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Kurt was gone.
The memory haunted him every moment. Stepping off the Blackbird, moments too late, to see his fellow X-Men gathered around a body. The scent of salt and sea in the air mixed with blood, too much blood. Metal, and brimstone, and… and Kurt.
It was here, on the rocky shore at the edge of Utopia, where Kurt had breathed his last. Teleported in front of a lethal blow meant for Hope Summers, and used the last of his energy to carry them both back to the X-Men’s base in one last, desperate jump.
And Logan hadn’t been there.
The people that did this to him were still out there. But the X-Men were cut off, trapped on this island, waiting around for their enemies to close in, to see what fresh horrors awaited them next. Their first period of rest since Hope and Cable returned from the future, and humanity’s worst converged to wipe them out.
There was nothing he could do but sit with the memory.
Sharp adamantium claws slid from between his knuckles, the quick jump of pain grounding him back to the present.
He was alone on the shore now, sitting next to the spot where Kurt’s body had lain hours before. No scent of him remained now, washed away by the oceans’ waves. The barrier separating their forced retreat of Utopia from a world that took from them again and again. And this time, they had taken the best of them. The one who always loved and forgave humanity, despite it all.
The Wolverine couldn’t be meaningfully injured. Not for long, anyways. Healing factor always kept him fightin’.
But this?
It felt like he was bleeding out on the shore with him.
"...Mister Logan?"
No one should have been able to sneak up on him. He whirled around, claws out, a growl halfway out of his throat.
Logan blinked, clearing his eyes of the tears clouding his vision, as the blurred figure standing in the open a few paces to his side came into focus. Her ragged cloak drifted weakly in the ocean breeze, red hair falling across her face, partially obscuring wide, worried green eyes.
Hope Summers.
"I'm... sorry. About your friend." She looked ready to bolt at any moment, holding her hands out in an expression of surrender.
He had been furious with her, at first. A part of him still was, the confused animal inside that begged to lash out to solve his problems.
An’ now he’s—he’s gone, and—and for what? You better be worth this, I swear to God, He’d exclaimed, claws extended towards the girl, in his last glimpse of her through the smoke of Kurt’s pyre stinging his eyes, before he’d turned and stormed away.
If she hadn’t come here, Kurt would still be alive. Those were the facts.
But Kurt had died to keep her safe.
Logan could not tarnish the sacrifice he had made in his own impulsive anger. If he decided it was worth the kid surviving, then damn it, she would live.
But now, seeing the girl in front of him alone, he couldn’t even manage the anger anymore. He just felt hollow.
She didn’t look like an enemy. Just an exhausted, frightened kid.
He let the growl die in his throat. Sheathed his claws. Let the tension drop from his shoulders, as he sat back against the rocky coast with a deep sigh.
"’S not your fault for livin’. The elf made his own choices.” He closed his eyes. “Always was too self-sacrificin’ for his own good. Knew it'd catch up with him one of these days. Y’ just happened to be the one he did it for,” he said.
He knew in his bones that Kurt had done it without a second thought. Always putting other people before himself. Never stopping to think just how important he was. How much people would miss him.
How much Logan would miss him. The warm light by his side, suddenly snuffed out, leaving Logan cold, and lost.
Logan ran a hand through his short brown hair. "It was easier to have someone t’ blame. To make sense of all this. You. Cyke’. Myself,” Logan breathed out, dropping his arm back to the ground. “But he knew the risks. No one’s fault but the ones that killed ‘im.”
Hope looked down, arms wrapped around herself. "I... Still don't know what it is I'm supposed to do. Why all of this is happening because of me." She breathed in. "But I promise you, whatever it is, I'll try. I… I can’t let him down.”
She stood in silence for a moment. Breathed in.
"His last words... Were that he believed in me."
Logan blinked and closed his eyes with a pained sigh. Of course they were. It was so like Kurt. His belief would take him right to the grave, Logan had told the elf himself enough times, in frustrated outbursts he’d do anything to take back now.
“You said that I… that I better be worth this.” She paused. “And I… I don’t know if anything could be… worth this.”
“Nothing could,” Logan muttered softly. “Not to me.”
He looked back up to her. “But that’s not your fault. He was there for me, like no one else was. The first friend I’d ever known. He…” Logan paused. “He was my elf. Nothin’ in the world will heal losing him.” He looked back off into the ocean.
“But that’s not on you, kid. We just have to live with it.”
He heard a shuffle beside him as he turned to see Hope drawing closer, pity in her eyes. Logan gave a low growl of warning, breaking off as the kid backed away. He nodded as she sat down a respectable distance away.
“I… I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if I lost Nathan,” Hope said. “He’s all I’ve ever had.”
“Way it's going, kid? We don’t all make it out of this. But ‘long as I’ve known him, Cable’s been a survivor. Nothin’s taking him down ‘till he chooses it. You’ll be okay.”
They stared out at the sea together, the rhythmic waves the only sound as the moments passed.
He should have been annoyed at her intrusion. He should have snapped at her to leave. He should have wanted to be alone. The reminder of her should be the last thing he would want in his grief. But he found that despite it all, he appreciated her presence.
He didn’t want to be alone.
"Nathan told me stories about all of you. I was so excited to meet you all, to finally stop running, to be home,” Hope spoke at last, breaking the silence.
"Yeah. Life don't always work out that way." It must have come out softer than he meant it, because Hope turned to him with a smile.
"Nathan said you were an unapproachable grouch, but you don't seem so bad," she said with lightness in her voice, green eyes sparkling with warmth.
That got a short bark of laughter out of Logan. "You've caught me at a sentimental time. Old man’s right, I ain’t friendly."
