Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What do you think we’ll do, when the war is over?” Logan asks Victor, the two of them hiding out under a canopy of trees. The ground and air is wet around them, and each breath feels heavier than normal. Victor doesn’t know where they are, but he doesn't really care. A mission is a mission, and he’s got Logan with him.

“What do you mean?” Victor responds, moving his gun to the left so he can step closer to Logan on his right. He brushes their arms together, and smiles when Logan presses back. “We’ll fight the next one.”

Logan sighs, a scowl on his face. It’s one he makes so frequently that Victor knows exactly what to do. He leans down to kiss Logan, pressing his body into his until Logan has to back up, pushed up against a tree. Logan makes a pleased sound, a hand going up to Victor’s throat.

And then- 

Victor Creed wakes up. 

Nostalgia is hell of a drug, a morphine drip when the world is trying to kill you. 

It’s funny, in a horrible way, the way the world is now. Victor was always curious to see what everyone would be like, with their fears bubbling to the surface, with their blood on their hands. Everyone would be dead, it turns out. 

Curiosity killed the cat, he thinks bitterly. 

No new mutants, any cause or rebelling not worth the dirt they were bled in, and all the olds ones, weak now, and then those killed by their own hero, their so-called savior.

Even Wolverine. Logan . Damn runt went and got himself killed, and for what? Playing hero, getting into those stupid comic books? What good did that do for anyone? The world is still shit- more shit, even, than it used to be. The mutants are gone, the humans win. It's not like Victor even cared about other mutants, but its a real rub, isn't it?

Game, set, match. 

Victor sighs.

It’s just been him in the Wyoming woods for the past year or so, ever since the world has truly gone to shit. He used to be in Canada, but something there set him off, made him think too much of Logan- he killed a whole town that day. The blood was always good in his mouth, on his tongue, but it wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Victor had stood in the middle of town, blood soaking his clothes and the snow covered ground. It looked beautiful, and it did nothing for him.

So. Wyoming.

It’s almost nostalgic, the off the grid little cabin he has, if it wasn’t for the way he absolutely hates it. Though, that too can be sentimental, if he tries hard enough. 

The only thing he has to tie him to the outside world is the tiny radio he keeps in his kitchen; Victor doesn’t know why he listens to it, why he keeps it. What drives him to listen to the stories of humans dismissing mutants as old news, or the updates on natural disasters, or anything at all? 

(He knows why he has the radio. He was lying; he was so good at lying to other people, never tried to lie to himself. Didn’t see the point. He knows why he does everything he does, he knows exactly who he is and why. He has the radio because it’s the only time he can hear a voice that’s not his own.)

Maybe he should be dead, like the rest of ‘em. He knows that most would want it, anyway. 

But hey- fuck ‘em. 

“Fuck ‘em,” Victor murmurs to the sky.

The sky doesn’t answer back.

Victor has the radio on low, mostly just so the silence doesn’t drown him before the liquor he’s drinking does. He’s not really listening to it, not sure even what station it’s on, but he perks up when he hears, ‘Multiple parallel lacerations’.

Hope, like nostalgia, is a dangerous drug. 

Victor gets up from his kitchen table, turning the radio volume up before he realizes he does it, crouching down in front to listen.

“...to major arteries, including the femoral. The thoracic was slashed in those same parallel lines, with hands and legs missing as well. With this attack, we really must ask ourselves- what animal could cause that? I, for one, believe the long extinct tiger may not be as extinct as the government-”

Victor turns the radio off. It didn’t sound like a tiger to him at all. It sounded like a wolverine. 

But that- that couldn't be true, could it? The X-Men are dead. Logan was dead. He’s been dead for 552 days, give or take a few. 

The descriptions though- he knows how Logan kills. He knows that animal. And it sounded like Logan, albeit more messy. It could be him. Logan was so hard to kill, just like him. He might be back. 

Victor missed his birthday last year. And this year. 

Standing up, Victor makes a decision. He’s always been good at finding Logan. 

It takes three days. 

He spends most of that time near non stop driving, his windows rolled down to get a whiff of the runt, but he finally manages to find Logan scent in a seemingly random part of Oklahoma City. 

It leads him to a casino, with everyone on the ground; unconscious, throwing up, or crying in pain, some clawing at their heads. He even sees a few he thinks are dead. Victor can hear an ambulance heading towards them. 

What the hell you got yourself into, Logan? Victor thinks with humor, passing a man sobbing, not for himself, but for the young girl he holds in his arms. 

And that’s when he sees him, rushing around the corner and heading straight towards Victor. 

Logan looks…horrible, to be honest. He’s older, so much older than Victor thought was possible. Victor doesn’t really remember when he was born, and Logan had even less of an idea last Victor knew, but he knew that he had at least a decade or so on the kid. Logan shouldn't look older than him. Logan’s hair, once a dark brown, is the color of sand, grey and white sprinkled in it like ash. There’s deep bruises around his eyes, a scar- a scar - around his temple. Small, barely there blood stains seeping through his shirt.  Blood in his eyes, and on his knuckles. At least the latter was familiar. 

Logan looks horrible, but the sight of him still makes something in Victor’s chest hurt. Victor has to tamp down the ingrained, automatic response in him to cause Logan pain because of it. 

“Logan,” Victor breathes, equally embarrassed and relieved. 

Logan’s eyes widen, and Victor then notices a little kid gripping the back of his jacket, squaring her shoulders and glaring at Victor. Logan’s hands flex where he is holding onto the quilt covered body of- well shit. 

That’s Professor X. Old bastard wasn’t dead after all. 

“Victor,” Logan responds, more warning growl than welcome. The little kid holds on so tight to the back of Logan’s jacket that Victor can see it pull slightly off his frame. 

Victor can tell the runt is thinking of attacking him, planning on where he can put the body of his Professor down, where he can jump Victor so the kid wouldn’t get in it, all the usual stuff. It would be almost funny, if it also didn’t make Victor feel so damn tired. 

“I don’t have time for this.” Logan tells him. 

“Gettin’ hunted again?” Victor questions. He can smell guns and explosives nearby, and doesn’t doubt that the answer is ‘yes’. 

“Victor,” Logan snarls. Victor sees the kid make a similar expression, although silent.

Oh. 

Logan has a kid, a real kid, not one of his stupid students. Victor wonders, in the same way he wonders about all the loved ones of Logan he’s killed, who the brat’s mom is.

What the hell has Logan been up to? How could Victor not know? The kid is what? 10? He was in Logan’s life then, he was there, how the fuck did he have a kid and he didn’t know?

Why the fuck does Logan look like that, why the fuck is he here? What the hell did his runt get into? 

“C’mon,” Victor decides, taking a step towards them. “Let me help with whatever ya doin’.”

Logan glares at him. “You must think I’m stupid, Creed.”

“Nah,” Victor denies. “Yer smart enough to know that you shouldn’t trust me as far as you can spit a whale. But you also are smart enough to know that you look like a stiff breeze could knock you over, and ol’ Victor here is as strong as ever. You got a dead man in your arms, and a brat at yer heels. You need all the help ya can get, pup.”

Logan’s eyes flick from Victor to the kid. He licks his lips, looking behind them. The ambulance- cops, too- are getting closer. They’ll be here any minute. 

“We have a ride.” Logan argues with him.

“You don’t have me.”

“Usually that’s a good thing.”

“Yer right to be suspicious, but what else do you got?” Victor tries. He’s so close to Logan, after what feels like 100 years. He can’t let him get away. “I can smell them comin’ for ya. Can you?” He glances at the Professor’s corpse. “I also got a truck with a cover in the back for your old man.”

Logan’s face breaks a bit, a sliver of despair peering through the rage. “Yer a fuckin bastard, Creed, you know that?”

“Yeah, ‘course I do.”

Logan takes a deep breath, and then a step towards Victor, his kid still holding on to his jacket. “When- if you double cross me, Victor, I swear to fuckin’ God-”

“Yer always worrying about the future, aren’t ya, kid?” Victor shakes his head. Logan could never just be , always worrying, always fretting. It’s a surprise he didn’t overwork his healing factor into a heart attack years ago. Victor turns his back to them, looking over his shoulder as he leads them to his truck. “C’mon, live in the present with me.”

“Fuck you,” Logan growls at him as he follows. 

“You can fight me about it later.” Victor shoots back, opening up the bed of his truck, and taking the dead man from Logan’s arms, more or less ignoring but following Logan’s hissed commands of ‘Careful !’ 

Covered and secured, Victor shuts the tailgate, and gets in the driver’s seat, Logan and his kid already in. “So, where we headin’, runt?” Victor asks as he quickly gets the hell out of dodge. “And who’s the kid?”

Logan doesn’t answer him, surprise surprise, so Victor looks at him, only half paying attention to the road now. Logan’s hands are on his face, shaking, a quiver going down his spine as well. He looks at Victor through his fingers, as if even in this moment of- weakness? Runt’s a lot, but weak never really fit him- fatigue, he thinks he still has to watch out for Victor. 

“I’ll take you back to my place if ya don’t answer.” Victor threatens. He’s bluffing; there’s something almost humiliating about the thought of Logan at his house in Wyoming. 

Logan shakes his head, dropping his hands. He glances at the back of the truck, to his daughter, Victor assumes, before answering. “Somewhere near water,” he croaks. “I gotta bury Chuck.”

Not looking at his daughter, then. 

“Sure,” Victor agrees easily, turning back to the road. He rolls down his window and sniffs. Nothing that smells like a body of water- mud, wet grass, fish, things like that- but this is as good of a direction as any, unless Logan wants to talk and tell him where they’re going. They’ll hit water eventually. “So, good ol’ Professor did a bad, bad thing, did he? Back at that casino? Did ya have to kill him?”

Behind him, Logan’s daughter growls. Victor turns back to look at her and hisses. She doesn’t even flinch. Brat. She raises her fist as if about to punch him, but Logan strikes first, grabbing her wrist. “Stop that!” He snaps at her, before turning to Victor. “He had a fuckin’ seizure.”

Victor hums. Made sense. “He was what, 100? Hell, metal head didn’t even make it that long, and that bastard made us think he would live even longer than us, didn’t he?”

“97. Stop talking.” Logan lets go of his daughter’s wrist and sits back in his seat. Victor glances at the rearview mirror, and sees her glaring at them both. He smiles with his fangs, and she blinks in surprise. 

“So, what you been up to, pup?” Victor asks cheerfully. He really does look like shit. Victor can’t think of anything in the past few years that could have done that to him; sure, everyone that Logan knew is dead, but hell, not the first time, was it? And all those scars the softie keeps are inside, nothing to show on his skin. 

“We’re not doing small talk .” Logan replies disdainfully. He crosses his arms across his chest, almost petulant. 

“No? Just gonna sit there in silence til we find pops a sweet little restin’ place?”

Logan doesn’t respond. He turns on the radio, as if that could drown out Victor’s voice.

“. ..some noting a similarity to the incident almost two years ago in Westchester, New York that left 50 dead, and twice that many injured- ” 

Logan slams the radio off so hard that it dents the plastic frame around the screen. 

“I’ve got a real nice place in Wyoming.” Victor tells him, unable to stop smiling a little at the tantrum, glancing out the corner of his eyes. Logan never was good with his big emotions. 

 Logan doesn’t respond, doesn't even look at him. 

“Heard about a bunch of folk killed somewhere down south, torn apart. They thought it was an animal. Thought the wrong animal though, didn’t they? It was you .”

Logan doesn’t respond. 

“And here I was, thinkin’ my favorite little runt was dead, for nearly two years now. Lotta birthdays we missed, pup.” Victor keeps his tone light, near friendly, even though he knows it does the opposite effect on Logan. He truly doesn’t want to fight, at least before he gets answers. Though, even then… doesn’t look like Logan could put up much of a fight against him, even less than before. One push and he’s in the dirt. 

A dance isn’t worth anything if it's over after the first key.

“If you came here for a fight, drop us off now.” Logan snarls. “I told you, I don’t have time for this.”

“No fight,” Victor promises. Another sniff; He smells water. He gets into the right lane to take the next exit. “C’mon, I ain’t gonna kick your ass in front of your daughter. Who’s her mom anyway?”

Doesn’t really matter- she’s probably dead already. Victor just wishes he was the one to kill her.

“End of the world, and you still want to ruin my life?” 

“Is that what I do?” Victor questions. “Or is it, end of the world, and you still don’t wanna admit what the fuck you are?”

“I know what I am.” Logan snaps. 

“Yeah, you do,” Victor agrees with a smile. “An’ you hated it. How ‘bout now?”

 Logan growls, deep and animalistic, and Victor’s smile grows. “There’s my guy.” 

“I’m not your fuckin’ guy.”

Not anymore, Victor thinks. And hey, he’s never been an optimist, but he’s feeling real good about something right now. He thinks he can change that for the better. 

“Where we goin’ after we bury the professor?” Victor asks again. 

“Stop askin’ me that.”

“Start answerin’ me, then.”

“Kiss my ass.”

Victor, for the sake of keeping his ‘no fight’ promise, decides not to respond to that. “Kid,” He calls back to Logan’s daughter. “Where we headed?”

