A/N: Thanks for reviews! Sorry for slow updating...a lot going on. Promise I'll never forget about my stories completely, there's always an update coming even if it takes a while! :-)


( Volume: 4 Arc: "skeletons in the closet" 3 Issue: 1/2 )

Chapter 135 : skeletons

"Logan still isn't back," Laura said, the door slamming behind her.

"Weird." Julian continued to flick channels; he was watching TV, his usual occupation of spare time these days.

"This means no baby-sitter, Keller," Laura said.

Julian looked now. "Where the hell could he be? Did you ask around?"

"I did." Laura sucked her tongue. "I asked Kurt, and Piotr. Neither had the foggiest idea of where the hell he could be."

"And he didn't say anything to you? Even a hint?"

"No."

Julian paused. "Since when are you on first-name terms with Nightcrawler and Colossus?" he asked, his eyebrows raised.

"Logan took me out drinking with them a couple times. I beat them at pool once, and I let them off their bets."

"…" Julian was speechless.

"Little tip—don't go out drinking with LeBeau," Laura added. "That one gropes when he's drunk. Our claws popping weren't the only things being unfurled."

"I wasn't planning to," Julian said. "Thanks for that, though."

"Ah-heh." Laura unzipped her jacket. "I'm worried about Logan."

"He has a healing factor, an adamantium skeleton, and six blades in his hands that can cut through anything. Plus you can't sneak up on him. I don't understand how you could possibly be worried."

"I am," Laura said stubbornly. "I have a gut feeling. Logan's been doing it again. He got better there, for a while…last year, when I got him all wrapped up in the Shrimps. But he started slipping again,
a few weeks ago." She ran a hand through her hair. "I broke his lock and found tons of booze bottles."

"Whoa, whoa. You broke into his place?"

"Yeah, so? I'm worried!"

"First of all, that's illegal," Julian said. "Second, so what if he has booze? That might be from one night, knowing you, Ms. Projectile-Vomit."

Laura sighed. "Keller…there were bottles of rubbing alcohol in there."

Julian stared at her. "…"

"We only drink that when we're dead serious about getting drunk. It's 100 percent pure alcohol, and that will fuck a healer up like nothing else. Tastes like bat diarrhea and burns the whole way
down, but when you're desperate—"

"Jesus," Julian said. "Maybe you should tell Scott and Emma?"

"No way! I'm not a tattle-tale!" Laura said.

"What are you going to do, then?" Julian asked.

She sighed. "Wait, I guess. What else can I do?"

…

Hellion.

Julian snapped awake and sat up in bed, disturbed. Someone had just spoken loudly in his mind.

Beside him, Laura snored on, laying on her stomach, her foot twitching in her sleep. He glanced at her, trying to calm his racing heart.

Good, you're awake. It was Frost.

"What—"

Don't respond. Don't wake Laura. I want you to come, very quietly, to the mansion, with your gear. Dress in the locker room. You are coming with Scott and I on a pertinent mission.

We require your abilities.

…

"Why can't I tell Laura?" Julian asked, confused. He was now waiting by the X-wing, in his uniform, sleepy and distressed.

"Because she will insist on coming," Emma said. "And she should not be present. This…the less you know, the better, but this involves Logan. He is not in a state she should bear witness to at the
moment, and he may try to harm anyone in his vicinity." Emma paused. "You are coming to restrain him, should I not be sufficient. If this is indeed a berserker rage, then I will not be able to reach
him telepathically, and you are the only one in this school that would be able to hold him at bay."

Julian was silent. Laura was right.

…

"Where are we?" Julian asked, having dozed off, and awoken to Cyclops shaking his shoulder.

"Vietnam," Scott said. "Hurry. There are reports of civilian casualties."

Julian hurried to follow his superior, and complied with the request to levitate them to a field of grass. In the distance were flashes of metal, in the sunset. Sun. He blinked stupidly; in his mind, it was
still 3 AM, and he had just woken up.

Here, thanks to the speedy maneuvers of the X-wing, it was 8 PM.

"HELLION!" Scott shouted, running towards the commotion in the center of the field. "Grab him!"

Julian blinked. And only now did he realize he wasn't wearing his contacts. Now, when he was being relied on to pick up his maniacal, berserking father-in-law at 3 in the morning…this had to be a bad dream.

