Picture's Worth a Thousand Words - REVISED

This is my first fan fic and I don't own any of the Marvel X-Men characters. No profit is being made on this fan fiction and I don't own anything anyway. In my movie verse, Scott, Jean, Deathstrike, John Wraith, and the Professor are all alive and well.

I would also like to give a special thanks to GypsyWitchBaby for letting me borrow her Lupa character. She is a bit different here, but it's the same Lupa you'll all know and love from The Feral and The Dreaming Animal.

Summary: Some sketches catch Rogue's eye from life in the 1800th century. Little is known about the artist, but Rogue is convinced she has seen them. Little does she know that she's found a piece of Logan's forgotten past?

Chapter 1: The History of a Name

Present Day

Ororo was taking the students to an Art exhibit in New York with Rogue, Bobby, Jubilee, Kitty, and Piotr. Scott and the Professor were present as well. The purpose was to review some of the classic painting, sketches, and drawings from the 1700th – early 1900th century as part of her Art History class. The Museum of Natural History was doing an exhibit and one of the sketchers names had caught Rogue's eye and her attention; an early pioneer sketcher that signed all of his works as The Wolverine, so this is where our story begins.

The tour guide was walking them through the exhibit and now they had just come to the sections featuring some of The Wolverine's works. There were several sketches on display. The few caught Rogue's attention and she asked the tour guide few questions about the sketches: Natural Beauty and Brothers in the Wild. "Do you know when these were actually drawn and where?"

"Not much is actually known about the artist known as The Wolverine. All of these sketches are from a sketch book / journal that were recently found with some of the artifacts found at the battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. All we know for sure is the artist served in the Civil War and most likely died in battle." replied the Tour Guide. "We also know that he was very old to be a soldier for the time period, so he was most likely there to avenge a fallen son or sons. The themes of Brothers and Nature keep's reoccurring in most of the pictures and life during the early to late 1800th century. The sketches are extremely detailed, but self contained as well drawn with different types of lead and charcoal pencils. There is only non sketch believed to have been done by The Wolverine but we can't confirm that it was indeed his work since the oil canvas was damaged in fire before it came to the Museum. The reason we believe it was his work is the canvas picture was depicted in one of the sketches in this very collection."

The Natural Beauty sketch had Piotr's attention as well. Piotr was looking all of the details - how you could see the birds flying in the air – two young boys fishing with spear like sticks vise traditional fishing poles and playing in the river with their mules on a line by the river – a small frontier style cabin nestled in the woods in the background – the sheer beauty of the mountain range showing it's snow covered peak, just after a winter thaw. It appeared you could just step into the picture and be in actual scene. Piotr wished he could capture scene with his pictures to this degree.

Scott was looking at a sketch of group of sleeping wolves just inside a cave in winter time by the look of the snow. The sketch was titled: Wolf Pack. You see could one older wolf not asleep, its head raised, and its wild eyes boar into from the page. Despite being in black and white you could see the texture of the wolf's coat the sharp contrasts and its injured left ear with a piece of its tip gone. The wolf was showing its teeth and you had to wonder how anyone would get that close to a wild animal to capture this picture let alone sketch it in such clear detail.

Xavier observed "The sketches are excellent, but I haven't heard of this artist outside of this exhibit. Has he done other works?" The Professor was also thinking of updating some of the art work in the school.

The tour guide looked pleased. "We are VERY fortunate to have gotten this collection of The Wolverine's works. Usually anything that looks like the works of the The Wolverine, J.H., or J.L. is all acquired by a private collection group. That group is trying to purchase this collection as well but our Curator wants to keep it public. This collection is the first to be shown publically in roughly 30 years, since the private collection group started actively purchasing all of the known pieces. If the stories are to be believed, The Wolverine, J.H., and J.L. are either all the same person or a father, and son relationship. The first one would be unlikely since it would mean the artist would have been close to 120 years old for all of the known sketches to have been completed and the signed name changed during the different time period, but the style of the pieces is undeniably the same. The other collections also features the Brothers theme, but shows them during the Great Wars, traveling around the world to historic cities of the time periods, and shows the human condition, vs this collection of showing them as boys in the wild with nature. It's believed that these are the first sketches to have been produced by The Wolverine. The other rumored inconsistence is the sketches are all signed The Wolverine ,but the journal containing them have one of the 3 ways of being signed but all of the journals that house the sketches are signed J. H, J.L., or J."

Kitty, Jubilee, and Rogue were studying the Brothers in the Wild piece. This one was also extremely detailed. It showed two brothers as young teens in the center frozen in time with wild smiles and sharp eyes on their young faces with 4 different scenes in each of the corners – the first was them walking thought tree line into a large field to tracking and hunting the caribou there. The brothers didn't have any weapons in the sketch in the picture in the upper right corner. The lower right corner showed one of them drying meat, smoking fish, and berries using tables and the other chopping up wood. The upper left corner showed them running in the forest and taking an impossible leap from the trees into the huge water fall below. One brother was caught in mid air – looking for the entire world to see as a large cat leaping into the water. The other brother was also caught in mid air twisting at the top of a dive into the waters below. The last scene was in the lower left corner showed both the brothers covered in animal skins bring back an assortment of dead woodland creatures - surrounded by snow with the frontier style cabin in the background with a black bear huge skin already stretched between two drying polls hitting the setting sun.

A strong sense of Déjà vu hit Rogue and she stared intensity at the sketch.

