Somewhere in the past, North Dakota
(in other words, the prologue)
"Laura—Laura, no!"
They say that life altering moments most often happen in slow motion, in slow heartbeats and throbbing blood. And recollection of those seismic moments for the rest of eternity—they come in slow, mirror images of what's already buried in time. Forgetting how to breathe is almost a stipulation. Paralysis, a qualification. Anatomy all but ceases to function as reality kicks down the door of absolution, racing in like a battering ram. Splintering the few seconds of time before the cataclysm.
She couldn't have reached Laura in time, even if she'd seen it coming. Survival laced with the intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline had already etched this moment into stone, set things in motion that couldn't be undone from twenty five feet to her left—couldn't be resolved with her fingers buried knuckle deep in some yahoo's gut structure. By the time she saw the telltale, unmistakable swing of the pistol's arch coming around the little girl's body, she knew.
Laura, in her short life, had probably never even held a pistol, accustomed instead to sheathed adamantium blades and rage. Even from here she could see her aim was high. Shaky, unpracticed. Terrified and enraged, like an inferno dancing around a whirlwind. A ticking time bomb waiting to seal fate—to change the world among the North Dakota evergreens and crisp, deep woods air.
Low on her legs, the pistol shook ravenously in the girl's hands. Even from across the forest leaves and rocks and dirt, she could see the girl's brow pull into a wrinkled line. Bloodstained and adrenaline galloping through her small frame, she may as well have been set on fire—even her finger kissed the trigger in slow motion. Frame by frame, she couldn't have pulled her fist from her attacker's abdomen fast enough.
Even if Laura had heard her, there was no undoing. The shot cracked the air with a resolution that could rattle worlds. Even the air didn't move, the trees seemed to stand all-soldier. Like sentinels, they canopied the scene, looking down as the creature christened X-24 hit paydirt, unforgivingly hard. Ragdoll and slack. Blood rivered from his head like an emptied canoe. Staining the earth, timestamping these seconds in history.
She watched Logan jar backward on impact, considering his goliath form for only seconds before reality struck her upside her own head. His enraged roar, the sudden all-stop of steps permanently halted by the jarring collision of a bullet. Staggering, he didn't even have time to glance her way—reality hit her like sunlight cresting the new morning. Her heart stopped beating, bones unable to support her as she staggered forward, tripping over air and a shriek that may as well have ripped open her meatshirt.
Logan's frame hit the earth almost automatically. Without so much as a full breath arching his chest. Clawing through the dirt, harsh forest floor piked up her nailbeds. Ripped at her blood-stained skin. Blood from the man she had dismembered still warm and tacky between her fingers mingled with dirt and pine needles, felt like sin staining her soul. Sin and survival, who could tell the difference when her heart was clawing out of her chest?
Somewhere behind her, she heard the pistol hit the earth with a polite thud—-heard Laura's weight buckle in shock.
"Logan!"
Barely breathing, she hauled herself to her feet and would've flown had God designed it that way. In two shallow, burning heaves of air she skidded to a stop beside him, his limp form splayed onto the earth in a gruesome display. Hands skimming over his wounds, over the scarlet pools of blood around his chest—she didn't know where his blood started and stopped, where it had been contaminated with that of their enemies. It didn't matter.
Eyes moving to his face, her breath hitched heavily in her chest like the snap of a pistol's slide. Gnawing at her ribs like a rabid wolf, her gut rose to the back of her throat and she heaved—turning from him, she leaned away and vomited across the forest floor. Wicked ice rose up beneath her skin, violently rattling her limbs. Uncontrollably feverish, her teeth began to chatter, the sour sting of vomit lingering on her back teeth as she choked on the sob rewriting her soul.
"Logan!" Guttural, her shriek was animalistic. White hot rage. Pain, loss, disbelief consumed her like a rip current, carrying her out and back again. Pulling her under, drowning her in reality.
This can't be happening, no nono—Jesus, please…..not now, not Logan, please anyone else—isn't….this isn't fair….
Every stage of grief hit at once.
