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Author's notes: Our last 'flashback' chapter before the main event. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Logan

He bent and traced the faint outline of the footprint, breathing deep the intruder's scent. Ahead were signs that more tracks had been brushed from the snow. The traces weren't fresh, and the cold made it hard to tell how long since anybody had passed by, but whoever was after them was good, real good, and deliberately covering their trail.

"What is it?"

Logan sighed, and looked up at his foster daughter. Her tiny frame was swallowed by the tattered flak jacket she wore, the white stripe in her hair hidden beneath a dark stocking cap. Rogue was still so young, but Logan had to keep reminding himself of all she had seen in her sixteen years on the planet. She wasn't yet a woman, but the green eyes that stared at him weren't a child's, either. He would give anything to protect her from the evil sickness burning through mutants the world over like a fever, but coddling her would only get her killed.

He gestured further along the snowy forest path. "Trackers," he grunted. "Second ones we've run into in a week."

Standing, he brushed the dead leaves and snow from the knees of his broken in blue jeans. He had known Farouk would come for them eventually. There wasn't a mutant breathing that hadn't had their lives upended by the King's network of slavers and spies, Logan had just hoped to keep one step ahead of them. So far they had been lucky, but if the tracks were any indication, their luck was running out.

The trackers were mutants' worst nightmares, super powered hunters roaming their territories and rounding up any undocumented mutants they found. Those taken alive were turned over to Farouk's slavers for a hefty bounty, and shipped off to Cairo for 'processing'.

Logan had thought they'd be safe in the Canadian Rockies, reports of the trackers had been few and far between in the Western hemisphere. So far, mutants had mostly been snatched from third world countries where the governments were wiped out. He and Rogue had been traveling too long, he hadn't realized Canada was fair game. If Farouk's snakes were slithering through the far north, odds were they had already made it stateside, and that meant the King had gained the upper hand in the U.S. He and Rogue were running out of places to hide.

They'd lived hard on the road since Rogue's powers had manifested, Logan working where he could to keep their bellies full. They'd stayed in some shitty places off the grid over the years - mutant communes, abandoned cabins - mostly keeping to themselves. It had been a tough life, but they had each other. Running into that first team of trackers had scared him. Since then, they'd been moving hard and fast, sleeping rough under the stars and leaving behind no trace. How could another team have found them so fast?

"You been doin' your meditation like I told ya to?" he snarled, and he saw her spine stiffen, a telltale sign he had touched a nerve.

"You know I have," Rogue snapped in response. "You watch me do it."

"I watch ya sit there, I hear ya breathin', but I can't tell if you're really doin' it."

She opened her mouth to argue, but he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. "I'm tellin' ya this for your own good. You might think it's stupid, or a waste of time, but it's savin' our lives, darlin'. You control your thoughts? Farouk's people'll never find you."

The snap of a frozen twig was their only warning. Logan threw Rogue down into the snow and spun, his adamantium claws no defense against the shotgun blast that shredded his abdomen.

"LOGAN!" Rogue screamed.

The force of the gunshot threw him onto his back, but he rolled and staggered to his feet, his mutant healing factor already knitting new guts.

"RUN!" he roared, blood seeping hot down his pant legs to dye the white powder below. He heard her scramble to gain traction, but it was too late. Two bodies rushed from the trees, a third taking shots from a distance, the snow exploding at their feet in pulverized bursts. Two males, one heading for Logan, the other for Rogue, buffalo sized blocks of muscle whose scents were similar enough they jumbled together. They were related, Logan realized, the thought disappearing when one of them barreled into him like a Mack truck. The older one tackled Logan and pinned his arms, and the pair rolled together, the big guy getting an arm around Logan's throat. Fast, strong, Logan would have had a hard time holding his own even without the hole in his bowel draining all the blood from his body. The man twisted, trying to snap Logan's neck, and when that didn't work, the man squeezed.

Rogue was good in a fight - Logan had taught her himself - but unless she could get her bare hands on the younger one she didn't stand a chance against somebody so big.

The lack of air popped little flashbulbs in front of Logan's eyes. He couldn't wrestle free his claws, so he bucked his legs up and over, swinging his gaping wound towards the man's face. It startled his attacker enough that he relaxed his hold for a split second. Logan got one arm free, and a slice of his claws sent a decapitated head full of long, dark hair flying through the air. A hulking body dropped limp into the snow.