The kid reaches for her backpack, digging through it, but Logan snaps again before she can get anything- hopefully an address -out of it. “Jesus Christ, I don’t know, okay?”

Victor can see the kids head snap up at that, a terribly familiar snarl creeping onto her face. She growls at Logan, and he glares at her. “It doesn’t fuckin’ exist !” 

The kid shakes her head rapidly, getting increasingly upset. 

“What doesn’t?” Victor asks, getting off the highway and into a smaller road. 

“This fuckin’ make-believe world. Eden. She got it from a fuckin’ comic book.” Logan tells him, not breaking the glare he has on his daughter. “It doesn’t fuckin’ exist, and so we’re not fuckin’ going .“

The kid yells at him, wordless screams of anger, too loud in the small space of the car. Apparently Logan thinks so too, as he shouts, “Shut up!”

She stops yelling, but her face is still that snarl. Makes Victor think of young cats fighting their ma. 

“Okay,” Victor says simply, turning off the road and driving through a semi decent dirt road through some trees. “Tell me more about whatever this is about.”

“Victor,” Logan warns, turning his glare onto him. “Drop it.”

“Have you ever known me to drop something once I get my teeth in it?”

Logan rubs at his eyes again. Victor pulls up to a small abandoned lake. It looks peaceful, he’s sure Logan would appreciate it. 

“You got a shovel?” Logan asks him. 

“‘Course I do.”

“‘Course you do.”

Logan doesn’t want Victor to dig the grave, but also doesn’t want him to hold Professor X at all. He seems protective of the corpse, which Victor doesn’t get. There’s nothing in there that was once the man Logan knew; just a shell, a bag, a sack of flesh. 

Still, Logan touches the center of the dead man’s chest as if he can still get hurt. 

Logan carries the corpse next to the hole he’s digging, and Victor watches from the now near empty truck bed. 

The kid stands hesitantly between Victor and Logan, as if unsure where to go. There’s no tears in her eyes when she looks at the Prof, which Victor thinks is odd; from his experience, kids tend to cry a lot, especially when facing death. 

There’s only rage in her eyes, even more when she looks up and stares at Logan. 

What the Hell happened to them?

“What have ya been doing these past few years?” Victor calls out to Logan, watching as he takes off both his collared shirt and long sleeve, leaving him in his usual tank.

Logan ignores him, and starts digging. The kid watches Logan, before twitching closer to Victor. She doesn’t take her eyes off Logan throughout it, scanning the man with an emotionless face. 

“Where is this Eden place supposed to be, kid?” Victor asks, not looking away from Logan, and a particular pearl of sweat that falls down his temple, his neck, and rests in his clavicle. Logan’s arms flex with each movement, showcasing both strong muscles and scars. It’s a dichotomy he’s not used to seeing on Logan; he’s not sure how he feels about it. 

 The kid’s eyes widen when she turns to Victor, not out of fear, but excitement. She gets closer to him, putting her backpack next to him and rummaging through it. She pulls out a thick envelope, covered in blood, and hands it to him. Tearing his eyes off of Logan, Victor sniffs the envelope- blood not the kid’s or Logan’s- before looking at the writings on it. 

“North Dakota, huh?” 

The kid nods her head eagerly, tapping at the envelope. 

“Laura!” Logan snaps suddenly. Victor looks up and the kid spins around to face him. He’s paused mid dig to glare at them, arms shaking; either from rage, or weariness, Victor doesn’t know. “Get over here!”

The kid- Laura -doesn’t move, just glares at Logan with aversion. 

“Just chattin’ with the kit, no need to bite her head off.” Victor says breezily, honing in on the way Logan's hands flex on the shovel handle, opening three cuts on his knuckles. A thin bead of blood falls down from the middle knuckle, dropping into the grave he’s digging.

 Can’t even heal those now, can he?

“I don’t want you talkin’ to her.” Logan tells him.

“Then you talk to me, runt.” Victor replies, hopping off the truck bed and strutting towards Logan. He stops in front of him, Logan in his half dug grave, and the Professor between them. “So: What the fuck have you done?”

Logan, staring straight into his eyes with his upper lip raised in a snarl, doesn’t respond for so long that Victor starts to think he’s not gonna. “Takin’ care of Charles, mostly.” 

“Yeah? How’d it feel to take care of the Mutant Messiah?”

“ Don’t fuckin’ call him that, asshole.” 

“He acted like it, back then. Called us next step in God’s plan. Or was that Magneto? You know, it’s funny. I sometimes forget which one said what, who thought what. Magneto hated the damn humans, yeah, but which one thought it was all part of a greater plan? Who said we had to be better than we were- and what did that mean to them?” 

“Got real into philosophy in your old age, didn’t ya, Creed?” Logan sneers. He’s still shaking. It’s not from weariness- or at least not only because of weariness- or rage, Victor realizes: this is Logan when he’s so filled with remorse that he doesn’t know what to do with it. In the past, it would always turn to different emotions, ones Victor could handle with more ease; anger, disgust, contempt. He wonders which one it’ll turn to now. 

“You know me, a real thinker.” Victor shoots back smoothly. “What the hell you thinkin’ about, pup? What’s rummaging around in that lil head of yours?”

Logan doesn’t respond right away, although Victor didn't expect him to. He surprises Victor though, by saying, “He called me a disappointment.”  

Victor didn’t see that coming. Logan says it like he’s admitting something, but not answering Victor’s question. Victor looks into the waxy face of the man at his feet. The quilt is up to his chin, revealing his open mouth and blank eyes. “Hm. Why’d he do that?”

“I said we’re God’s mistake.”

Victor laughs softly, surprised. “You believe in God?” He didn’t know that. 

 Logan shrugs, suddenly looking even more exhausted. He leans more heavily on the shovel, avoiding Victor’s eyes. 

“C’mon, who cares what a God would even think of us?" Victor asks. 

“He did. Kurt did. Kitty did.”

“Yeah, and that helped them a lot, didn’t it, cupcake?”

Logan closes his eyes, asking tiredly, “Why are you helpin’, Victor?” 

“I’m bored,” Victor answers, a truth, but not the reason. ‘Course it’s not the reason. Logan should know that. He didn’t do all he did for Logan, all he did to Logan, to stave off boredom . 

“Bad things happen when you’re bored.”

Victor hums in agreement, a wide smile on his face. “Yeah, ain’t it a blast?” He gestures to the shovel in Logan’s hands. “Give me that, pup. I feel like ya kid could beat yer ass right now.”

“She could,” Logan groans, shaking his head. Victor wonders if he sees Laura perk up at that. “But I have to do this.”  

“That cross feel heavy on your shoulders, or what?” Victor grabs the shovel, not taking it out of Logan’s hands, not yet. “Sit down, runt.”

“ I can’t. ” Logan hisses at him. He rips the shovel out of Victor’s hands, and goes back to digging. “I can’t.”

“You don’t always gotta be a damn savior , kid-”

“I’m not being a savior, I’m being a decent-”

“Oh, decent, are ya?” Victor takes the shovel away from Logan now. “Since when?”

Logan punches him in the face. 

It hurts; Victor can’t pretend that it doesn’t. Logan seems more breakable now, but he’s still strong, and he’s still got those metal bones. Victor feels his nose crack a bit, and then immediately heal. 

He growls at Logan, picking him up from the front of his shirt and throwing him down next to the body of his Professor. He’s pissed, but in a way he can control. The anger is soothed a bit by how weak Logan’s punch was. It hurt, but not like it should.

Laura makes a sound, some sort of yell, but she doesn’t rush towards them. Victor gives her a brief look, sees her scan the both of them as if looking to make sure she knew who her enemy was. 

“I don’t know if you got the news, sweetpea,” Victor says to Logan, who stays on the ground, wind knocked out of him and seething. “But there’s no sides anymore; Just people survivin’. So if you wanna go back to playing big bad cat and scary wolverine, let me know, but until then, how about you accept some fuckin’ help ?”

“I hate you,” Logan growls. Victor believes him. While Victor would prefer Logan’s feelings veer more on the other side of the spectrum, he doesn’t really mind Logan hating him- At least Logan feels strongly about him. 

“Who doesn’t,” Victor replies, picking up the shovel off the ground.

He digs a grave for the Professor, Logan sitting on the ground next to the corpse. Laura comes and sits next to him, a good two feet of distance between them. Logan refuses to let Victor drop Xavier in the grave, demanding he do it himself, as well as burying him. Victor, feeling like he won by forcing Logan to let him dig the damn hole, decides not to fight him on this. 

Laura gets up to stand next to him, closer than she was sitting with Logan. She’s not close enough to brush her tiny shoulders against Victor, but she’s close enough that he can feel her body heat. He wonders if she’s trying to get comfort from him. Strange.

Logan uses the shovel almost like a cane when he finishes burying the Professor, hobbling up to them. He stands next to Laura, staring at the grave he and Victor made. 

“Well,” he croaks. “It’s got water, and…and it’s…it’s got water-”  Logan shudders, knees shaking, and Victor barely has enough time to catch him before Logan drops. The shovel hits the ground with Victor, Logan in his arms, the runt’s temple pressed against Victor’s chin. Victor can feel his whole body shake. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Chuck, I’m sorry-” Logan sobs this over and over again, seemingly unaware of anything else around him besides the dirt pile in front of him and his own guilt. His hands dig into the ground below them, fresh dirt burying him to his knuckles. 

“Pup,” Victor tries, unsure what to do with this. He’s not used to Logan being this heartbroken, not used to Logan not leaning into more acceptable forms of expression like violence and revulsion. 

Laura comes up from behind them, and places a hesitant hand on Logan’s back, crouching so she could face him. She catches Logan’s eyes and he stares at her, wide eyes. She stares back as if she’s trying to tell him something. If she is, it’s something Victor doesn’t understand. She puts her free hand over Logan’s in the dirt, tiny fingers curling around his wrist, an imitation of holding hands. 

“Fuck,” Logan curses, breaking away from their touch. He heads back to the car, slamming the passenger seat after he climbs in, leaving Victor and Laura on the ground, in the dirt.

“He okay?” Victor asks Laura, knowing the answer. He just wonders if she does.

Laura shakes her head. Good, so she does know. 

Victor gets up and goes back to the car, Laura close at his heels. Logan has his face in his hands when Victor gets in, but he quickly drops them. 

“So,” Victor starts the car once Laura gets in the back seat, pulling out back towards the dirt road. “North Dakota?”

“We’re not goin’ to North Dakota.” Logan tells him. Victor waits a second, but just like he thought, Logan doesn’t actually tell him where they would be going, if not fuckin’ North Dakota. 

Victor feels a pull on his sleeve from behind him, and he quickly looks back at Laura to see what she wants. Face serious, she shows him… a comic book.

“What’s that?”

“That’s fuckin’ Eden, Creed.” Logan answers, grabbing the comic book away from Laura. Victor can see a drawing of Professor X holding coordinates, the same ones on the bloody envelope. “Her nurse made this shit all up, read to many fuckin’ comic books, made Laura believe in Fantasyland. You hear that?” Logan turns to Laura, waving the comic book in her face. “Doesn’t exist.“

She glares and growls at him, swiping the comic book back. 

“Nurse?” Victor questions, latching onto that. “What the hell is goin’ on here?”

With a deep sigh, Logan tells him. 

“So, she’s a clone?” Victor asks when Logan has finished telling him the story, glancing at the girl from the rearview mirror again. She scowls. 

“No. Yes. I don’t know. She’s my daughter.”

Victor scoffs. “Obviously.” 

Logan just sneers at him. 

Laura tugs on Victor’s sleeve again. He looks at her through the rearview mirror, and meets her pleading eyes. They don’t do anything to move Victor’s heart, but still…

Victor pulls over on the side of the road to properly face Logan.

“What the fuck are you-”

“I think we should go to North Dakota.”

Logan rears his head back in shock. “What? Why the fuck? I’m not gonna risk our life to take the kid to a place that doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, yeah? What the fuck else is there to do? Wanna drop the lil pup off on the side of the road and get outta here?” Victor mocks. Logan won’t, he knows he won’t, but he also knows that Logan needs to hear it be a suggestion before he realizes he won’t.

Laura growls again, glaring at him. He ignores her, or at least tries to, but she then punches him in the side of the head. It hurts even more than the punch Logan gave him. 

“You fuckin’-”

“ Hey -” 

Both he and Logan talk over each other, but are both cut off by Laura leaping between the two of them and punching Logan in the face, much like Logan did to him.

“Don't fucking hit me!” Logan yells at her, grabbing her wrist mid her next swing.

“Don’t do that again.” Victor warns her, grabbing her by the back of her jean jacket and pulling her towards him, making her face him. She snarls in his face. Logan lets go of her wrist, but keeps his hand up, like he needs to stop this somehow but doesn’t know how. “Don’t ever fuckin’ hit us again. You hear me? People want ya dead, kit, and it’s me and ya dad that are making sure they don’t do that. But if you ever try that shit again, I promise I won’t make a big effort to protect ya. Understood?”

Laura seethes, trying to shake herself out of his grip. She can’t. 

“Victor, let her go.” Logan finally makes a decision and grabs at the arm that holds Laura, pulling at it. “She gets it.”

“I wanna hear her say it.”

“She doesn’t talk !”

