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tomhockstetter7-111 · 12 days ago

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I think it’s so funny that this is my favourite chapter I’ve written and the reader isn’t even in it!

Highest Form of Empathy - Chapter 1.5 (Logan)

2k+ words

“And every night, he looks up at the sky and sees the moon and howls her name. But, he can never touch her, again.”

CW: Dissociation, Trauma, Angst, someone give this man a hug SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 4

No beta. We die like Logan Earth - 10005

Masterlist

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Late December, 2005

Alberta, Canada

Logan walked down the street; hands shoved in his pockets. Try as he did, he couldn't call on a coherent thought. All he could manage were flashes of faces, gunshots, a man screaming...it sounded like him. He didn't like it.

Jean's visage, always the reliable go-to, conjured in his mind's eye. Her red hair pulled into a twist, showing off the sharp angles of her face. Damn, he missed that face. He missed how, despite his incessant flirting, patient eyes always stared back at him, even as he annoyed her from the exam table their first meeting. Patient even while telling him how much she didn't want him; how much she loved Scott. His chest ached. It was faint, but just enough to break through the newfound silence. It was something constant, something concrete.

Crossing the street, he ran into the nearest liquor store, slowing to a stop as he located the whiskeys. He stared, trying to check the alcohol content, the prices, the warnings, but nothing registered. It felt like someone set his brain to factory reset. No matter how he tried, blinking away the blurry vision, he couldn't help but feel like a stranger in his body. Every now and then he would see things, hear voices; a man's loving eyes, the smell of saltwater, the laugh of a boy...a woman's voice. There were no words. But, he found that if he closed his eyes he could hear the cadence. A blurry figure just barely came into view-

"Hey, buddy." A man's voice jolted him from his thoughts. He looked to the aisle's end to see what he assumed was the store clerk, some older heavy-set guy with a short, white beard. "We close in fifteen."

All Logan did was nod before the clerk walked away. Checking the shelf again, he grabbed a bottle of with a big "LTD" across the label and made his way to the checkout desk. He watched as the clerk rang him up.

"So, where ya from?"

Logan looked up to meet his eyes. "Around," was all he could muster. He watched the number appear on the cash register with more focus than was probably required before digging into his jacket for his wallet.

"Careful with that. Strong stuff." The clerk took the money before Logan reached to grab the bottle. "It's a nice jacket ya got there. Used to have one just like it when I was yer age," the clerk said, catching Logan's attention. "My buddy used to have one just like it in '64." He sounded bitter when he said it. Must be a painful memory.

Logan smirked as he glanced down at it. "Yeah um...an old friend gave it to me." He wasn't sure why he said that. But, it felt more or less correct. It was with him when he came to that day, alone on the island. At the time, it smelled faintly of air freshener and sage. "Well, have a good one." He saluted the man with the bottle as he headed out.

"Stay safe, now, ya hear?"

Logan walked into the hotel room and dropped the bottle down on the kitchen table with a loud thud before plopping onto the chair next to it. The curtains were wide open to the night sky, letting the moonlight stream in. Twisting the cap off, he brought the bottle to his lips. But, just before taking a sip, he stopped. He frowned, staring at the caramel-colored liquid inside.

When did his drinking become so habitual? When did it lose meaning? It worked great to functionally shut down all the baseless voices and torment in his head. Not to mention the hell Jean's death wreaked on his world. It just became routine. But, now it was quiet. Head empty, heart beating a steady pace — with nothing to silence, why bother?

Scooting his chair away from the table, Logan left the bottle and walked to the window. He pressed his arm to the glass, leaning his forehead against it, as he looked out to the street. What was different? Everything felt normal until...

He lifted his eyes to look up to the night sky. The moon was full. In his dazed state he saw her, just at the back of his mind: the girl from the bar.

