Set after X-3, spoilers FYI. Intro of my own charecter, a mutant I made up, but I don't own anything, so consider this a disclaimer of sorts. A/N included at the end of every chapter. R/R puh-lease!
Chapter 1 "Stranger I Once Knew"
Logan, once again, found himself sitting in some random bar, doing his best to drink away the memories of the way things used to be. It was times like these when Logan loathed his mutation and inability to get drunk. Life hadn't exactly been easy this past year and a half. The first six months after Scott, Charles, and Jean's deaths felt like a distant dream now.
Hank McCoy---also known as Beast--- had been climbing up the political ladder and was also helping out at the mansion, taking over Jean's role as resident doctor of the place. His new role in the school only brought positive attention to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and to its cause.
Storm was doing a great job at running the place. She took to it like a duck to water, per say. Charles, the ever psychic that he was, apparently sensed his impending doom, and made provisions for the mansion to keep it up and running in the events of his death. In short, he left his fortune to the X-Men.
Logan surprised everyone, including himself, when he didn't take off after the events on Alcatraz. It wasn't exactly like he could have just picked up and left, he reasoned, ordering another beer. That would leave Storm with one less person there to help out, and he couldn't just leave after all the X-Men had been through together. They had lost co-workers, friends, the women that Logan loved, and their leader in a matter of weeks. No, Logan thought while taking a long swig from his bottle, I couldn't just leave. I'll never be able to leave again.
Logan had taken over Scott's classes, which consisted of shop, auto-repair, and he was also given a few new self defense classes to teach with the help of a few of the younger members of the X-Men. The damndest thing of it all was that he actually enjoyed teaching those classes. Granted, Logan was still grumpy and often impatient, but he was definitely getting better at working with kids.
Yes, the mansion had been lulled into a lovely routine, the only thing breaking it being the occasional teenage drama and various other goings on inside the school. Break ups, make ups, fights, and all the normal things that kids go through---not mentioning the fact that some of these 'kids' have enough power to destroy a few buildings.
The X-Men kept watch on the mutant underworld, even in this time of peace. Better safe then sorry. Almost all of Magneto's followers scattered to the four corners of the earth---those who survived Alcatraz that is. There was still activity here and there, but nothing substantial or that deemed threatening. All in all, everything was peaceful…
Until one night in the mansion when all hell broke loose.
The whole school was awoken by Rogue's ear splitting cry for help coming from the student lounge. When Logan, Storm, Hank, and anyone else within ear shot arrived in the lounge, they found Rogue quivering in a corner---unwilling to let anyone come near her, even Logan---and the body of a young girl lying cold on the floor. Logan didn't need to check for a pulse. He could smell death all over the room.
"I don't know what happened!" Rogue screamed, wracked with hard wet sobs. "I just don't know…"
The first thing the next morning the X-Men had a meeting. Rogue sat in the corner of Storm's office, her skin covered from head to toe, and didn't say a word the entire time.
Hank had been up half the night running tests on blood he'd taken from Rogue and had come to one conclusion: the cure didn't work.
Everything seemed to unravel from there. Stories were broadcast from every news station in the country. Reports from all around the world came pouring in as one by one every mutant who had taken the cure---voluntarily or otherwise--- had regained their powers…including Magneto.
Magneto went into hiding immediately after discovering he'd gotten his powers back, just before the X-Men could apprehend him. He began to rebuild his army, The Brotherhood, and planned on seeking revenge for himself an for every mutant who had the cure forced upon them, which was apparently more than the X-Men had been aware of. Turns out that the government had sent up camps, kidnapped mutants that they deemed to be too dangerous, and 'cured' them. This only fueled the war between mutants and humans.
The X-Men did the best they could to track down Magneto but their efforts were futile, to say the least. His number of followers was growing stronger as each day passed and the number of attacks by his group's sky rocketed. They X-Men just did not have the ability to handle everything that was going on, both on the mutant side and human side.
As the wave of panic and war hit the country, the X-Men knew the school was no longer safe. They tightened security---plus having the kids take self-defense classes--- making sure that nothing like the attack made on the school by William Stryker could ever be possible again.
Luckily for Rogue all of this wasn't a total catastrophe. Though the cure hadn't worked as had it been intended and though Rogue had accidentally killed a young girl because they fell asleep on the couch together while watching a movie and had fully absorbed her powers (Rogue could now fly) Rogue also gained control over her skin. It took a while for her to figure it out and deal with the fact that she had taken a life, and that would stay with her for the rest of her life, but with the ability to finally control her skin gave her peace knowing that nothing like that would ever happen again. Logan was glad for the kid.
