Disclaimer: If I owned them, do you think I'd need to be writing fanfic? The story is made up out of my weird, perverse, imagination; the actual characters belong to Marvel.
He woke up to the scent of plum blossom, and the warmth of another body beside his.
"Good morning, Logan-san."
Mariko, smiling, waking him with a gentle kiss. Something niggled at the back of his mind. Green eyes that suddenly weren't green at all, and the man who had taken the form of a demon…
{"Done."}
Unconsciously, he twisted his fingers into a sign, one his mother had taught him, to ward off evil. Old habits die hard. But the demon-visage faded, as the memories from this world began to take over.
There was a photo on the side table; him, Mariko, and Kurt, all smiling broadly. Fragments came back to him. They'd honeymooned in Europe; he'd wanted to show Mariko everything. The Black Forest, and the little monastery she'd wanted to visit.
The child she'd refused to leave behind; pouting till she got her way, which wasn't long.
{"Tell me this, bub. Will I remember this world?"}
{"Unlikely. I am not merely bringing your wife back from the dead. I am making it as if she never died."}
He touched a fingertip to the photo of Kurt. Something he should remember. Behind him, Mariko sighed, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"I don't suppose you've changed your mind?"
Logan looked at her in confusion; she must have taken it for stubbornness, for she continued.
"He may have been closest to you, but I still loved the boy like a son, my Logan. Do you not think he would want you to be there? To mourn him with the rest of those he called family."
And the memories rushed in, unheeding of his pain. Mystique… she'd gone after Mariko, out of spite, probably. Kurt snorting. "Who knows why Mama does what she does?" A desperate search had ensued. Kurt may have called Raven 'Mama', with a distinctly bitter tone, but Mariko was a true mother to him, and he'd loved her.
Loved her enough to take a bullet for her.
And he hadn't been fast enough to save him. His family, his gwi's. The boy he'd began to think of as a son. Blood on his hands, for his sins. And not just Kurt's.
They'd had to tear him away from the mutilated remains of what had been his granddaughter. He'd wept until there were no more tears. Then he'd just lain in Mariko's arms. Didn't eat, didn't sleep. A waking dead man.
And now his instincts were acting up again, telling him this was wrong. There was something amiss. Somewhere in his memory, green eyes segued into a hateful flaming red.
{"What's the catch, bub?"}
{"The world may not be exactly as you remember it; one change affects many things. For better, for worse… I cannot say until the wish is made."}
Something wrong. He stood up, distracted. Pulled on a shirt with the jeans he was wearing. Took the katana from it's place on the wall; check the blade – yes, still sharp.
"Where are you going?"
"Ta fix things."
"Logan-san… How can you 'fix things'? You have already destroyed the one who killed him. What more can you do?"
"Not sure, darlin'. But there's a way, I know it."
Resignation was on her face; she obviously recognized his mood. "Crazy Gaijin. Come back to me?"
"Always, beautiful. Always."
Mariko wrapped herself in a kimono and headed downstairs. The funeral would be today, as planned. If her husband insisted on being a stubborn pig; well, she'd dealt with that before. She needed to deal with her own grief first; then she could help him deal with his.
She wandered into the kitchen; Jean was the only other person up, nursing a cup of coffee.
"How are you feeling, Mariko?"
"Fine." She winced as her unborn child gave a vicious kick.
"He acting up again?"
"Hai. If he keeps this up, I think he'll turn out to be as fine an acrobat as his older brother was." Mariko sighed. "I just wish my children could know him." Treacherous tears threatened to escape again. Would she ever be done crying?
Jean was beside her in an instant, soothing words spoken both out loud, and telepathically. Not for the first time, Mariko was glad she had such a good friend here. As her erstwhile husband would put it. "Jeannie's a rock."
The restaurant was closed; but that never posed much of a problem to someone like him. He was pretty sure they hadn't been there; and then again, he knew he had.
