This is the first X-Men story I've written that isn't Charles/Erik. It's also the only X-Men/Les Miserables crossover on this site right now. It's no coincidence that both movies star the gorgeous Hugh Jackman. :)

What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?

Logan smells Rogue as soon as he steps onto the train. She still carries the scent of the school, the safe, homey smell of freshly-cut grass, paper and backpacks. He looks up the aisle and recognizes the back of her head – that same dark green cloak that she was wearing when they first met, when she was still a runaway kid.

His legs feel clumsy and slow as he walks down the aisle to her seat. He's rehearsed the first thing to say to her – "I'm sorry about last night" feels safe – but beyond that... he has no idea.

"I'm sorry, too," she whispers back, when he sits down beside her and apologizes, and Logan thinks, There. At least he did that much without messing up. They're sorry they accidentally almost killed each other.

Rogue stares out the window at her reflection, not looking at him, but she confesses, "I heard the professor was mad at me."

Logan brightens at this. So she didn't really want to run away again. She just heard wrong from one of the other kids – probably some older student playing a joke on her – and got scared.

But his spirits fall again when she goes on, her voice flat and distant, "You know, the first boy I ever kissed? Ended up in a coma for three weeks."

She's been through so much – too much – and for all his strength and mutant powers, Logan feels helpless. He doesn't what to say or do, or how to convince Rogue to come back to the school with him. He shifts in his seat and tries to imagine what the professor would say. A bell rings on the train platform outside; they'll be taking off soon.

Just then, Rogue turns away from the window looks at him, her young brown eyes glistening with tears. The sight triggers some long-ago instinct in Logan, and from deep inside him, something very old rises to the surface.

The memory hits him like a train, so sudden, so vivid, that for a second, he's there again. He feels the horse carriage glide along bumpily and glimpses snowy trees through the window. A little girl sat beside him, perched on the seat like a bird, her young blue eyes wide and nervous.

Am I to work for you now, Monsieur? she asked.

He smiled, wrapped both arms around her, and pulled her close. No, you're not to work for me, sweetheart, he said gently, stroking her hair. I'm going to take care of you. You're my little girl now.

He startles back to the present when the train lurches forward, jolting him and Rogue in their seats. The clip-clop of horse hooves becomes the rumble of the wheels on the track. For a moment, Logan can only sit there – stunned and blinking, his arms achingly empty without that little girl, his heart pounding at what just happened. He remembered. For the last fourteen years, he tried and tried but could never remember one thing about his life before the surgery.

He wants to dwell on the memory, but there's no time. The train is moving, and Rogue's tears are spilling down her cheeks – but Logan's earlier helplessness has vanished. He knows what to do now. He's done it before. He puts his arm around Rogue and gently pulls her closer. She crumbles against his shoulder, sobbing openly.

He lets her cry for a moment before he says, "This professor guy genuinely wants to help you." Her shaking shoulders grow still, and he can tell that she's listening. It feels the same as the little girl in the horse carriage – the light weight of her head on his shoulder, his hand against her hair, the strong, peaceful feeling like wings inside him. He drops his voice to a whisper and moves his lips closer to her ear. "Come on, let's give these geeks one more shot. I'll take care of you. I promise."

She's just gathered her bag when the train grinds to a sudden, unnatural halt. Logan stands up immediately, all his senses on alert, but it's not until the whole train car rips apart that he realizes Magneto's found them – found Rogue, the mutant he was after all along. Logan plants himself between them, trying to shield her, but what good are he and his metal skeleton against a mutant with magnetic powers?

He goes back to the school after the train station – he goes back without Rogue – and he sleeps worse that night than ever before. His dreams jolt between the train car of this evening, his old truck cab where he first gave Rogue a lift, and the horse carriage of long ago, with Rogue and the other, younger girl switching places and confusing him.

What kind of a name is Wolverine?

You're not to call me Monsieur. You're to call me Papa.

Often he still wakes up struggling and screaming, from nightmares about the surgery. But tonight, he wakes up with his arms stretched out, reaching for something that slipped away from him, with a name on his lips. Cosette. He throws off the blankets and says it out loud. "Cosette," and he knows it was the little girl's name. But what had happened to her? Had he failed her to protect her, just as he failed Rogue today?

The guilt claws at him worse than the claws in his hands. He gets up and does what he didn't have time for on the train; he sinks back into the memory, looking for more of it. He closes his eyes and pictures the little girl's face. He sees her again in the horse carriage, holding a doll that he knows he gave her. She snuggled up against him and fell asleep with her head in his lap. He gazed down at her, awed and humbled that she trusted him so much, so soon, and murmured, "How was I to know so much hope was held inside me?"

He took off his coat and spread it over her like blanket, then laid one hand on Cosette's head protectively. He stared hard at his hand – so normal-looking, with no hint of the claws beneath his skin – and at the little girl sleeping peacefully beneath it, and he vowed, She will never know.

The words echo loudly inside Logan's head, a mantra that he had once lived by. He had many secrets – his claws, his hyper-acute senses, his healing abilities and immortality. How many of them had he managed to keep from Cosette? Never unsheathing his claws around her would've been easy enough, but she must've noticed, sooner or later, that her papa never grew any older.