“That can’t be true. Not from how you talk about Mister Wagner.”
Logan paused. “He was special. Had a way of getting people to open up. You felt lighter just by bein’ near ‘im. Made it his mission to befriend this ‘unapproachable grouch’,” he said with a fond smile. “And only the heartless could’ve been mean to ‘im. So yeah, the elf got a pass.”
"He seemed so nice,” she said, shifting to sit cross-legged against the rocky coast, turning back out to sea. “I wish I’d gotten a chance to get to know him.”
"You would have loved him. Everyone did," he spoke softly, looking into the distance.
“Even you?”
A pause. Words he’s never said crashing against his mind like the waves before them.
But there was no point holding them in anymore. Not when he’d never hear them.
“Yeah,” He breathed. “Yeah, I loved him.”
He rose to his feet. Couldn’t let the floodgates open yet. Still had work to do. People he could still do something to save.
He glanced sideways at her. “Word of advice, kid? Best not to approach short-tempered grieving men with metal claws. ‘Could'a gotten hurt."
Hope looked down. "Nathan said that too. Said I should keep my distance after…” She trailed off, the lightness leaving her eyes.
He remembered how Cable’s eyes had narrowed, arms around her to shield the girl from his outburst at the elf’s funeral. It was his mission to protect the girl from any threats. And Logan had certainly made himself seem like one.
“But I had to talk to you. I… I couldn’t let you think that I didn’t understand what this meant. I’ll never forget what everyone’s given up. And anything I can do to help, I will.”
“Only one thing you need to do, kid.”
He looked back at her. So small against the ocean beyond, draped in her old, ruined cloak. Looking up at him with trust.
“Stay alive. We’ll figure the rest out later.”
Determined footsteps filled the hall. The silent march of men walking to their own doom, as Wolverine followed Cable to where they would make their jump through time.
Sounds of battle thundered above them. An endless outpouring of Sentinels from the future, aimed to wipe them out from the past. So they would take the fight to their source, Cyclops commanded, with just enough power remaining in Cable’s device for one more jump through time.
They all knew it was a good plan. It was what they had to do. There was no time to sit and find any other solution, when each minute that passed meant another robot bent on their extinction closing in on their location. They were the best for the job. A necessary sacrifice.
Win or lose, they wouldn’t return. The end of X-Force. Clean. Tidy. Cyclops’ covert band of killers erased without ever having to face the consequences of what they’d done in their fight for peace.
Cold numbness settled over his bones, the sound of his footsteps fading away to a dull ringing. All that was left was to see it through. Nothing else mattered.
Was this how Kurt had felt, in the moments before his own sacrifice?
Not that he could ask him. If his heaven was real, he knew he wouldn’t be joining him there when their work was done. But part of him hoped, still, that he would see him one last time.
And now, faced with a similar choice, Logan could forgive him.
But there was someone else on his mind, someone left at the end of their desperate cycle of self-sacrifice.
Logan could understand Kurt, now.
But he didn’t need Hope to understand Logan.
He stopped in the hallway, and called out to Cable.
“You tell Hope you’re saying goodbye?”
Cable’s eyes met his, the faint glow of his left eye illuminating his expression of resigned determination, before his stare dropped to the ground.
“I don’t say goodbye.” Cable’s voice was flat, resigned.
A growl leapt out of Logan’s throat, low and angry, before he was even aware of it.
“She’ll hate you.” He stepped forward. “She’ll blame herself.” His claws jumped out from between his knuckles. “She’ll live every night with the grief.”
“I know,” Cable said, turning away. “But she’ll live.”
Logan narrowed his eyes as Cable walked down the hallway towards their shared demise.
Kurt didn’t say goodbye. Wasn’t given a chance to. And only the focus of their job to do kept him from losing himself to the mindless animal that was the grief building inside him. Once they were on the other side of the time jump, when there was nothing more to lose, he would let it take him over in a blaze of rage.
He hadn’t known the kid longer than a day. But she didn’t deserve his fate.
He sighed, and willed his claws to retract back into his skin.
“Please.”
Logan’s quiet plea was the only sound down the hall, filled with a softness and desperation he didn’t know he was capable of. Certainly one the soldier had never heard from him before.
Cable stopped, looked back at him over his shoulder, eyes widening.
“She needs you more than anything in the world. And you’re about to leave her alone. Give her something. Some last conversation to remember you by.”
Like he’d never had with the elf. Gone in a whirl of his teleportation power, thinking they would see each other again when their work was done. Logan wished more than anything that he’d had something meaningful to say before he lost him. One last moment. An apology for everything Logan had done, everything they hadn’t yet said.
Cable had that chance, before they left in a jump of their own.
At least, going to the future, Hope would never have to find their bodies.
Cable stood there. Studying him. Then he took a long breath, closing his eyes, the glow fading. Then turned and walked back to where they came from. To Hope.
Logan relaxed.
They could wait a moment longer. A moment for someone else to get the closure that he wouldn’t.
He moved forward to the room where X-Force gathered, waiting. Each putting on a mask of determination. But to his heightened senses, leaning against the wall beside them, their fear lying beneath betrayed them all.
When Cable returned, Hope followed behind him, chasing to meet his strides, pleading for him to stay. Logan turned away, unable to watch.
Cyclops gave the order. Cable’s device powered on with a hum, the halls of Utopia fading away in a blur of pink energy as their bodies accelerated forward through time.
And as the world faded away, Logan caught Hope’s eyes one last time, giving her a nod of encouragement.
She would be alright. Eventually.
But not Logan.
One last mission. And then he would be with Kurt again. One way or another.