Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men. Only Morgan.
MPOV
I found him in the last place I expected; the garden.
He was sitting on the bench I sat had upon yesterday, his eyes scanning his surroundings. It was like he was always on alert, always waiting for someone or something to attack.
I figured it was a better time than any. The garden was empty as classes were on so there was no chance of being eavesdropped on. I should have been in maths class but I figured the Professor wouldn't mind me skipping a class for this. And if he did, I would catch up on what I missed later.
His back was to me. As I walked towards him, I wondered if I should announce my presence. Then I remembered his heighted senses would have already picked up on my arrival. Sure enough, he said, "Hey kid."
I rolled my eyes. I knew why he didn't want to say my name.
"Hey Logan," I said as I approached him. I sat down beside him, clutching the letter in my hands. My heart was pounding. I wondered if he could hear it. "I need to tell you something."
He looked over at me, alert at my serious tone. I wondered what he was thinking.
How was I going to say this? I couldn't jump out and dump it on him. "I didn't stow away in your trailer by accident."
He looked at me with obvious confusion, trying to work out what I was saying. "What do you mean kid?"
"What I'm saying is it wasn't chance that I met you. I went to that bar to find you."
His frown deepened, as did his confusion. "You found me on purpose?"
"Yeah, there was this girl at the orphanage who could locate mutants so I mimicked it to find you," I explained, knowing that wasn't the answer he wanted to hear. He didn't want to hear how, he wanted to hear why.
"But why did you want to find me?" he asked.
I opened my mouth...then closed it. Too late to back out...I had to do it. "I wanted to find you because...my mother left me a letter when she left me at the orphanage. In the letter...she wrote about my father...she wrote about you."
He was looking at me with blank eyes. Did he realise what I had just said?
The seconds ticked by...he didn't speak. I saw in his eyes the moment he realised what I had just said. He didn't say anything, he just stared.
"This letter explains everything," I said, desperate to get some reaction from him. I practically shoved the letter at him. Why wouldn't he say something?
He took it from my hand while still staring straight into my eyes. Was he trying to tell if I was lying? After a moment, he finally looked away and opened the letter in his hands. I watched his eyes fly across the page, reading about a history he couldn't remember.
I didn't need to read the letter anymore...I had memorised it by heart since I was 7. It was a long letter as it explained everything.
She started off by writing how sorry she is if she never comes back. She wrote she didn't want to hide anything so this letter would explain everything...and if she didn't come back for me, it meant she was dead.
Then she dove right in to the topic of my father. 'He was an amazing man born in 1845 with an extraordinary mutation' she wrote.
She explained about his troubled childhood...how he ran away with his half brother and fought in the American Civil War, both World Wars and the Vietnam War. They were then approached by a man called William Stryker.
I swore if I ever met that man, I would beat him to within an inch of his life. He was the reason for everything; the reason I didn't have a mother, the reason why I was sitting next to my father yet he couldn't remember a thing about me.
They had joined his Team X and worked for him. My mother hadn't written what they had done in that time. After many years, Logan had walked away for a new life. And that's when he met my mother, Kayla Silverfox. Except it hadn't been fate that they had met.
After Logan had left the team, Stryker had decided he needed to keep an eye on him. That was where my mother came in. Stryker kidnapped her sister and forced her to do what he wanted. She met Logan and he fell in love with her. And despite Stryker's warning, she fell in love with him. She wrote what a kind man he was despite his fierce appearance. They lived together for six years in Canada. She wrote about the story of Kuekuatsu and the spirit world and how Logan got the name Wolverine.
They were in love, and although she never stopped thinking about her sister, she was happy with Logan. But then the day she had been dreading came. Victor, Logan's half brother, who worked for Stryker came for her. She was forced to fake her own death.
She didn't see Logan again for 9 months.
She didn't realise she was pregnant until she was 2 and a half months along. She never even thought about getting rid of me. But Stryker would have killed her if he discovered she was pregnant with Logan's child. Luckily after faking her death, Stryker did not have any purpose for her until Logan came looking for him, so she rarely went to Three Mile Island, where Stryker's operation was based.
So she hid her pregnancy from him and everyone. While she was hiding away from the world, she learnt that Stryker's plan hadn't gone exactly to plan. Logan had been distraught over her death and took up Stryker's offer on a way to beat Victor for revenge. He had adamantium graphed to his skeleton and was given the dog tags with Wolverine on them.
But Stryker hadn't been counting on Logan escaping after he heard his plan to wipe his memory and use him as a weapon. She was overjoyed that Logan had escaped but sad that he would probably never see her again...or their child.
