"Well I'm going home,
Back to the place where I belong,
And where your love has always been enough for me.
I'm not running from.
No, I think you got me all wrong.
I don't regret this life I chose for me."
(Home- Daughtry)
In the four days since finding Laura, they'd gone almost non-stop. Laura grew more and more restless, and wouldn't sleep unless he sat right beside her and stayed awake. Jean did her best to help soothe the both of them, but she wasn't Maia and neither one of them had much patience for her. Logan regretted how he was behaving and hoped she read it in his mind.
Jean approached the car hesitantly, her eyes flitting over the seat Laura was stretched out in. She had a phone in her hand, and held it out silently. They'd been expecting a call for a couple hours, ever since they'd raided the third from last facility on the list and discovered it in the middle of a termination protocol. A firing squad extermination followed by explosive detonation. They'd barely been able to pull the few remaining test subjects out before it had become a hole in the ground. Already two of the ones they'd saved had died, and a third was likely to die on the way back North to Hank, a little girl not too much younger than Laura.
During it all, Jean had managed to determine that someone had started mapping their assault. They'd started cleaning house. With the two facilities left being hours from one another, they wouldn't be able to hit them both at once, and Maia had to be at one. They couldn't possibly make that choice, but Charles had told them to take the night and rest, that he would figure something out. "Chuck?" Logan grunted into the phone.
"Logan." Charles acknowledged before getting straight to business, "It's not a perfect solution, but there will be a team in place to infiltrate the facility outside of Seattle within the hour of your assault on the Las Vegas one." He paused for a moment, "You'll have to wait until dawn."
Logan looked back at the girl sleeping feet away from him, "Kit needs to sleep, so does Jean. Who's in?"
Charles remained silent for a second longer than Logan was strictly comfortable with. "The Brotherhood."
"Magneto!" Logan growled, keeping himself from roaring for the sake of his daughter. He did, however, catch Jean's eye and jerk his thumb in Laura's direction in a silent request for her to take up the guard post so he could scream at Charles.
Jean's weary face cycled through confused to amused to shocked and finally ended on worried, but she took his place near Laura without a word.
"What the fuck are you thinking?" He snapped at Charles, as soon as he was at a reasonable distance from Laura.
Charles gave a long suffering sigh, "I am attempting to make the best of a dire situation. This solution has the best possible outcome. I am aware it is not a perfect plan, but unless you have a better one, I suggest you take what I've offered you."
Logan let several seconds pass before answering, "What did you offer him?"
Charles hesitated, "Nothing, Logan, I promised him nothing."
Logan growled, "Bullshit, Chuck. You're going to owe him one, and that never ends well for anyone."
"Logan, you've given me much all these years. I will carry this debt for the sake of your family." Charles' tone was resolute, and experience told Logan that no amount of arguing would change his mind.
Logan pinched his eyes closed, "Shit. I hope you know what you're doing."
Charles hummed in agreement, "I'm very much looking forward to seeing your family whole and in person. I will be in contact with Jean should anything out of sorts happen."
Logan hung up the phone, handing the brick back to Jean. Three hours later, Laura was awake, fed, decently clothed thanks to Jean and Rogue braving a department store and scrounging for suitable clothes for a tiny ferocious nine year old girl. She'd wanted Logan to go, but he wasn't about to take her back in public again. They'd stayed with Scott in the car.
They were still tired, as a group they weren't in top fighting form, but they could handle any humans guarding the facility. Logan kept one eye on Jean and one eye on Laura, his other senses sorting through the data coming in from the rolled down windows. Ten miles. Two facilities within ten miles. It was genius and stupid at the same time.
On Scott's signal, they breached the perimeter. There was a solid minute before the sleep addled guards realized what was happening in the early morning light below them, and by that time their response was too late. Rogue had slipped inside, with Scott close behind her when Logan and Laura both stopped dead, a scent distracting them both from the possibility of tearing through mutant hating flesh.
Maia's blood.
They tracked the scent to a nearby truck, where dry flaking blood was puddled in the bed. Jean walked around the back, and said, "This truck came in from the other facility last night while Scott was watching."
Laura took off.
Jean waved her hands at Logan, "Go! We've got things under control here."
