Chapter 51

As much as Logan hated to do it he used the base's communications and called Fury because who else was going to deal with HYDRA and clean up this mess. Logan certainly wasn't going to do it and sure enough within an hour the place is swarming with SHIELD agents, arresting everyone in sight.

Team X gets marched out together in heavy, power-inhibiting restraints(yes, even SHIELD buys them from Swann Industries), marched past Logan, Dom and Superman who keep a close eye on them as they stand outside the main entrance to the base.

"Say hi Colonel Stryker," Superman says as Gauntlet is marched past.

"Hold on," Fury orders and the procession is brought to a halt. He then looks Gauntlet straight in the eye. "Bill?" he queries someone he knew once.

Gauntlet growls. "Not any more," he mutters in disgust at what he has become.

Fury's eyebrows actually rise a touch in surprise. This is gonna be an interesting debriefing when he gets them back to their new 'accommodations'.

"You know you sound just like a huggable care bear when you growl," Deadpool comments.

"Ok, can someone please gag him," Domino begs in relation to Deadpool.

"Aw, Dom, honey, I thought we had something!" Deadpool pouts.

Dom is going to be sick.

Fury can already feel the headache forming at having Deadpool in his custody again.

"Oh hey Nick!" Deadpool cheers at seeing the one-eyed man again before going sombre. "I know it's been awhile and I should have told you earlier but there's no easy way to say this...I've been seeing someone else. I didn't want to hurt your feelings and I'm sorry."

Fury's one good eye twitches. "Get him out of here!" he practically begs someone to remove Deadpool.

Deadpool is dragged away. "But if it means anything my feelings for you haven't changed!" he calls out. "I'm sure we can work it out. Forgive me, please?!"

Why oh why doesn't Fury shoot the idiot he'll never know.

"You d'ink d'is is over," Kimura says, addressing Superman, her voice very nasal due to her swollen broken nose. "I'll make you pay. Your friends...I'll rip d'eir limbs off...or maybe put my finger in d'eir brains and scramble around what I find in d'ere," she threatens.

Superman's eyes narrow and he folds his arms across his chest. "Listen lady, you want your ass handed to you again d'en by all means take your best shot. Only be aware dext time I may not stop at merely breaking your dose," he mocks her nasality.

Dom sniggers at that.

Lady Deathstrike takes the distraction as an opportunity to lunge at Logan. The SHIELD agents manage to grab her, though it takes several to stop her, her face millimetres apart from Logan's. "This is not over Logan-san," she hisses hatefully. "I will not rest until I have peeled your flesh from your bones and reclaim what you stole from my family."

Logan just stares at her. Who the hell is she?

"Get her out of here!" Fury orders. "Get them all out of here!"

Deathstrike is dragged away into a helicopter along with the rest of them for the trip to their new 'accommodations'. The deepest, darkest hole Fury can find.

"Wow, you can just feel the love," Dom mutters.

Logan blinks. "Yuriko."

"What?" Superman asks.

"Her name is Yuriko," he says.

"Did that just pop into your head?" Dom asks.

Logan nods. He was just staring at her there and in it popped.

"She was there? At Weapon X?"

"I don't know," Logan says distantly...but he knows her. Somehow he knows her...but that makes no sense. She would have had to have been a child back then and he surely wouldn't recognise her...then again who knows what it is HYDRA did to her to make her capable of killing him. That's going to need him talking to Chuck and seeing if the Professor can pull anything else out of his head.

That talk can wait as Fury walks up to them. "Alright, so there's one loose end left. Where's the girl?" he wants to know about X-23.

Logan turns to look at the wreckage of the octopus-craft. "She didn't make it," he says sadly. "Even we can't heal from everything, Fury," he points out, turning to look the man in the eye.

Fury searches Logan's face for any sign of deception. He doesn't see it. "You know this isn't the end. Even if Viper didn't survive, HYDRA always does," he points out, his voice full of the grim inevitability of that.

"But it'll be licking its wounds for awhile I think," Dom reasons.

Fury agrees with that. Might give him a chance to get on top of HYDRA. Damn, he thinks he might have even liked to thank the girl. Shame she's gone. "So you needing a lift home?" he offers.

"Nah," Logan refuses that. "After calling you I called the mansion. The gang will be here soon enough."

"Suit yourselves," Fury says, not going to push for it. He offered which is way nicer than he usually goes for.