A long black train, pistoning her soul to hell and back. Whiplashing between reality and nightmare. For a moment she wondered if she had died, unable to note the difference between the living and dead—what was tangible and ill. She choked on air. Fought the ache in her lungs for it. Drowned in her own sticky saliva and vomit that wouldn't stop coming. Charred by the hot acid splashing the back of her throat again and again. Turned inside out, she counted every organ in her body all at once, function and purpose—their miserable failure, only to painfully jumpstart her back to life.
She screamed. Again and again and again and again until they cracked like broken hourglasses, spilling the sands of time loved, now lost. Her bones trembled with fury, white-hot lava that boiled over in a wellspring unidentified in her low parts. Animalistic pain gripped her like a master puppeteer, flinging her spine forward into a low, all-fours posture not far removed from that of an animal—ripping dirt from the earth, she flung handfuls of it in every direction. The toes of her boots ground into the dirt, leaving small ravines as she about-faced, vicious like a predator. Forecasting the forest floor, the next heartbeats.
Nothing but innocent eyes, aghast and horrified, stared back at her. Most dead, many still living. Still hoping.
But it was over. Cuts like a white-hot katana to the gut. "Get away from us, all of you!" Rage. Angry, otherworldy, mountainous rage. "Logan," she turned back to him, eyes surveying his splayed form, "enough of this!" Of course nothing but postmortem weight hung in the air, life seeping into the forest floor with every ounce of blood dripping from his veins.
Whatever strength the outburst had called for evaporated, the air out of her sails and asystole in her chest. Sinking to her knees, she clawed at her own skin, numb to anything but the earthquake of loss shaking her frame. Able to feel him slipping away, she could've watched his soul slip away if God had allowed it. Farther and farther, nothing else— the familiar sting of splitting skin between her knuckles, intimate agony of bone finding the air from beneath her living flesh. It was nothing, borderline unreal.
She may well have been all paralyzed, white noise.
Screaming, sobbing, shaking violently. Fighting the urge to keep vomiting out the very contents of her guts and failing, only to fight again. She shrieked until her throat closed, until words came in painful, unintelligent garbles only identified as sticky saliva, spit-stained utterances. Violent cold gnawed at her flesh, reminding her that it was spring in whatever God forsaken wood this was, and that she'd lost her coat somewhere in the fray—it kept her grounded, for all of a few heartbeats.
Slowly she came back to reality, to the borders beyond the immediate whiplash. Sentinel, all-shielding forest. Still, quiet air crisp and clean, reminding her she was alive with every pull into her chest. Youth and innocence pounding with every heartbeat that watched, waiting.
He would be furious at her for letting go, for losing control. People like them couldn't break, one finger on the pulse of the moment—people like them kept it together. In her mind's eye, she could feel him grab her by the back of her neck. Whirl her around, fight for her attention. Nose-to-nose, chest-to-chest, he'd get in her face and tell her to simmer the fuck down and get it together. People like us, we can't lose control, sweetheart—focus. Survive. Not for us, for them.
But what about you, Logan?
Wiping at the tears trying to cut away the guts and blood and gore on her face, she sank low on her knees. Strawman, unable to feel or think past the sting of cold air and pain in her limbs. Swallowing a breath, gagging on her own spit. His void expression, closed and quiet, face upturned. She followed—blue sky, crystalline blue sky and a gorgeous canopy of undying evergreen. Cumulus clouds, rolling by, shadowing them from the heavens. Maybe even God.
He didn't move. Already terrifyingly cold as she rested her hand against his arm. Nails biting into his flesh as she curled her fingers around once-living muscle, now little more than dead weight on the ground. Sputtering on a shallow whimper, she slipped her arms under him. Hauled his head to rest in her lap. He was astronomically heavy, it was painfully obvious. Eyes still far away and closed, her fingers carefully carded through his hair, still damp with sweat.
"Logan," her voice cracked, this time almost to a decibel she couldn't believe, "my Wolverine—please," Chin bowing to her chest, her shoulders earthquaking with another sob. Tears dripped from her face into his hair, her fingers combing them through in vain effort to wash him. Mary of Magdala had washed the feet of Christ with tears, redeeming her soul—perhaps this would redeem him, his life. Restore what had been so gutteraly ripped away.
He'd always said to be ready, she'd always tried to be. She wasn't. A thief in the night, this happened all too quickly. Too much left unsaid, untouched, unfelt.
