by FallingStar
"Logan! You're home!"
A child's voice. Familiar. Happy.
"Hey, kid. What's with the new hairstyle?"
"It just...I don't know, just happened. Maybe I'm like you. Wouldn't that be great?"
The feel of silky hair, black now streaked with golden blond. "I don't know, Leial. It might be, I suppose."
A laugh. "Of course it would be! You have no idea how jealous I've been of you all these years."
"Jealous? Of me?" Feigned surprise colored the older voice. His voice, barely recognizable now. "Why ever would you feel that way, little sister?"
"Oh, Logan. You haven't changed, at any rate."
"With you to come home to, I didn't dare."
"You just remember that." A teasing poke. "Are you hungry? Mom and Dad will want to see you, but we can get something to eat first. They're out somewhere."
"I am a little. Do you have enough money?"
"Yeah. I'm supposed to eat here and then buy some groceries, but we don't really need them and I'm sure it would be all right with Mom."
"You order, then. I don't even remember what there is here anymore."
"All right." The scrape of a chair as she began to stand up.
He hardly remembered the meal. Hadn't paid much attention. He remembered talking with her, though, talking for the first time in more than a year. Talking about everything.
Then it had all ended.
Walking out to the car. Her small hand in his. "Is that yours, Logan? Is it new?"
"More or less."
An impact on his leg. Unexpected. He fell, tried to spring to his feet.
"Logan, get up!" she wailed, frightened. "What do you want? Leave us alone!"
He rolled back up, teeth bared. Had to protect her from whoever these people were.
A hiss. Gas, spraying from a cylinder of some sort. A cloyingly sweet smell. It filled his nose. He tried to fight it off, but slowly slumped to the ground again.
"Logan, get up, please," she cried, her voice full of fear and worry, as she as well tried to fight the gas. Then there was a thud, and she too was unconscious.
Wolverine jerked upright in bed, heart pounding, his sheets soaked with sweat. Only a dream, it had been only a dream. But it had seemed so real. More like a memory.
Could it have been a memory? Part of his forgotten past coming back to him? It hadn't been a bad dream, at least at first. Who could the girl have been?
Leial. Little sister. A part of his family?
The second part of the dream had been slightly more familiar. When he'd been captured and taken away, taken to be experimented on. When the adamantium had been grafted to his skeleton.
He shook his head. He should probably talk to Professor Xavier about this. It might have something to do with the professor's recent efforts to reach Wolverine's lost memories.
There was no way he'd be able to get back to sleep now. Maybe the professor would already be up?
He was. There was a light in the control room, and the professor was waiting near the table. "I thought you might be coming to see me," he smiled. "What is it? I felt how agitated you were. A dream?"
"Yeah," Wolverine nodded. There were occasionally advantages in having someone who could read minds. "I'm not sure, but I think I might be remembering something. Something before...what happened." His hands involuntarily came together, rubbing the knuckles as at remembered pain.
Xavier leaned forward, expression interested. "Tell me about it."
He did, telling as much as he remembered of the dream. "And I think there's something important about the girl," he finished. "I don't know."
"Your sister?" Xavier smiled. "If you could find a family member, it might help you find out everything about your past. What was her name?"
"Leial," he replied. "I think she was a mutant. I don't know what she does. But she's..." Wolverine closed his eyes, trying to remember. "She was around twelve or thirteen. Her hair was black with gold streaks, almost like a tiger, or maybe a leopard. She had blue eyes, I think, and there was something strange about them..."
"That's very good," the professor encouraged. "I'll start trying to find her." He turned to a control panel, and began to type. "If you remember anything else, tell me."
"I will," Wolverine said. He left the room, and walked slowly down the hallway. The dream still ran through his mind, but no longer with the same urgency. Maybe he'd be able to sleep, after all.
"Logan, help me!"
"Don't worry, Leial, we'll get out of this." Trying to reassure her when he had no idea what would happen himself.
"They're bad, Logan, they're bad. They aren't right." She was sobbing now. She never cried. What had happened in the brief time they were apart? What had she heard?
A clink of keys. A door opening. "Come on, girl, you first." Someone reached in to take Leial away.
"No!" she cried, trying to get away. "Logan, help!"
He tried to pull her back in, to keep them from taking her, but others were there now. Too many, taking Leial away. Too many.
"Don't worry, it'll be your turn next," one of them half-laughed. The door slammed shut again.
Not long. Not long before they came for him and he found out what they were wanted for. Not long before the surgical procedure that seemed to take a thousand eternities.