"NO! JOHN!"

Rogue's dancing partner - younger than her from the sounds of it but just as big as the other- screamed a blood curdling cry into the trees. With her assailant distracted, Rogue wriggled around in his arms and planted a kiss on his cheek. The boy dropped like a stone, and Rogue vaulted over his body, tearing through the snow towards Logan, the continuing shotgun blasts narrowly missing her.

"Logan!"

He caught her in his arms and swung her behind a tree. A blast exploded the bark at his shoulder. He sniffed at the frozen air, gunpowder and the hot smell of blood smothering death and decay. The shooter was a woman, more than a hundred yards away. From that distance she was lucky to have hit anything.

He saw the younger boy's unconscious body within spitting distance.

"Ya get anything from him?" he felt her flinch away from the closeness of his bare skin.

"Pain…grief…his brother…" her eyes were closed to the sound of continuing shots, but Logan puller her hard to his chest.

"His power, darlin'. Did ya get enough?"

She nodded sharply. "More'n enough to finish this," she growled.

Logan let her go. He came around one side of the tree to draw the fire, Rogue sprinted the other way, moving with the borrowed speed of their attackers, dodging the blasts that shifted their aim to her. No more shotgun blasts, a handgun now, then two, their assailant firing with both barrels.

The slowly sealing hole in his belly was slowing him down, but Logan stopped and took care of the boy before he followed after Rogue. He hated killing someone who couldn't fight back, but in Farouk's world it was the boy or them. Logan tried to tell himself he was doing the kid a favor, but it didn't stop the sick wave of guilt that washed over him at the staccato click of his claws into the boy's chest.

He saw when Rogue reached the sharpshooter. She dove for the woman but somehow missed, the shooter springing to the side at the last second to avoid Rogue's lightning fast tackle. Rogue twisted on the ground and lashed out with a fist, but the woman dodged every strike. Watching them move was like watching a choreographed fight staged for a movie. Rogue was doing everything right, every move the same Logan would have made, but somehow she wasn't landing anything.

When Logan reached them, he recognized the woman. "Neena!" he roared, the yell confusing the sharpshooter. Her pale face, a Dalmatian puppy birthmark decorating one eye, turned towards him. Over her shoulder, Logan saw Rogue's gloveless hand go for her throat, and he popped his claws and struck. The woman's eyes went wide when the adamantium thunk hit home. Retracting claws dropped the lifeless body between them.

He held a blood soaked hand out to Rogue. "We gotta go, darlin'."

"Yer hurt," she declared, her wrinkled nose reminding him of the little girl who used to make him tell her stories to stall bedtime. He was sure he was in for an argument, there was that stubborn set to her jaw, but Rogue bent over and rummaged through Neena's pockets before standing and heaving one of his arms over her shoulder.

"Their truck's not too far. Leavin' on foot'll do us no good if yer droppin' a trail of blood like breadcrumbs clear across the mountain pass."

"Yes, ma'am," he hissed through clenched teeth. Healing was usually as painful as the injury itself, and Logan knew he was in for a world of hurt this time. Ruptured bowels were never a good thing, he honestly wasn't sure how he had stayed conscious, it felt like he was losing blood as fast as his mutant power was replacing it.

They couldn't keep living like they had been. He needed to find somewhere Rogue would be safe, if there was anywhere like that left on the whole stinking planet. There were a few places that sprang to mind. Getting to any of them would be tough, and would mean calling in favors from people he preferred never to see again, but Rogue's safety took priority.

Making it to the tracker's vehicle would be slow going even with Rogue's borrowed powers, but they hadn't shuffled more than a few steps when she opened her mouth.

"Did you…did you kill Jimmy?"

He almost asked who she meant, but nodded. Jimmy was the boy whose strength flowed through her bones. He knew Rogue hated her mutant powers, hated to be haunted by the memories they left behind, but today those powers had saved her life.

Remy

In six hours, Remy LeBeau would be saying 'I do'.

