This is set immediately after X-23 escapes the facility and accidentally kills Sarah Kinney. I do not own X-23 or Sarah Kinney; that is Marvel's job.
She didn't know the cold
And yet she did
Where there was nothing
There was always something
Something that nipped at the edge of her heart
"I want to be a real boy!"
That voice was a memory, something utterly useless to her now
But still she replayed the words that
Had turned to sentences that
Had turned to paragraphs that
Had made the pages that
Had urged Dr. Kinney's soft voice onwards.
"Go straight to school Pinocchio. Don't talk to strangers."
Dead words from a dead woman. What good were they now?
The wind blew, its temperature well below freezing. X-23 felt it as nothing more than passing air. There was no cold, not for her. She was nothing, felt nothing. All she knew was that she had to get far far away. Had to survive until her mission was complete, until she killed the original Weapon X for bringing her into existence. It was what Dr. Kinney had died for.
A twig snapped. The harshness of the sound was muffled by the falling snow. Someone else might not have even noticed it, but X-23 was not someone else. She was a weapon and she reacted as violently as a weapon should, whipping around and crouching into a defensive position ready to strike. A wolf stood there, its head bowed low.
She growled at the animal, her vocal chords vibrating harshly. The wolf looked at her with morose golden eyes. X-23 stopped growling and cocked her head.
"Go straight to school Pinocchio."
The wolf shot her a knowing, almost sympathetic glance before turning aside and trudging slowly deeper into the tree line. Intrigued by the strange behavior X-23 followed close behind. The animal led her to an opening in the side of a snowy hill. Inside it was small and dark but warm. X-23 closed her eyes and then opened them, getting used to the absence of light. She saw three mewling puppies lying on the floor in a nest of pine needles and discarded feathers, young enough in age that their eyes were still closed. Nearby was a fourth puppy. It had been wrapped tenderly in a tattered cloth. Its frozen body was cold and unyielding to breath. The wolf stood over her dead cub with a somber air. She gingerly picked it up in her teeth and started off outside. X-23 watched as she gently placed it in a hole in the ground and buried it. Her throat was heaving all the while, weeping in her own way. When she had finished, she looked at X-23. Her eyes were like amber stones set firm against the waves of sorrow. This was not a creature of weakness, but still she wept the loss of her cub. She came close to X-23, nuzzled her hand with her snout, and walked back into the cave.
I am nothing. I am an animal, a killer.
How many times had X-23 chanted those words to herself? She looked at the wolf, at its caring face, the pink tongue that licked its young.
"Even an animal has feelings."
Those words were found nowhere in Pinocchio, still Dr. Kinney spoke them in the deep recesses of X-23's mind. The wolf licked her chops and nodded. X-23 laid her head against the soft fur before she was even aware of her actions.
"She has lost a cub," she thought, "and I have lost a mother." And there was the cold, the ache, the thing that was eating her up inside.
She pulled Dr. Kinney's letter out of her pocket. She opened it and read it. Her insides twisted and her head filled with a hot pressure as she did so. Confused by her feelings, Laura Kinney turned her face to the wolf's coat and let the tears flow.