figured out on his own. They were close from what he'd gathered, and some kind of relationship was the least he had expected, but the certainty it was said with was a surprise. This other Wolverine, in a relationship measured in years, and spoken about as fact.
James had relationships in the past, ones that lasted years, but the relationship this other version of him had found seemed so different, like the man held a much bigger puzzle piece to the whole thing then what everyone was letting on.
If nothing else, he was evidence. The other Wolverine had made a life for himself, he belonged. Had managed to find someone to love, to make a life with. To take care of Laura with. This other man raising his daughter, a stranger, even more then the other Wolverine was to James.
"What's he like?" James asked, trying to keep even keeled.
The air went still as everyone stiffened.
"you wouldn't like him," Scott broke the tension.
"Well I find that hard to believe, if other me has been shacking up with him for a few years now," James responded.
Laura had spoken of him fondly, if briefly. Only mentioning him in passing, an immutable fact of her life. James hadn't gotten the whole story, but it had sounded like he already owed the guy uncountable favors.
"He's a mercenary," Hank said gently.
"He's a lunatic is what he is," Scott cut back in.
"Wade is a complicated person, but he has a good heart," Colossus tried to settle the argument that was about to break out.
"He is a ruthless killer, he takes lives without thought," Warpath ground out.
"He's worked with the team before, but he's never proved himself someone we can trust. Logan seems to be keeping him in check for now, but I wouldn't trust him very much either." Scott tried to shut the topic down.
"He's a mutant?" James asked like it was a question, but it hardly was. If he fought with the team, with the Wolverine none the less, there was hardly anything else he could be.
"Mutate, technically. It was just about a decade ago, well into adulthood, that he got his powers," Kit corrected.
James glanced over at him and they met eyes, but Kit quickly averted his to the rest of the group. The topic maybe feeling like one that hit close to home for him. Having been firmly an adult before being able to become himself as well. James knew it was best not to mention.
"Which are?" James prompted on the open ended topic of Deadpool's powers.
"He heals, like you." James eyes snapped to Ororo, "Yesterday I would have said even better, but with you showing back up, I'm not sure that's true anymore," she said with a fond smile.
James searched her face for a hint that she wasn't being completely honest. She was someone he trusted, and her face held no sign of a lie.
A healing factor at all was impressive, but one too rival his own? James wasn't wholly surprised by Laura's, her being his daughter, and the other Wolverine surely had the same mutation as he did. But this other man? Wade? Not only had Logan found himself someone to love, someone he got along with, but he had found someone just as indestructible as himself. Someone who wouldn't die on him, someone who could protect just as much as he needed protecting.
The look on James' face must not have hidden much, his wonder interrupted.
"We know you James, and we know Deadpool, you wouldn't get along," Jean said with finality.
"Logan seems to like him," Elektra said. She had been one of the strangers, but Laura had seemed comfortable with her, and she in turn had vouched for Marie's fiancé.
"'Seems too like him' is an understatement," Ororo laughed.
"The two are very affectionate," Kurt said.
"It's disgusting," one of the younger members of the team said. Ellie, Laura had introduced her as, along with her girlfriend Yukio who was hanging off her arm.
"It's adorable," Yukio countered happily.
"We thought for a while that Logan would be like you," Jean said longingly "that he would be you."
"When we heard about him a lot of us came back to the city. We thought you had come back, but it wasn't you. He didn't want much to do with us. Couldn't even tell us what happened, we had to hear it from Deadpool," Scott said.
"He still sent Laura here?" James asked
"No, it was a while before we knew about her. Once Logan was willing to meet us, we were introduced to Laura, she has been taking some classes here, but they still mostly keep her away." Blink said
Keep her away.
James thought about Laura, earlier that evening, clutching his shirt in one hand, typing on her phone in the other. Wade and Logan had expected her home and when she hadn't shown up, still wrapped in the chaos James' return had brought to the mansion, they had begun trying to reach her. They cared. James wondered if they were against her staying overnight. If they had been demanding she return. But they hadn't shown up, and Laura had seemed wholly unconcerned. James had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't them keeping Laura away.
"Logan has some attachment issues. We think he's gotten in her head a bit, about staying with them, just about the polar opposite of you. He wants her close." Scott said.
It wasn't an insult but it sure felt like one.
Laura's hand was still holding James' shirt, even in sleep. As though afraid he would disappear. Afraid she would wake up and it would have all been a dream. James thought of all the times he'd disappeared in the middle of the night. When the mansion was dark and quiet, he would slip out without saying goodbye. He wondered if they'd told Laura that was a habit of his. He wondered if she ever gripped Logan as though he would flee in the night. Two years of waking up to Logan still there, clingy and warm, but she knew to hold James where he was. As though she thought he wanted to leave.
The X-Men, his friends, seemed to think he did. He supposed he had never done a very good job at proving them otherwise. Logan had. They knew Logan stayed. He was the Wolverine who stayed. The one who cared, who had made a family for himself, and took care of them as he was supposed too.
James' hand tightened around Laura's smaller one held in his palm. Assuring himself she was back at his side. That he was back at hers. He thinks about Logan, wonders if he ever holds her. He does, James knows that without being told. The way Laura fits against him, how she moved herself so automatically into his space. How desperate James was to hold her. If Logan wasn't afraid the same way James had been for so long, if he had made himself at home, there was no way Laura wasn't held whenever she wanted. By the better Wolverine.