Laura’s nose twitches. Bingo. “Nod ya head if you understand, kid.”

Laura nods her head, and Victor lets her go. She crawls back to her seat, glaring at him. He stares back cooly, and Logan keeps his hand on his arm. 

“Yer real pissed at me, aren’t ya?” Victor asks her. She nods again, face a silent snarl. “ Good . Remember this, kit: Your rage will save you when no one else can.” He turns to Logan, who’s watching him with wide eyes. “You think Eden is fake, she believes in it. Why not go anyway? Either she’s right and you can get the kid off your hands, or she’s wrong, and we spent three days driving, which we’re gonna do anyway, because you have no clue where to go.”

Victor pulls back onto the road. “Smile, you two. Everyone’s gonna get what they want.”

Neither of them say anything back to him. 

Soon after getting back on the road, Logan falls asleep, leaning his head against the window.

Victor would be the first to admit- to himself, if not others- that he was deeply familiar with how Logan breathes. He knows how he breathed when he was just flesh and bone, the easy, smooth breaths he would take. He knows how he breathed when he was flesh and metal, how each breath was shallower, but faster, as if he had to make up for the fact that his ribs couldn’t expand as much.

His breathing right now is different from either of those. It’s shallow, yeah, but it sounds like he’s barely getting enough air in his lungs before he has to breath out, a faint click-clacking sound with each exhale. It sounds too much like a death rattle for Victor’s comfort. 

“What’s wrong with him?” He asks the kid, glancing back at her from the rearview mirror again. She just frowns at him. “C’mon kid, you can talk. I can see it in your eyes. You may be his kid, but I know you got some words in ya.”

Her frown deepens into a familiar scowl. Then, softly, as if she didn’t want Logan to wake, she says in Spanish, “I can talk.”

Victor is vaguely surprised by the Spanish, but maybe he shouldn’t have been; while Alkali was a Canadian company, the kid was raised in Mexico. “Good, that means you can answer.”

“Charles told me that he’s dying.” Laura whispers, still in Spanish. “He wouldn’t tell me why.”

“He tell you anything else?”

Laura hesitates. “He said Logan wants to die.”

Victor sighs, glancing at Logan. “He doesn’t wanna die. Not really.” Laura makes an inquiring sound, prompting Victor to continue. “Logan hates himself- Hates what he is. Always been tryin’ to hide it, or change it, or fix. Never really worked. He says he feels guilt, though I don’t know what he has to feel guilty about. He use to say the killin’, but I bet you’ve seen him kill more people than you can count, can’t ya, kid?” She makes a face at him. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. See, he doesn’t wanna die, he just doesn’t wanna be him.”

“ Is he a bad man? ” Laura asks nervously. 

Victor knows about morals; he just doesn’t have any. He knows that killing, torturing, and eating people is considered wrong. He doesn’t care. He had too much fun with it, enjoyed it all too much to give a crap. Victor is a bad man, no way to sugar coat it. He knows this, accepts this, loves this.

Logan is a different beast than him, although still a beast. 

He never liked the taste of blood in his mouth, not like Victor did. He didn’t blink at those he killed, sometimes able to smile over the body, produce a quip or two. He used to leave the torture to Victor, but he always stood next to him during it, and after he left, when he was an X-Men, Victor had seen him use those pretty claws to get information out of people. 

He may say he feels guilt from the blood on his hands, but that never stopped him from spilling it.

“He’s complicated.” Victor answers. He can tell Laura doesn’t like that answer, but that’s too bad. “Things are almost always complicated once ya leave yer cage, kit.”

“ Are you a bad man? ”

“Oh, yeah, can’t you tell?” Victor answers easily. “That’s one of the simple things.”

Logan wakes up when the sun is almost about to fall, a good handful of hours after falling asleep. He wakes to Laura flicking the lock in her door on and off again, something she does every 2 seconds, close enough to a pattern that Victor was able to ignore it. Apparently Logan wasn’t- how Logan lived at that school so long, Victor doesn’t know.

“Stop that noise.” Logan grumbles, lifting his head off his window. Laura flicks the lock on and off again. “Stop that.” Logan snaps. Laura continues. “Fuckin’ stop that.” Laura glares at him, and he glares back. 

“You two always yellin’ at each other?”

“Fuck off,” Logan huffs, cracking his neck. It creates a sort of sharp metallic echo in the car. 

Victor can hear Laura huff in the back, and glances at the mirror to see her press her face against her window. The corner of Victor’s lips twitch up. 

“What are you smilin’ about?” Logan questions. Victor looks at him briefly, sees him lean against his seat heavily, like the rest he had hadn’t rejuvenated him. His head is angled up a bit as Logan looks at him, revealing his throat, and in particular a scar that looks like a scald or a burn, hidden under his shirts and jacket, but peeking up until mid neck.

Victor catches his eyes and Logan holds them. Logan’s eyes are hazy and bloodshot, but they still shimmer with all the things that make Logan himself. Victor wonders what Logan sees when he looks into his own eyes. Eyes are the window of the soul, they say. Victor ponders what that means for him. Everyone knows he doesn’t have one. 

“Just enjoin’ the company.” He’s so distracted from Logan- story of his fuckin’ life- that he’s almost too late to swerve the car out of the way when one of the big trucks next to them inch into their lane.

“How ‘bout you keep your eyes on the road, Creed.” Logan tells him dryly when Victor course corrects. 

“I fuckin’ hate those AI trucks,” Victor hisses instead of responding. “They’re made too fast to be anything but cheap shit that’ll break and not know a fuckin’ car from a shadow.”

Logan snorts a laugh, absolutely at Victor, but Victor is startled enough by the sound of his laughter- when was the last time he heard it? Years, had to be years, more years than Victor wants to think about. 10? 15?- to not be upset beyond a faint exasperation. 

“Wyoming, huh?” Logan asks, seemingly apropos of nothing. 

Eyes of the soul, Victor thinks again, before opening his mouth to reply when-

A horn from one of the trucks blasts through the air, the truck itself not just inching into their lane, but fully merging into it.

Victor pulls the wheel as fast and sharp as he can, swerving out of the way again. He overcorrects, though, veering completely off their side of the road, and into the incoming traffic. 

Laura and Logan shout, and Victor can hear the duo sounds of snikt as Logan releases his claws into the ceiling of the car to steady himself, Laura doing the same. Victor manages to get them to the shoulder, facing the right way.

“ Fuckin’ AI trucks,” Victor cusses once they’re settled. Logan keeps his claws in the ceiling, breathing heavily, but Laura rips her hands away, revealing the two metal claws Logan told him she had. Snikt! She resheathes them, glaring out the road. 

“Shit,” Logan agrees. The three of them watch as another truck pushes someone off the road, this one a family with a horse trailer, the trailer tipping and opening its door, letting the horses run free. “C’mon, let's go before more of these things break down.” Logan resheathes his own claws.

Victor shifts the car into reverse, but Laura hits his shoulder to get his attention before he can move the car. “What?” he turns to look at her, annoyed. 

She points to the horses and the family who try to corral them, eyes wide. 

“What, never seen a horse?”

She makes a ’yes, but’ face, pointing harder. 

Victor looks at Logan to ask him what she wants, but Logan is suddenly hit with some sort of coughing attack, turning his head away from them and hacking into his elbow. Victor is caught off guard by this; he knew Logan was sick, can smell it, Laura told him it, he can see it, but to hear it…It’s disturbing.

Laura, the little brat, uses Logan’s brief distraction of dying to her advantage, hopping closer to Victor and speed whispering, “ We should help them, Charles would want to help them.”

She glaring at him while saying this, and continues to glare when Logan is done coughing out a lung, completely unaware.

Victor doesn’t want to help these people. He doesn’t care about them, and would be just as likely to kill them than leave them. That, and the fact that they stopped to bury the Professor so close to where they were running from, means stopping again probably isn’t the best idea. 

“What do you need, Laura?” Logan asks, voice hoarse now. She points to the horses again, more aggressively. Logan looks at her blankly.

“She wants to help them,” Victor tells him, derision clear in his voice.

Logan raises a brow at him, before looking to Laura, who nods her head vigorously. He shakes his head at her. “We should keep moving.”

Laura makes a face at him like she smelt something bad, and then quickly, before Victor or Logan realize what she’s doing, gets out of the car. 

“Laura!” They yell in unison, ignored as Laura bounds over to the family, both her and the teenage boy almost getting hit by those damn AI trucks.

“Nate!” The woman shouts to her son as he tries and fails to round up the horses. “Get off the road!”

“God fuckin’ damn it,” Logan hisses, getting out of the car after Laura.

Victor parks the car and follows after him. “She’s your kid, alright.”

“ Shut up .”

The two of them chase after Laura, Logan trying to get to her before a truck or a horse can, Victor a step behind him. He whistles loudly as they get closer to the horses, causing all of them to huff and slow down.

Victor was always good with animals; it made hunting easier. He clicks his tongue, and one of the horses heads towards him, curious. He pats the bridge of its nose to let it know it should stay here. With this one horse off the road, the father and son are able to wrangle the other two horses, Logan getting the last one. 

“You, uh, need a hand?” Logan asks the father, handing him the reins of the horse he had.

They help the family move their truck and trailer off the ditch, Logan and him pushing against the front of their truck while the father and son push off from the side of the car, and the mother inside pressing on the gas, all while Laura looks at them from Victor’s car. 

“Laura.” Victor calls once they’re done, prepared to go. He didn’t care for this helping business. She ignores him, and heads towards the trailer where the horses are, jumping up on a bar to get a better look inside. 

“Thank you so much for your help.” The mother smiles at them politely but honestly. Victor feels his skin crawl. She puts a hand out for a shake, which Logan takes for the both of them. “I’m Kathryn Munson, and this is my husband Will, and our son Nate.” 

“James. Howlett.” Logan introduces himself like this is the first time he’s done it, words clipped and awkward. 

Jesus wept, this guy. 

She looks over the both of them, before glancing at Laura. She seems to make a decision of some sort, as she turns to Logan and asks hesitantly, “Is that your daughter?”

“Yeah. Laura.” Logan answers with a frown. “And, uh, this is Victor, he’s, um…”

“His partner,” Victor cuts in, because it’s true, even if Logan doesn’t know it, even if it's not the kind of partnership he knows this woman will take it as. It’s him and Logan, though. Him and Logan. 

“Oh!” Kathryn’s eyes widen, but she quickly smooths her expression out. Her husband doesn’t react more than raised brows. Logan, meanwhile, glares at Victor. He puts a hand on Victor’s lower back, outwardly to help showcase their ‘partnership’, but Victor hears the familiar metallic noise of his claws, and feels the tips dig into him, not quite breaking skin and getting his spine. 

Victor grins widely, putting an arm around Logan’s shoulders and pulling him in, pushing the claws in deeper, just deep enough that Victor feels some blood go down his back. Logan puts his claws back in, and Victor keeps his arm around him. 

Never bluff a bluffer; Logan still doesn’t get that.

“Where you all headed?” Will asks. 

“North.” Logan answers shortly. 

It’s easier pulling out teeth than talking to this man sometimes. Victor would know. 

“Can we give the three of you a decent meal, show our appreciation?” Kathryn asks. “We don’t live far from here.” She adds. 

Hm. Victor drove straight for 5 hours before finding Logan and Laura, and then continued to drive almost the whole day, minus when they buried the Professor. He could go on for much longer, but the idea of food is extremely tempting right now. 

“No, thank you, we can’t-” Logan cuts himself off, calling out to Laura, who is still looking at the horses in their trailer, “C’mon, Laura, let’s go.”

She makes a face at him, but does as he says. 

“Please.” Kathryn tries again. “It’s the least we can do. And you’re going to have to stop for dinner somewhere.”

“She’s gotta point, sweetpea.” Victor says, putting a hand on Laura’s shoulder to make sure she doesn't run off again, when she stands next to him. “‘Least this way we get a free meal.”  And if the ones after Laura and Logan find them, here’s three people in the way, able to slow those bastards down enough that he, Logan, and Laura could escape; living shields. Victor smiles at the Munsons, charming and pleasant, and with no fangs. A smile that’s gotten him into places when slashing and tearing people apart wasn’t the route to go. 

“I-” Logan cuts himself off, frowning deeper at Victor, before looking at Laura. “I…”

Live long enough, and you start to see the same sort of people, over and over again. Very rarely do you meet someone brand new, someone you’ll never meet again. Victor has only met one, and he’s sitting down in this nice little middle America home with him.

Victor knows this family, as he’s known hundreds of others like them: families that work hard, believe hard. The Lord will save them, something they believe in even at the end, when there’s more of their blood on the ground than in their bodies. All they know is the land they work and eat and shit on. Small people, small minds, small worlds. Happy people, usually. 

The Munsons- and Logan, always pretending- keep their heads bowed and eyes closed as they say Grace, setting Victor’s teeth on edge. Laura and him keep their heads up, the kid looking around at all the photos and decoration, the little people’s little place. She makes eye contact with Victor in her look around, eyes wide, and Victor winks at her. She smiles at him. 

Strange kid. He’s gettin’ sorta fond of her. 

“​​We thank you, Lord, for this food... and we also thank you, Lord, for sending our new friends, the Howletts.” 