"Don't leave me," fingers gently brushing over the hair on his face, hair that had made her chuckle just hours before as children had taken to him as their own little plaything. The look on his face at his own reflection had been priceless, rousted a giggle from her that tipped a smile on her lips. Now little more than pinpricks of what would be touch to numb hands, "I— how do I live without you, Logan," the truth, larger than life and snapping like the jaws of a frothing animal at her psyche, "Baby, baby please. I love you. I love you, I've always loved you, I love you—come back to me! Come back to the living—" every ounce of religion flooded to the surface like rising water to the delta, every seed of faith. All prayer; every bone. He could do this, she believed it—
"—to go. We have to leave, Miss Mare—he called for more men, we have to leave."
Foreign, the voice was plagued with naiveté. Leave? There was nowhere to go, nothing to live for. Her entire world was bleeding into the earth here on the forest floor. She wouldn't have felt an assault anyway, better to die paralyzed and numb than be ripped apart in a fight to live. Logan had died. Logan had—
"—Mare, Miss Mare. Please," Logan. She could hear him, even now, dead on the ground. His voice rapid fire in her ears, telling her to get up. Fight. Don't look back, push harder, survive. Get the fuck up, princess, and do what needs doing. Gaping like a fish out of water, her mouth opens and closes on words that aren't there. How does she do what needs doing without him? It doesn't feel possible, an anomaly.
A mutated form of living with no benefits, no hope.
My Wolverine," she doesn't realize she's actually said it until it suffocates under a gut wrenching wail. "LOGAN!"
His features, marred and dismantled, blur behind a veil of tears. Probably for the best—she couldn't look at it yet. Couldn't stomach the void in the center of his skull, taking from her everything that had mattered. One bullet. One adamantium bullet and her entire world had eviscerated, gutted of purpose. Everything that mattered. Would matter. The rest of her living days of joy. Gone, slipping between her fingers.
Helpless little hands grab at her arm. "Mrs. Howlett," it's pleading. Innocence, terrified purity. On the bleeding edge of desperation. Like a prayer, seeking redemption and revelation—revelation no longer beating in the chest of the dead, cold and still on the forest floor beneath her hands.
Her gaze casts to X-23, across the floor. Laura. Grief stricken, milkwhite with the phantom of shock etched across her much too young face. Guilt assailed her like a veil, a guilt she'd carry for the rest of her life—answers. X-23 would need answers, answers she didn't know if she'd ever have to give. Logan's last fight, his last purpose had been this young girl, getting her, getting them all to a new life. To Eden. His last valiancy, wrapped up in a little girl that wasn't even theirs.
How do I live without you, Logan?
She lowers to brush her nose against his. Moving slowly, ever so slowly to gently kiss his lips, like he's glass and might break. Because he has, has before. His lips are cold already, waxy. Chapped like they always are. He's dead, but he feels and smells so much like the living. Any second now, kissing him upside down, his fingers would dig into her ribs and make her scream with life, with laughter. He'd tease her and tell her to act her age, not really realizing that to them, age means nothing.
Instead all she tastes is blood and sweat and dirt, cocktailed with her own tears that nearly choke the life out of her lungs. Her fingers curl into the flesh of his face, as if it'll pull him back. Snap him out of this charade of forensic, anatomical ceasefire that's ripped him away. It doesn't. It isn't the answer, doesn't put two and two together and never would. Touching him like this never would.
Logan had been her answer. To prayer, to life, to happiness, to love, absolution. The object of her life's purpose. He'd been the light of her life, a gift of heaven. Loved her viciously, the only one to do so—the only one to lend part of himself to.
Set aside for her, from the very foundations of the earth. Wholly perceived, divinely goliathed. He'd taught her everything—about him, about life, about mutation and life's purposes within the uncertain. Taken her hand and shown her the most reckless, passionate, whole way to live and let life—how to breathe again. How to love. How to feel and be and move. He'd given her everything, would give her anything. Fierce, loyal. Tortured, stitched back together with resolve and determination, hope. Magnificent, undivided, indestructible. Power personified—
—I'm sorry, Logan—
—a Wolverine.