Liquid, surrounding him. His bones were on fire, every one. Had they done this to...? But he had forgotten. He'd forgotten everything.
Something in his hands. Painful. But hardly noticeable with everything else. Something sharp. Strong. Could he get out, escape this liquid?
He forced his eyes open. A tube of some sort. People outside. They'd done this to him! He had to get out!
Claws. Claws on his hands. Were they strong enough?
The material of the tube gave way almost instantly to his slashes. The people outside became frantic. He had to get out! Had to get at the people who had done this! He tore into machinery, anything he could.
Voices. Unintelligible at first. Then he began to understand.
"He's breaking out!"
"The others?"
"They're out of control too!"
"Seal off the girl! We can keep control of her at any rate!"
"Freeze her?"
"Yes! Cryogenic hibernation'll keep her safe and under control until we make it back!"
A brief glimpse. Another tube, liquid-filled. A girl. Familiar. Dark-spotted golden hair. Then it was sealed off, the liquid freezing, drawn into a different place. Unimportant, it had seemed.
Now he recognized her.
His sister.
Leial.
The dream had grown more vivid every night, as he remembered more and more. This dream was the clearest yet. Parts were familiar, things he'd long ago remembered. Others...
"Leial," he whispered. Family. And she'd been with him in that place. Perhaps she, too, had been changed, maybe in the same way he had.
Cryogenic hibernation'll keep her safe and under control...until we make it back.
And they'd never come back. She'd never gotten out. Was she still there? Still frozen? Or had something gone wrong? Had the systems malfunctioned sometime in the long years? Had the explosion he'd caused damaged them? Was Leial dead?
My fault. He should have remembered she was there. How could he have forgotten?
Was there still time to undo his mistake? Could he still save Leial? He had to try, anyway.
Throwing a few outfits and some money and food together in a knapsack, he swiftly left the building. It wouldn't have taken long to tell where he was going. But Wolverine didn't want to let Leial stay there for a moment longer than necessary.
It was cold, and it was snowing. He thought he remembered where the outpost had been, but he just wasn't certain.
Wolverine smelled the air, trying to get a hint of anything. But there were no scents. He hadn't really expected any.
Then he saw a strange snow formation some way ahead. His pace quickening, he hurried to look at it.
Fresh snowfall had covered up something, and blowing snow had created the odd half-drift. Wolverine kicked it away, almost frantically. He had to know, had to see what had happened to his little sister.
Beneath the snow, there was a metal door embedded in rock. Wolverine hesitated for a long moment, then tugged at the door's handle. Predictably, it didn't open. He extended his claws and sliced it from its hinges.
Within, there were a few steps leading to a long corridor. Only a few of the lights placed at regular intervals still functioned, and even they flickered dimly.
Wolverine walked swiftly down the hallway, hardly paying attention to it. There were no doors except the entrance and one at the far end.
Suddenly, there was a noise behind him, as of old, rusting machinery. Spinning, he saw a robot coming from an open panel in the wall. "Authorization, please," it said in a grating monotone.
Wolverine didn't reply. Claws out, he swiped at the little robot, and it fell into two pieces.
"Intruder alert," came a second robot voice. "You are not authorized to enter this section. You will leave now or be destroyed."
"Don't think so," Wolverine told it. It fell apart with a slash as well.
And many more entered the corridor from both in front and behind him. Several had weapons of one kind or another, but most had long ago fallen almost completely apart. A snarl formed on Wolverine's face as he took out the ancient defenders of the complex.
When all that surrounded him was a pile of rusted scrap metal, Wolverine continued toward the end of the hallway.
Beyond the door that now lay in ruins were many more passageways. Baffled, Wolverine tried to decide which would be best to take. The sterile, dead air gave him no hints, nor did his memory. Finally he chose one and started down it, marking it with a scratch at the beginning. But it led only in bewildering circles, passing numerous small offices and labs and finally leading him back to the original crossroads. Wolverine recognized the mark he had made.
Most of the other corridors took him nowhere as well. But the next-to-last one he tried finally led into a small room, in which a large machine still whirred slowly. Hopes rising despite his best efforts, Wolverine approached it.
Circling it, he knew he had found what he was looking for. An upright tube was nestled within the machine. The liquid within the tube was frozen solid, and some solution moved sluggishly down a feed into the girl locked in ice.