{"You've, like, never had Japanese, Scott?!"}
{"Shut up, Jubes. Don't worry, Scott, you'll like it, I promise."}
{"I'll like it as long as you're there, Kitty."}
The girl, of course, had no scent to be tracked, but the scent of the other was clear, and still strong. He was still here.
"You never told me whether or not you liked my skirt."
He hated it when she did that. "You never told me you were going to kill my son."
"The last time I checked, Logan, your son was long dead."
There was a growl, and both sets of claws slid smoothly through her belly. Instead of bleeding, or screaming, she cracked, like a china figurine, crashing to pieces on the ground that then disappeared into the floor. The scent of the one he sought was getting stronger, and he growled again, moving quickly on.
He didn't seem at all surprised when Logan burst through his door.
"I wondered when you'd turn up, my friend."
"Goddamn it!" Claws sliced through furniture as his prey leaped nimbly to one side. "Bring him back, you bastard."
"Really, Logan, you should calm down. It was your granddaughter who killed dear Kurt, not me."
The reaction that got was an incoherent snarl.
"Did you really think that there wouldn't be a price to pay?" The man-form suddenly grew, beginning to glow with red flame. "There is always a price, Logan. That is how we work."
Facing the demon, Logan growled again. "Undo what ya did!"
"Impossible, even if I wanted to."
Wolverine lunged at the demon, taking a swipe with his claws. They passed through as if the creature was made of smoke. But the blow that he returned was solid enough to knock Logan into a wall. Shit. But as he reached down to move the katana, which he'd half-landed on, he noticed the blade was glowing.
{"What does this one mean?"}
{"Purity. Or purify. It depends."}
{Blue fingers trace the outlines of the word, delicately carved into the blade. A growl from the next room to remind him to look, not touch, and Mariko and Kurt burst into giggles. A frown, as golden eyes scan the translation he has gotten so far. "Mariko, this doesn't make any sense."}
{"Hai, it does, little Gaijin."}
{"Nein, it doesn't." Tracing of the symbols again. "Star, born, soul, purity. That's not a sentence."}
{"Think of it more like a spell, or a blessing. It doesn't have to make sense, just like those prayers of yours."}
{"Hey! Those are in Latin, they're not _meant_ to make sense."}
The next time he rushed the monster, he did it with the katana in hand. He'd never really liked guns, of any sort. But a blade… a blade as good as this one became an extension of himself. When he was thrown aside again, they were both bleeding; Logan wiped a little out of his eyes from a gash on his forehead and forgot about it – it was probably half-healed already. The blade had hissed as it touched the demons flesh; the demon looked at his wounds with something akin to unbelieving horror.
Some preternatural instinct told Wolverine to leap to the side just as a fireball obliterated the table he'd been standing next to, and quite a bit of the wall behind him. Apparently somebody was sick of fighting hand-to-hand. Apparently he'd also forgotten exactly who he was fighting. He had the blade at his enemies throat in a second; hands of burning flame gripped onto his arms, but he ignored the pain. Time to end this.
As he watched it in it's death throes, impassive, an inhuman screech came from behind him. Whirling, the katana came to rest at Cassandra's neck.
"So you have what you want." she hissed, showing no fear. "The boy will return to you – at least, until I get my hands on him."
The touch of the katana to her neck shed no blood, but tiny cracks began to spread across her neck. Still, her tone was defiant.
"Fool. You have no idea what you have done."
"If what he did is now undone, darlin', it was worth it."
"Everything he did is now undone. You think you were the only one, to make a wish? You brought chaos to this world, when you pierced his life. Things fall apart, Logan."
"Yes, I've noticed. For example…" and one swipe of the blade shattered her visage. "You."
She took one last shot as the pieces fell to the ground. A telepathic snarl in his mind. ~That's twice now you've killed her… Logan-san.~
He ignored it. He had a boy to find, and an anniversary to remember.
A/N: Coming up next! (Other than more evilness from yours truly). Logan and Kurt have a talk, Xavier and Magneto argue, Jean gets pissy, and Storm struggles to understand what happened to her. How much trouble could result from the death of one little demon? Hell, you ain't seen nothing yet.