A Little Time
By kiragecko
If she had waited, it wouldn't be so cold. She knows that. Logan liked the cold, though, so that's okay. It would be nicer if he was here, with her, in the cold. She really wants to see him. He told her it took a lot to kill him, that he could take whatever they gave him, so she knows he is alive. He just doesn't know where she is, and he needs some time. She's never had a very good grasp of time.
Her name is Erin. Logan never adopted her. It wouldn't have meant anything if he had. She slept every night on the floor in his room, wrapped in one of his jackets. When he left on missions she wouldn't leave his room until he came back. No one could touch anything because that would lessen his scent. She still carries around the jacket. Still sleeps with it at night. It's survived seven attacks. She spent two extra days in a "science lab" looking for it after she escaped. The scent is gone, has been for many years, but she's never had a very good grasp of time.
They tried to make her wait for him and she did, for as long as she could, but time went so slow and it felt like years. They tried to find her after she left but the experiment that took away her ability to understand language also makes her untouchable by telepathic minds. Not even the Professor could have found her. They looked for a long time.
She waited at an airport for one that smelled like Japan, but airplanes stopped coming. She tried to go north to look for pine forests but cars wouldn't go that way. She walked until she was discovered, slipped away and walked some more. Logan taught her how to live off the wild, so she does. There are a lot of mean people the way she is going but he has to be there somewhere. He always goes there when he needs time. She would have rather gone to Japan.
There have been set backs, like the "science lab", which have slowed her down, some of them quite a bit, but that doesn't matter. Every once in a while the highway disappears but she can go around the holes. Sometimes there are dead people, and that makes her sad, but she knows the X-Men do their best and can't save everyone. Big robots walked past her once, and she thought they were sentinels, but they didn't try to kill her. They kept going and Erin got away as fast as she could so the X-Men wouldn't see her when they stopped the robots. She hopes that Logan will have had enough time when she finds him. That he won't growl and hurt things. That's what he did the last time, after he got captured and she found him. He needed time, they said, but it was hard. She hopes he won't be mad.
Her mutation, like Logan's, gives her amazing senses. She can smell and feel things that he doesn't even know are there. Before she was experimented on, she could hear sounds too quiet for him as well. Perhaps she could see also, but her memories are vague on that account. She spent a long time with no senses at all, an experiment to see if someone could survive with no contact to the outside world. She can hear perfectly now, but the experimenters left some cruel reminders of their influence. A device in her skull, which cannot be removed, both stops telepathic contact and her ability to understand words. Logan learnt sign language and everything was fine. She can't see so she walks by the scent of her surroundings, the feel of the breeze, and the sounds of everything around her.
She has another of Logan's mutations as well. She ages slowly. When he found her, they thought she was eight. If you look at her now, she looks the same. Time has no meaning because it does not touch her. Logan will never grow old, Erin will never grow up. Logan is the closest thing to a father that she knows and she will never outgrow her need for him. It's been a long time, but every time she is away from him it seems like forever. The world might end, but that doesn't matter. She has to go north, find Logan. Then everything will be okay.