As he turns Clark, Dom and Logan share a look. There were reasons they didn't want to go with Fury. Not ones to be mentioned here.

They watch and wait until SHIELD starts to pack up and leave.

Logan and Clark then sniff the air as something drifting on it catches their attention.

"What?" Dom asks at the sniffing.

"Sorry about this," Clark says as he lifts up both Dom and Logan and zips off.


From the wreckage of the octopus-craft a slim brown-haired figure crawls out, her clothes battered and torn and her body still with obviously healing wounds.

She survived.

She didn't want to survive.

"Oh my God!" she hears shouting and looks up to see her sister running toward her.

"Kid," Dom says as she rushes over to help her little sister.

Logan is just behind her. "You ok?"

"Leave me be," Laura pushes any sort of help away. "Please. Just let me die," she begs.

"No. We're not going to do that," Dom says bluntly.

Tears fill Laura's green eyes. "Please," she whispers. "I am a monster. I killed...I do not deserve to live," she believes.

"Why don't we ask her that, hmm?" Superman's voice pipes in.

Laura raises her head, her brown hair covering her face. Raises her head and sees... "M-mother?" she queries in completely disbelief.

Sarah Kinney runs over and hugs her daughter. "Laura. Oh Laura!" she weeps.

"B-but how?" Laura asks, unable to comprehend it. Her logical mind knows her mother was dead and that can't be undone.

"Long story," Dom reflects on it.

"Dr Rice created a serum derived from your blood that could regenerate tissue," Superman summarises it.

"Ok, so not so long," Dom accepts.

This is one of the things they didn't want to share with Fury. The serum worked. It revived Sarah...which was a bit of a shock to her let her tell you. The first thing on her mind after coming back was her daughter. She had been hidden away while SHIELD was present until Superman just came to get her. Now she knows why.

"I am sorry," Laura sobs...yes actually sobs.

"Shh, it's ok. It's not your fault," Sarah assures her. It was Zander's fault from what she was told. She always knew he was filth. She just never realised how far down into that filth he was willing to sink.

Dom is smiling at the scene. "So at least we finally have a name for you. Laura," she says fondly which is so much better than X-23. "A pretty name for a pretty girl."

"I know. Weird, huh. Who knew he could make such a pretty girl," Superman quips, nodding his head at Logan, making a joke of the fact Laura is Logan's clone.

Dom laughs. "That's so true!" she says merrily, enjoying the sour look on Logan's face.

Logan shakes his head at the 2 of them.

Laura just hugs her mother, her face buried into Sarah's neck, tears streaming from her eyes. She's never felt anything like this before.

Sarah looks up at her saviours. "So what now?" she asks them.

"Now, you get to choose to do anything you want," Superman tells her. "You're free."

Sarah's lips start to jerk up into a smile. She's free. It's...she never imagined she would ever reach this place. Everything had been about Laura up to this point. She doesn't even know what to do with that idea.

The x-jet roars overhead as it arrives.

"Though if you wouldn't mind coming back to the Institute I'm sure the Professor would like to speak to you," Superman adds.

As for right now Sarah literally has nowhere to go so she might as well. At least until she has a think over what she does now.

No, what she and her daughter do now. It's the two of them now...and for the first time in a long, long time Sarah Kinney feels actual hope blossoming within her about the future.


At the Institute...

Laura was sitting outside the infirmary...she hates infirmaries. To her they are places of pain not healing but Professor Xavier had insisted her mother get a check-up. Laura couldn't argue with the logic.

This serum that was used to resurrect her mother...they knew nothing about it. They didn't know it's effects or whether it would last. That needed to be investigated.

So here Laura sits...with Logan standing opposite watching her. Laura is matching him stare for stare.

"Oh for God's sake. What are you two doing? Having a staring contest?!" Dom exclaims as she returns.

"He started it," Laura mumbles.

"No, I didn't," Logan argues.

"Well ya do usually," the southern-laced drawl of Dom's companion adds her two-cents worth.

Laura's green eyes narrow as she takes in this newcomer. "Who are you?" she wants to know.

"Now play nice," Dom advises. "This is Rogue. She's your sister...in the same way I am," she explains.

Rogue folds her arms. This is why Dom drags her down here. She looks the girl over...and dear Lord she has the exact same scowl as Logan does.

Dom elbows Rogue in the side to play nice.

