Please read the first part of this series, Past Forgotten, if you haven't already done so. Thank you.
by FallingStar
Science Log, Day One after return--Experiment Twelve has been logged as a partial success. Though there were several fatalities, two of the group have undergone the procedure with few adverse side effects. Though the escape of the older one has greatly damaged the equipment and the child has somehow been released from cryogenic hibernation, we intend to find one or both again. From the records remaining, the girl was released not long before we returned to the laboratory. Now that we have found funding once more, it should not be difficult to locate the test subjects. It is to be hoped that through the hibernation, the girl has remained young enough to begin the second portion of the experiment.
"Watch out in the trees, Logan!" Leial called as she leaped out of the way of a descending fist. Her brother turned to block the blow of an armored enemy. His claws easily penetrated the metal, and a hit to the head put that one out of the fight.
Wolverine looked around quickly to see if Leial needed help, to find her watching him, her opponent sprawled on the ground. "Done playing yet?" she inquired. "You know, it would've been easier to knock him out after getting the helmet off."
He shrugged. "I'll think about it next time."
"You do that," she grinned, and they walked out of the Danger Room.
Jubilee was waiting outside in the hallway. "Hey, Leial," she said, "I was wondering if you'd want to go to the mall with me. I have to get my CD player fixed." She rolled her eyes. "Again."
Leial nodded quickly. "Sure! I need to do some shopping for--for stuff." She hoped Logan hadn't noticed the involuntary, furtive look she'd given him. She needed to buy birthday presents for him, but she wasn't going to tell him that. Apparently he didn't even remember when his birthday was.
"Let's go, then. Beast's coming too, he said something about buying some scientific book or other, and besides I'm not allowed to drive anything yet." Jubilee let out a long-suffering sigh.
"All right. Bye, Logan," Leial called back as Jubilee hurried her down the corridor. "See you later!"
"Have fun, Leial," Wolverine replied, with a wave.
"Boy, having you around sure has mellowed Wolverine out," Jubilee commented. "'Have fun'? Never imagined I'd hear him say that."
Leial considered silently for a moment. Logan didn't seem particularly mellowed to her. The way he acted in a fight...he'd never exactly been a pacifist before, but neither had he shown such enthusiasm for violence. If she had had a mellowing effect, she wasn't sure she wanted to know what Logan had become in the twenty years she had been frozen.
On the way to the mall, Leial summoned her courage. "Beast," she asked, "why did Logan forget things and I didn't?"
"Well, first you must remember that you had a great deal of uninterrupted time to recover," Beast began readily. "Even in hibernation, twenty years provides plenty of opportunity to mend any damage done to your mind. In fact, the hibernation may have helped--there were no new stimuli, no new memories being formed. And then you are younger than Logan." Beast shook his head. "I never thought I would see it, but you heal even faster than he does. An effect of the resilient physique of children, combined with your similar mutation."
Leial frowned slightly, trying to understand all that.
The rest of the trip passed in silence. Once inside the mall, Beast headed for a store that specialized in scientific equipment, telling the girls to meet him in half an hour. Jubilee headed straight for the music store. "Be right back," she told her friend.
Leial wandered past the nearby stores, stopping at one window to peer inside. A small figurine caught her eye. A tiny glass leopard, delicately colored, seemed frozen in midleap on the shelf. How many times had Logan called her a little leopard? "Panthera pardus," she muttered, and smiled before moving on.
In a different store, Leial caught sight of something she remembered from the life that seemed so long ago now. A picture frame, paw prints of various animals apparently sunk into snow running around the edges, one set she recognized as a cat's, another could do for a wolverine. Logan had had something like that once, in his room, a picture of the two of them. Leial reached for it with a grin. That would be perfect. Logan would love it.
And then the grin faded and slipped away. Logan might have liked it, might have kept it on his dresser for years, but Wolverine? Maybe she would be better off with something less sentimental.
But no. Leial decisively took a boxed frame off the shelf. Even if Logan had changed, surely he hadn't changed that much. And anyway she would make quite certain that any changes would be for the better. She headed for the checkout counter, bought the gift, and walked back toward the music store. It hadn't taken long, only a few minutes, and it would certainly take Jubilee at least as long to get her CD player back.
Leial was tucking the frame into the pack she carried when she caught the first hint that something was wrong. She couldn't pinpoint what made her worried, had made her remember the experiences she wanted most to forget, but her expression creased into an uneasy frown. A faint smell of disinfectant, of surfaces scrubbed clean and sterilized, of dead air and her own fear...
Nothing, Leial tried to reassure herself, it's nothing...like last time, and the time before. Just my imagination. It had happened before, the memory resurfacing. But Leial couldn't shake it. An aftereffect of the trauma, the Professor had said. It would do more harm than good for him to suppress it.
At the moment, Leial didn't really care what harm suppressing it would do. She just wanted to be back with people she knew, where no one could hurt her.
Paranoia, the sensible part of her mind remarked. It's ridiculous to think anyone could still be after you. It's been twenty years. But Leial was in no mood to listen. She hurried toward the music store.
Jubilee was still waiting at the counter. She turned to Leial with a smile just as the man handed her a plastic bag. "Perfect timing. Let's go find Beast."
"All right." Leial tried to smile back, but there must have been something wrong in her expression, because Jubilee frowned.
"Are you okay?"
Leial waved it off. "Fine. I thought I saw something for a minute, but...it's fine."
"If you're sure." The other girl's eyes lingered for a moment in concern.
"No, really. You...you know how these things are." Leial half winced. She didn't want her friend to think she was going crazy, or worse, pity her.
"All right." Jubilee turned from the counter and began to walk out of the store, Leial following behind.
In a smaller corridor a moment later, Leial sensed something behind her, a half-remembered voice, a smell, just as before, and spun. Nobody was there...
nobody? But this was the mall, in the middle of the day, there ought to be someone around, even here... She turned to call for Jubilee, but the other girl had gone around the corner already...
And then there was a smell that was dreadfully familiar, and someone had leaped from behind and covered her mouth and nose with a damp cloth, and she tried to scream but couldn't, lashed out with the claws she had never wanted to use, and as the world went black, she could only think, so I wasn't just being paranoid after all...
"She's what?"
Jubilee's eyes were reddened from tears, and she anxiously wrung her hands in her lap. "Leial's missing," she repeated miserably. "I thought she was right behind me--she was right behind me! Me and Beast looked for her all over--we even tried to have her paged--but we couldn't find her anywhere!"
"It'll be all right, Logan," the Professor reassured. "We'll find her."
Wolverine straightened and stalked out of the room without bothering to answer.
"I'm so sorry," Jubilee half-whispered. "It's all my fault."
The Professor sighed. "There is very little you could have done, Jubilee. Don't blame yourself. We will find Leial."
Outside, Wolverine briefly toyed with the idea of asking someone for help, then discarded it. Any of the X-men would come, of course, even if it had been just to help him out--and Leial had made her own friends in the brief weeks she'd been there. But he had to do this alone.
He wished he could believe that Leial had simply gotten lost, missed her way in the large mall...but he knew that was nearly impossible. If it had happened, she would never have stayed lost for so long.
Wolverine didn't want to think about the possibilities that left. He'd go to the mall, pick up her scent, and then...well, he'd just see.
Anyone who tries to take her away from me again is going to be sorry...