Victor smiles. The Howletts. Isn’t that just something to hear?

“They came to our aid.” Kathryn adds with a smile. Victor wonders how fast her smile would drop if she knew who and what exactly came to their aid, how ridiculous the notion is. “Amen.” She and her family finish.

Once everyone opens their eyes and puts their heads up, Laura wastes no time trying to dig in, dipping her fingers into her mashed potatoes and shoveling them into her mouth. Victor doesn’t stop her, figuring that while he eats human food neater, he eats humans much more messily, and can’t really judge the kid. Logan however, taps her shoulder and gives her her fork, a tired look on his face. 

Victor nods thanks to Will who hands him the bowl of corn, puts some on his plate, and then hands it to Laura. She scoops some corn on her plate, and is about to do it again, when Logan takes the bowl away from her. She makes a face at him, and he just gives her that same tired look, shaking the bowl, waiting for her to put the spoon back in. 

“Hm-hm.” He hums when she does.

Victor watches as Kathryn and Will make eye contact, their son looking between them.

“There’s plenty more if she wants.” Kathryn tells Logan.

“She’s fine. Thank you.” Logan looks at Laura as he says this, the kid happily shoveling so much of the food in her mouth that her cheeks puff out. 

Logan’s not really good at this whole ‘father’ thing, Victor thinks. The kid might not be good at the whole ‘daughter’ thing either, but Victor doesn’t know. Maybe that’s what a kid is supposed to act like. Hell, he was never good at being a child, being a son, but his father didn’t help matters. 

Well, Logan hasn’t chained her up in a basement and torn out her claws, so it’s not like he’s the worst father ever. Victor is reasonably sure Laura won’t try to kill him anytime soon. 

“Were you all heading?”  Will asks them.

Small talk. Logan probably doesn’t want to do that, so Victor answers with a lie, “Wyoming.” The same moment Logan answers with his own lie, “Oregon.”

They look at each other, Victor raising a brow. You wanna fix this?

Logan makes a face at him.

 “We’re travellin’.” Victor continues to lie smoothly. “Cross country roadtrip, and all that. Final stop is Oregon before we start headin’ back home.”

Victor looks over at Logan with a smile, fake for the humans but real for him. Logan is still looking at him, although he’s giving him a strange look, like he’s trying to figure something out. 

“That sounds lovely.” Kathryn smiles at him. “I’ve been trying to get Will here to take a vacation for years now.”

“And if we go out traipsing around the country, who’s gonna take care of this place?” her husband argues.

“Exactly. I say, ‘let it go.’”

“And live off what?”

“The Lord will provide.” Kathryn answers.

It takes everything in Victor not to jeer at them. Logan must sense it, or maybe see it, still looking at Victor, as he gently kicks him in the leg under the table. Laura looks at them as she eats low to her plate, feeling the vibrations of the kick. Victor, in a minor act of defiance against Logan, rolls his eyes at Laura. She smiles at him, and when he looks back at Logan, instead of the frown he was expecting, there’s that curious look again. 

Victor wonders what he’s thinking; wonders if after this, he can get Logan to tell him.

“So, how long have you two been together?” Kathryn asks Victor and Logan. 

“Oh. Um. Uh-” Logan flounders, seeming to remember the not-really-a-lie Victor gave them.

“Long time.” Victor answers. Laura perks up at that, interested.  “Been chasin’ this man for most my life, it seems.”

“Victor.” Logan scolds for some reason. 

“What?” Victor laughs. “C’mon, you know it’s true.” Smiling coyly, Victor tells the Munsons, “Knew almost from the moment we met this was the guy for me. He’s a hard one to convince though. Gifts don’t do nothin’ for him. Never had a head for poetry. A real battle it was.”

“ Victor .” Logan repeats, looking down, almost embarrassed, more likely indignation. Laura giggles, and the Munsons smile at them. 

“But, hey,” Victor continues. He leans behind Laura and taps Logan’s chin up with his knuckles, bringing Logan’s eyes to meet his. “Gotcha in the end.”

And he did, he will. He feels it to his very bones. He doesn’t know if this Eden place is real or not, doesn’t know what they’re gonna face while on the way there, but he knows this: Logan is gonna stay with him. He has to. 

Logan takes his hand away from his chin, and then, surprising Victor, holds it. He’s got that curious look on again. 

“Well, that’s sweet.” Kathryn declares. “True love.”

“Hm.” Logan grunts vaguely, dropping Victor’s hand. 

“What about you, James?” Will asks as Victor goes back to lean in his seat. “What’s your view of your husband’s great whirlwind romance?”

Husband. That, like being called the Howletts, delights Victor. 

Laura’s smiling face dims a little, getting back to her critical, analyzing look she gets when Logan talks. 

“Uh,” Logan stumbles again, not looking at any of them as he responds. “He’s been a real pain in my life, to be honest. Even when we were…friends, never had a moment's rest with him.”  Logan snorts a laugh, semi bitter sweet. “But he’s all I have.”

It’s too honest to be a good thing to say about a long term partner, Victor can see that in the Munsons’ faces, but to Victor, it’s the most delightful thing he’s ever heard. 

“You’re making me blush, punk.” Victor tells him honestly.

 Logan looks up at him; he doesn’t meet his eyes, but he does smile, soft and hesitant, but still sad. Victor smiles back, and almost forgets to hide his fangs.

That’s when he feels Laura tug at his sleeve. “Hm?” He looks down at her on his side, and sees her frown up at him. It's not the near constant angry frown she usually has, more sad. “What’s up, kit?” She tugs at his sleeves again before standing up, and heading straight out the front door.

“Laura!” Logan shouts after her, standing up alongside Victor.   

“Is she okay?” Kathryn asks worriedly, hands clutched to her chest. 

“We should go.” Logan says instead of answering, because really, did they know the answer?

He hears Logan dole out half hearted thanks and compliments for the meal, but Victor doesn’t pay attention. Whatever’s happening with the kid is more interesting than that, and so he heads outside to her.

She didn’t run off, like Victor half thought she would. Instead, Laura is leaning against his truck, arms crossed, her face turned down in outrage.

“Got what you wanted. Get in the car,” Victor tells her. “We’re leavin’.”

Laura turns her face towards him, glaring. 

“What?” Victor asks, exasperated. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re all he has.” Laura says bitterly. 

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

“ What about me? What about Charles ?”

“Kit.” Victor shakes his head. “Charles is dead.”

“I know that! ” She snaps. “ But -” She makes a small noise of outrage. “It’s his fault! It’s his fault Charles is dead. He wants people to stay but he takes them away himself!”

Logan was always good at pushing people out. Still. “It’s not Logan’s fault the old man had a seizure.”

Laura snorts angrily, a very Logan sound, but doesn’t say anything. Victor hears Logan head out the Munson’s front door and decides to drop it. Whatever reason Laura’s little freak out, whatever reason for Laura’s fake muteness with Logan, he doesn’t want to get into it.

“What was that?” Logan asks Laura when he reaches them, tired and embarrassed, but mostly looking mad.

Laura, of course, doesn’t answer, just gets in the car, slamming her door closed. 

Logan rubs his face, dragging it down and over his eyes. “Let’s go,” he mutters to Victor, patting his shoulder as he goes by. “I’ll drive.”

Victor spends his time in the passenger seat watching Logan. Logan obviously knows this, but doesn't comment on it. 

That meal was good for Logan, maybe. He seems less stressed, the tightness in his shoulders loosening a little bit. He still has that permanent furrow between his brows, something that’s been on this Earth longer than some people’s lives, but the rest of his face seems almost slack. He looks like he took a long rest. 

The kid stays silently fuming in the car for so long, Victor is only able to tell when she falls asleep by the sound of her breathing, about an hour into the ride. 

Logan must be able to tell when she falls asleep too, because he says to Victor, “You were almost good tonight.” The words are something like praise, but the tone isn’t. The tone is hesitant, like he doesn’t know how to properly compliment Victor, or maybe like he doesn’t know if this would be a compliment to Victor. 

“Ya thought I was gonna kill them?” Victor asks, as if that’s something out of character for him. He’s killed more for less. He’s killed more for nothing. 

“‘Course I did.”

“And you still let us go with them.” Victor notes. “You’ve changed, pup. Maybe I’ve changed, too.” He hasn’t, not really, not in any way beyond weariness. He’s tired of being alone, and he has a real opportunity, like never before, to keep Logan- and beyond that, an opportunity to be kept by Logan. He’s not gonna ruin that for some cheap thrills.

Logan snorts disbelieving, shaking his head slightly. 

They sit in comfortable silence, just the world whipping by them, and the sound of the car, and Laura. 

“You’re good with her.” Logan nods towards Laura, asleep in the back, almost accusatory. Victor doesn’t quite understand why. He doesn’t think he’s particularly good with the kid, to be honest. He doesn’t understand why she decided he could be trusted with her secret of silence, why she tried to tell him she wanted to help the Munsons, why she tried to tell him she wanted to leave, and not Logan.

 “Yer not.” Victor replies. He’s not accusing, he's just telling the truth. Logan knows it, of course, but the ‘why’ of it all tickles Victor’s brain. Why is it that Laura likes Victor better than Logan, why is it that it’s so hard for Logan to be with her?

Logan doesn’t respond. The tightness is back into his shoulders. 

“We should get a motel tonight.” Victor states. Logan jolts a bit, and Victor smiles with teeth and fangs. “Just somewhere for the three of us to rest our heads.”

“You think it’s a good idea to stay in one place for so long? After that dinner?”

Victor shrugs. He leans comfortably against his seat, still unabashedly looking at Logan. He keeps glancing out of the corner of his eyes, nervous like, as if Victor will pounce on him. “Told ya back at that casino, runt. Ol’ Victor is strong as ever. I’ll take care of ya kid and you.”

“Is it strange, tryin’ to save someone instead of killin’ them?”

Victor remembers a time in the early 50s, the early days of Team X, that he and Logan infiltrated an abandoned mine shaft that was being used as a base of operations. They killed those soldiers, yes, but one too many bullets hit one of the support beams, putting almost the entire mine down on them. 

Logan, smaller than him, afraid of the type of deaths that involve suffocating, had panicked when he saw what was happening. Victor had made a split second decision, and when the walls and ceiling started caving in, he pushed Logan to the ground, and got on top of him. He hid Logan’s body under his, bracketing it with his arms and legs, and let the mine shaft fall on him. He held up all he could, and then more, ignoring the bits of stones and broken wood that pierced his body, the weight of the Earth trying to crush him. 

Logan had looked at him with wide eyes. They were trapped there, but with the way Victor was over him, Logan could breath, and wasn’t impaled on anything. Logan had touched his face, and had to slap him awake every time Victor almost passed out. Their faces were so close, they breathed each other’s air. 

They were there for almost two days before the rest of Team X found them.

“No; just a little rusty.” Victor finally answers. 

“Yeah,” Logan replies softly, and Victor is surprised to hear it sound like commiseration. 

They find a motel an hour later. Logan goes in to pay, and Victor gets Laura out of the car. At some point she got a toy horse out of her bag, and is holding it to her chest. He puts an arm around her back and under her knees to lift her up, like he would do with a corpse. She murmurs something in her sleep when Victor picks her up, aggressive yet weak, but quiets down once her head lands on his shoulder. He moves his hands so she can get more comfortable, to go back to sleep, and one of her little hands goes towards his chest, holding onto his shirt with the same level of intensity she holds the toy horse. Her face smooths out, and Victor hears and feels her make a happy little sigh. 

Victor tries to recall the last time he held someone this gently. He can’t remember. 

He hears Logan’s footsteps walk towards them, and then stops. Victor looks up from her face to see Logan standing a few feet outside the motel office door, looking at them as if they were a ghost.

Victor moves a hand up from Laura's back so she’s resting more on his forearm, and covers the ear not resting against his shoulder. “What?” he whispers to Logan. 

He sees Logan’s throat move, hears the clicking noise it makes when he swallows. 

“This way.” Logan mutters, talking a step back, still looking at them, before turning around and heading to one of the motel doors. 

Shaking his head, Victor follows him. 

Logan opens the motel door for him and Laura, and closes it behind them. Victor scans the room. Two beds, each with a single bedside table, are neither extremely clean nor fairly dirty. A nothing room in a nothing state in this nothing world. 

Victor places Laura on the bed farthest from the door, and the kid automatically curls into herself, fetal position, horse tucked in close. 

Victor takes a step back to look at her. 

Logan’s possible clone mutant daughter. Feral little kid who won’t talk to her father, but will to Victor. Who wanted to help the horse family but needed to leave them. Who apparently is great at killing but is worried about Victor and Logan being bad men. 

He doesn’t understand children. 

Victor gazes back at Logan, who was watching them both, a shine to his eyes. 

Logan looks so damn sad, Victor doesn’t understand it. Victor takes a step towards him, but Logan shakes his head. 

“Ya drove a lot.” Logan murmurs to him, nodding towards the other bed. “Rest up. I’ll head back in a few.” And with that, Logan leaves the room, closing the door behind him.  

Victor sighs. He takes off his jacket and places it in the lone coat rack in the room, closes the curtains to the small window in the room, makes sure Laura is really asleep, and then heads out to Logan. 