He didn't need to be told twice, and, while his legs were longer, his daughter was exceedingly fast and he struggled to catch up with her. He lost visual of her a few minutes into their frenetic run, instead using his nose to tell him where she was.
How she'd known which way the other facility was, he had no clue. Laura had spoken like two words in his presence; Mama and no. That was it. He'd started to think she didn't understand English, but that was obviously another thing he didn't understand about her. She knew enough to be able to navigate based on conversations she'd overheard. Damned kid was going to get herself killed pulling shit like this. She'd be lucky if he didn't scream at her.
Ten miles went by quickly with them both running on adrenaline highs, but Logan's heart almost stopped when he finally saw the facility and smelled Maia's scent mingling with Laura's and the Brotherhood's. The latter was fading, but he could tell that they'd crossed paths with Laura.
His heart almost stopped again seeing Laura in Maia's arms. He stood still for a second, just taking the sight of them together again in, embedding it in his brain, before his mouth caught up with the rest of him, "Fuck, Kit, you can't do that shit."
Maia ambled his way, struggling slightly under Laura's weight, her face lit up under her sallow skin tone, "Wild Man, you've got to stop using words like that. People don't expect to hear such things from the mouths of pretty little girls."
She looked like shit, smelled sick, but she was still his Maia, wasn't she? He couldn't help the stupid grin that came to his face as he closed the space between them, leaving just enough space so that their clothes brushed, "Shit, Darlin', I've heard words like that come out of your pretty little mouth before."
Maia grinned back at him, "Not around our kid you haven't."
Logan leaned in to kiss her, but was blocked by Laura pushing herself between them, "No! My Mama!"
Like hell was the Kit going to start that shit. He and Maia kissing was what had started the whole business that had led her to exist, and he was just about to let her know what he thought about her possessive wail when he caught a scent he shouldn't have. Possibilities flicked through his mind: Scott, Jean, Rogue. None of them at all. Not an X-man, not a member of the Brotherhood. The scent belonged to something else.
The monster from Frankenstein's lab. For a split second he catalogued the injuries he and Laura had inflicted on the thing with his face, and came up empty as to how the thing had survived them on top of being buried under the rubble from the building exploding.
Laura growled. Maia gave a tiny gasp. He popped his claws through his flesh and barked, "Maia, run!"
She didn't though. She hardly took a breath, she just stared straight through him. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, she couldn't outrun any of them, not even on a good day when she didn't appear to be half starved. He only then noticed the blood running down the side of her face. Damn, they needed to put the thing down for good and get her to Hank.
Laura wriggled out of her mother's grip and the two of them put themselves between Maia and the giant hole they'd entered from, which they presumably had Magneto to thank for.
The monster left the cover of the trees and Logan could scent Laura's confusion. "Yeah, thought we'd killed him too. Just gonna have to double check this time."
She gave a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod, her razor thin claws at the ready in a mimic of his own posture. Damn was she his kid or what?
Laura fought like him, more so than the bastardized clone they were fighting did, but the thing was stronger and they were tired. They didn't stand a chance.
Logan lay on the ground panting with a broken back, watching Laura try to dig the things eyes out with a terrible sense of deja vu. He wasn't going to let anyone take her from him again. Laura got tossed away, rolling to a stop just feet from where Maia still stood. The creature approached her, and Maia met him.
She had an odd expression on her face as she put her hands on the things torn up face, "Just hold still and let me look at you."
Her eyes flicked back to Logan and he realized what had finally gotten her out of her frozen state. The thing wanted her, making her the biggest distraction in the whole damned forest.
He forced himself up before the injury could heal completely, and could feel things pull apart again with every step he took. Logan's approach didn't even make the science experiment turn around.
He let loose an earth shaking howl when Logan's claws plunged into his back, severing his spinal cord. "She's mine." Logan growled into the thing's ear.
Laura didn't let him have the kill alone. And bless her heart, she was his daughter. Not content to leave things the way they'd been the last time the three had tangled, Laura used her claws to sever his head from his useless body, tossing the thing away.
It hit the ground the same time Maia did.
Laura cried out, scrambling off the clone and back to her mother, "Mama!"
