This a comedy, or my
version of it, which is more situational comedy than directly funny.
Okay, so maybe it's a dramedy. Is that better?
It's PG13 for indirect adult content. Fairly obviously I don't
own Logan but I suppose I own Ms. Matheson. Not that I would mind if
anybody else wanted to use her, but now it's time for the story:
……………………………………………………….
"Uh…there's somebody at the door for you." One of the younger kids, James Enknerr, was trying to get Logan's attention. He was the kind of kid who was mostly invisible, the kind who's naturally scared of a person like Logan. Chuck had been telling him that he had to work on noticing the kids who tried not to get noticed. This might be a good time to get the kid to talk a little.
"Hey, Enknerr, how you been lately? Been practicin' that runnin' on water thing?"
"Um…I'm actually pretty good at that now. But anyway, she looked kinda mad and she was asking for you."
Who would have been asking for him at the Mansion? He hadn't even told anyone he was there. He had only half-heartedly flirted with a couple of women since he had got there and hadn't told them where he lived. He didn't know anyone else. "What's she like? How'd she ask for me?"
"She's got three babies with her plus I think she's pregnant. She said she was looking for the Wolverine, Logan. I'm pretty sure that's you."
Logan had never noticed that Enknerr was sarcastic before. He wondered about that for a second or two before the situation hit him suddenly. A woman with kids, who knew him as Wolverine, and was waiting for him and was mad while she was doing it? A fight groupie? No matter what, it sounded hairy. "Hey, thanks."
When he got to the door he stopped and breathed in deeply to see whether her scent was familiar. Unfortunately he had a hard time picking her up over Enknerr and various other students and a trace of Jeannie. He turned the knob and jerked the door open quickly, both so that more of her scent would swirl in and so he could have a second to look at her before she started talking. It worked, but the information he gathered didn't tell him much. Both her scent and her appearance were just on the edge of familiarity. Of course, her scent was saturated with the smell of milk; probably both had been affected by having kids and he might not recognize her even if he had known her pretty well before she had kids.
"Well you look exactly the same. I'm not surprised somehow." She was smirking and her tone was not friendly. But as far as her looks went, she was not bad, and being noticeably pregnant made her look better, if anything. She was a classic blonde-hair-blue-eyes little thing, but he couldn't smell even a trace of hair dye on her and that made him feel a little better. She looked like she was in her late twenties, maybe.
"How's it goin'?" he asked to stall for time while he inspected the kids. There were three of them and they were all tiny. The boy didn't even look old enough to be walking but he was standing, clinging to the woman's leg. The girl was in a little carrier and was staring at him intently. The baby cradled in the woman's right arm was of indeterminate sex. He turned back to the boy and something in his eyes scared the crap out of Logan. There was something about those eyes that he saw every time he looked in a mirror.
"I didn't expect you'd remember me," said the woman, ignoring his question. "But I expected you'd be able to figure out at least part of the problem and it looks like I'm right again. He looks a lot like you for just a little thing, doesn't he?"
"Look, if you're sayin' he's my kid all I can say is in those days…"
"Not just him," she interrupted. He forgot what he had been about to say.
"What? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean he's yours, and so are these, and this one." She pointed at the boy then at the other two and then at her own bulging belly.
Logan considered slamming the door in her face. It had to be a scam. Damned if he knew how it worked but it had to be a scam. A damn stupid scam at that; she was actually trying to convince guys she'd had four kids by them? He couldn't think of anybody dumb enough to fall for that, except for maybe the worst alky or somebody.
"How about you stop standin' there like an idiot? A couple of those kids are listenin'."
He turned around and found, not unexpectedly, Will Connelly and Zach Mench. They were both friends of Enknerr's and damn brats. Connelly disappeared as soon as he turned but not many kids can do that and it didn't take a genius to figure out who it had been. Mench just ran, swearing.
When he turned back to the woman she was staring at him intently. "It was three years ago. Pike City. The infamous Wolverine. I knew it was you by the end of the first day. It was only 14 that day, but not one of 'em got up."
He was still close to slamming the door in her face but now he was curious, too. There would be a pretty good way of figuring out whether he had had a thing with her back in his cage days. "Give me your hand." He would have to settle for sweat, a woman's second-most memorable scent, but it would probably be good enough.
"What? Why?"
"Come on, just for a second."
She hesitated a few more seconds then shifted the baby in her arms a little and held out her other hand, palm up. He brought it to his nose. He could usually smell the sweat straight out of the gland, but in this case she was actually sweating a little, so he got a nice big whiff. He thought about it and slowly it clicked into place. Yes, he had had a thing with her back then. It had only been a one-time deal and he still didn't remember her name but that wasn't unusual. He focused a little harder and remembered that he had started with a rubber but afterward he wasn't finished and she had told him not to worry about it because it wasn't her time of the month or something. So maybe the boy was his kid. Teach him to listen to a woman about things like that.
"Can we come in?"
He looked from her to the boy to the girl then back to her. Then he gestured inside with his head and moved out of the way to let her pass. It took her a long time to herd her kids into the first empty room he happened to find, the classroom mostly used for English. It was used constantly throughout the school week but since it was now late Sunday morning the room was empty.
"So you're sayin' the boy is my kid?" He didn't know why, but he was giving her another chance to make the more believable claim of only one kid.
"Yes, him and the others."
Logan put his hand to his forehead. His knuckles were suddenly itchy for some reason.
"I even had 'em tested. It was at this big doctor's office in Toronto. My doctor, my normal doctor, told me to go and get tested to see if we could find anythin' and they told me that all four have the same genetic markers or whatever. Same father for all of 'em."