Rogue rolls her eyes. "Hello Laura."

"You were created by Weapon X?" Laura queries.

Rogue sighs. She doesn't like to be reminded of that. "Ah'm afraid so."

"What are you afraid of?" Laura asks confused.

"That's...it's just an expression of wishing something that is true not ta beh," Rogue explains.

Laura blinks, clearly confused.

"She was raised to be a weapon," Logan states it, hoping Rogue figures out that Laura isn't going to be coherent in every social norm or grasp every nuance of language.

"That is so," Laura confirms. "HYDRA had me kill many people," she states.

"Ok, honey, maybe you shouldn't...volunteer that last bit," Dom advises.

"Why?"

"It makes people uncomfortable," Logan answers and he should know. "You should only give that if directly asked," he offers as advice.

Laura shrugs. "Ok," she accepts even if she doesn't quite understand why but if her progenitor says to do it then it must be the correct social protocol.

"Oh yeah, she's goin ta beh a barrel of laughs," Rogue whispers sarcastically into Dom's ear. If her family wasn't crazy enough now she's got a female clone of her dad to deal with.

The door to the infirmary opens and Laura shoot to her feet as her mother and Beast walk out.

"What is your condition?" Laura asks, close to sounding impatient for news.

"I'm fine," Sarah insists.

"Perhaps you should leave the evaluation to the Doctor," Hank advises in his good humour.

"I am a doctor," Sarah points out in the same good humour.

"Yes and we all know how we doctors are the worst patients."

"Cut to it furball," Logan demands.

"Well first off I really don't understand this serum that regenerated Dr Kinney's tissues but from every test I can run her body seems to be functioning normally." He addresses her directly. "You're in perfect health."

"Thank you Dr McCoy," Sarah says gratefully...though still trying to come to terms with where she is right now and the fact these people are treating her so nice. Surely they have to know the sort of things she has done.

"Well if you're feeling up to it the Professor wanted to have a word," Logan mentions.

"Of course," Sarah accepts that was sort of inevitable.


"This must seem like a bit of a whirlwind," Charles remarks in good humour as Dr Sarah Kinney sits opposite him in his study. He was wanting a more informal setting for this talk. The girl, Laura as he has learned is her name, is hanging out with her family. He thinks they were trying to get her out of her tattered clothes and into fresh ones.

"A little bit," Sarah admits.

Charles nods and rests his hands in his lap. He is trying to get a feel for the woman. On one hand he knows from Logan and Domino that she tried to help Laura escape, tried to help the girl hold on to some of her humanity. On the other at one point in her life she chose to work for HYDRA in creating a human being for the sole purpose of turning that person into a living weapon.

That shows at one time she was a cold person, willing to overlook all norms of ethics and morality. The fact is he only knows what he was told via Logan and Domino who got told by Dr Risman that Sarah repented so to speak. Felt remorse and love for her daughter.

In a sense that is what he has to judge. Has she genuinely repented. He has his students to think of. He can't have some amoral scientist around them...nor have her running around free in general.

The only reason they didn't let SHIELD take her away was for Laura's sake. She had to see that she hadn't murdered her mother as she must have thought...or that is the story as Logan, Domino and Clark tell it.

Charles isn't 100% convinced that those 3 are telling him everything that happened but that's not relevant to here and now. "So the question is where do you go from here?" he asks her.

"I have no idea," Sarah admits.

"Won't be easy for you. If you pop back up onto the scientific scene SHIELD will hear of it," Charles points out.

"And arrest me," Sarah knows.

"And your daughter. They want her I'm afraid to say. For now we believe we've convinced them she didn't survive."

"Thank you for that...but where does that leave us? A life in the shadows?"

"Well the point is that that is up to you now, isn't it. If you want I can create false identities for both you and Laura."

"Why would you do that?" Sarah asks.

"To be honest it would be more for her than you. She deserves a chance at claiming a life."

"And me?"

"I haven't decided yet because I'll be blunt what you must have done for HYDRA sickens me. I too am a geneticist, Dr Kinney but I don't work for terrorist organisations creating weapons out of human beings. I work to help the gifted find their place in this world."

"You don't think I regret what I've done?"

"I know your colleague Dr Risman claimed you did but I need to hear it from you."

"What do you know of me?"

"I can read your basic biography, your brilliant work but that doesn't tell me who you are, nor explain why you chose the path you did."

"You can read my mind, right?"