He didn't plan to fuck anyone that night. It just happened. Despite the poorly hidden circles under her eyes, she seemed so confident and lively, and she drew him in like a damn siren, getting him to shove his instincts aside, somehow. But, the way she looked at him hadn't escaped his notice, almost like she knew something was wrong.

In the end, it didn't matter. He made the offer, and she took it. It was something to take his frustration out on, some sort of relief. Maybe it was a relief for her, too. But, ever the gentleman, he still kissed her after. Hell! Of course he did. She was too adorable, the way she looked up at him with that blissful smile. How could he not? But, when he did, it was like the world quieted. It was peaceful at first, her plush, gentle lips being all he noticed. It even made his heart pound a little. But, it all came crashing down when he saw a face, felt terror, heard the screams and sounds of canon fire, felt the blood on his skin. Then, as quickly as the visions came, they disappeared, leaving an eerie silence in their wake.

What did she do to him?

The following morning bled into noon. Logan laid in bed staring at the ceiling, whiskey long abandoned on the table. All night and into the morning, things would come back in flashes. Some were familiar. Most weren't. Closing his eyes, he saw the faces of men in helmets, clearly doomed to die. He saw a man's freshly shaved face visiting a child's room. The room was old, probably from a few centuries ago. He saw a boy, maybe fourteen years old, with sharp canines and long nails smiling down at him. Then, there was the woman again. Her face and voice were still unclear. But, he saw her clothes. The cowboy boots paired with the white knit sweater were especially endearing, and he couldn't help smiling when he saw her surrounded by kids in front of a wooden building. Then, he saw the lab. He felt the agonizing pain of needles drilling into his skin, through the muscle, and down to the bone. The lab...the lab he recognized.

Alkali Lake.

He shot up out of bed with a newfound determination. Throwing his shoes on, he made his way to the motorbike, stolen from Scott...again, making sure to grab his jacket on the way out. He wasn't entirely sure where he was going. He just knew north. North would take him to where he needed to be.

Vaguely remembering the coordinates Chuck had given him only a few years ago, he finally found it, just as the sun was setting, too. Stopping his bike by the road, he trudged his way through the trees and snow to where the lab once stood. The area was filled with water now.

He could still hear the rushing of water as the dam broke, the freezing cold coming to claim Stryker's life. A well-deserved death, even if he didn't know the full extent of the man’s horrors.

As he walked along the forest edge, making his way to the shore, he felt his heart clench.

He could still hear Jean's words to Scott. It was a simple goodbye. She hadn't even bothered to give Logan a glance as he screamed for Kurt to bring her back. Surely there had to have been another way. She deserved more, better. Not that it mattered, anymore.

He listened to the crunch of rocks under his boots as he watched the lake that, strangely, hadn't frozen over in the winter cold, not even a little. If anything, it was pretty lively. Small crabs skittered along in the shallows, and fish ran to deeper water as his shadow hovered over them.

A glint of light caught his eye. As if fate hadn't been enough of a cryptic asshole, there sat his old dog tags just out of reach of the water. He stopped in front of them and leant down to grab the broken chain, seeing the engravings on the metal.

Wolverine. Logan. Number 45825243 T78 A.

He lifted them to eye level and furrowed his brow as he examined the second of the two. He always wondered why it said "Wolverine". As far as he knew, he was only ever "Weapon X" to Stryker. In the brief times they did interact, it never occurred to him to ask.

'Wolverine.' He repeated the word in his mind over and over. 'Wolverine. Wolverine.' Slowly, his inner voice morphed from its lower octave to something less gruff, something more feminine. 'The Wolverine.' He heard it clear as day.

"Que Qu'atsu," said a playful woman's voice. "It means 'The Wolverine'."

His breath caught in his throat as it all came back.

