Sorry for the immense long wait.

Chapter 2

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His head was thumbing and cloudy and with every breath a sharp stinging pain tore through his stomach and chest. He tried to crack an eye open, sensing immediately that he wasn't alone, the hackles on the back of his neck rising. A pained groan involuntarily escaped his lips as the bright light hurt his eyes like countless little needles and the searing ache the simple motion of turning his head caused. "You aren't healing properly." A familiar dark and raspy voice to his left said. As he turned his head to focus at his archenemy, he continued, sounding almost reproachful. "You look older than me now."

Logan snarled viciously although as soon as he tried to move his arms, he knew he was in no position to threaten. Every inch of his body hurt and stung and he was so tired and worn out that even lifting his arm used up most of his remaining energy. Holding his hand before his face to emerge his sharp claws, he noticed with a large frown, that a bandage ran around his palm and over his knuckles. Although his spinning head screamed at him that this was a very stupid idea, Logan tried to push up and look down his body, yet fell immediately back against the soft pillow with a hiss of pain. 'Wtf! A pillow and bed?' With another groan he surrendered his beaten body and only lifted the bed sheet slightly to look at the makeshift bandages out of a towel. 'What the hell is goin' on?'

The low growl rumbling from his brother's chest didn't intimidate Victor, so he stepped closer and dumped a wrapped burger with double beef and extra ham onto James' chest - causing a pained yelp - and placed a bottle of water next to the other man's arm before returning to his own bed and bottle of beer.

Warily Logan watched the other feral sip his Molson's, eyeing him all the while. The appealing scent of a tasty burger only inches before his face betrayed him as a growl rumbled from his stomach. Snarling and eyeing the other mutant from the corner of his eyes, he picked the food up and sniffed it carefully after unwrapping. Tentatively he took a small bite, not tasting anything strange. The strange thing here was, that his archenemy had first shredded him to pieces like almost every year, but then decided to scratch him off the pavement and not only treat his wounds in a motel room but also feed him. And most disturbing was the other man's scent. No anger or animosity, but only curiosity and concern. And impatience.

Eventually Logan began to take bigger bites of his meal and felt his strength slowly return. As soon as he had finished his burger a second one landed unceremoniously on his chest. He narrowed his eyes at Sabretooth, who kept staring at him with his ever preset scowl. 'Just like when he was a boy and shared his hunt.' When Logan registered what he had just thought, he paused his second burger mid-air and frowned. He lowered his hand again and stared back at the other feral. "Why all this, Sabretooth?"

Victor suppressed the urge to roll his eyes about the question. Jimmy had been such an inquisitive child that it sometimes worried his nerves. And aside from that, Sabretooth was the one used to ask the questions. "What happened, runt?" He countered in his calm voice, which usually angered his brother and didn't miss its aim this time either.

With a stubborn and agitated snarl Logan resumed his meal. He wouldn't share this kind of information with a stranger less his enemy. The other mutant's scent told him that his patience was wearing thinner by the minute. So Logan hurried with his food and then took a few gulps of water. When he was sure that this time he had enough strength to sit up, he tried again successfully, but not without more pain tearing through his body. Groaning he removed the gauze from his knuckles and saw only light reddish scars were left. He cursed his poisoned body and swung his legs over the edge of the bed with some difficulty.

Victor watched his brother shake his head to clear it, his breathing labored. "What's wrong with you?"

"Why do you care?" Logan pushed himself up with a lot of effort and began to stagger towards the door, holding his heavy weight up by the furniture on his way. His senses and instinct told him, that the other feral wasn't about to attack – for the moment – and he gambled that it would stay a bit longer this way.

Angered Victor jumped to his feet and threw the empty bottle only inches past his brother into the bin next to the door. "Don't you dare to walk away again, Jimmy!" After all what he had always done for that ungrateful little wimp, he would turn his back on his own flesh and blood a third time?! But something had changed in that split of a second and his little brother froze in his tracks, his face a myriad of emotions: Disbelief, confusion, anger, but most of all hope.

Logan scented the air again and frowned even more about the disappointment and betrayal he smelled coming in thick waves from the other feral. 'Jimmy. James.' This kinda sounded familiar, especially being carried by Sabretooth's dark and throaty voice. With his last strength he turned around and staggered a few steps back and half-collapsed onto the edge of the bed. To his surprise the other man's strong grasp on his upper arm steadied him and pulled him into a sitting position on the mattress.