"I don't do that without permission."

"Do you know what it's like to live in a world without love, Professor?" Sarah asks him.

"That is the world I fight to ensure never happens."

"It happens all the time. I grew up in such a world. My father was a violent alcoholic. The only way I found to cope was to turn off any ability to feel love for him but it didn't stop with him. I turned off my ability to love my sister and in the end myself. The only distraction I could find was academia. Turned out I had a gift for genetics."

"I am aware of your work...and as for your father...my step-father was violent too. Some days I would even provoke him to protect my mother who was dying."

"Did he...?" she gestures at the wheelchair.

"No. Someone else is responsible for putting me in this chair. A dear friend actually. Still it only ever strengthened my resolve not to give in to such violence for down that path leads nothing but suffering," he argues. Charles is not trying to demean what she went through at her father's hands but he finds that that sort of thing can also be used too often as an excuse to justify unacceptable behaviour.

"Then perhaps you were gifted to be stronger than me," Sarah reflects sadly. "For in my position when HYDRA came calling, offering me almost limitless resources, I made the only emotionless, logical decision and saw it was the best means for progression in my work. I..." Sarah rubs her head. "You know I wrote it all down in a letter. Everything I ever wanted to say to Laura on the real probability I never saw her again. I can remember every word, seared into my brain. It went like this...

Please forgive me. Even as I write the words, they ring so hollow. My mistakes… No, my choices… They cannot be undone, much less forgiven. How all this came to pass…and the truth about HYDRA and Weapon X. Had I chosen to end my association earlier, abandoning you to your fate, would I be less a monster? Or more? Would I even know the difference?

Of course I don't have to tell you about monsters. Your life is defined by monsters. Replicating the mutant genome proved difficult but rebuilding Weapon X seemed all but impossible. For every enzyme, for every codon, for every sequence we repaired, or even built back from near nothingness, we seemed to be missing a million more.

But I felt alive, the work, the failure, the challenge. It was like a brilliant light, shining inside of me. I felt like my life had a propose. What a fool I was. I was defiant in the face of my failures. I was determined to succeed out of spite. Weeks passed. I was working on two projects, living two lives. The public one I still had and the secret one I had with HYDRA. I was used to that. I had kept secrets before. It seems so incredible to me now, that in all that time, given everything that I knew what I was doing and what the end result would bear I didn't give it a second thought. I told myself that you weren't real. I told myself that this was science not life. I was creating a weapon not a child. I was wrong.

When I was little I always believed that every thing that happened to me, I deserved. That we all get what we deserve. Maybe I was right. Once you were implanted in me I was no longer the experimenter, I was now part of the experiment. A vessel to be poked and prodded. To be violated. They certainly didn't care about me...not with a weapon to train. A team of physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, and military strategists now ran my life. They watched my every move but they didn't see everything. I once asked you for your forgiveness. I've had some time to think on that and now I'm telling you, don't forgive me. Don't forgive any of us for what we did. Ever.

I remember everything...everything we did to you and you deserve to know why we did these things. Your training was designed to strip you of your humanity. After all, in the eyes of the program, you weren't human, you were a weapon. A weapon I willingly conceived for them. Our orders were to keep you from gaining any sense of self something they said would compromise our ability to control you. We were never to treat you as a child, only as a weapon but not every one followed those orders. Especially in the end myself.

Madame Hydra was impatient to complete your construction but that wasn't possible while your healing factor was dormant. You would never survive the surgery so Rice was given permission to take whatever steps were necessary to activate your x-gene. He chose radiation poisoning. You nearly died that day. Unfortunately Rice was right. The radiation worked. Now nothing stood in their way, especially not me. I only found out later what happened; that your claws were extracted one by one, that he sharpened and then coated them with the indestructible metal, adamantium, outside of your body, without the use of any from of anaesthetic. It was never supposed to be like that. So much wasn't.

I should have known what was coming, not that I could have prevented it but I would have tried. I'm sorry, so sorry. When it was time for your first field test the target was chosen with the flip of a coin. Who it was didn't matter. As long as the target was high profile and couldn't be gotten to by normal means.

Madame Hydra had decided that a statement needed to be made and you delivered it to the world. I wanted to understand why we were doing this. I told her I needed to understand why you had to publicly kill an innocent man, his family and so many others. So, she told me.

