Family Ties

Chapter 2: Old Memories

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Wolverine has a new scent to track: a teenaged girl who knows something about his past. Why did she call him father? And what is Sabertooth doing there? AU mostly influenced by the Ultimate X-men.

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The wind caught up again. It twirled and blew across his face. He shivered. That made him scowl. Sabertooth shivering? Well, he had been here for a while, a couple months maybe. Honestly, he'd lost track, and that was the whole point. His stomach growled, agreeing with his windswept face that he'd been in the tundra too long, long enough that his healing ability couldn't cancel out the hunger anymore. He had to find some food before his body shut down and he froze again. That hadn't been fun. The last time he came here, he froze, went comatose for a few years, and woke up in a laboratory. The scientists had mistaken him for some ancient "link" or something.

Another gust brought him back to the present, and he looked around. He wasn't too far from a cave system. He could smell the warmth, or relative warmth, warm enough to support some minimal amount of life anyway. It took some time to reach the nearest cave enterance; his muscles were seizing up. The second he got out of the cold, he sighed in relief. Now to get some food.

He ate the little thing raw, no flint left for a fire, and tossed the bones when his nose flared with an all too familiar scent. He snarled, whipping around to come face to face with the one person he despised the most, the only other person who could survive in these temperatures without serious repercussions.

"Runt," he hissed. "What? The world not big enough for you?"

Wolverine just shook his head and moved farther into the cave. "I've been looking for you, Victor," he said.

"Don't call me that," he hissed back.

"Well, I can't really call you Sabertooth at the wedding," Wolverine replied just as calmly as before.

Sabertooth gave a gruff laugh. "You proposing now, runt?" he asked. "I never pegged you as the incest type."

Wolverine only shook his head. "I mean I'm getting married," he explained, "to a shadowmorph named Aria."

"Why should that concern me?" Sabertooth growled. He hadn't thought of the man as his father in decades, but for some reason it stung like hell that he was remarrying. It wasn't his mother's fault she wasn't a healer.

For a long time, Wolverine only stared at the cave wall. Sabertooth considered cuffing him one, just to see if he was still awake, but he turned back.

"Julian's been gone a long time," he whispered. "Believe me or not, but I've mourned for her as much as you have. That was twenty years ago. It's time to move on. Aria makes me feel like I belong again, and I was hoping…well…we were hoping, you could feel that way too." He finished softly, as if waiting for Sabertooth to yell at him.

He really wanted to. He wanted to swear, and shout, and tell the runt what a dirtbag he was, and all the other things he always said, but something stopped him. "What do you mean?" he asked instead.

"Aria and I want you to come live with us," Wolverine said. "We want you to be part of our family."

"What?" As hard as he tried not to, Sabertooth took a step back, eyes wide. After a moment of staring he realized his mouth was hanging open. Firmly he clamped it shut.

"I'm not saying it'd be easy," Wolverine told him. "I'm just saying you deserve a family."

Sabertooth stayed silent for a long time. He listened to the wind howling past the cave entrance, the snow dripping from Wolverine's thick coat, his own breath, then both of their heartbeats. When he was a kid, back before everything, they used to play Tracker. He memorized that heartbeat, could tell the man's mood by it perfectly because it was exactly the same as his own. Right now, the guy was patient, expectant, and a little scared. Slowly he relaxed his stance.

"All right," he muttered, "but just to see."

The scene froze. At the back of the cave, three figures studied the two motionless ones.

"Intriguing," Xavier said. "so Aria was not your birth mother?"

The Sabertooth standing next to him shook his head. "My real Ma died years back," he said.

"Can you show us a memory of her?" Xavier asked.

He shook his head again. "I've got parts of my memory back," he said, "but not everything. The farthest one-" he stopped, glancing at the third member of their party, "was getting in a fight with you over Ma's grave six years after her death. Nothing's clear farther."

"Why do you think these memories are returning?" Xavier asked.

He shrugged. "Don't know. They just started. It's why I left the Brotherhood."

Xavier nodded and motioned to the scene around them. "Well, I believe that is enough for one day," he said. The memory faded until they stood on nothing. Then he gently brought them back to their bodies. When Sabertooth opened his eyes, Logan was watching him.

"What?"

"Was that really how it happened?" Logan asked. "You're not sugar coating anything?"

He shook his head. "Surprised me, too."

It was a long moment before Logan smiled. "Ya hungry?" he asked. "Psychic merges make me starving." Sabertooth nodded, rising and stretching out his soar muscles. They headed for the mansion's kitchen.

Since inviting him and Mara to come to Xavier's Institute, Logan hadn't called him son. Not once. He didn't call him Victor either. After the first couple days on the road, after Mara recounted basically every little thing they'd ever done together, he started using something of a pet name: "Sabe." And he didn't use that often. Sabertooth didn't have the heart to tell him he'd done the same thing last time.

As they passed the elevator, he took a slight sniff and noticed Wolverine do the same. Mara was still in the basement levels. He smirked, wondering how much trouble she could get into in the Danger Room.

They made it all the way to the kitchen without speaking. They may be family, but they still had a lot of "issues" to work out. Sabertooth couldn't really remember, but he thought all of it started when his mother died. Like he told Xavier, he couldn't remember that far back, so he didn't really know, but all of their earliest fights had been about her in some way. After that things just got plain messy until they forgot exactly why they hated each other's guts.

Logan tossed him an apple. Those seemed to always be at hand around here. What was it with good guys and apples anyway? He took a deep bite and leaned against the counter. His father leaned against the table half way across the room. His father. He chuckled. He had been using that word more and more lately, despite the fact that they looked the same age and, relative to their lifespans, basically were.

"What?" Logan asked.

"Ah, nothing," Sabertooth told him. "Just thinking's all."

The man paused, looking like he was doing some heavy thinking himself. Sabertooth let him. Finally his father looked up.

"Are you all right here?" he asked. "I mean, Mara's just coming in like any other student, but you." He stopped and looked away. "You've been against the X-men in a lot of battles."

"You saying I shouldn't be here?" Sabertooth asked. He kept it from showing, but he was really worried at the prospect of getting kicked away again, just when he was beginning to let his guard down a little.

"That's not what I meant," Logan said so fast it dissolved any doubt. He sighed and continued slower. "Actually it's more like you're coming in like I did the second time, where they already know you and all."

"Second time?" Sabertooth asked.

Logan nodded. "Cyclopse and I got into it pretty bad. The others stopped us, chastised me because he was the one needing stitches, and I left. The second Scott was able to walk again he came and invited me back. But, just because he'd forgiven me, that didn't mean the others trusted me one bit. The whole place smelt like fear for months. I guess what I'm trying to say is I know what it feels like, and it feels like shit." He finished in a decisive tone, one Sabertooth hadn't heard since before Weapon X, and it made him smirk.

"I'm used to it," he said. "Heck, that's how the whole Brotherhood smelt the whole time I was with them."

Logan chuckled. "I guess that makes sense," he returned. "You ever feel like popping a guy just to give them something to worry about instead of worrying for nothing?"

"Actually I did," Sabertooth said, leaning back. "Never underestimate Toad. He's made of some pretty tough stuff."

This made his father laugh again. He liked that, liked the memories it brought back, reminded him that there were good times locked away in all those old memories.

"Got anything more holding than an apple?" he asked, tossing the rind into the garbage.