"HELLION!"

"NOT THAT ONE!" Scott shouted, as a figure flew into the air. Julian grimaced and dropped the person unceremoniously; there was a loud, feral roar, and a smaller figure flew towards them.

"Uh—" Julian could now see Logan, perfectly fine, and realized maybe he was getting a little too close.

"Get to cover!" someone shouted. "You're now his primary target, son!"

"PICK HIM UP!" Scott ordered.

Julian listened to neither; he raised his arm and shielded himself at the last moment, just as a pair of claws sailed towards his face. Logan was sent flying backwards; he snarled as he skidded
along the grass, raising a curl of turf in his wake. He was up again, in the blink of an eye.

"Is this about the bathtub?!" Julian asked, uncertain, as Logan circled him, cutting him off from his superiors. He didn't want to hurt Laura's 'father'.

"I swear, I'm sorry! I had a talk with Nate and he—"

"RAAAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLL!!!" Logan sprung, and Julian barely dodged. He could see Logan's eyes now; they were completely bloodshot.

He was gone.

"Holy—" the tips of Logan's claws caught his underarm and sent curls of blood into the air. His blood, as well as the Shrimps'. Logan's nostrils flared slightly.

STOP!

Everyone bent over double, clasping their ears, even though the sound was in their mind. Pure, raw pain zapped through every nerve in Julian's body.

"I had a dream, Logan, what I believe to be a precognitive vision," Emma said, approaching the smaller man slowly. "In it, I saw someone very important to you. You must put aside your selfish
quest for revenge, if you care about that someone enough."

"They…used me…" Logan groaned.

"Yes," Emma said. "'They'did. And now 'they' are using your son."

"W-what?" Logan turned pale. "Where is he?"

Julian stared. Son? Oh, god.

"I don't know. I only saw him in a vision," Emma said.

"WHERE IS HE?!!" Logan screamed. Julian had seen this reaction before, in Laura. The strange nurturing instinct.

"I don't know," Emma repeated, her voice steely. "We will look into it."

Beside them, Captain America wobbled, then collapsed, in a heap, making choking noises. Julian blinked.

"Uh…"

"I'm not waiting on you," Logan said. He looked at Julian. "Sorry, kid, got a lil carried away there. Did I get ya?"

"It's just a flesh wound," Julian said, realizing he hadn't even noticed the fact that his arm was open and soaking blood down his side. "I think that guy over there needs help more than
I do. Isn't that Captain America?"

"Yeah." Logan turned, retracting his claws; Scott touched Julian on the shoulder. "Time to go. We'll patch you up on the X-wing. If you could get us back…"

"…" Julian looked back at the man choking on the ground. "Let me get this straight. You woke me up—at three am—to come to Vietnam, for a period of two minutes, so I could get hurt? And then
you walk away, leaving someone choking on his own blood? Sir, excuse me, but what the fuck?"

"Well, we know where young Nathan learned that word, now," Emma said airily. "No, we are not going to leave him. It was assumed that, since you are responsible for transporting us, you
would automatically bring him as well."

"…" Julian rubbed his neck, embarrassed.

"Yes, 3 AM, I know," Scott said, his tone kinder. "Believe me, I know. I sleep with a psychic…everything seems to happen at 3 AM."

"Scott!" Emma rebuked, sounding cross.

…

Julian placed his hand on the door handle and turned it, very slowly, then opened the door. So far so good—he was being quiet.

"AHHHHH!"

Laura was standing by the door, her arms folded. "Where the hell were you?"

Julian paused. He wasn't used to keeping things from her—and normally he wouldn't—but if he told her now, she'd steal the X-wing and go hunting for Logan. He did not want her in the
middle of whatever was going on.

"Nothing, beautiful," he said, touching her elbow.

"It's four AM, and you're sneaking back into the house, wearing your uniform and smelling like rice patties. That is sure as fuck not 'nothing'!"

"You're totally off your game. I was fighting zombie robots from the future," he said, brushing past her and heading towards their bedroom. He headed straight for the cribs, knowing Laura
would have to be silent beside them, or risk waking the softly, steadily breathing Shrimps (something that was so easy to do and something that Laura avoided like the plague).

"JULIAN," Laura hissed from the living room. "You get back in here and take this like a man!"