She gave birth to me and was ecstatic but only one week later everything went wrong. Stryker demanded she go to Three Mile Island as Logan was coming for him and he wanted to use her to crush Logan.
She wrote that deceiving Logan was the hardest things she had ever done in her life but she did it to keep her sister alive. She made it clear that her love with Logan had been real.
She hoped to one day come back for me but knew that it was a possibility that she wouldn't make it out of Three Mile Island alive. She wrote that she hoped that one day I might meet my father and I shouldn't be disappointed if he didn't remember anything. Stryker had made bullets from adamantium, capable of removing Logan's memories if he shot him in the head.
She left with me a necklace Logan had given her and the letter.
The last thing she wrote was that she loved me more than life itself.
I wasn't angry or hateful towards my mother. She had been in an extremely difficult situation and did what she had to do to keep herself and her sister alive. I don't know what I would have done in her situation. She was my mother and I loved her.
I don't know exactly what happened at Three Mile Island but I do know my mother died and my father lost his memory.
And here I was, sitting next to him. I began fidgeting with one of the threads on my ripped jeans.
I watched his eyes stop flying across the page as he reached the end of the letter. My heart felt like it was about to jump through my chest. I couldn't read his face; was he happy? Angry? Confused?
He finally looked at me again, still clutching the letter in his hands. Was he trying to see any resemblance? I didn't look away, no matter how intense his gaze was. All I wanted was for him to believe me.
All I had ever wanted was my father.
He finally did something; the last thing I had expected.
He put the letter down on the bench, stood up, took one last look at me, and walked away.
I watched his retreating figure. My heart was no longer pounding...it felt like it had just been ripped out of my chest. He hadn't even said anything. The only parent I had left had just turned me away. He didn't want me as his daughter...he didn't want a daughter. I wondered if I would see him again...he was probably going to leave now. He probably didn't want to be near me.
Could I have done it better? Should I have waited to know him more? I had just made the biggest mistake of my life.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I cried.
LPOV
I had a kid.
The kid was my kid.
I wanted to say it wasn't possible...but I had no memory...it could be true.
Her letter had explained everything. This woman...Kayla, had written about my past. But was it true? Was I going to believe this letter?
It did explain a lot; who I was, why I had this metal on my bones, why I had no memory. But reading it...I didn't have any flashbacks, nothing that sparked a memory. I didn't know if I should believe this. Why would the kid lie? She had nothing to gain from lying. What if she wasn't lying, but the woman who wrote the letter was?
Kayla Silverfox. I didn't remember her.
She wrote that we had been close...we had a daughter together. But she hadn't loved me...at least not at the start. She had been ordered to stay with me by this Stryker. She had wrote that she had loved me but was that true? I wish I could remember her.
I had done that experiment...the adamantium for her...to get revenge for her. I had done it to kill my brother. I had a brother.
A brother who tried to kill me. And then there was her.
The kid...Morgan. My daughter.
I had looked at her, trying to see myself in her. I did. But I didn't know if I simply saw it because...I wanted to believe it. I never thought I would want a kid...but there she was. And I couldn't deny some small part of me was...happy. I had something in my life after having nothing for so long. I had something from my earlier life. I had a daughter.
I shouldn't have walked away from her, I knew that. But I was in shock. I needed time to think everything over. I had just been bombarded with everything I had ever wanted to know, plus more. I could only imagine what she was feeling. I had just found out I had a daughter, but she had just found her father.
I thought back to when I had first seen her in the bar. She had been staring at me. I realised now why. I remembered all of the things she had said and done, seeing them in a new way. All she had wanted from the start was to meet me. I can only imagine what she would have thought when I left her on that snow covered road. I had dumped my daughter on the side of a road.
But she had stuck around. And now I had left her after she had confessed her biggest secret.
I growled and ran a hand over my face. It hadn't been easy for either of us and leaving her there didn't help. I turned around to go back to her. We needed to talk. I wanted to know what she wanted. Had she just wanted to see her father? Had she just wanted to get that secret off her chest? Or did she want to know me? Did she want me to be the father she had always wanted?
I knew without a doubt that I would be a horrible father but I wasn't going to give up before I had even tried. If she wanted a father, the least I could do was try.
I walked back the way I came, hoping she had stayed there.
She had left. The bench was empty. Except for the letter.
MPOV
How stupid could I be?