He saw the blue eyes of his father looked him over as his fever broke. His friend, an older boy named Victor, sat in the chair with jealous eyes. Downstairs he heard a man screaming for his mother's name. There was blood everywhere, and his heart sank when the light left his father's eyes. His claws, made of bone at the time, sunk into the abdomen of the man who put the bullet in his father's chest, the man that claimed to be his real father. The eyes of his mother, his first taste of pure disgust for what he was, burned into him. It sank in that day just how unwanted he was.

He remembered the wars. All of them. Each one, worse than the last, sent shivers down his spine, tearing him to bits. Young boys, so many still in school, carted away year after year like pigs for the slaughter. And, he was helpless to save them.

Vividly, he watched himself exiting a plane, no one sure how he survived the nuclear disaster of Nagasaki. His heart ached as he remembered Victor waiting at the gate with open arms and, animalistic as always, pressed his forehead to Logan's like a wolf would its pack member, more than ready to share a drink with his little brother. The little brother he swore to protect.

Then, Vietnam. And, Stryker, the one who made him the weapon he is now. He couldn't fucking stand that man. Logan was never good with authority, disobeying at every turn, thinking he knew best. But, Stryker…so ready to destroy, it was vile. He couldn't watch it, couldn't be a part of it. Not anymore. So, he walked away, ignoring the calls for him to come back. He wasn't an animal like them. He never would be.

Kayla taught him that. Her voice rang loud in his ears. "What you have is a gift." Despite his feelings, he wanted to badly to believe her. He felt the warmth of her hands on his chest, and the flutter in his stomach when she would fall asleep in his shirts. He saw her face clear as day, and her natural scent crept to the surface of his mind, washing over him like a summer breeze. Her face smiled at him from the car. Her eyes cut deep into his core every time she looked at him.

He loved her. God, did he love her.

The pebbles of the shore crunched under his knees, echoing in the surrounding area as his hands gripped at nothing. His eyes stung, head throbbing as he remembered the look of her body lying in the rubble of the island's facility. She looked so foreign to him, then, his damaged brain refusing to mend the pieces together. She deserved more. A proper burial. A proper send off. A proper fucking goodbye.

His throat began to burn. Black swarms of birds flew from the surrounding trees as he let out a desperate, guttural roar. His body felt so stiff, yet it seared like fire as he released his woes into the now vacated space, pain and devastation, long since locked away, now surfacing like boiling water with a vengeance. Catching his breath, his gaze shot up, vision tunneled to a small dot as his rage took over.

She was gone.

Kill. He needed to kill something. Someone. But, they were all gone. Victor having fallen from the Statue of Liberty and Stryker drowned and eaten away by fish. Well-deserved deaths? No. They were far too quick, too merciful than what those two deserved.

Despite this, he ran, claws unsheathed and teeth bared, punching at wood and snow, slicing up tree after tree, each falling down and leaving devastation in its wake. Any animal too slow to notice being unlucky enough to be trapped and crushed under them. He thought he saw flashes of black fur, something attacking him. His claws ripped through it with ease, serving well to protect him, but he barely noticed when there was only red in his sight and heat under his flesh.

She was gone forever.

He screamed, and slashed as animals in his path scattered, sky above darkening, illuminated only by the rising moon. Stryker was dead. Victor was dead. She was still gone. Nothing would bring her back. Nothing would fix the whole left in his chest. His body, suddenly heavy as led, fell. He buried his face in the snow as he yelled for her, yelled for Kayla. His Kayla. The only one to accept him for who he was. The only person in this god forsaken world to see him as something other than a fucking mindless monster, something human. He yelled for her to come back. Don't leave him here.

Exhausted he looked up to the moon. He could almost swear he saw her face in the light. Chest heaving and jacket falling from his shoulders, he wailed, nearly howling, at the blooming night sky above him. All he wanted was a normal fucking life. Was it too much to ask? Just a normal life away from the violence and chaos. Away from guilt. Away from destruction. Away from death.

She was gone.

She was dead.

He never even said goodbye.

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A/N: Merry Christmas...? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wrote this to "What Could Have Been" by Sting

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