He’s pacing on the sidewalk next to their motel room, that same sad expression on his face.

“What’s got you all twisted inside, pup?” Victor asks, hands in his pockets. “Haven’t seen you this worried since, hell, the seventies.” The 70s being, of course, when Logan left him. 

“You wouldn't understand.” Logan tells him wearily. He sits down on the small bench in front of their motel window, head in his hands, elbows resting on knees. 

“You want me to?” Victor asks. He could probably try, if Logan wants. Logan is probably right, though, and Victor wouldn’t get it. Whether he’s troubled because of his kid, or the loss of the Professor, or just the guilt he still feels he has to carry for the lives he’s ruined, the people he’s killed, Victor doesn’t know; but he does know that if it’s any of those, Victor can’t reach him there. He’s alone in that. 

Logan shrugs helplessly.

That weight on his shoulders is gonna drag him down, Victor thinks. Talk to me, dammit.

“You’re dying, aren’t ya, pup?” Victor says, more statement than question. He knows Logan is, and Logan knows Victor knows he is; he just wants to know why . 

He wants to know why this is the world they have to live in, why he can never reach out to Logan like Logan needs, why Logan can never reach back to him like he wants. Wants to know why this is the best hand he could have been dealt, the company of this dying man. 

Logan lifts his head out of his hands, and scowls at Victor. “Fuck off.”

“Come off it,” Victor goes to sit next to him on the bench. “Ya smell sick, half dead already. Don’t think I didn’t notice those pretty little red spots through your shirt. What happened to ya?”

“The Adamantium,” Logan admits after a moment of harsh silence, lightly poking at the small blood stains seeping through the dark fabric of his shirt. “Caught up to me.”

Huh. Guess the procedure wasn’t the dangerous part of that whole deal after all. 

Victor glances behind him through the small space in between curtains into the window. Laura is asleep on her side, lil face scrunched up and knees to her chest, holding that toy horse.

“So what, this whole goose chase is a dyin’ man last wish? Yours or the Prof’s?” 

“I don’t deserve her.” Logan whispers, following Victor’s eyes. He lowers his head in shame, in absolution, as if Victor can do anything about that. “I’m not good enough to-to-” Logan’s scowling face twists, looking away. 

“What happened to that bleedin’ heart of yours, pup?” Victor questions. Logan was always trying to be better than they were, and has been for almost as long as they knew each other; takin’ in kids, fighting the ‘good fight’, tryin’ so fuckin’ hard to be what he thought he could. 

It’s kinda nice to see the runt open his eyes to what they are, but more than that… He doesn’t like it when Logan looks defeated. At least when it’s not because of something Victor did. Victor always loved it when he was able to get the kid to look up at him with those wet eyes, his breath shallow and fast. The way his body used to be so open, almost like how he once was with Victor. 

He misses their fights. 

“Bled out.” Logan responds tiredly. He closes his eyes as though it physically pained him to keep them open. His breath was shallow, but it’s slow, like each inhale and exhale was a struggle. Victor can hear the tickle in his lungs, the way the air forces itself in and fights to get out, a fight it sounds like it’s losing. 

He looks so fuckin’ old , Victor can’t help but keep going back to that. He looks half dead- Hell, he smells half dead. Being this close to him, without the smells of the road, or Laura, the running car, the Munsons, Victor can smell it so clearly. The poisonous blood in his body, the bruises rising and staying, the rot that sticks to his joints. It’s like talking to a corpse. 

Victor remembers one time, sometime in the 1960s, leaning too far down into Logan's space. It had hurt his lower back, but he didn’t care. They were at a bar, in between missions, in enough cups that they both could feel a nice fuzz in their heads, but not enough that it wouldn't go away in an hour. People were staring at them, glaring really, but no one would have dared to say shit. 

“Could stay together, forever.” Victor had said. “You and me…”

“Forever is a long time.” Logan replied easily. He didn’t lean up into Victor, but he didn't move away. He liked making Victor chase after him, back then. 

“Long time is all we have, sweetheart.” Victor had leaned more down; he absolutely was hovering now. Logan’s lips had twitched up, a barely there smile, and he hooked his ankle around one of the rungs of Victor’s stool. He didn’t pull Victor closer, just kept that connection between them, and Victor had taken it as a promise: forever. 

But then Logan thought he was too much. And then Logan left. And then Logan forgot him, forgot them. And then the only time Logan and he could touch each other was to draw blood. 

And now they’re here, together again, but Logan is dying . 

“You got regrets?” Victor asks him, leaning back against the bench. His shoulders touch Logan’s, such a small thing to notice now. Victor’s got a few regrets- less than he knows the world wishes from him, and none what they hope. All his regrets revolve around Logan, one way or another. 

Logan hums vaguely, eyes still closed. His brows furrows in a familiar expression of pain. “You?”

“Wish I was in your life more,” Victor says honestly, even though what he really meant was ‘wish you were in my life.’ There’s an important distinction between the two, and he doesn’t know how to tell it to Logan. It used to be easier, saying what he wanted, needed , from Logan, even when Logan was trying to truly kill him, and Victor near it. He knew they could heal from it, so it didn’t matter. It matters now. Oh, hell, it matters now. 

“Wish I was in ya life less.” Logan shoots back. 

That hurts, but it’s the kind of pain that Victor expects from Logan.  “Yeah,” he sighs, a small smile on his face. “You know, I missed you, pup.”

Logan snorts, finally opening his eyes and turning his head to face Victor. “You miss tryin’ to kill me, blondie.”

“If I ever really wanted ya dead, you wouldn't be here, and ya know it.”

Logan scoffs, shaking his head. “Gotta big head, Creed.”

Victor laughs, and he sees Logan look at his fangs. 

You’re dying, Victor thinks when he quiets down, looking into Logan’s bloodshot eyes. How much time we got?

“Hey,” Victor says, always one to dive in, ignoring the risks; Always jumping out of planes without parachutes. “Let me fix one regret of mine, before ya keel over, will you?” 

Logan’s brows furrow, drawing attention to the scar on his temple and the wrinkles around his face. 

How much time we got?

Victor leans in before Logan can ask what he means, cupping Logan’s jaw with as much of a gentle touch that he is capable of. Victor hears Logan’s breath hitch in surprise half a second before pressing his lips to Logan’s. They’re calloused and cracked, more pronounced by Victor’s own contrasting soft lips. Victor kisses him like he never kissed him before, like he never will kiss him again. He keeps his movements as light and careful as he can, aware of the precious and fragile thing in his hands right now. Logan is dying; he can’t heal like he should. Victor can’t touch him like he used to. 

With a shudder, Logan starts to kiss back. Victor feels one of Logan’s hands hesitantly go to the back of his neck, dry fingers scratching at his nape before curling themself in the strands of hair that has escaped Victor’s bun. Victor jerks, which seems to embolden Logan, his other hand going to Victor’s arm, hand tight on his upper forearm. They twitch a little, as Logan tilts his head a bit to the side, and Victor realizes that Logan is silently asking for him to come closer. 

Victor does, and when Logan opens his mouth, Victor can taste cheap whiskey and blood that’s too metallic. 

I love you, Victor thinks with a sort of desperation that fills him with rage. He pushes more into Logan in response, and has to stop himself using his fangs on Logan’s mouth. Logan makes a broken sound from the back of his throat, and pulls gently at Victor’s hair. Victor’s chest burns with emotions. I’ve loved you. 

When Logan pulls away, his breath is unsteady, as if he’s close to tears. He is, Victor realizes, when he opens his eyes. There’s a wetness to them, and Victor doesn’t think before leaning in again, and kissing the corners of one. Logan shudders with his whole body, pressing his forehead against Victor’s.

“One of your regrets was not kissin’ me?” Logan mocks, the whispering tone of the words and roughness in his voice taking out any bite. 

“Nah,” Victor denies. He decides to take another risk, and runs his fingers through Logan’s hair. He thinks it's thinner than it used to be, but he can’t be sure. “Regret not rememberin’ the last time we did kiss.” 

“I don’t believe you.” Logan says, as familiar of a dance as their fights. Logan hated him too much to believe there was a time he trusted Victor, let alone more than that. He knew they were friends, but not more than that, and barely that at all.

It’s not like Victor helped his own case, to be fair. 

He’ll be as honest as can be, right now, though. 

“I know you don’t,” Victor acknowledges. “Doesn’t change it, though, does it?” He leans in to kiss Logan again, and Logan meets him halfway. Victor wonders if the muscle memory is there, if not the actual memory. Wonders if Logan’s body knows their long history. Victor lets his hands wander now, feeling the fast flutter of Logan’s heartbeat against his neck, then his chest. The coarse chest hair peeking through his shirt, scars and cuts on his skin that's hidden by his beard. 

Victor pulls himself away from Logan’s mouth- enjoying the slight sound of protests that escapes Logan- and leans down to scrape and kiss at Logan’s neck. The angle causes a slight pain in his back, but that’s nostalgic, and makes it better. Logan’s breath catches, and the hand in Victor’s hair holds on tighter. Logan smells the strongest of death here, in the crook of his neck, but it’s Logan’s death, so it still does it for Victor. And maybe he can use it to his benefit, at least in this moment. Maybe he can finally leave a mark on Logan, something that Logan can keep. 

“We’re in front of the window, Laura’s inside.” Logan gasps. 

It’s not a stop , or a no , and Victor continues. He sucks a bruise right where Logan’s beard meets his neck, and watches as it stays. “The blinds are closed, and the kit is asleep.” The hand near his elbow moves up, Logan’s fingers slipping under Victor’s rolled up sleeves. Fingertips touch the crook of Victor’s elbow, and for some reason, it is one of the most intimate things Victor thinks he has ever felt. “It’s just us here, sweetheart.”

Logan shudders again, and pulls Victor off his neck and back to his mouth. 

“Still,” Logan mutters around a kiss. 

Victor doesn’t know how bad Logan’s hearing is now; he doesn’t know if he can hear the birds a mile away fighting over prey, or the dogs down the block snoring, or the A/C of the rooms at the motel, like Victor can. He hopes the only sounds Logan can hear are the ones they make together. 

Victor moves his hand to Logan’s lower back, leading him onto his lap. Logan starts to fight this, snapping, “Not here.”

“Ya think we’re gonna get up to something more than neckin’ outside?” Victor laughs, because during their whole relationship when in Team X, they never actually did more than that. Logan scowls at him, a pinkness rising to his cheeks that Victor can’t help but find adorable. Silly little pup. “C’mon, Tiny Dancer,” Victor stands up, pulling at Logan's arms to lead him to his car. “Lay me down, hold me closer.”

Logan lets Victor lead him to the car, crawling in the back. He leans against the car door on the other side, a hesitant look in his eyes as he watches Victor get in and shut the door behind him. Victor wonders if he’s thinking of their fights, when Victor would have him crushed, or pinned, and then would stalk and loom over him. 

Victor crawls between Logan’s legs, puts his hands back around his face. Logan’s hands go to his hips, barely there. 

“You look like you wanna eat me.” Logan comments, which is a hilarious thing to say to a man who has eaten people before, so Victor laughs again. Logan’s lips twitch up, his familiar barely there smile, and Victor’s chest hurts again. 

“Well, come on then, cupcake.” Victor kisses Logan again, and then again, and again. “Feed me.”

That startles a laugh out of Logan, but the moment of happiness that it causes in Victor quickly fizzles out, as the laugh turns into a wet cough. Logan leans out of Victor’s arms, turning his head towards the car floor. Logan’s coughs shake his whole body, making his face twist up in pain. Victor can hear his lungs spasming around half taken, aborted breaths, even after the coughing dies down and Logan lays back down against the car.

There’s a moment of silence, the only noise being Logan's wheezy, unsteady breath. He ignores Victor’s eyes, but doesn’t hide his face. Victor can still see the pain from the furrow of his brow, and the embarrassment in the downward curl of his lips. 

Victor has never been one to comfort, has barely even tried. He doesn’t know what to do for Logan, but that’s not new. He didn’t know what to do when Logan was unhappy with Team X, didn’t know what to do when Logan didn’t know him, didn’t know what to do when the only way he could touch was to hurt. He doesn’t know what to do now. 

Logan always did that, bring out the worst in him; made him feel childish, unsure, weak. It didn’t matter to Victor, really, that sort of vulnerability. He used to chafe at it, certainly, made sure to hurt Logan as much as Logan hurt him when it seemed like that’s all they could do, but- well, when he thought Logan was gone, he missed it. It was lonely, in his chest and his head, thinking that Logan was dead. He’ll be the loneliest when he sees Logan die. It can’t be long now; Victor can smell it. 

I lost you once, Victor thinks, and then swears, I’m not gonna lose you again.

“C’mere,” Victor murmurs, drawing Logan back in his arms. He’ll make this good for Logan, he’ll be as sweet as he can feasibly be with who he is. I love you, rings around in head again, because he does, he did, he always will. He’s never been good at showing it, not in any way Logan wants, but he can right now. He has to. His normal touch would break Logan, so he has to change it if he wants to make this last. “C’mere.”

I’ll have you forever, pup, even when you’re gone.  