Logan dislodged the corpse and knelt beside them, pulling Maia into his arms. She was still breathing. He almost sighed in relief, but Laura didn't seem to understand that Maia had just fainted. She took off again, running back into the building.
"Damnit." Logan hissed, carrying Maia inside to lay her on the cot there, "I'll be back, got to go stop the Kit from doing something stupid."
A vague memory of Maia throwing a severed hand at an electrified door came to mind. Maybe Laura had some of her Mama in her after all.
Laura was screaming, the noise shrill and inconsolable. She fought like hell when he grabbed her, and they wrestled in the hallway long enough for Jean to have flown herself the ten mile distance with the other two in tow. By the time Laura had tired enough for him to carry her in a restraint hold, Jean had already looked Maia over, "She's just unconscious."
Yeah, he'd kind of fucking figured that.
She was definitely Maia's daughter. He couldn't figure out how Laura had the energy to wriggle in his arms, bite, kick, and scream for the hours the flight back to New York took.
The mutants the others had rescued wondered the same thing, several voicing concern that she was a subject too far gone for rescue. He'd told them all to shove it...politely of course. Maia was right, last thing they needed was the kid screaming obscenities.
He was only relieved of Laura duty once Scott had the brilliant idea to dump her in the danger room. Hank agreed in passing, muttering something about an adrenaline driven panic attack before he'd immersed himself in the sea of injured and abused mutants they'd recovered.
Maia, the last one off the plane, stirred almost as soon as Jean levitated her to a sofa in the living room. "L?" She mumbled, blinking rapidly.
He put a hand on hers, "I'm right here, Kid."
She squinted in the bright light for a few seconds, but smiled softly, "I knew you'd find us."
He gave her a tight smile. She was going to have a heart attack. She narrowed her eyes at him, sitting up, "Logan, what's the matter?"
He pressed his lips together so tightly they almost completely disappeared into a line. Unbidden, his mind flicked to his last sight go Laura, the girl launching herself at simulated threats in the Danger Room, "Laura is…animal."
"Where?" Maia demanded.
"Here, she's safe. You need to stay put until…" but she was already up, heading in the direction of their daughter, and further protest died on his lips. Maia seemed fine, in need of a few good meals and some water, but fine. Getting in her stubborn ass way was just a good way for his ass to end up in a sling.
Rogue tried to stop her, but the girl was too afraid of hurting Maia. Maia was out of her grip in seconds, breaking into a jog. Maia froze at the door to the Danger Room, a lost expression on her face as she stared at the keypad. Logan imagined himself typing in the code, and, after a moments hesitation, Maia's nimble fingers flew over the digits.
Jean was standing just inside the door, probably making sure Laura didn't hurt herself. The kid was a complete mess though, covered in blood and sweat, repeatedly stabbing a hunk of metal that might have been one of Hank's babies at some point. It was unrecognizable now. She was almost unrecognizable.
Jean grabbed at Maia as she entered the room, "Laura, stop!" Maia screamed, breaking away from Jean.
The girl stilled suddenly, blood dripping from her claws, and she stared at the red headed sisters.
Walking close, Maia knelt next to the girl, tenderly wiping blood off her face, "Laura. You can stop now."
The blades from the child's hands retracted once she took a deep breath, and she started to cry, "Mama?"
Maia nodded, and clutched the child to her chest in a tight hug, "Yeah, baby. I'm here, I promise."
Laura was heavy, too heavy for Maia in her malnourished state to pick her up without incident, but Logan was there, keeping her on her feet as she stood. "Careful, kid." Maia buried her face in Laura's shoulder, and started sobbing. Logan kissed the side of her head gruffly, "Hey, quit that. We're alright." But Laura was sobbing too. High kneeing sobs that broke both her parent's hearts. Logan's instincts were split between telling him to flee the ties tightening between them, and just accepting that his life was forever changed.
Maia hiccuped her sobs to an end after several minutes, adjusting her hold on Laura, slipping from his grasp to kneel in front of Laura again, her hands worrying over every inch of their daughter, "I'm sorry, baby. I'm so freaking sorry I wasn't strong enough to protect you."
"You did what you could, Maia." Jean said reassuringly, but stepped back when Laura growled in her direction as she was pulled back onto her mother's hip.