Leial had hardly changed in all the years, cryogenic hibernation keeping her almost the same. And alive, Wolverine saw with relief as he checked the pulse and breathing readouts. They were so slow as to be almost nonexistent, as was to be expected, but they were there.
Hoping he wasn't causing some catastrophe, Wolverine pressed the button marked 'unfreeze'. Slowly, the liquid started to melt. The solution that entered Leial's arm at the elbow changed color slightly, and Leial began to stir.
She opened her eyes, first wide in terror, then slowly turning to relief and joy. They were the only thing changed that Wolverine could see. Once blue, now they were a strange mix of green and amber, the pupils catlike slits.
Not bothering with looking for the way to open the tube, Wolverine slashed at it and quickly retracted his claws. The liquid poured out, and Leial fell into his arms.
"Logan!" she gasped, half out of breath. "Logan, what happened? I remember...I think I remember you escaped, didn't you? And you found me! We gotta get out of here, or they'll catch us again!"
"No, no hurry," Wolverine said slowly. How to tell his sister that he'd forgotten her for so many years? "They've all gone."
"Gone? Where? Why?"
"Do you know much about cryogenic freezing?" he asked, ignoring her questions.
Puzzled, Leial nodded. "It keeps someone alive for a long time, unconscious and frozen, without needing much air or food or anything. I think people don't even grow up much."
"That's right."
Slowly, her mouth fell open. "Logan, you don't mean--I've been--how long?"
He sighed. "Twenty years," he told her as gently as he could.
"Twenty..." She looked down. "And I don't feel any different at all. I remember what happened before like it only just ended, and the dreams... Logan, what happened to you? I remember they did something to me, my skeleton, they said..."
Then she'd had the treatment as well. "Adamantium. They fused it with our bones." He showed her his claws. "Gave me these, too."
"My fingers," Leial said suddenly. "They felt strange. Hurting. I thought maybe something was wrong with them. Like you, Logan?"
"Yeah. Like me." He examined her hands. They looked normal, except for the fingertips, where there were tiny patches of slightly discolored skin at the very ends. Leial curved her hands, tensed the muscles. Small, catlike claws appeared on her slender fingers.
She shuddered slightly, and they disappeared again. "I don't like it, Logan, it hurts. Why'd they do this to us?"
He hugged her, going back in memory to when they'd been just brother and sister. "It was an experiment, I think. To see if we would survive it. They wanted to make weapons out of us. Tell me, Leial, is your mutant power like mine? You heal quickly?"
She nodded. "Guess it's a good thing. I don't think I'd have survived otherwise."
"No," he agreed, "you might not have."
Leial looked up at him. "Where do we go now?"
"There's a place I've been staying for a long time now, Xavier's School for the Gifted. They've helped me a lot. I think you'll like it there, too."
"All right," she acquiesced. "Long as I'm with you."
"Logan, you shouldn't have run off alone like that," the professor rebuked him. "If something had happened, no one would know where you were."
"I know," he acknowledged. It was unlike him to admit he was in the wrong, but having found Leial he felt he could at least try to go back to the way she remembered him. "But I didn't want to leave her there any longer."
"Yes, your sister Leial." Xavier smiled. "And you found her?"
"Yeah." A responding smile crossed Wolverine's face, unusually unguarded. "Yeah, I found her."
"Have you told her she has been in hibernation for twenty years?"
Wolverine nodded. "She knows. It's gonna be awfully hard for her to accept, though. I thought maybe you could help her out."
"Of course, Logan. She's waiting outside, is she? Why don't you tell her to come on in?" the professor suggested.
"All right." Logan left the room. Just outside, Leial sat in a chair, her knees folded up and her chin resting on one hand. Her eyes were closed, but they snapped open at the sound of the closing door.
"Logan?" Those golden eyes turned up to him, a little worried. "Are you in trouble for coming to find me?"
"Nah. The professor understood. You'll like him."
"I can go in now?" Leial's expression showed slight nervousness, but she took comfort from the reassurance.
"He said so."
"All right." His little sister stood and brushed past him. The door opened and shut again.
"You must be Leial," the man on the other side of the desk said. "I'm Professor Xavier. I can't tell you how glad I am Wolverine was able to find you."
"Me--me too," Leial said uneasily. "I'm awfully confused, though, Professor. I mean--twenty years?"
He nodded sympathetically. "It's a lot to absorb. But I think you'll like it here. I'll have Jubilee show you around. She's around your age."
"Give or take twenty years," Leial muttered under her breath. But she managed a smile. "Thanks, Professor."
"It's no trouble."
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