Walking through the wood-paneled halls of his adopted father's plantation estate, nestled deep in the bayous outside New Orleans, he passed household staff busy with preparations for the upcoming ceremony. They each offered their warm congratulations, but the smile Remy plastered on his face in return didn't reach all the way to his heart.

What was wrong with him? This was supposed to be the happiest day of his life, but the thought of putting on his suit and making that long walk down the aisle did nothing but fill him with dread, and it wasn't just cold feet. Even the thought of his betrothed in her wedding dress - or later on out of that dress - couldn't bring a genuine smile to Remy's lips.

He had known Bella Donna Boudreaux since they were both snot nosed seven year olds, and their story should have been something out of a storybook. Childhood sweethearts, best friends, on paper their romance looked so perfect, but Remy couldn't help feeling like they were making the worst decision of their lives.

The two had grown up in the tangled criminal underworld of New Orleans - Remy raised in the Thieves' Guild, Belle the heir apparent to the Assassins' Guild - their families at war for generations. Recently, someone had decided the best way to ensure peace was to join the two clans in marriage.

Remy knew his adopted father - Jean-Luc LeBeau, patriarch of the Thieves' Guild - had a bigger hand in the decree than he was willing to admit, and Remy hated him for it. What a great idea, just like Romeo and fucking Juliet, and everyone knew how that story ended.

He understood the politics behind it. Their arranged marriage was supposed to strengthen the Guilds' alliance against the syndicates controlled by Amahl Farouk, the gangster supreme known as the Shadow King. Farouk, once a small time crook out of Cairo, had risen to unimaginable heights in Remy's lifetime, controlling most of the world's wealth, weapons, and territory. Candra - the benefactress of the Thieves' Guild - was one of the few left in power strong enough to hold out against Farouk's people and their incursions. With the Assassins' strength added to theirs, hope was they could push back for once.

But, it wasn't all political maneuvering, there was so much more to it. Remy sighed and raked a hand through his chin length hair. Candra and her stupid prophecy. A decade gone by and her words still hung heavy in his mind, casting doubt on his loving father's intentions. Jean-Luc never breathed a word about the conversation Remy had overhead as a child, and Remy had done his best to pretend it never happened, but there were days he found the ancient Guild prophecy impossible to ignore. The first had been the day his mutant powers emerged, verifying one of the benefactress's predictions. The second had been the day Remy and Belle were brought into the tunnels beneath New Orleans, the gathered leaders of their two families ordering them to become man and wife.

Resentment had since taken the place of love. Belle was smart, daring, and beautiful, everything you could want in a woman, but at eighteen, how was he supposed to know who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? Hell, he couldn't even legally drink in most of the fifty states, not that legality ever stopped him from doing anything. He understood the reasoning behind the forced union, but their families had taken away their choice. Jean-Luc was still stepping to Candra's orders, and Remy had never felt so used.

Jean-Luc had asked to see him before he dressed for the ceremony. Stopping in front of the door to his father's study, Remy took a deep breath and paused before knocking. Behind the heavy oak door came the sound of voices - his father's, raised in an unusual display of emotion, and another that was strangely familiar to Remy.

The door was flung wide and Remy stood chin to chin with a boy around his age. Though the pair were the same height, they couldn't see eye to eye as the boy - slim but muscular with closely cropped brown hair - wore red glasses tinted dark enough to obscure everything behind them.

"Step aside," the boy scowled and Remy stepped back and bowed gallantly.

"Pardon moi, mon ami," Remy called after him, and had another snarkier comment to make, but it died in the back of his throat when his gaze fell on the man who exited next.

Long black hair slicked back from an unnaturally pale face, a sharply trimmed goatee, and eyes that travelled over Remy as if he were something good to eat, the man paused when Remy rose to face him.

"No need to be so formal, young LeBeau," the man said, and his voice was the slither of a snake up Remy's spine. "Soon we will be the best of friends."

Before a confused Remy could ask what the man was talking about, Jean-Luc called from inside his study.

"Remy, leave Dr. Essex to his business and come in here."

"Until we meet again." Dr. Essex smiled that smile again and walked down the softly lit corridor, trailed from the room by another young man, blonde this time and much more solidly built than his companion, but that same stick up his ass walk.

"They ain't coming to the wedding, are they?" Remy quipped as he closed the study door behind him, but stopped short when he turned to his father.