Maia kissed Laura's forehead, wiping both their tears away, "Be nice, baby. She's your aunt."
Logan gave Jean a nod of thanks, and gently took Laura's weight off Maia, smelling something not quite right about her, "Maia, doll, you alright? Did they do something to hurt you?"
She shook her head, looking anxious, "Stryker, he…uh… wasn't satisfied with X-23." She looked pointedly at the child in his arms. He didn't understand. Maia stared at Laura's face as if trying to memorize her daughter's every feature, "I was more use as a woman than a mutant. I'm fine. Just super hungry right now." She looked up at him, her blue eyes clearer than he remembered them being, "Could we get some ice cream? I think Laura would really like ice cream. She's never had any."
Cold dread filled Logan as he took an inventory of everything before moving his family. That was why she smelled so delicious. He'd been trying to ignore the signs, but his senses were very rarely wrong. There was a tiny heartbeat hammering away under the steady thrum of hers. It was like one he'd heard before, but the owner of that too fast heartbeat was currently in his arms.
She was pregnant. Maia gasped, reading it from his mind.
"Stryker?" He growled out, his claws barely contained in his skin, ready to kill. "Mine?"
Maia stared at him in shock written across her face, "Yours. But…"
Logan took hold of her elbow, "We're taking you to Hank right now."
Maia shook him off, breathing heavily with fresh tears in her eyes, "No, Logan, you don't understand."
He snarled. "I understand plenty…"
She lunged forward and kissed him. "Shut up, Logan." She said when she pulled back to breathe, "No one touched me that way." Maia pulled up her sleeve and showed him the inside of her left arm, which was littered with needle marks. She looked like a damned meth head. Laura hissed and covered her mother's arm with both hands, hanging in his stunned grip.
"What?"
Maia kissed the top of Laura's head before looking back up at him, "Happy tears! Stryker was going to use me to figure out a way to eradicate mutants. Make us infertile or kill mutated fetuses in utero, I'm not sure. He just gave me drugs all the time and I let him so I could be with Laura. It didn't even occur to me that I might be pregnant. I mean Momma said it only took once, but…I just didn't…"
"The clone?" Logan asked, interrupting with a question he wasn't sure he really wanted the answer to.
A small smile formed at the corners of Maia's chapped lips, "Poor son of a bitch had terrible aim. Worst he did was make a mess on me and crack my head into the bathroom counter." She gave a tiny shrug, "Just you, Wild Man."
He grabbed her up, kissing her hard, disregarding Laura until the kid bit into his shoulder, "Damnit!"
Maia laughed, and pulled hair out of Laura's face, "Baby, let Daddy go."
Laura growled around his flesh, and Maia giggled a tiny bit hysterically, meeting his eyes with hers, "Logan, we're parents."
He pried Laura off his shoulder, shaking his head, "We're all fucked, aren't we?"
Maia scowled at him, and then at Jean when she started giggling. She held her hand out to Laura, "Come on, Laura, let's go find something to eat."
"You should…" Logan began as they walked out the door.
Maia waved a hand over her head, "Back off, Wild Man, I'm hungry."
They disappeared from view, and Logan looked at Jean, who was still giggling. "Fuck's wrong with you?"
Jean waved a hand much like her sister had, "I mean, I've seen you with Laura these last couple says, and… you with a baby is kind of hilarious."
Rouge was leaning against the doorframe, "She's totally right. This is going to be fun to watch."
Logan ignored the two of them as he went back into the house part of the mansion after his girls. Maia had found ice cream, and now Laura had smears of chocolate drizzle added to the mess she'd already been. Maia was staring at her bowl, seemingly unaware that Laura was humming happily in her disorder.
Maia caught his eyes over Laura's head, and he watched the facade she'd put up crumble again. "L?" He went to her, and she buried herself in his chest, gasping for breath. A nudge against his hip announced Laura's arrival, but instead of biting or scratching him, she just wrapped an arm around both of them and held on. Maia shuddered, letting a short laugh loose, "God, Logan, we're finally home."
They were, weren't they? He'd feel better when she'd been looked over and they were back in the boathouse, but, yeah, they were finally all home. Fuck, he the Wolverine, had a home. He had a family.