The older feral still had not noticed his faux pas and returned to his former seat and opened another bottle of beer, eyeing Wolverine intently. The staring contest went into another round until Logan eventually muttered. "You called me Jimmy." Victor's jaw immediately tightened and his piercing blue eyes narrowed. After their first encounter after Three Miles Island and before he had figured that his brother had indeed forgotten everything, including Victor himself, he had made a point of only calling him 'runt' anymore. If James would leave voluntarily everything including his brother behind and deny it, then this ungrateful brat wouldn't be more than just a runt. This didn't change when it became clear that his brother had indeed forgotten everything. The loss of his memories had angered and hurt Victor even more - not that he would ever admit this.

The minutes ticked by until Victor eventually scoffed, his gaze averting his brother's eyes and inspected a dark stain on the opposite wall. "It's your name." When no reaction whatsoever came, Victor glared back at the other mutant, angered. "Believe it or not, runt!"

Logan verified this statement with another sniff. Also his guts were telling him that this was indeed his name. Suddenly Logan felt nothing. He had always thought that he would be happy or relieved or anything, but there was suddenly nothing. Even his new found strength had left him and he crawled up towards the head of the bed to lean his heavy body against the pillow and wall. "And my last name?" He wasn't even aware that he had asked those words before he had heard his own voice.

"Howlett." Victor took another sip of his beer, his voice calm again, but not the scary calmness that angered his brother or frightened his victims to death. He didn't dare to hope to get his brother back after all this time, but something in him stirred as the other feral settled down on the bed instead of leaving. He had just offered the other man the olive branch, maybe he would also receive a reward. "What's wrong with you?"

'James Howlett.' Logan repeated the name over and over in his mind. It sounded correct. It sounded like him. He decided to ignore the question for now. How did his current name fit into all this? "And Logan?"

The growl rolling in Victor's throat was a mixture of frustration to be ignored and to remember that man. Another sip of beer to steel his nerves. "Just a nick-name." He hoped he would leave it at that, but knowing his brother he would dig further.

The younger brother ceased his forehead in wrinkles as he thought about it. He had a hunch that 'Jimmy' used to be his nick-name, but no one other than the man occupying the other bed had ever used it. For everyone else, he had been 'Logan', even though those people knew his real name. He was sure of it. "Why Logan?"

With a snarl-sigh Victor emptied his second beer and threw the bottle to its partner into the bin. "It was the last name of your biological father."

Logan smelled anger and disgust from Sabretooth. But didn't bother to dig further for once. Something told him, that speaking about this man was the worst topic he could come up with when it came to Victor. 'Victor...' He had known from the file in Xavier's database that Sabretooth's real name was Victor Creed, but until now, he had never thought about him as 'Victor'. 'I used to call him Vic...'

Subconsciously Sabretooth tightened his grip on his next bottle. His words were barely a whisper. "You took that name; I discarded it."

'You took that name; I discarded it.' Logan let those words sink in and their meaning. His eyes suddenly widened, glued to the other man. Was he...?

Victor felt his brother's heavy gaze on him, but didn't dare to neither scent the air nor meet his eyes. He would get this off his chest and the runt could do with this information whatever he liked. Most likely deny it. "Dunno... Think you felt guilty after you stabbed that asshole o' father o' us and took his name... I'd told you that he had deserved it."

Of all the questions, of everything this new information held, Logan questioned one thing. And to Victor's surprise it wasn't that they were brothers. "Why did he deserve it?"

"He'd murdered your step-father. The man you had always believed to be your real father." 'Among other things.' He had never told his brother or anyone about the treatment he had to endure during his childhood, the abuse, the dark, cold basement, and he surely wouldn't start now. "Howlett is your step-father's name, the man your mother was married to."

"And Creed?"

"My mother's maiden name." When he said the next words, his ice-blue eyes slowly travelled over to the other mutant, eventually resting on his face. "We're half-brothers, Jimmy." The slow, subconscious nod his words received lifted a mountain of rocks from his heart. His brother looked like finally everything fell into place. As a few minutes later still no denial was voiced and the surprisingly comfortable silence stretched on, Victor leaned forward to his beloved black coat, which hung over the back of the only chair in the room. With one claw he fished in the left inner pocket and flung his finding with one last glance onto the words and numbers, he knew by heart, over to their rightful owner.

His pulse sped up as Logan picked the two metal pieces up on their chain, his eyes running over the two words engraved in them. 'James Howlett.' Slowly his thumb stroked his name on his old dog-tags, a small smile finding its way to his lips.

"What's wrong with you?" Victor hated to repeat himself, but this was something he had to do from earliest childhood on with his stubborn brother.