"So? So I'm not the father of any of 'em, then."
"No, you're the father of all of 'em. I don't know what you did to me but you are."
"What the hell?" He was trying to come up with the right way to ask for her to get the hell out when she interrupted him and for the second time made him forget what he was thinking.
"I haven't gone unprotected even once since that time with you."
"Um…"
"I know that sounds strange but it's true." She didn't seem quite so mad anymore. She sounded like she really wanted him to believe her. "I had a boyfriend when Raelee…"
"Raelee?"
"Yeah. Her." She pointed to the little girl in the carrier. "And there's Tyler and Brock," she indicated the boy and the baby in her arms, "and I haven't thought of a name for this one yet, but the genetic test people told me she's a girl."
Logan blinked a couple of times. Tyler was a semi-normal name at least. Even so he was feeling worse about this all the time.
"Anyway, what was I sayin'? Oh right, I had a boyfriend when I got pregnant with Raelee so we thought a rubber had just broken or something but when she was born we knew."
"Huh?"
She stared at him for a few seconds then sucked in air suddenly. "Oh, sorry. My boyfriend was black."
He looked back at the little girl, Raelee. Much as he hated to admit it, she was all white.
"Then I got pregnant with Brock and I hadn't slept with anybody at all since Raelee was born."
Logan's head was starting to hurt. There was no way for him to describe exactly how ridiculous this was to him. He had been willing to believe that Tyler was his kid but with the rest of it he was pretty sure that it was all nothing but crap. Of course, at this point she was sounding pretty desperate. What if she was just a fight groupie who had had one too many accidents and was looking for one of her old flings to take care of her, put up some dough? And she had somehow found out that he had got a steady job at a school and she had decided that he was better than any of the other guys, who were probably still out running around in the cage fighting scene. It made sense to him but it didn't make it any easier on him. It was pretty clear that she was sticking to her story and wouldn't just let go of it no matter what he said. She had probably practiced her story all the way there.
"May I speak with you a moment, Logan?" the voice was the professor's and he found himself whipping around to look for the man himself before remembering that he was telepathic and quite often spoke into people's minds.
"Just a second," he said to the woman and left the room. When the door was closed behind him he breathed a little sigh of relief. It was almost too much; a couple of years before he already would have been using his claws in a situation like this.
The professor wheeled around the corner and up to where he stood. "I would like you to know that I have recently become aware of your meeting. I have sensed, in fact, that both of you are experiencing a high level of stress. I think I may be able to help."
"So you could hear her, Professor? What the hell…what's she thinkin'?"
"It is not my policy to invade personal privacy, but I can tell you that she honestly believes that you are the father of all of her children."
"But that's…not possible. Can you explain that to her?"
"I agree that it seems highly unlikely, but I am unwilling to completely rule out the possibility as yet."
"Are you sayin' you think they might be my kids? When I…slept with her only once?"
"I know a way that we might be able to determine." He paused, and Logan waited, confused. "If the test fails we will be no closer to the truth but if it succeeds we will know."
"What? What test?"
"We must test whether the children share your unusual healing ability."
"You're goin' to cut 'em or something?"
"I do not intend to cause any serious injuries. Please, may I see your arm?"
Logan held out his arm. The professor held something to it and made a little slicing motion. It was a small piece of stiff paper and where it cut him it stung just a little bit. He looked down and saw that a single drop of blood had formed at one end of the cut. Then, as he watched, it closed up. He wiped the drop of blood off on his shirt sleeve.
"Very well," said the professor. The two of them went back into the room, where the woman was calming down a fussing baby.
"I am going to perform a test on Tyler," said the professor as he rolled up to the boy. "It might sting for a moment but that will be all."
"Why?" asked the woman, and started to shift so she could stop the professor.
"Just let him," said Logan, and she complied.
The test was over in seconds. The cut appeared, spread slightly, stopped, shrunk, and disappeared completely.
"What?" said the woman. "You mean…" she stopped. "When he got that bruise and it disappeared…what?"
The professor laughed lightly. "There is no need to worry, nor is there need to be confused. Logan has the ability to heal very quickly, much more quickly than you or I. He has passed along this ability to Tyler and to the others, I would guess." He performed a similar test on Raelee and her little cut disappeared just as quickly as Tyler's had.
"But that doesn't explain how in the…how it happened." said Logan.
"Actually, I think it does," contradicted the professor. "I think you passed along your near-invincibility directly." Logan and the woman both stared at him. "Well, spermatozoa cells normally have a very short lifespan, especially in such a hostile environment, but if yours possess an ability anything like you yourself possess then perhaps they would be able to survive much longer, possibly years."
"You're jokin'." The professor had certainly chosen a strange time to reveal his practical joker side.
"As completely crazy as everythin' you just said sounded, it's made the most sense of anythin' I've heard since the beginning of all this," said the woman. She chuckled. "And I'll be damned if these guys ain't the toughest babies you ever saw. Tyler especially. Never cries. That was why I knew he was yours in the first place."
At the moment Logan wasn't sure he trusted himself to have interpreted that correctly.
"And you're sayin' you have this ability to heal real fast? So I was right?"
"'Scuse us again for a second," said Logan. He walked out without another look back and waited for the professor to join him in the hall.
"You're jokin'. I can't take this. I don't even remember her name!"
"Calm down, Logan. One step at a time. I know this is a shock to you but stay calm. First of all, I have taken the liberty of figuring out her name: Ettie Matheson. Now, we will let the two of you take a little time apart to consider the information you both have just acquired, and tonight we will decide on the next step. I will see to Ettie and will ensure that her children are fed and rested. Now, please take an hour for yourself."