Logan was still plagued by nightmares. Only, they were no longer only about the procedure he had undergone all those years ago---those had definitely stayed with him---but were also about the Phoenix. They were about Jean, the woman he had loved, and her last moments on earth…before he took her life.
Logan knew there was no other way. He knew that he hadn't had any other options or choices, and he wasn't wracked with guilt, but the nightmares kept coming and that's why Logan was there sitting on that barstool, drinking that beer, completely oblivious to the pair of green eyes watching him closely from the corner.
……0……
Logan glanced up at the clock behind the bar. It was a little past midnight and he decided it was time to head back to the mansion. He paid his bill, grunted a goodnight to the bartender, and went out the way he had come in.
Logan climbed on his bike---it was still strange thinking of it as being his bike now that Scott was gone---and was getting ready to start it up when he heard a woman's voice.
"I know you," the voice said as if shocked to see him.
"Who's there?" Logan growled, sniffing the air, catching her scent. He smelled lavender, cherry blossom, and a hint of something that smelled so familiar that he could barely make out what it was. It smelled like him. He smelled metal.
He jumped off the bike and immediately tensed, ready for an attack.
"Where are you?" Logan said, his voice growing louder with every word. He knew he could smell her out if he wanted, but he'd rather her come out into the open.
"I don't know if I can trust you, stranger, but okay…" and then, literally melting out of the shadows as if she had once been apart of it, came the form of an attractive young woman. Logan took a long hard look at her. She was of average height and, from what he could tell despite her tight jeans, heavy looking shirt, and blue jean jacket, an average build. She was curvy in all the right places that's for sure, Logan decided, and her face wasn't half bad from what he could see. He couldn't tell the color of her eyes and could only make out that her hair was dark, but he could see the hard lines of her face and the way her jaw tensed up. She was young, he'd guess very early twenties, but she was strong. Very strong. She wasn't afraid of him in the slightest, if she had been he would of smelled the fear, and he could tell she could kick some ass. If she wanted to fight, Logan thought, it could be a fun one that was for sure.
"Who are you?" Logan asked. The woman shrugged.
"You tell me," she quipped, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. "You should know."
"How the hell should I know?" Logan ground out, his patience running thin.
"Right when I saw you walk in, I knew I'd seen you before. A time when I could remember…" she said cryptically, her gaze rising to the moon and then back down to Logan before taking a step toward him. "I don't remember much. Only what they called you." As she became more visible, now completely out of the shadow of the building, Logan's eyes caught a silver chain around her neck and two heavy looking metal pendants hanging from it.
"You're the Wolverine." And then Logan immediately knew what the necklace was; a set of dog tags.
"How do you know me? Who the hell are you?" Logan took a step back, shaking his head. This makes no sense, he thought. He wracked his brain, trying to think of where he could know this woman from. Had he met her at some random bar during all those years on the road? Had she seen him at one of his cage fights, thus knowing his name? Had she been one of the many meaningless women that he'd filled his bed with at night? No, he reasoned, she looked much too young for that. That had been over four or five years ago and she'd of been a teenager then. But the more that he looked at her face the more familiar she felt and smelled. Yes, yes he did know her somehow…
"I don't know who I was." The woman said matter of factly.
"I don't get it." Logan shook his head. "Stop talking in damned riddles!"
"I'm telling you the truth," she snapped, her eyes narrowing, her jaw muscles flexing.
"What's your name?" He growled.
"My real name? No idea. But I go by Sky or Shadow---Shadow for obvious reasons." She nodded, satisfied with her answer. Logan noticed an extremely, almost no existent, hint of an accent on this woman's sharp and even toned voice. She almost sounded Irish.
"How do you know I'm called Wolverine?" Logan asked, his voice softer now. He felt this woman meant him no harm. She was genuinely confused.
"I honestly don't know," she sighed, taking her hands out of her jacket pockets and placing them in front of her balled up into a fist. "When I saw you come into the bar, I just knew…I just heard your name. Wolverine."
And then, this Sky woman, or whoever she really was, did something that if Logan had been a lesser man, he would of fainted dead on the spot. From between her knuckles slid three long, dangerously sharp claws. It was like a bad flashback, seeing Lady Deathstrike's class come out of her fingernails, except this woman's were coming out just like Logan's, only a little different. Unlike his, Sky's claws were slightly hooked at the end.
"Holy shit," Logan breathed. "There were three."
Authors Note:Haha, didn't take me long to get back in the saddle did it? Alright, chapter 1 of my new fic is up folks, but you'll have to wait for chapter 2 for a bit. It's being written as we speak! Alright, Sky is my own charecter, so be nice to her. Um, lets see, what else... oh, its a Logan/OC, but read it anyway please!!! I hope you all enjoy!