Victor cups Logan’s jaw again, guiding his mouth back to his, and Logan goes back to grabbing the back of Victor’s neck. Victor, careful not to scratch, grips Logan’s shirt to pull him closer, as close as he can get him. Logan’s own hand goes to Victor’s wrist, holding him there. The back of Victor’s car really is not the best spot for this, Victor too big to get real comfortable, but he can make this work. He leans forward, still holding Logan’s shirt, and makes Logan fall back. Still between Logan’s legs, Victor pulls off Logan’s collared shirt,  the shirt pooling around Logan’s arms as he won’t let go of Victor, and then pulls at his other shirt. “C’mon,” Victor growls against Logan’s lips, fangs tucked in his own mouth. “Help me out here, pup.”

There’s a clicking sound as Logan swallows. He pulls away, finishes taking off his collared shirt, and then pulls off his other shirt, before finally his tank, leaving his chest bare. Victor’s hands follow the movement, feeling out the shape of Logan’s hip bones- too prominent- to his stomach-still strong- and his chest- covered in scars and wounds.

He looks like shit; he’s still the most beautiful thing in the world. Victor kisses the center of Logan’s chest and tastes more blood, dried and old. He looks up to look Logan in the eyes, and sees him look back, afraid. Strange; he doesn’t think he ever saw Logan look at him that way before. Horrified, absolutely. Disgusted, more times than he could count. But scared ? “Don’t worry, I won’t bite.”

Something about that must have given Logan a bout of bravery, because he tugs at the neckline of Victor’s Henley. “You too, handsome.”

Smiling wide, Victor leans back as much as he can, taking off his shirt in one fluid motion. There’s few differences in his body since the last time he had any intimacy even close to this with Logan, over 65 years ago, so if Logan liked his body then, he must now. And hey, the man deserves a show. 

Logan’s eyes scan his face and body, the pretty pink in his own rising. He smiles hesitantly, and Victor leans back down to kiss him. Logan kisses back with a fervor, his hands scratching up Victor’s back, down his arms, pulling him in. Victor slows them down when he hears Logan start to get out of breath already. He crawls down, kisses under Logan’s chin, his Adam's apple. “Settle down, punk.” Victor’s lips brush skin, and he can sense so much of Logan right now. Can taste his skin, the old blood he never washed off; Can smell Logan’s own blood, and the poison, but also his arousal, his fear; Can hear his heart fluttering like a bird, his shaky breath. 

“I’ll be good,” Victor promises, the only time he’s ever said it and meant it. He kisses Logan right next to a half healed bullet wound on his left pec and Logan jerks at that, his hips dragging against Victor’s stomach from the angle. Logan gasps, the hand in Victor’s hair tightening almost painfully, pulling strands loose from the bun. Victor groans, pressing his forehead against Logan’s skin. He wants to open his mouth wide, and bite, but he can’t. Logan would bleed, and stay bleeding. His fragile little frail. 

“Yer never good.” Logan argues, always arguing, even as he moves his hips slowly back up against Victor, again and again. 

Victor crawls further back, and kisses Logan through his jeans, holding him gently but firmly by his hips to stop him. Logan lets out a barely audible ‘oh’ . “I’ll be good,” Victor repeats, opening Logan’s jeans and pulling them down just enough. He kisses Logan again, this time through his boxers. “It’s a night of firsts, pup.”

Logan only gets out, “Heh,” in response, more air than laughter. He pulls out the tie that keeps Victor’s hair up, just to grab a fistful of it. 

Victor pulls Logan’s boxers down and under his balls, freeing his half hard cock, only to quickly take him in his mouth. Victor hears Logan’s breath get caught in his throat, before letting out a surprised moan. Victor bobs his head, letting out a pleased purr when Logan sighs peacefully, like a weight was just taken off his shoulders. Logan’s hip jerks up in response, and Victor decides to let him, forcing his body to ignore it when the head hits the back of his throat. He takes Logan as deep as he can, until his nose brushes the greying hair at Logan’s base. He’s careful with his teeth as he swallows, trying to make this as sweet and nice as he can handle. The way Logan gasps and moans, shuddering in Victor’s arms, Victor thinks he’s doing a pretty good job at it. 

He looks up, a sudden burning need in his chest, that he had to see Logan’s face, had to see that he actually was doing good for him, was making him feel good. But when he looks up, he sees that Logan has turned his head away, an arm across his face. Victor can only see his mouth, partially covered by his beard, open and panting. 

That’s not good enough. He wanted this for so long, Logan can’t hide from him with this now.

Victor pulls off with a wet ‘pop’, leaning up on his forearms on either side of Logan’s hips, hands holding him down. Logan makes a sound of discontent, but doesn’t remove his arm or do anything to look at him. 

“Move yer damn arm, pup. Let me see ya.” 

Logan grumbles softly, no words, and doesn’t move his damn arm, so Victor leans back and away from Logan, on his knees in between Logan’s legs, torso curled down from the roof of the car. 

“Goddamn it, Creed-” Logan moves his arm to glare at Victor, face flushed and eyes shining. Victor slips his hands between Logan’s shoulders and the car seat, and pulls him up, pushing Logan so he’s on Victor’s lap, knees bracketing Victor’s hips. His spit-covered cock rubs against Victor’s abs, and Logan twitches in his arms, his hands going to Victor’s shoulder’s for balance. 

“I’m trying to make something good for ya, old man.” Victor complains, moving one hand up and down Logan’s back, the other going to hold Logan’s cock, rubbing his thumb along the head. 

“Yeah, yer a real philanthropist.” Logan twitches again. It looks like he’s fighting against the pleasure, trying to hide from Victor what he’s feeling. 

“Big word for ya,” Victor grunts, kissing him again. Logan meets him, open mouth, and Victor smoothly moves his hand on Logan’s cock. He jerks him leisurely, as if they had all the time in the world. As if they were in one of the nice bedrooms Victor had before the world killed them, and not in the backseat of his 5 year old car. As if Logan loved him. “The world’s so full of shit, ain’t it?” Victor murmurs against Logan’s lips. “All this damn hurt ya got, it’s burying you before you’re even laid in the ground. But don’t worry, sweetpea, I know all about pain. I’ll take care of ya.”

Victor moves his hand off Logan’s back to his head, tilts it so that Logan has to look him in the eyes. His eyes are wide, flickering around Victor’s face. “And all I want is just to look at ya, Logan. I just wanna see.” 

“That’s not all you want.” Logan challenges, moving one of his hands off Victor’s shoulder and between his legs. He presses his palm onto Victor’s hard-on, rubbing his thumb along the zipper. 

“Yeah, well,” Victor knocks his head against Logan’s, rubs their temples together as Logan undoes his pants and takes his cock out. His hand is rough and dry, and it hurts, but it’s Logan. Wouldn't be him, wouldn't be them , if it didn’t hurt at least a little. “All I want from you is to look at me. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Just lay here and look pretty for you, Victor? That it?” Logan pulls back and raises a brow at him, cocky, so Victor does a particular twist with his hand, and Logan’s face immediately stutters, both relaxing and tightening. Pleasure and pain always looked the same on him.

“You’ve always been real pretty,” Victor agrees, because it’s true. Logan scowls, an embarrassed look crossing his face. Victor lets go of Logan, and spits in his hand. He goes to stroke himself, one, two, three, before taking Logan in his hand as well. 

They moan in unison, the feeling of their cocks rubbing against each other making Victor feel light headed. Logan moves his hips in time with Victor’s hand, small motions, like he can’t find it in himself to really go for it. Old man, Victor thinks, horribly, painfully fond. 

“Ah-” Logan grunts, hands going back to Victor’s shoulders, squeezing the muscles, nails digging in. “ Victor .”

“I know, pup, I know.” Victor moves his hand faster, moving his own hips up, more powerful than Logan’s, pushing them into each as much as they can in this moment, grinding and stroking. 

The more Logan seems to enjoy it, the more he tries to look away, avoiding Victor’s eyes as he pants and moans. He stares at Victor’s hand on them, and Victor can only see the crown of his head. 

“Look at me,” Victor demands again, embarrassingly desperate. Please, don’t leave me. You can’t leave me now. “Look at me, Logan. You’re takin’ all of me, let me get all of ya.”

“Victor,” Logan says again, voice catching. He moves his head up an inch, looking up over at him through his eyelashes. Victor has seen that look so many times, over so many years, over a gun, a glass, a set of claws, both bone and metal. 

Victor runs his thumb over his tip, spreading precum across the head and his thumb, and moves his hand more, doing the same to Logan’s.

Logan makes a garbled sound, deep in his chest, and leans in to kiss Victor. His mouth is moving against Victor’s, tongue tracing a fang, when he suddenly shudders. It turns less into a kiss, and more Logan pressing himself into Victor’s mouth as hard as he can as he comes, staining Victor’s hand, Logan’s own chest, and stomach.

“Fuck,” Victor grunts, opening his eyes, having closed them during the kiss, to look at the mess Logan made. He takes his hand off Logan, and moves his hand faster on himself, using Logan’s cum to slick up the already smooth passage. 

Logan makes a small, oversensitive noise as Victor still grinds against his now softening dick, but doesn’t move away. “Yeah,” he goads, sucking in a ragged breath, burying his face in Victor’s neck. “Keep goin’, Creed.” Logan is panting into Victor’s neck, breathing him in, still squirming on his lap, and all Victor can smell is Logan; Logan’s sweat, his cum, his blood, his hair, Logan, Logan, Logan.  

Logan said Victor was all he has; doesn’t he know it’s the same for Victor? That all he has, all he wants, is Logan? 

“Fuck,” Victor repeats. He’s close. He buries his nose at the base of Logan’s skull. He still smells like death; he still smells like Logan. He wraps his free arm around Logan’s back, pulling him in, an imitation of a hug. Logan is broad, but Victor still feels like his hand envelopes so much of Logan. He kisses the back of Logan's neck, and whispers, “I’ve loved you,” simply because this is a night of first, of getting rid of old regrets. He loved this bastard and now the runt is dying. He has to say it. “I’ve loved you through it all, through the worst of me. Even when I was hurtin’ you like never before, I loved you. I’ve loved you for 82 fuckin’ years-”

“Ya talk too much,” Logan cuts him off, pulling away just to look him in the eyes and put his hand over Victor’s on his cock. Just like that, Victor comes, an animalistic growl coming deep from his chest. Victor doesn’t notice Logan hitting his hand away, but he must, because it’s Logan’s hand stroking him through his orgasm, Victor doing nothing but holding on to him.

They both take a moment trying to catch their breaths. Tired of sitting hunched over in the back of his car, Victor leans back down on the seats, leading Logan with him. Logan follows without complaint, resting his head in the crook of Victor’s neck.

“You’ve gotten soft in your old age.” Logan murmurs to him, wiping his hand off on Victor's chest. The hand on his chest feels so nice, Victor doesn’t even care about the mess.

“Look who's talking, punk.”

Logan grunts, but doesn’t reply. He sniffs at Victor’s neck, and Victor feels that pain in his chest. Deciding not to ruin this nice moment, he blindly gropes between the driver’s seat and the center console until he finds a pack of wet wipes.

“What the hell you have that for?” Logan questions, mocking humor in his voice. 

“Sometimes I eat when I’m drivin’, I don’t wanna stain my clothes.” Victor defends, glaring. Just because Logan always been a fuckin’ slob doesn’t mean he has to be. 

Logan snorts, his barely there smile crossing his face, nearly out of Victor’s view. “Nancy-boy.”

Victor wants to bite him, and kiss him. Instead, he wipes his own chest, then the front of his jeans, before getting a new wipe. He rubs Logan’s chest, more as an easy excuse to feel him up again, than to actually clean him, although he still gets the job done. 

Logan grunts, but doesn’t stop him, which is basically a ‘please’. 

Victor throws both wipes on the floor, and relaxes. He pulls Logan closer to his chest, stroking his fingers down Logan’s forearm, feeling the blades just beneath the skin. 

“Put your dick away.” Logan commands, leaning slightly out of Victor’s grasp to pull up his boxers and pants, tucking himself back in and zippering up. 

Victor doesn’t, and Logan doesn’t ask him to again. He leans back against Victor, and Victor greedfully holds him, sniffing and kissing at his hairline. Logan doesn’t say anything, but Victor can hear his wheezy breath, the stutter of his chest against his own. Their little romp took a lot out of him. 

Feeling the sickness against him like this, hearing the broken breathing, thinking of the way Logan coughed like he couldn't stop, fills Victor’s chest with lead. 

He's really, truly, dying. For no good fucking reason, he’s dying, and Victor can’t do shit against it. Victor doesn't know what he’s gonna do when the runt is gone. 

“So,” Logan starts, voice quiet and rough. His lips brush against Victor’s throat, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “You loved me, huh?”

He says it like he doesn’t believe it, which is fair. Still, Victor gives him a look that he knows Logan can’t see, one that he knows sets Logan’s teeth on edge: A look that just says Logan needs to catch up.

“Obviously.”

“ Obviously ,” Logan repeats, shaking his head, inadvertently nuzzling Victor. Victor preens. “You call all that shit, you lovin’ me? Killin’ ones I care about? Attackin’ me?”

