This one is very late but I loved writing it because this lowkey ship of mine is something I feel SO STRONGLY in my own bones. I just love everything about Laura and Young Jean and I super super wish we got this instead of every other romance decision made for the two of them by Marvel.

X-Men and related characters © Marvel Comics
story © RenaRoo

The Phoenix and the Wolf

She was the best at what she did, and what she did… Well, it wasn't pretty. It wasn't pretty at all. And more often than not, it drove away those closest to her, the people who probably should have known better than to get too close to start with.

And Laura tried to not be surprised when it happened, when she drove a wedge between herself and every person she came to care for. But at the end of the day that was a lesson Logan could never teach her and that Sarah struggled to keep. Both or neither were her fault, and she never could figure out which side of the fence it was on.

When she bit the bullet and tore out her own heart so Warren wouldn't have to that time, Laura realized for the first time just why it was important for the Wolverine to take a walk, to step away from towns and cities and cabins, and just find herself in the beautiful nothingness of the wilderness. Run wild, feel the freezing snow against bare skin.

In order to do that, however, Laura first needed to do something about the one person in the world she could not bear to drive a wedge between. The one person in the world who wouldn't let her if she tried. And the one family that Laura was determined to never show the self-destructiveness that ran through their bitter veins.

"I can't believe you signed me up for a summer camp," Gabby said, glaring at the campus of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning from the entrance gates. Her book bag was full and her arms even fuller with Jonathan the Wolverine. "You signed me up for a mutant summer camp which is basically school."

"Which is basically training," Laura said solidly, adjusting her sunglasses. "If you're determined to make Wolverine and Wolverine a thing, I need you to train with other mutants, learn how to psychically defend yourself, and be exposed to all the types of threats that we'll come across while we're doing our job."

"Couldn't we do that by just sneaking inside and using the danger room?" Gabby tried to argue.

"No," Laura replied simply.

"Why?" Gabby begged.

"Because you also need to learn math and history and science—"

"Oh my god! This isn't a camp! It's summer school!" Gabby cried out, mortified. "I know all those things better than you already, too!"

"You're proving my point," Laura said, glancing over the brim of her glasses at her little sister. "I didn't go to school like I was supposed to."

"But I'm Wolverine," Gabby groaned. "School is too lame if you're Wolverine!"

"Nah, you have to go to school if you're Wolverine, Gabs," Laura assured her. "That's where every Wolverine earns their street credit among other mutants."

That, at least, sparked Gabby's attention. She hummed to herself, sizing up the competition around the school grounds. "Okay… but what are you doing for a month? If you're doing something dangerous without me and I find out—"

"It's not dangerous," Laura assured her. "I don't even have my costume. It's just something I have to do alone — and, no, not in the alone but Gabby adventures along anyway. I have to do this alone because…"

"Because you're mad at yourself for breaking up with Warren?" Gabby suggested.

"No, because I'm not mad at myself for breaking up with Warren," Laura said simply. "Look, Gabby… I'm not just doing this for me. Think of it… Well, remember how Logan — my Logan — he… he died. And I immediately became Wolverine and joined the new X-Men?"

Looking sincerely empathetic, Gabby shook her head. "No, Laura. I don't. I wasn't around yet."

"Well, that's how I handled it," Laura continued. "I didn't handle it. I left some loose ends. I'd like to tie them up before they grow any looser, and before I forget why I miss the old son of a bitch so much."

While still looking apprehensive, Gabby conceded and nodded. "Okay. I can suffer for a month of school for that," she declared.

"I'm glad to hear it."

Both Laura and Gabby looked up just as none other than Jean Grey herself floated down from the sky to meet them, landing only feet away with a soft smile on her face. She had cut her hair, she had changed a lot of things, and Laura was certain that looking less and less like the Jean Grey of the statue in the middle of the courtyard had something to do with that.

As the new Wolverine herself, Laura sympathized.

"Hello, Laura, thank you for finally bringing Gabrielle here," Jean said comfortably.

"Jean," Laura greeted her back.

"Hi! I bet you're Jean Grey," Gabby said, shifting Jonathan so that she could offer the psychic a hand to shake. "I'm Gabrielle. But you already know that. I love your hair. And that jacket. Hope that's not weird."

"Not weird at all," Jean assured her, accepting the handshake. Her eyes then glanced toward Laura, a voice in Laura's head uninvited speaking, I asked Professor Kitty to let me show Gabrielle around. You should come with us instead of planning to leave already. It would help Gabby feel more at home. She's very worried about you.