FLASH**

A deep voice shouts, "Jimmy knock it off – if you land on your head in the river bed you're going to drown! A young voice shouting back from above him laughing in a way only a child can without a care in the world – "So says the man who is about to stink like a VERY wet cat soon! You're the only cat I know who can't catch a fish to save his life."

He was very cold in a dark cave that reeked of mold. He walking out into the snow to hunt the caribou; if they could kill one or two of the beast they could use the skins for blankets in the winter. The freeze was on them and if there were going to survive they needed the animal skins.

The cabin was in poor condition, but there was an old ax and ladder in what was the barn. It had been clearly abandoned after an Indian attack. The arrows sticking out of the walls let them know, the tale of what had happened to the previous owners. That and the scattered bones in the room; they could fix it up. It would get them off the ground and away from the cold earth at night. They would start with the fire pit and roof and work on other stuff. The floor was in surprisingly good shape, but neither boy was really heavy. They started chopping wood and making repairs to the cabin walls. Jimmy made the mud cakes for the walls and tied them in pretty good with the vines that they had found in woods. Who know? The boy was actually good with his hands. He was also light enough to get onto the roof and fix thatch with fresh pines to keep the rain and snow out. This was going to work. There was even a stash of forgotten canned goods that weren't all bad. They had tossed out the stinky ones that morning. They would fix up the barn and the chicken coup by the spring. It would require going into town to get some chicken, some new boots and clothes for both of them; they could trade the skins they were catching off of the caribou's, deer's, and rabbit's for barter.

"ARRGGG", screamed Jimmy as the black bear tore into his side and back. He couldn't get up, not in time when it started to run at him again. He was going to die. Then from out of the tree, Victor landed on the bear's back with a giant roar and started to claw up the beast for all he was worth. Jimmy tried to help and stuck the bear with his own claws and knocked into the tree for this trouble. When he came too again it was quite. Too quite. He looked around and saw the bear was dead and covered in a lot of blood, but Victor wasn't moving either. Jimmy scrambled over to Victor was fast as he could. His ribs still hurt, but were feeling better. Victor was all cut up, bleeding, but he was breathing! James would take it. He had to find a way to stop the bleeding, and there was so much blood. He tore off his shirt and made stripe for the worse wounds. He noticed that his own wounds from the bear were slowing disappearing. He knew that wasn't normal, but both he and Victor had claws, so maybe they both would heal given time. He butchered the bear with his claws and used its skin to drag both Victor and a few choice cuts of meat back to cabin. He got Victor into the cabin, no mean feat for an eleven year old that a few short months ago had never been outside all night, plus Victor out weighted him by a lot. He got Victor settled in the bunk, he roasted up all of the bear meat and stretched the bear skin out to dry polls after scrapping off fat. He put the fat to the side for the oil lamps. It would due in a pinch and tonight was going to a long night as he watched over Victor. It was what Brothers did after all and Victor had been there for him plenty of times in the past. Tonight it was his turn and he wouldn't disappoint his elder Brother.

The Indian woman, Simnoa, had taught them well. They could dry and smoke anything they caught, plus she and family promised to return each year to trade and restock the cabin. The boys would have extra skins to trade and skins for Simnoa to make clothes for them. It was a crude barter system, but it worked for them. The French – Canadian hunter got credit for all skins the boys caught, the boys got money, clothes and canned good for winter. Plus they didn't have to go into settlement. Victor was always attracting the wrong type of attention at the settlement. The would have to go into the settlement come spring to purchase the land the cabin sat on and the surrounding area down to the river and deep into the woods, but now they had the 100 dollars to do just that, plus money for two mules, the feed, seed, oil, some good work boots for each of them and a little extra for fun stuff. Jimmy had already put in his request for a book and pencil. Victor didn't get it, but as long as he could get some tobacco he wasn't going to forbid it. It had been a rough year since they had to run with just the clothes on their backs, but they had survived against the odds. They had to find a way to hide Victor's hand for the signing at the court house and Jimmy had come with getting Simnoa to make a few pairs of "work gloves" out of the tuff flank caribou skins. No one would see his claw tipped hands and if they stuffed the tips with moss, Victor claws wouldn't poke out through them before the left town. Both the boys looked older than they actually were in real years. Victor was already close 6 feet tall with facial hair at 15 years old. James while much shorter 11 years old, he had filled out due to all the hard work. No one would question if Victor was old enough to purchase the land. He could easily pass for 17 years of age. The legal age in these parts for land purchases; the court would deed the land to the brothers and they would finally have a real home on paper.

Present

Jubilee was busy ready the wood under the sketch noting that it appeared to be a setting in North America but the exact location was unknown. She noticed Rogue starting to shake and turned towards her. "Rogue?" Jubilee didn't get an answer from her friend, "Earth to Chica?" Then she noticed the really vacant look on Rogue's face plus the hand on her head and the fact that she was sweating. "Kitty? Go get the Professor now?," she turned back to Rogue and got her to sit down on the bench next to the sketch.

Xavier's heads came up as he sensed strong emotions and pain coming of Rogue. He met Kitty as she moved towards him. Scott and Piotr were also noticing something wasn't quite right and everyone unconsciously formed a circle around the girls. To the outside world it looked like a small school group discussing the art work or lunch plans, but the Professor was really inside Rogue's mind snapping her out the past. He picked the last of the flashes of the past from Rogue.

….To Be Continued?

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