“I said it back there, didn’t I? Knew from the moment I met ya that yer the guy for me.” Victor shrugs, pressing his lips to Logan’s forehead so Logan could feel the smile overtaking him. He thinks his smile is charming; Logan used to as well. “All I got to show for it is my passion for ya, precious.” He moves a hand up Logan’s forearm, his bicep, his neck, until he’s brushing his jaw, nails lightly scratching at Logan’s greying beard. “Sorry if that’s not enough for ya.” 

“Victor….” 

“Yeah?” Victor moves Logan’s face up so they could face each other. The runt is frowning, that wetness back in his eyes. It’s not just his body that is more breakable now. Victor has to remember that. “What is it?”

Logan licks his lips, the same hesitant look falling over his face as it did in the casino. He opens his mouth, and Victor hears a scream. 

It’s not Logan- its young and high pitched, though it has the same berserker rage behind it like Logan does.

Laura . 

Chapter Text

Logan rushes out of the car without getting any of his shirts back on, yelling, “Laura!”

Victor hastily tucks himself back onto his pants, running out behind him and putting his hair back up.

He should've known this would happen. Everything good turns to shit, and it was too much to believe that he could have what he wanted longer than a few moments.

When Victor gets out of his car, he sees double. 

There’s his Logan, on the rough parking lot ground, blood pouring out of his chest, and then there's another Logan; younger, hair shaved close to the scalp, and currently trying to pierce Victor’s Logan’s skull with their own claws, his Logan weakly but surely fighting back.

The other Logan looks exactly like Logan when he was younger, the Logan that Victor last saw before the world went to shit- minus the hairstyle Victor has never seen Logan wear, as well as the eyes. They aren't Logan’s hazel eyes, but instead a pale yellow. 

A few feet away, chained up and left on the ground, is Laura, still screaming like a wild animal, strands of hair in her face.

Victor roars, bounding towards the Logans and tackling the doppelgänger to the pavement. He scratches the fake Logan’s face off, and is gutted for his troubles, the clone- it has to be clone, Jesus Christ what are their lives?- picking him up and tossing him, throwing him straight into his own ride. The truck dents with the force of it, and Victor can feel parts of his spine and shoulder blades break. 

The fake Logan charges at him, punches at his chest three times with its claws out. They puncture his lungs, causing blood to try and choke him. Victor snarls through the suffocation, and during the next swing, spine still only half healed, he dives low, shoving his hand as hard as he can into the fake Logan’s stomach. He breaks the skin and slices through the thick muscles. He pushes harder to get its internal organs, but the clone elbows him in the back of the skull, feeling like a big metal hammer hitting him.

Victor buckles under the pain, head hitting the concrete. He blinks away the grit from his eyes, and sees Logan carrying Laura away from him and the clone, her eyes wide, turning the corner and out of sight. Leaving. Leaving ?

Enraged, Victor flips himself around. He gets his claws into the clone’s thighs, using that to pull himself up, and bites through the clone’s wrist, tearing tendons and muscles, blood splattering into his mouth. 

He looks into the eyes of the clone, and only sees rage, no pain.

The clone doesn’t taste like Logan, doesn’t smell like him. There’s a chemical taste to the blood, and an artificial air to its scent, making Victor think of new cars and fresh machines. Beyond that, beyond even the sweat and blood from the thing, is a smell that Victor can only attribute to the smell of newly born babies.

The clone snarls at Victor, and Victor smirks cruelly at it, showcasing its blood on his teeth.  Get pissed, pretty boy.

“Victor!” Logan’s voice gets Victor’s attention, and he turns his head to see Logan running towards him, his claws out. The clone uses his break in attention to try to cut his head off, but Victor manages to dive out of the way, slicing through its chest.

Logan reaches them, and although he doesn’t fight like he used to, not even close to the level he used to, it’s enough for Victor.

The clone goes for Logan’s head, Logan blocking it with his own claws, but the thing just uses that as an excuse to stab him straight through the armpit. Logan screams in pain. With the thing’s hands full, Victor goes for its neck, all ten of his claws tearing through its throat. 

It snarls at the both of them through its ruined vocal chords, blood spraying them both in the face. It uses the grip it’s got on Logan and flips him around, throwing him behind him. Logan flies through the air and hits their car, crushing the engine and smashing through the windshield.  Fuck. 

The clone looks at what he’s done to Logan only for a second, because Victor howls, and bounds towards the clone. He carves through the thing’s back, feels the muscle tear and then heals around his nails. It growls, ripping itself out of his grip and shoving both claws through Victor’s shoulders. 

Victor knows in a split second once this happens what the clone plans to do. It wants to use this to throw him to the ground, away from itself, and go after Laura. 

This is gonna hurt, Victor thinks, before holding onto the thing’s forearms, claws curling inside until they hit bone. He grips as tight as he can before dropping himself down on the ground, pulling the thing down with him. The clone’s claws go deeper inside him, knuckles press against his skin. He was right- this hurts like hell. 

Just then, the world explodes. 

It feels like it, at least; one of the vans on the other side of the lot burst into flames, bits of shrapnel flying over the place, breaking a few cars near it. Bright, fiery light overtakes the lot, bathing everything in orange and reds. 

The clone’s head whips around towards the explosion, its snarl deepening. Victor heaves his body to the side, claws still in him, and takes the thing with him. Its head hits the ground, breaking the concrete below, and Victor punches it in the nose. His hand hurts from hitting the metal ridge of its bone, but he hears the beautiful sound of cartilage breaking. 

He also hears wet growling, Logan’s growl, and doesn’t waste time looking up to see him coming towards them. Instead, he uses his grip on the thing’s wrist to pull them both up, just in time for Logan to pierce the clone below the ribs. Together, they beat the clone into submission, throwing it into the big stone lot dividers.

Before the clone can get up, Victor tears out a ‘Customer Parking Only’ sign from the ground, and shoves it through the clone’s eye into its brain. He pulls it out again, and pushes it in between its ribs, feeling the slight give as he hits its heart, and through its back and into the ground. 

The clone stops moving.

Logan pants raggedly once the fight is over, blood still flowing from his chest, and down his knuckles once his claws are back in. He leans down a little, looking faint, and Victor goes to him. He puts an arm around Logan’s waist, helping him stand up straighter, and pulls him closer to him, making Logan lean on him. The blood from his chest pours out less than it would be for a normal person, but more than Victor would like to see. 

“Let’s go, pup. Before they bring others.”

 Logan coughs, then takes a haggard breath, nodding his head. His hands flex, making more blood leak out of the wounds on his knuckles. Victor leads him away from the clone, and feels Logan’s blood coat his fingers where he touches him.

“Where’s Laura?” Victor asks, scanning the destroyed lot for the kid as he helps Logan stumble away from the defeated clone. He can’t find her. He can’t even hear her. He frowns. 

“She’s-” Logan coughs, worse than all the others Victor heard. “Over here.” He finishes, out of breath. Using Victor as a crutch, Logan guides him to Laura, who was hidden away in between an ATM and a vending machine on the other side of the motel wall. 

She’s still handcuffed, a thick metal bar going down to the cuffs of a matching set around her ankles. She’s shaking with rage, her tiny face curled up, teeth gnashing. Victor lets go of Logan to pick her up again, but Logan stops him with a hand to his chest. 

“I got her,” Logan tells him. “Get the car.”

Laura looks at them both with wide eyes partially hidden behind her curtain of hair, but doesn’t say anything. 

“I’ll be right back,” He promises both of them. He touches Logan’s face gently with his fingertips, his claws barely pressing in. The action, though meant to soothe, causes him to smear a bit of blood onto Logan. “Don’t pass out.”

“Get the damn car, Creed.” Logan moves out of his touch, and has to hold onto the wall to keep himself balanced. 

Huffing, Victor heads back to the car. It’s totaled, completely unusable, which Logan would realize if he wasn’t going to lose consciousness any second now. Instead of bringing the broken car around to them, he grabs his and Logan’s shirts from the back, shaking out the broken glass, and finds the closest to a good car he can in this nearly abandoned and destroyed parking lot. 

He’s almost surprised that no one had come out during the fight, and then the explosion, but he guesses humans got a better survival instinct than they used to; they’re all hiding out in their rooms, probably. 

Victor finds a SUV that’s unlocked, promptly throwing Logan’s shirt in the passenger seat, putting his own on, and then hot wiring the car. 

When he pulls the stolen car around to Logan and Laura, the two of them are sitting on the ground together, Logan looking worse for wear, and Laura without her cuffs.

“Ya can’t take shit.” Logan tries to reprimand, sounding too weak to be anything convincing. Laura gets up and gets into the back seat, but Logan struggles. “Laura’ll copy.”

“Sure I can,” Victor argues. He gets out of the car and takes Logan’s hand, helping him up and in the car. “I just did it. Now get in the fuckin’ car.”

Once his car door is closed, Logan rests his head against the window, breath loud and broken. His face looks gaunt and pale, especially in the cool street lights they pass as Victor speeds away from the motel. 

He shouldn't have let him fight the clone with him. It’s a strange thought to have. Victor can very rarely get Logan to do anything, and he loves fighting with Logan, in any way. He wants to fight with Logan by his side. But looking at him now, he realizes he can’t have that anymore, even more than he thought. 

Logan was almost out of breath just from feeling each other up in the back of a car, and almost really, truly died during a fight. 

Victor comes to a conclusion, one he knew for years now, but now in a different light: Logan needs him. He can’t do this without him, at least not in any way that won’t kill him.  

“Don’t pass out.” Victor tells Logan again.

Logan coughs, breath getting caught in his next exhale, but doesn’t respond more than that. His eyes flutter, and then close. 

Victor doesn’t like that. “ Logan .”

Laura peeks her head out between the drivers’ and passenger’s seats, looking at her father. Victor can’t see her expression, but he does see the way her shoulders raise. 

"He needs the doctors. ” She stresses to Victor.

Logan jumps minutely, his brows furrowed as he opens his eyes, an act that looks like it’s taken most of his strength. 

“We don’t need doctors.” Victor argues. They don’t, they never had. Logan’s healing may have gone to shit now, but it’s still there. Logan is fine, he’ll be fine. They just have to give it a moment. 

“ He needs the doctors!” Laura snaps at him, pointing at Logan, who’s staring at them with wide eyes.

“You can-” he coughs again, a horrible wet sound. “You can fuckin’ talk? Why the fuck- What was all the bullshit with-”

Laura whips her head back towards Logan, and although Victor can’t see her face, he knows she’s glaring and snarling. “Why do you want me to talk to you if you're always insulting me, yelling at me, if you try to leave me behind? After what you did to Charles? You want me to open my mouth-”

“ Laura.” Victor’s voice is firm when he says her name. She turns her head to him, and yep, there’s that snarling glare. “He has no fuckin’ clue what you’re sayin’, kid.” She bares her teeth at him. 

“You knew?” Logan demands, glaring at Victor. His chest heaves, both with the rage in his face, as well as the wounds that Victor can still see clearly in Logan’s bare chest. He just kissed that chest, and now it’s in shreds.

“Uh-huh.” Victor answers, moving his eyes back to the road.

He won’t feel guilty. He hasn’t done anything wrong, and even if he did, when has that ever made him feel guilty? The look of betrayal Logan has shouldn't make him feel like this, like his stomach is full of maggots. 

“You piece of-” Logan coughs again, but tries to work through it, hacking out the word, “Shit!”

“Don’t yell at him! At least he talks to me like a fucking person! ” Laura yells at Logan.

Victor doesn’t actually know how true that is, but doesn’t bother correcting her. Logan sluggishly grabs at Victor’s sleeve, trying to pull Victor towards him to face him. Victor yanks the hand off himself easily; too easily. Maybe Laura was right about the doctors. Victor can see Logan start to lose his fire. 

“Can’t I have fuckin’ anythin’?” Logan yells at him. 

“What are you even talkin’ about?” Victor yells back, getting irritated. “I didn’t take anythin’ from you!”

“You sure?” Logan glares. “‘Cause I seem to remember you sayin’ you wanted to get everythin’ from me.”

“You know what? I changed my mind. Pass out. I don’t want to hear yer miserable voice for a lil bit.”

“That’s fuckin’ rich.” Logan seethes. “Considerin’ all you can do is fuckin’ talk.”

“All I can-” Fuck it. Victor whips the car off to the side of the road. He doesn’t care that he should keep moving, that this just makes it much more possible that they’ll get caught again. Laura hits the back of his seat with the force of the stop, and Logan has to hold his arm in front of him so he doesn’t slam his face into the dashboard. Victor turns to Logan, snarling. “All I can do is fuckin’ talk? What the fuck have I been doin’ here, Logan? Runnin’ around with you and yer girl, protectin’ the fuckin’ both of you, playin’ nice the whole way! What about that, huh? I’m tryin’ to be so fuckin’ good to you, pup, I really am, and yer just gonna spit in my face like that?”

He’s trying, he’s really trying to be good to Logan. Not good in general, hell, maybe not even good for Logan, but he’s trying to be good to him. It goes against everything in Victor to touch Logan the soft way he’s been working on, the sweet words he’s been trying to say. 

It infuriates Victor to have Logan pretend like that’s nothing- to pretend that the moment they had in his car was fucking nothing. 

“Kit was right, we’re findin’ a doctor for you.” Victor tells him, getting back on the road.  