Lowering her glasses so that Jean could see the seriousness of her eyes, Laura squinted at her. Out of my head, Jean.

"Is it awkward knowing future you has a school named after her but current you isn't going to be future you anymore so there's a chance that all of reality is going to collapse?" Gabby then asked Jean with positively no tact.

Jean's mouth opened slightly and then she looked back to Laura as if to ask for help.

"Have fun, Gabs!" Laura called as she waved a hand and walked toward her motorcycle. "I'll be back in a month."

Gabby turned and ran straight for Laura, throwing herself into a hug around Laura's waist. "You better be back in a month exactly, or I'll never forgive you and we'll both be sad about it forever and you know you would be," she demanded, face buried against Laura's hip.

Laura wasn't entirely sure what to do in response, but she let instincts take over. She lifted both of her hands and ran them through Gabby's hair. First like petting Jonathan, then, just holding the family she loved more than anything close, and safely.

"I can never let you down, Gabby. You know that," Laura assured her.

The tension fled Gabby's body almost immediately, but she kept the hug. Laura then looked up to Jean, watching her concerned expression.

I know you're still in here, Laura warned. Don't bother. I mean what I say. I don't lie to Gabby. Ever. I'll be back in a month for her. Take care of her until then. Or tell whoever's in charge to.

Jean only nodded in response.

Breaking the moment with Gabby, Laura patted her head again then got onto the motorcycle.

She needed the month. She needed the time. She told herself that one and over again, no matter how much it hurt to feel the scathing disappointment she was leaving behind in her selfish needs' wake.

The forests in Nunavut were, at the very least, expansive. The looks of disbelief and concern from locals as she checked her gear through the lenses of sunglasses and poked around the local bait and trap shop for more supplies were well deserved.

"Do you need a map?" the shopkeeper asked worriedly.

"My old man's place is burned into my memory," Laura answered, throwing a few bags of cold hotdog wieners onto the counter and pulling her wallet out from her back pocket. "I could get to it blindfolded."

The cashier seemed hesitant but the fifty pound note Laura held up to pay seemed to calm some nerves about the situation. Still, she looked warily at Laura. "There aren't any cabins for miles in these woods."

"You have to know where to look," she responded cryptically before packing the freshly bought meat into her bag and heading out the store's door. It was the best she could do under the circumstances. After all, no one was likely to take the true answer being that Laura had every intention of living the next few weeks exactly the way Logan had.

Mobile. Unsettled. Nothing but what she packed and what she found and what she built, fire included.

It honed instincts, it kept that bit of herself that would always be feral alive deep inside.

It…

She needed to feel close to Logan again. Her Logan. Her father. The one she lost before Gabby or Warren or —

The wind was cold even in the summer, and the way it whistled through trees that lived to see hundreds if not thousands of years was foreboding and terrifying to those who were not expecting it. But Laura expected it.

Just like she expected the chill to her bones and the hollowness of moving through the trees without a real direction — Laura expected the wilderness to fill her with the same kind of dread and disappointment that every home, every four walls which once housed the man whose legacy she wore as her own filled her with.

For other campers and hikers, the night was full of darkness and horrors, but for Laura they promised only a small and subtle change as predictably unpredictable as the winds. She kept her head down and walked further through her self-made trail. It was the sort of thing she was certain that Logan did when he took his long solo travels.

By the time she found some water to drink from and refill her canteen, Laura was looking at the other side of morning and slowing down.

Sitting by the stream's edge, Laura cupped her hands and washed her face of the sweat and dirt and grime that her trip had earned her thus far. Then she leaned down and stuck her head into the water enough to take a deep drink.

The water was so cold and so pure, she couldn't help but close her eyes in order to savor it. But as a result, when she opened her eyes, she was met with something unexpected in her reflection.

Red hair.

Laura swung out first with her sweeping right leg, toe claw out for attack. but fortunately for Jean, she was quick to end it quickly. Her claws were still drawn and her eyes narrowed, but Laura wasn't about to attack Jean Grey the younger.

"Whoa, easy!" Jean said, hands up as if that was supposed to calm Laura after receiving such a shock.

"If I wasn't taking it easy, you'd be on the wrong end of a boot, Jean," Laura hissed. All the same, she rose to her feet and sheathed her claws, looking down in disappointment at her new hiking books. Her eyes then sharply turned back toward Jean. "You owe me new boots."

