A/N: This little short one shot is inspired by the Logan movie trailer. It is based solely on the imagery found in that trailer, and I have no knowledge of what the movie will contain, although I hope they don't let me down...again. In any case, this is the only thing I've ever written for the X-Men even though I am a long time fan from back in the day when I used to collect The Uncanny X-men comics. This was back when Wolverine was 5'3" and weighed more than 250lbs :). This won't be a full story. I was moved to write this short piece, and I have no intention of adding more to it. Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy!
Muscle Memory
The Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. A stark contrast from the hot arid desert lying west of it. It had taken days to get here. He'd tracked them although they took care to cover their trails as best they could. In truth, his finding of their encampment hadn't been based purely on his ability to hunt. Some of it had been luck. Pure, dumb, stupid, unfortunate luck. Logan sat downwind of them. The Weapon X program, more commonly known as our very own United States of America's CIA. Maybe it was a secret subdivision, but that didn't stop it from being dear old Uncle Sam now did it?
With keen eyes, Logan – formerly known as the Wolverine – scanned the area. He peered through the leaves of the trees to the ground below. There was no one there, yet. They would come though. They always came. Wherever he went in this seemingly wide world, they always found him. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he was just playing out some fucked up version of the prodigal son, maybe with mommy issues, because no matter what, Weapon X had given a sick sort of birth to him. It's connection to him was no less enduring than that between a mother and her child. All his pain, misery, betrayals, could be traced back to a time he even now scarcely remembered. The pieces he'd managed to put together made him oddly glad that he couldn't. In a life lived more than one hundred years and counting, nothing could make him wake up in a cold sweat like a resurfacing memory of the cold underground bunker. The needles, the torturous pain as he was killed repeatedly only to confirm that he would not, maybe even could not die. God knew he wanted it. Death. So many times he wished for it, prayed for it, begged for it, dreamt of it, but it would not come. It would dance a sultry dance of seduction, undulating its corpse-like hips, beckoning with skeletal fingers. But no matter how hard he tried to get to it, reaching his arms out to grab hold, she always only grazed his fingertips with her own. Smiling and then gracefully sidestepping away.
He'd escaped them finally. After so many years he'd finally wrenched himself free of their ever-reaching grasp. It had taken much to do so. The country lay in the tatters of an apocalyptic civil war. The land was littered in many places with the old broken machines of war. Tanks, Sentinels, fighter jets, and not to mention the various devastation caused by any number of mutant abilities. The country's infrastructure barely survived, only a mere shadow of itself. Now, it was a much more ruthless governmental regime. It was run like a dictatorship under constant martial law. Movement was severely restricted, and absolutely no mutants were allowed to live unless they served the state, and they didn't need to be alive to do that.
Despite all that had occurred, Logan had survived. There was no one left. All the petty differences between the X-Men and the Brotherhood were all gone, because no one lived to uphold them. Stragglers here and there had managed to survive off the grid. One had found him. Old Chuck. Good old Chuck had made it through, after everyone had thought him dead and gone. Logan had set up camp somewhere in the Arizona desert, hoping to eek out his days alone. It was a painful existence. Lonely. Safe. Without anyone around, there was no need to become attached. No fear of being hurt by their death, or worse yet be the cause of it. He spent his days tooling around an old shed he called home. Really it was an overturned grain silo, rusted and gutted out. There was no one for miles around, it was perfect. He hunted for food, collected rain closer to the city for water, and tried to keep himself shielded from the vengeful sun overhead. Many days he just sat, overlooking nothing at all. He wasn't even lucky enough to suffer from Alzheimer's. The healing factor wouldn't let his brain fill itself with the cobwebs of forgetfulness. That would be too merciful, and Logan had come to accept long ago that he was too rotten to receive any mercy. He spent too many years denying it to others to partake of any now, and he supposed that should have been the way of it.
It was on one of those hot days, the kind that drifted fitfully into the night as if anxious to resume with the next sunrise. It started with a dream. It was a dream which consisted of nothing except someone calling his name repeatedly in the darkness, as if they were searching for him. It took him a whole week before he dared to answer that call. Truth be told it frightened him…badly. He could not discern the voice, couldn't tell if it was male or female, so his mind finally conjured Jean. It was then he replied, and when he did the image of her filled him so completely that he'd woken up in the midst of a full-on sob. It has been so long since he had shed any tears. He thought he had cried them all. Through bleary wet eyes, he could see her. Had it finally happened? That psychotic break that he was sure he could not have? He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He opened them and there she still stood, a radiant angel of a being standing in the rusty doorway of the overturned silo. Her red fiery mane flowing around her like a halo of fire. Beautiful and terrible all at once. He closed his eyes and sniffed the air. It was the only way he could be sure, really sure that he wasn't dreaming, wasn't dead now.
"Logan," she almost sighed his name.