The man in that memory was so fatherly, so... tender. How could that be him? It was so far from the rough way he lived the past fourteen years – trucking, drinking, fighting, doing odd jobs and heavy labor, wandering from place to place with metal claws in his hands and no memory of how he'd gotten them. That was all he had lived for. That was all he had known. But is there another way to go? Who am I? he wonders – not what, but who.

Logan paces his room like a trapped animal, thinking. How long had it been since anyone traveled by horse carriage? That memory had to be at least a hundred years old, and Cosette looked six or seven in it. Even if he'd somehow kept her from learning his secrets, even if she'd lived to be very old, his little girl is dead and gone now. Cosette is dead, and he's barely aged at all.

Logan stops short as a cold fear clenches his heart. He's tried for fourteen years to remember his life before the surgery, but now he wonders, for the first time, if maybe he doesn't want to.

Rogue is unconscious, pale and still, when their team finally rescues her from Magneto's machine on Liberty Island. If he had medical training like Jean, he would check her pulse or her breathing. But all he has is reckless instinct, so he yanks his glove off with his teeth and touches Rogue's face.

Logan knows that for all her innocence, Rogue is dangerous. Her mutant powers could kill anyone who touches her skin, but he's too far gone to care. He touches her face lightly with his fingertips and waits for the crippling pain that struck him the last time he touched Rogue.

"Come on, kid," he urges, when nothing happens. "Come on." He touches her with his whole hand, cupping her cheek, brushing her hair back, but still, the pain doesn't come.

"No..." he whispers, shaking her a bit, but still, she doesn't move. "No!" he yells, and something inside him adds, Not again. It hurts worse than any injury he got during the battle, and he closes his eyes against it. He pulls Rogue's limp, pale body closer and tucks her head beneath his chin, holding her the way he once held Cosette. Not again.

But then, suddenly, Rogue's body jerks against his. Logan flings his eyes open wide, gasping, as the pain overtakes him. His injuries reopen – great, bleeding gashes across his face and chest – as Rogue absorbs his healing powers. With so much of his skin touching hers, he passes out almost immediately, but just before the blackness, he feels a wild joy take flight. She's alive. She's still alive.

He had almost forgotten how much hope was held inside him.

He sat down on Cosette's bed and settled her into his lap. She leaned into him, her head beneath his chin, and followed along as he read to her from a story-book. Then he tucked her into bed and kissed her goodnight, but she woke up a few hours later, crying from some nightmare, so he carried her to his bed to sleep with him. She curled into his side, and he kissed her and whispered sweet nothings until she fell asleep again. Shhh, it's all right, sweetheart. You only had a bad dream. Papa's right here.

The scene changed: Cosette was a few years older, but she still held his hand as they walked together down a snowy street. Then she was a few years older, and he saw her among roses, watering them, bending her head down to smell the blossoms.

Logan startles awake when he smells antiseptic instead of roses, and at first, he doesn't know where – or when – he is. He glances around and realizes that he's on a bed in the school's medical bay, covered in bandages and hooked up to a monitor. Jean is standing over him in her white doctor's coat; she smiles reassuringly and answers his questions before he can even ask them. Rogue is fine, the professor is fine, and they're all back at the school again, safe.

It should feel like a happy ending, but Logan aches with regret. He doesn't know whether those scenes with Cosette were real memories or simply dreams, but he wishes he could've lingered in them a little longer.

His right side still feels warm, from where Cosette had snuggled against him in bed. It was real, Logan thinks, so fiercely that he almost says it aloud. He presses one hand over the spot, wanting to hold onto it forever. That was real. The ache in his chest lessens, and for a moment, he feels closer to her.

Professor Xavier never does read his mind and uncover all his lost memories, like Logan half-hoped. But after he's better, he gives Logan directions to an address in Canada, "where you might get a few clues," he says, smiling like he knows more than he's telling.

Logan never mentions his recovered memories of Cosette to the professor or anyone else. They're his – memories from his own life, something he hasn't had since the surgery. Cosette had been his, and he wanted to keep her to himself. That possessive feeling was very familiar.

He goes to say goodbye to Rogue and finds her in the school's rec room, laughing and playing foosball with some other students. He watches from the doorway, glad to see her doing something so normal, but she leaves the game and comes over when she notices him. He hugs her carefully, not touching her skin.

It occurs to Logan that most of the secrets he'd tried to keep from Cosette, Rogue already knows. She's seen the fast, unnatural way his body heals, seen him fight, seen his claws. She knows that he has no idea how old he is, and no memories of most of his life. But it doesn't make a difference to her. She still trusts him. She whispers sadly, "I don't want you to go," but she smiles, reassured, when he promises that he'll be back.

Hope spreads through Logan as he leaves the school. He can't remember his life before the surgery, but he always imagined it to be bleak and lonely. But it wasn't all bad. He had a daughter, once. However many painful shocks might be lurking in his past, the possibility of learning more about Cosette makes them all worth it.

Cosette. Just the thought of her makes him feel like a new man. But he doesn't want to feel too much like a nice guy, so when he sees Scott's motorcycle on the school driveway, he decides to steal it. He climbs on, revs the engine, and drives off to Canada, and whatever answers he might find there.

FIN

For future reference: 105th fanfiction, 26th story for Les Miserables, 10th story for X-Men, 2nd crossover. Entry for the June 2016 monthly one-shot contest at Caesar's Palace.