She said, it's simple. The world needed to know that HYDRA's power was unchallengeable and that to save lives the world needed to submit. That's what it had come down to. Life was cheap, expendable in the name of the cause.

Even I was expendable. I didn't matter. Not to them. Not to you. Not to anyone. I had become irrelevant. Replaceable if I stepped too far out of line. After all I had already created them their weapon. All I could do was watch. While you were forced to kill and kill, and kill, and kill. You killed royalty. Godfathers. Drug lords. Dictators. Assassins anyone...everyone HYDRA deemed to be in their way.

For years, you murdered without fail. Every target they marked, you killed. Every time limit they set, you beat. Every rendezvous point they plotted, you reached...except one.

The last one. The one after I told you I was your mother. Hope burst within me that day because the fact you chose to disobey an order, the fact you chose to vanish told me that somehow I had saved some tiny sliver of your humanity.

That I had failed to create the perfect weapon...and for the first time in my life I was happy that I had failed at something. If you had known me before you would have known how I detested failure.

You know back at the start of it I tried to hold myself above Madame Hydra and her lackeys. They made you a killer, not me. They were the ones using you, not me. I was simply a scientist and I was working with molecules and cells and tissue samples. Not a person.

What changed you may well ask.

You.

You changed me.

9 months of carrying you inside me. Of feeling you grow, awoke in me feelings I long thought dead. When you were born was the happiest and saddest day of my life.

To see this beautiful little girl...my little girl...and then have her taken from me instantly.

Then to have to listen as they planned out your terrible future...a future that only existed because I had made you, because I had solved the problem no-one else could.

That's when it truly struck me...and Deborah too to some extent.

I was just like them.

They say in life that we are judged by the choices we make, they are what define us. I chose to bring you in to this world. I chose to stay in the program even as they tried to strip you of your humanity and mould you into a weapon. I'm responsible for everything that has happened, for all the pain, all the death, for everything you have suffered because I had a choice when you had none.

And I chose...I tried to help you, to salvage what I could of your humanity but somewhere deep down I always knew it would never be enough.

The damage I've done...can I ever forgive myself?

You couldn't stop what HYDRA made you do...but somehow you managed to make a choice, to be free. You showed me what you truly are. You are not a weapon, you are a child.

As I write this Deborah is gone, hopefully to SHIELD, to try and find you before HYDRA does. One of us had to stay behind and help the other escape. Why me?

Like I said. Choices.

Am I trying to punish myself?

Yes.

Because that is exactly what I deserve. I've had 14 years since you were born to think on that and that is the conclusion I've reached.

Always remember you are not to blame. You did not pick this life. We...I forced it upon you. The blood you have spilled is on my hands, not yours.

You cannot play God and then wipe your hands of the consequences.

I never wanted a family. My father stripped me of that desire. He took my childhood, my innocence, my life. And then I took yours. I became what I hated and feared most and you became my victim.

But you restored in me hope and love.

Now I want you to do me a favour.

Show me that we can choose to be something other than what we are forced to be, that we can be something better than we believe we are.

I pray we never meet again because that'll mean you truly are free, no matter it breaks my heart to never lay eyes upon you again.

I so wish that we could be together, moving forward, never looking back. That we could end the bloodshed we have brought. That we could start a new life, have a future, be a family. I'm sorry I waited so long to tell you these things. There's probably so much more I want to tell you about living but hopefully you'll discover it on your own.

Maybe...just perhaps, you'll look up your father one day and tell him how sorry I am for everything that was done to him. The only thing I don't regret is using his DNA to create you because there is one thing that you must always remember, no matter what has happened and no matter what may come, you are a child, not a weapon. You are my child. You are my daughter and I love you. I will always love you, Laura.

Your Mother, Sarah."

Silence follows that.

Charles can sense that every word she spoke was the truth and the feeling behind every word was genuine. He needs to think on things...and probably she does too. "It's been a long day," he breaks the silence with. "I've had a room prepared for you and Laura. Why don't you get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning," he proposes.

Sarah nods. She's emotionally and physically spent and sleep sounds like a wonderful idea.


Author's Note: So, yes, Sarah lives...and so does Laura but you probably guessed she would survive. The core of that letter is from the real one Sarah wrote in the comics with me making the necessary adjustments to the context but I hope I kept the gist of the original. Thanks to everyone who wrote reviews. Next up; Target-X part 8, the final wrap-up for this arc.