Logan hardly registered that his brother had spoken again. His brother. It made sense. Their healing factors. Their claws. Their feral natures. More alike than they differ from other ferals he had met over the years. A part of him didn't like to present such vulnerable information to others; he wouldn't have told it to all of the other X-Men if the lack of this knowledge wouldn't make him a greater liability than his condition already made him. But the other man had shared with him more than he had dared to hope to find out about his past in the last years - actually he had for the most part given up on his search and embraced his life at the school. Aside from everything, Sabretooth already knew about his damaged healing and he hadn't exploit this knowledge. On the contrary, he had tended to his wounds. "The Adamantium." The words fell heavy from his lips as he felt he had his brother's undivided attention. "It's slowly poisoning my body and my healing is hardly on par with it any longer." He took a sip from his bottle of water. "Hank said that this process must have started decades ago without anyone noticing until it reached a critical threshold." Yes, those had been the fureball's words.

An ironic chuckle escaped Victor's lips. "Good thing then that the government screwed me over with my promised treatment."

"What?" Confusion spread over Logan's features as he faced the other man.

"I volunteered." Victor knew, that if the news that they were brothers hadn't been a devastating sledgehammer, then it would be the next words. "Just as you did." Like anticipated James shook his head in utter disbelief. "You wanna hear 'bout yer fuckin' past or still deny everything you don't like to hear like the sickly little wimp you have been so many decades ago?"

Logan growled in frustration. He hated it how the other man knew how to push his buttons. His claws itched to break through the freshly healed flesh and into something or someone to let out his anger and frustration. But after a moment he settled to just throw the PET-bottle against the opposite wall, denting the plasterboard and the plastic of the bottle. The pitiful object bounced off the floor a few times, before rolling to a stop between the brothers' beds, a puddle of water soaking into the dirty carpet. "I could use a beer, bub."

Wordlessly Victor reached into the paper bag on his bed stand and retrieved another transparent bottle and threw it over to the other bed. "No beer fer you 'fore you're healed. Alcohol will only slow you down, little brother." There still was no denying of their brotherhood coming his way and his hope was indeed going up.

Reluctantly Logan opened the new bottle of water and scowled at it like a stubborn child. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Victor's muscles immediately tensed at the reproach in the words and voice. "You wouldn't listen after our... fight." He literarily spat those words. "You said, we were done. We weren't brothers anymore." The hurt dripped like venom in the sentence and his scent, just like his anger boiled up again. "Next time I found you months later in some run down bar and you pretended to don't know me."

"Well, I actually didn't remember you!" Logan shot back with a snarl and placed the chain with his old dog-tags about his head, making them rest on his healing chest.

"Found that out later." It was already during this first bar-fight they had, that Victor thought it strange that his brother suddenly didn't know his attack sequences anymore and seemed to fight purely on instinct than tactic and his knowledge about his brother's combat experience. Making it easier for Victor to anticipate his advantages and wiping the floor with his Adamantium clad ass.

Both men growled lightly and the silence dragged on as both stubbornly refused to continue their conversation. Until Logan's stomach made itself known again. Wordlessly, Victor threw a package of beef-jerky over, followed by a bundle of paper tissues. "Don't dare to like your fingers!" It'd already made Victor tick off when they were kids in the wilderness that his brother sometimes would eat like a pig, shoveling everything into him with only his fingers, he would lick afterwards clean. Especially after they had left their wild live style and had settled down near civilization, like his little brother had craved for.

Logan grumbled on this; hating how the other man knew him. "What else can you tell me about, well, me?" He knew that this question sounded kinda dumb to ask his own brother.

Victor gazed over to the digital clock. 11:47 PM. "Well, you still have birthday for the next 13 minutes. But don't expect me to sing."

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They had talked till dawn and to Victor's surprise the other man had asked for his cell-phone number, while pulling his own smartphone with smashed display out of his pants with much cussing. If the runt would indeed keep in touch, then maybe Victor would be so appeased to even take his brother back up north to Alberta and to the old manor their lives had started at in another century. Back in those days that piece of land had still belonged to the Northern Territories.

Victor dared to hope now. Maybe he would slowly get his baby-brother back. Even if it was for only a limited time. Then again, he'll keep his ears and eyes open and might discover something to reverse the venom inside his little brother's body.

A/N: I couldn't see the letters on the dog-tags in the movie 'Logan', but I guess it would be his old dog tags, not the one reading "Wolverine" and "Logan" on the other side.

I hope you liked this. Maybe I'll write a piece about Victor's reaction to his brother's death.