I had seen what the man was like. An animal in the cage and no better out of it. Why had I ever thought he would be happy to have a daughter? I had been so stupid! I should have known from my mother's letter that he would never be the father I wanted. A man who went around getting metal on his bones to kill his brother was not going to be a father figure. I bet if he had known I had existed, he wouldn't have cared. Just like he didn't care now.
I wish I had never told him!
The look on his face before he walked away...it was like he had wanted me to disappear...to never bother him again. So that's exactly what I was doing.
I shoved my few clothes into my duffle bag with excessive force. Tears were still pouring down my face but they were no longer from sadness. I was pissed off.
Rouge was still in classes, thank God. I couldn't handle anyone asking me questions. I just wanted to leave.
I zipped up my bag, threw it over my shoulder and turned to leave. A flash of light in the mirror by the door stopped me. My mother's necklace. The necklace given to her by him.
It suddenly felt tainted. I didn't want anything from him. I reached up to my throat and yanked on the chain. It broke easily and fell to the floor. I stepped over it and walked out the door.
I had expected to encounter someone walking through the mansion but I saw no one. It made everything easier. No one stopped me as I walked out of the mansion doors or as I ran down the long driveway.
I wiped away my few remaining tears as I walked down a road lined with shedding trees. I had only been walking for a few minutes when a small red car pulled over just ahead of me. Running up to it, I saw a young girl, not much older than me, giving me a kind smile.
"You need a lift?" she asked through the open window.
"Yeah. Can you take me to the train station?"
LPOV
Where the hell was she?
It was almost 5 in the afternoon and I hadn't seen her since this morning. I had decided to give her some time alone after our conversation to give both us some more time. But I had to see her. I had to explain I hadn't walked away from her because I didn't want to know her.
But I couldn't find her anywhere.
I walked the halls of the mansion until I found what I was after; her scent. I don't think I would ever be able to forget it.
I followed it up a flight of stairs and around a corner. I stopped in front of a plain oak door. This must have been her room. It was silent inside.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside. It was a plain old room with two single beds, cupboards and two study tables. The room held her scent as well as another unfamiliar to me. Obviously I was not going to find her here so I turned to leave when I stepped on something.
I bent down and picked up a broken necklace. Her necklace.
It took me a moment to remember the letter; it was in fact I who had given it to her mother. I studied for a moment. It was a silver locket in the shape of a heart. When it had fallen to the floor, it had opened. Inside I found a picture.
It was Kayla. For a moment, I felt a flash of something I couldn't quite recall. Like a dream I had long ago but couldn't remember the details of.
Her smile, her laugh, her body wrapped around mine.
And it was gone again.
I grasped the locket in my hand before I saw the chain was broken...like she had ripped it from her neck.
"Dammit!" I growled.
I stalked out of the room, slamming my fist against the door as I went. Something told me she wasn't here anymore but I needed to find out for sure. Practically punching the button for the elevator, a group of teens coming down the hall suddenly turned around.
I was cursing my stupidity when they door slid open. Storm was inside. She took one look at my murderous expression and stepped aside to allow me to enter.
"What happened?" she asked as she pressed the button for the lower levels of the mansion, where the Professor was bound to be.
"Have you seen Morgan?" I growled.
Storm shook her head. "No. I haven't seen her at all today. Why?"
I didn't answer. I was too angry at myself that if I spoke now, I would direct that anger at her. This was my entire fault. If I hadn't been an idiot and had just stayed and talked to her...
"Where is she?" I growled as I walked in the room.
The Professor and Cyclops had obviously been talking but their mundane shit could wait. I needed to find my daughter.
"Who?" Cyclops asked, his tone slightly harsh at having been interrupted.
"Morgan," the Professor said with a faraway look in his eyes. A moment passed. "She's gone."
"Dammit!" I growled again. My anger had been bubbling beneath the surface but now I couldn't control it. She had run away because she thought I didn't want her. I slammed my fist against the wall with enough force to create a dent. In the same moment, the doors slid open and Jean walked in.
"What's going on?" she asked. Storm and Cyclopes looked like they wanted to know the same thing.
I was too pissed off to answer. I expected the Professor to answer but when he didn't, I looked over to see him staring expectantly at me. He wanted me to tell them. Maybe he thought it would calm me down somewhat.
"Morgan just told me she is my daughter," I said, trying to calm my tone.
"What?" Storm said with obvious shock.
"Yeah, and I reacted like an idiot. She's left because of me." The anger was seeping back.
The Professor must of noticed for he said, "Calm down Logan. I can find her."
"Yeah? How?" I muttered.
"Cerebro."