At times, Jean-Luc could be a serious man, and seriously dangerous. The responsibility of running the family weighed on him, but Remy had never see his father's face so ashen and stepped quickly to his side, his anger momentarily forgotten.

"Pere, what is it? What's wrong?"

Jean-Luc, standing behind his desk, his wiry frame highlighted in front of the massive windows that overlooked the sprawling plantation, held up a hand to halt Remy. Over his father's shoulder, Remy could see the grounds busy with family members beginning to arrive for the day's festivities, and his nervous stomach clenched.

Avoiding his son's question, Jean-Luc's haunted eyes looked down at his desk and Remy followed his stare. Perched on the corner was a gift, the gold wrapping paper torn and the flaps of the box leaning open against one another.

"Don't ya usually open the presents after the ceremony?" Remy tried a joke again, but watched Jean-Luc swallow hard in an effort to control his emotions.

His father covered his mouth with a shaking hand and closed his eyes. "There will be no wedding," he finally said, his voice quiet but firm.

Remy blinked. "What? What do you mean? Did Belle say something? Look, if this is about the parlor maid or the cocktail waitress in the Quarter or those two tourists in the cemetery…"

Fierce brown eyes snapped up to meet Remy's bewildered red on black ones. "Shut up. For once, this isn't about you or your juvenile exploits. This is bigger than all of us." He shoved the package towards Remy, the box a heavy scrape across the desk's polished surface. "A present from M'sieu Farouk."

With trembling hands, Remy opened the flaps and gasped. It had been a few years since he had seen the now lifeless face that stared vacantly up at him from inside, nestled on a bed of wavy, blonde hair.

"Merde," he whispered, swallowing the taste of vomit that crawled up the back of his throat. "Candra?"

"Oui, my son. Our supposedly immortal benefactress." From a drawer, Jean-Luc retrieved a flask and took a long pull. "We are well and truly fucked."

Her eyes, cold and crystal blue, seemed to stare at him from beyond the grave. Candra, powerful, beautiful, ruthless, had been the only thing standing between Remy's family and criminal slavery at Farouk's feet. Fear was sliding over Remy's skin, but also a wildly inappropriate sense of relief. Unless they wanted to start a war, which Remy and Jean-Luc knew neither side could win, both New Orleans' Guilds would have to swear fealty to the Shadow King or to each other, their feud ended by default. Remy was off the marital hook.

"So, the wedding is really cancelled?"

Jean-Luc flopped into the leather wingback chair and rubbed his eyes. "You don't have to be happy about it, Remy. The Benefactress protected us all, but you especially, in ways you've never understood, far beyond helpin' you learn to control your mutant power."

Remy took the flask his father offered. "You talkin' about the Elixir of Life? You know I never drank that Kool-Aid."

"You never needed to."

Laughing, Remy raised the flask in salute. "I don' know about that, Pere. Who don't want to live forever?"

Their eyes met and both flicked to the tattered gold paper.

Jean-Luc cleared his throat. "A longer life wasn't the only thing the elixir offered our people. It offered certain…protections…against Farouk."

Farouk, his rise to power the stuff of legends, had accomplished in the last two decades what some could not achieve in several lifetimes. Rumor was, mutant powers had aided his criminal coup d'état. There were more than a few who thought Farouk, a mind-reader, one of the most powerful ever born, was twisting humanity's worst qualities with his telepathic powers. Using his mental abilities, Farouk had recruited a veritable army of like-minded individuals to his service, turning or destroying any who didn't fall in line. The criminal and superpowered worlds had been sharply divided, but any who had opposed the Shadow King had eventually succumbed to his will, Candra the latest domino to fall.

Leaning over the desk, Remy caught his father's eyes. "What are you talkin' about? Why wouldn't I need protection?"

Smiling sadly, Jean-Luc covered his son's hand with his. "Something Candra knew and I suspected. Your mutant powers give you a natural resistance to Farouk's talents. Candra's people used your DNA to bring that immunity to the Elixir. We kept it all hidden, and kept you away from anything that could bring you into contact with the King. You know what he does to those he can't control. I'm sorry, son, but with the benefactress gone, I don't know how long I can protect you."