He happily ignored her, too tired to care as he unzipped his uniform—it had a front zip, thank god—stumbled out of his boots, and sunk headlong into bed. He was asleep before his head hit
the pillow, and he continued to do so, even through the thirty-minute period in which Laura attempted to rouse him (using a pillow, her hand, and even the paperback book she'd been reading).

…

Laura was very displeased over his refusal to describe the mission to her, and made her displeasure known throughout the week that followed, sabotaging his laundry (throwing in a still-packaged
pair of red socks in with his whites), hiding the remote constantly, and adding weird, unpleasant spices to his meals, amongst other petty methods of revenge.

The next Monday, Laura was making lunch—sandwiches, using an E-Z-squirt bottle of mayonnaise, sticking out her tongue as she squeezed the spread onto a piece of bread—when the door opened.

Laura looked up, and her mouth opened. It was Logan.

"Kid, ya busy?" he asked. Something was up. His face looked…different. Full of excitement, like he was lit from within after being extinguished for a long time.

Laura continued to squeeze as Logan pulled someone in, by their arm. His arm.

A young man—perhaps a few years older than herself—with a striking Mohawk and prominent tattoos all over his arms, left bare by his wife beater. He watched her coolly, his nose in the air.

"I got someone to introduce to you," Logan said, oblivious.

Laura stiffened. No.

Squeeze! The mayonnaise container emptied itself onto the piece of bread, but Laura didn't notice, just staring at the boy with narrowed eyes, her nose twitching.

She hated him.

"This is Daken," Logan said. "My son. I guess yer, uh, son too. But I thought he's a bit more like yer brother. You guys are about the same age so…"

Laura said nothing.

"Daken, this is Laura," Logan said, his hand on the boy's shoulder. "She's had a hard go of it too. She's my clone…and, well, let's say the fact that her name was X-23 should cover it. She's got the
claws, too…an' she heals…" Logan finally seemed to notice that no one had said anything.

James peered around the corner, having heard voices, then listened in to the conversation. "What! He is not living here, too!"

"Nobody said he was," Logan grunted. "Shut up, Keller. Oh, Daken, that's her man's brother…I think Julian's out with the team or somethin'. They have two kids together, their names are
Nate and Rachel, but everyone calls 'em the Shrimps."

"I see." Daken's first words. His voice was on the nasally side; but it was cold, even, precise.

Mocking.

"Well…" Logan's fingers tightened on the boy's shoulder. "Let's get you settled in. I kin get you a room of yer own…figure you'd like the privacy."

"Yes," Daken said, still watching Laura.

The air seemed to buzz with tension; Laura felt like a magnet was pulling her claws to the surface of her knuckles.

"Hey, sorry about that, I—" Julian was at the door; he stopped, seeing Logan and the boy. "Er—"

"This is Daken," Logan said. "My son." He seemed proud of the word, although very weary; he had worked so hard to find him, ever since the first rumors of him had reached his ears. He'd almost
given up, several times, yet here he was.

"Uh, nice to meet you," Julian said, extending his hand and feeling awkward, because he'd seen Logan on the field beforehand, breaking apart over this very being. This being who didn't look all that friendly.

His hand was ignored.

"This is Julian, you remember, I was tellin' you?" Logan said.

"Uh-huh," Daken said, eyeing Julian, who felt stupid. He lowered his hand.

"See ya, Laura," Logan said, leading Daken out.

Laura stared after them. Julian gazed at the piece of bread piled with almost an entire bottle of mayonnaise.

"I'm guessing you didn't like him?" he asked.

"No…this is yours," Laura snapped. She flipped the opposing side on top, threw the bottle into the sink (it clattered loudly), then stomped into their bedroom and slammed the door very violently.

Julian turned to his brother with a questioning expression.

"What the hell you looking at me for?!" James demanded.

"Well, since you're the empath, I was hoping you could clarify things for me a bit," Julian said. "You know, so when I go in that bedroom to face down the storm, I'd have a bit of background history."

"The fuck! I don't know squat about shit!"

"You were here," Julian pointed out.

James rolled his eyes. "All I saw was her dad walk in with a strange kid, say some shit I didn't really follow, and then she went crazy and used a whole bottle of mayo on one piece of bread! That do it for you?"

"Major help, thanks," Julian said, annoyed. "I should start charging you rent, for all the use you are around here."