"That's fair," Jean agreed, glancing over Laura with a frown. "I think it's also fair for me to be pointing out that for someone who's on vacation, you look pretty legitimately terrible."

"I don't remember asking you," Laura said, turning around to gather her stuff by the stream. "Why are you here and what do I have to do to send you back to civilization and my little sister?"

"I followed you because… Well, psychically you were fuming with distress when you dropped Gabrielle off at the school," Jean explained reluctantly, rubbing her shoulder. "You… Or your brain was crying out in pain. And I couldn't ignore it. That's the reason I was… invading your mind. I didn't do it maliciously. I was worried."

"Because I was in pain?" Laura asked critically.

"Of course," Jean answered.

"Did it occur to you that I'm out here because I want to address that pain?" Laura demanded. "My only goal here is to get closer to my father. To feel like I'm with him one last time… that we could get together like we never managed when he was alive. That I was finally making him proud by being able to do something he never could — by raising a family and putting away the killer in me as much as I feasibly could." She then met Jean's bright, begging eyes at last. "I'm here to mourn him. Because he died. And now I'm trying to be Wolverine without him."

"And you think doing that alone is the only way you can?" Jean asked lowly.

"This isn't like Madripoor and the trigger scent," Laura snapped. "You can't reach in my brain and unlock my problems like there's some key. I'm allowed to mourn my old man as much as anyone else, Jean."

"Everyone misses Logan," Jean assured her. "If you explained to Professor Ororo or Professor Kurt—"

"Everyone misses him but you and the rest of the time displaced kids of the atom," Laura accused. "God, I can't even imagine what pain it'd cause him to know that Jean freaking Grey wasn't mourning him because she couldn't so much as remember the time they had together."

"I remember," Jean said softly. "I have looked into the memories of my… expired self. I know what happened between them."

"Remembering isn't experiencing," Laura said firmly. "And you're not his Jean Grey."

"You're right," Jean replied, actually breathing a sigh of relief. She then looked seriously toward Laura. "But I am your Jean Grey, Laura. I'm your friend. I'm… I'm here for you. And when I felt you were in pain, I knew in that moment that I was going to make it my job, my responsibility to help you. Because feeling you in such pain brings me that heartache. And I can't stand the idea of not being there for you when you needed me most."

Laura looked at Jean in disbelief for a long moment before glancing off, tucking hair behind her ears. "Wow. That's… Huh." She looked back to Jean, brows furrowed. "I didn't even get a speech that good when I was dating dudes."

Jean offered a gentle but still coy smile. "What good are dudes for, anyway?"

"I can never remember once I move past 'em," Laura answered with a small laugh.

Jean's eyes widened for a moment and she glanced off, face blushed. "Sorry. I… um. Sometimes I'm still trying to not get residual emotions off people without permission and… when I let my guard down I sense things… I didn't mean to…"

Laura ran her hands through her hair. "C'mon, Red, surely even in the past they knew how to pick up on someone flirting."

If possible, Jean's face grew redder. She looked up to Laura reluctantly. "Laura… I…. I'm not the Phoenix. If I play my cards right, I never will be. I'll be… just Jean."

"It'd be weird if you tried to be the older you," Laura agreed. "I wasn't exactly hitting on the older you. I was just hitting on, well, you. Unless you think just because I share a tacky fashion sense that I'm somehow becoming Logan. Like I said, I'm trying to be the Wolverine he'd be proud of. And Logan was a lot of things, but he wasn't always proud of what those things made him."

Jean seemed hesitant still, but she stepped closer to Laura. "You still look exhausted. We should make camp. Then figure out what we're doing until that month is up."

"Only if you light the fire and show me how you masked yourself from me for two thousand miles," Laura offered.

Jean's eyes sparked with something playful. "It's a deal."

The wilderness was still expansive, and there was still a chill through Laura's bones that reminded her of the life her father had lived.

But at that time, by a campfire with Jean leaning against her side as the wood crackled and burned, Laura didn't feel the pain of her grief as acutely as she felt the pride of his gaze on her.

He never wanted his life for her, he wanted something better. Something warmer. The proof that the lone wolf can still survive with a new pack.

Jean was warm and Jean was good. And Laura's life was not Logan's, just like the warm new emotion burning between her and Jean was entirely their own.

Even in a world that thought it knew the old story of the phoenix and the wolf.