It was the way she used to sigh his name when they made love. He rose from his meager pallet on the parched ground. He didn't take the time to put on his shoes. He had on a tank top that at some point in the distant past had been white, and a scuffed pair of jeans. As he approached her, like a worshipper to a beloved shrine, she backed away. She was beckoning him, smiling, her eyes filled with a happiness so pure it made his heart hurt.
"Jean," he choked out.
His lips barely moved with the sound. It had been so long since he'd said her name even to himself. So entranced was he in this vision, that he did not feel the sun bearing down upon his skin. Didn't feel it burning him. Didn't feel the blistering heat from the ground, scorch the soles of his feet. He only saw her. The memories assaulted him, every bit as ruthlessly as any enemy he had ever faced. He didn't recall how far he had walked. He had no sense of time or space, it was just her. Just Jean. Then he heard another voice call his name. It broke through the image of Jean, like a sledgehammer through delicate crystal. With a sad look she faded, and behind her sat a one Mr. Charles Xavier. He was all but dead, leaned over his motorized chair, drool hanging from his open mouth. His skin was blistered, and he seemed to be dying of thirst among other things.
Logan stood there, still swimming in the wake of the memory of Jean Grey. At first, very briefly, anger flooded him. No, it wasn't anger, it was rage. Pure unadulterated rage. It was a dirty trick, that. To use her that way. To use her on him no less. The one thing that could draw him out. The deep well of rage passed as quickly as it came though. This was Charles. His mentor, his confidant, his friend was before him, and he'd done the only thing he could have done to save himself from sure death.
Many days were spent healing him up, getting him strong enough to speak. Before that, Charles settled for filling Logan's head with images of how he should nurse him back to health. Logan hated it. He'd never liked anyone fucking around in his head, but over the long years he'd learned to trust Charles. Hell he trusted him with his life, and begrudgingly his heart, so why not his mind? When he did speak, Logan had not liked what he had to say. What he had to say didn't mean anything but voluntarily marching back into the lion's den. Only a crazy man would do it; so mark him as crazy.
He'd been up in a sturdy old tree, crouched for hours now. If his bones hadn't been coated in Adamantium, they would have been aching. It gave him excellent sight lines, and the ability to hear things over the noise of the dense woods below. You never knew how damn noisy it was in there until you were lying in wait for your prey to come. By all rights he shouldn't have been out here. He loved Chuck, but he should have told him to kiss his ass when he brought up this shit. As a matter of fact, he'd told him just that, but Charles was as stubborn as his one-time friend Eric in many ways. He couldn't have cared less about some kid he didn't even know, but Charles had told him that she'd escaped them. She'd gotten out. She was on the run. He thought back to the day he escaped them. He ran for days through a forest not too different from the one he was in right now. He wouldn't have made it had it not been for some very good friends up there in Canada. Someone had taken pity on him then hadn't they? He was nothing but a feral dog, an animal when they found him, but they took him in. Like a pitiful stray dog that you feed in order to gain its trust, they'd done him a good turn. That's what got him moving. That's why he was out here. One last chance. One last time to do what was right. He'd filled his life doing the very opposite of that. Through it all, he just wanted to be alone. His presence hurt people whether he wanted to or not. It never seemed to matter. Even his love was a weapon to be wielded against the very ones it was meant to make happy. Despite how he tried to isolate himself, some cruel master of fate always placed some charge in his lap. Someone to take care of. It was the craziest shit. Here was a man whose mind was an addled mess of violence and confusion. Most days he could barely keep his thoughts all moving in the same damn direction, but now he was saddled with a new responsibility.
The distant rumble of engines coming to life gently rocked him out of his revelries. He attuned his senses towards the sound. They were up now. The sun had just creeped over the horizon, and the cool breeze was weaving its way silently through the trees. He tensed, and when he did so the sounds in the forest below died suddenly. It was always like that. Prey went silent when predators were on the prowl, lest they be consumed in the wrath to come. His muscles coiled as the engines rumbled closer. They were riding slowly in ATV's most likely. Based on experience they would have sent scouts ahead on foot just to make sure. They always made sure, because one who was up to this type of no-good could never be too sure. This is who Logan was waiting for now. The scouts were the deadliest of the entire contingency. They were the most skilled, and the stealthiest. If he could take them out, the rest would fall like so many unstable dominos.
A faint little rustle of underbrush alerted him of their presence. Anyone else would never had heard it, but he wasn't just anybody. He was Logan. His senses weren't as sharp as they used to be, but they were as sharp as they needed to be. Just a few more yards, and the scout would be just underneath his position in the tree. His muscles knew their deadly work. It all came flooding back as if it had never left. He was sickened by the fact that this made him feel alive. It was his purpose in life. He was a weapon and he was honed to a razor's edge. It was second nature. It came as naturally as breathing, thinking, eating. As the scout passed just underneath him, not a single sound could be heard, except one:
SNIKT!