“You fuckin’ bastard.” Logan hisses, opening his mouth to say more, but he’s hit with another coughing attack, this one making the slowly healing wounds on his chest open up again. “I hate you,” Logan chokes out brokenly. 

It smells like a lie this time, which Victor guesses is the best he’s gonna get.

Story of my fuckin’ life, Victor thinks into the rising sun. 

Logan passes out soon after they’re on the main road.

“Ya gotta talk to him.” Victor tells Laura once he’s out. “I know he doesn’t know Spanish, and for some reason you really hate yer old man, but you gotta talk to him.”

Victor can’t get that look of betrayal out of his mind. Why was Logan so hurt? Victor has done so much worse to him, why was this the thing that made Victor's heart feel full of lava? 

Laura doesn’t respond for a second. “ I don’t hate him.”

“No? Coulda fooled me.”

“He’s done a bad thing.” Laura tells him solemnly, in accented English. “If someone does a bad thing, they should be punished.”

Victor hasn’t actually met nor seen any of the doctors or agents or whatever that were in charge of Laura until recently, but he can tell this is something that she was told a lot growing up. 

“Let me tell you a secret, kit.” Victor sighs. He thinks of Logan’s wet eyes, the way his whole body shakes with remorse. “Logan’s got that punishment inside himself already.”

He finds a walk-in clinic in the middle of a small town, after almost three hours on the road, and has Laura go inside and get a doctor before he carries Logan inside. 

“Sniff ‘em out first,” He orders her before she goes inside. “He should smell a little afraid once you tell him there’s a mutant who needs his help- not too afraid that he’ll call someone to try and save his own skin, but just scared enough that he'll think he’s gotta help us. Hear me?”

Laura nods seriously, like a soldier. “ What if he smells too afraid? ”

Victor thinks that over. He could kill the doctor, but if Logan is as bad as he looks, that’ll be a waste of time. “Get back in the car then, and we’ll find someone else.”

Laura nods again, and then rushes inside the clinic. 

Victor tries to wipe the dried blood off his mouth while he waits, getting his own spit on the back of his hand and then rubbing it onto his face, the blood flaking off over his clothes and the car. The blood on his mouth would heighten the man’s fear detrimentally; it always did. 

Laura comes back soon after leaving, with an older man at her shoulder. She nods in confirmation to Victor, and Victor starts to help Logan out of the car.

“C’mon, runt, time to fix ya up.” He murmurs to Logan, trying to get him to stand.

Logan groans, waking up a bit. “Victor,” he wheezes, eyes fluttering but never fully opening. He stumbles on his feet, and Victor decides just to carry him. While weak and sick, Logan is still muscle and metal, and although Victor can pick him up easily, he still rather have Logan walk. However, right now, that’s not an option. “Victor. Laura…” 

“It’s okay, sweetpea.” Victor arranges Logan into a bridal carry, quickly grabbing one of Logan’s abandoned shirts that fell on the passenger side floor and shoving it in one of his pockets. He presses his mouth to Logan’s hair as he carries him, and all he smells is blood. “We’ve gotcha.”

“Oh, golly,” the old doctor breathes when Victor and Logan get closer. “Kiddo, you better wait here.” He gestures to the waiting room, quickly leading Victor through a door. 

“Keep watch.” Victor commands Laura, just being able to see her give him another nod before the door closes behind him.

The doctor leads Victor to a small examination room, fluttering around an exam table nervously. “You should also-”

“I’m staying with him.” Victor snarls at the doctor, baring his fangs. The smell of fear fills his nose, still in the appropriate range, and the doctor nods, eyes wide.

“Yes, yes, of course, sorry, I’ll just-” The doctor takes a step back, allowing Victor to place Logan on the table. 

Logan groans as Victor does, hand weakly reaching up. With his eyes still closed, he murmurs, “Asshole.”

“Yeah, sweetheart, I’m still here.” Victor takes Logan’s hand in his, squeezing it once before letting go. Logan’s hand falls to his wrist, fingers loosely wrapped around. “Now, how ‘bout ya let the doc fix ya up, okay?”

“Fuck you,” Logan mumbles, before promptly passing out again, hand falling limply to his side. 

Victor sighs fondly, shaking his head. He takes a step back from Logan, and gestures to him, as if to say to the doc ‘all yours’, before pulling a wheeled stool up and taking a seat near Logan’s head. 

The doc gives Logan an IV of something for the pain, before starting to stitch up the slashes in his chest and side.

“There’s a bathroom down the hall, if you’d like to clean up.” The doc tells Victor as he wipes the slowly leaking blood off Logan’s body, trying to clean around the area he’s working on. Victor can see a hint of metallic bone before the wounds are stitched close, and feels dizzy with it. 

He once clawed so deep into Logan’s chest that he could feel those metal bones against his nails, the only thing stopping him from tearing out Logan’s heart. He smiled when he did that, jubilant with the proximity, with the noises Logan had made. 

“No one will ever get this close to ya, than me,” He thinks he said. He mainly remembers how close he got to Logan’s face, the way Logan looked at him. Logan stared at him so intensely, like Victor was all he could see. “Can’t ya see it?”

Logan, predictably, had tried to cut his head off in response. 

Victor is used to seeing Logan destroyed; he’s not used to seeing him stay that way.

“I’m not leavin’ him, doc.” Victor tells the man. “And if ya suggest that again, I'm gonna get real pissed.” 

The doc swallows, but his hands don’t shake, even when the smell of his fear spikes. 

Brave man , Victor smirks, stroking Logan’s hair, despite the blood that comes off his hand and into the hair. 

 The doc fixes up Logan, stitches him up and refills whatever he’s pumping him full of. Logan is half unconscious during most of this, muttering threats under his breath. Victor is reasonably sure the threats are for him, and not the doc. The tips of Logan’s claws come out of his right hand, so Victor takes it in his own, pressing the meat of his palm against Logan’s knuckles. 

“Sir,” The doc starts hesitantly once he’s finished. “You’re covered in blood. Um, I won’t ask what happened, but- for your daughter’s sake, at least, do you want to wash up? I can bring you water and a rag.” The doc quickly adds before Victor can respond. “You won’t have to leave the room.”

“She’s seen worse.” Victor responds, sure that Laura has. “But sure, bring it in.”

The doc leaves and comes back with a rag and a small bowl of warm water, avoiding Victor’s eyes as he mumbles, “Be right back,” before quickly heading back out. 

Chuckling, Victor washes the blood off his face. It’s been a good while since someone was afraid of him like that. He takes off his blood stained shirt, wipes down the blood that still is there from when the clone got him in the shoulders, chest, and gut. Once done, he puts his shirt back on, and cleans the blood off his hands. 

He looks towards Logan. The doc only cleaned off the blood that he needed to, to see where he had to stitch up, Logan still fairly covered in the stuff. Victor can see where some of his stitches have already started to heal, scabbed over. 

That’s a good sign.

“Victor.” Logan mumbles when Victor starts to wipe the blood that the clone coughed into Logan’s face off. “What…”

“Back to the land o’ the livin’ yet?”  Victor asks him, continuing to rub out the blood on Logan’s cheek. 

“Where…” Logan puts his hand over Victor’s, stopping him. “Laura…”

“Kit’s standin’ guard, don’t worry.” Victor can still smell her in the waiting room, a slight nervous stank to her normal scent, but otherwise fine. 

“We need to…” Logan struggles to get his eyes open, but manages. He holds eye contact with Victor for a moment; they’re hazy with pain and blood loss, but the doc did good, and it’s better than it was. His eyes go over Victor’s face, and Victor can see a flash of- of something go across his face. Guilt? Regret? Grief? “...We need to go.”

Logan starts trying to get up, and Victor helps him, holding his arm for support. Logan should probably stay down a bit longer, heal up as much as he possibly can. But that’s not the world they live in. They need to leave, and leave as soon as they can. Going here, staying in this clinic for the few hours they did, already was a huge risk. 

Victor hears the footsteps and smells the doc before he comes in, but still feigns surprise when the doc puts his head through the slightly opening door. The doc’s eyes widen when he sees Logan, quickly rushing in.

“Oh, no, sir, you need rest, and treatment. You need to check yourself in somewhere. I did what I could, but your wounds-”

“What I need is to leave.” Logan cuts the man off, tearing the IV out of his arm.

The doc glances at Victor, as if he would help. Realizing quickly that Victor won’t, the doc continues, “I always hoped I would get a chance to meet someone like you. There’s so few of you left. I’m worried that after you leave here, there will be one less in the world.”

“He’s fine.” Victor argues, handing Logan his shirt now that he’s standing on his own two legs, albeit shakily. Logan is fine. He’s awake, and he’s no longer bleeding, and what’s left of his healing factor can handle the rest. He’s not dying yet. 

“No, he’s not.” The doc argues softly. “I mean,” he turns back to Logan, currently buttoning up his shirt with trembling fingers. Victor resists the impulse to do it for him. “I know you’re different. But that doesn’t change the fact that something inside you is poisoning you. You need to check yourself into a hospital and run some tests, find out what it is.”

Logan lets out a bitter laugh, and heads out the door. “We know what it is.”

Victor follows Logan as he limps out of the exam room and through the waiting room. Laura jumps up from her chair when they head into the room, eyes scanning Logan critically, as if she could see any wound through Logan’s shirt and decide for herself if the doc did a good job or not. She and Logan make eye contact, and just like at the prof’s grave, something passes between them. 

“Please. Misters. If you don’t want to go to a hospital, maybe I can-” 

Victor is closer to the doc than Logan is, and stops the man by grabbing the front of his coat. “Ya wanna save a life, doc? Try your own. We were never here. Let us get on our way, why dontcha?”

“Victor.” Logan scolds, a hand on his back. “Stop.”

Victor lets the doc go, the man taking a few stumbling steps back.

“He’s right.” Logan tells the doc. “Forget we were here.” He turns to Laura, watching them with her cool, expressionless face. “Let's go.” Logan says, heading out the front door. 

Victor glares at the doc, and smells his fear heighten again. Hand on Laura’s shoulder as she gets closer to him, Victor follows Logan out. 

Logan pauses once out the door, and Victor realizes he was too out of it last night to remember what the car Victor stole looked like. 

Seeing this, Laura takes Logan’s hand, and guides him to the car.

Logan’s eyes widen when her little hand goes in his, and Victor can see the twitch in his arm, as if he was gonna rip his hand out of her grasp, but stopped himself. They silently follow Laura to the car across the road, and when she gets in the back seat, Victor heads towards the driver’s side. 

“Hey.” Logan touches Victor’s arm lightly, as if he was concerned that it would be unwanted. Victor stops and looks at him. His eyes are deep set in bruises, and although he’s not bleeding out anymore, his skin is still that off color. Most of the wounds are still not fully closed, and the ones that are have become horribly thick scars.

Victor was foolish for thinking that Logan looked half dead a few days ago. This is a half dead man; healing fast enough just so his body won’t allow him a quick death. 

When this is all over, Victor thinks, I’m gonna love you ‘til yer dead. Whether we’re in Eden, or in Wyoming, or wherever, you’ll have me. I promise. 

“I’m sorry for what I said in the car, earlier.” Logan tells him, avoiding his eyes, instead looking at the horizon over Victor’s shoulder. “And I’m thankful for all you’ve done. All yer doin’.” 

“You know why I’m doin’ it.” Victor reminds him, taking Logan’s hand off his arm and bringing it to his lips, kissing his split knuckles. He darts his tongue out a little, licking a bit of the blood off, before Logan takes his hand back.

“Because yer bored.” Logan says, a lie, and one they both know. Victor told him why he was doing this, as honest as he could ever be, on that bench and in that car. 

“I miss you,” Victor corrects anyway. “I love you.”

“You’ve gotten soft.” Logan tells him again. He pats Victor’s chest, and heads to the car. 

Victor watches Logan get in the passenger seat, and wishes he could rip his head off and drink his blood. He wishes he could take Logan by the back of the head and fuck him against the closest wall. He wishes he could kiss his tears away. Wishes he could take Logan’s face in his hands and just hold him. Wishes he could have Logan against his chest, his breath uninterrupted. 

Wishes that to keep Logan, he wouldn't have to be soft, just to have Logan mock him for it. 

Wishes, wishes, wishes. 

Wishes are for children. He knows this.

Victor starts driving to North Dakota.

Laura leans out her open window, sunglasses on, and arms crossed under her chin to rest more comfortably. Logan sits with his arms crossed across his chest, leaning heavily against his seat. He switches between staring hard out his window, and staring at Victor. 

 Victor kinda wishes Laura would fall asleep soon, just so he could have a chance to talk to Logan. The kid only got around 2 hours last night, having stayed up with Victor in the car ride to the clinic, and dutifully standing guard there as well; she must be tired. 

And Victor really wishes he could fucking talk to Logan right now. 

Victor’s always been one to take what he can get, and then try to take some more. With the way Logan let him touch him last night, how he let Victor hold and stroke and kiss him, he thought he got a lot. But now- the fight about Laura in the car, which Victor still doesn’t understand, and Logan dismissing him as soft again, he feels like maybe they took a step back somehow. Like Logan reclaimed something he gave Victor, while still hoarding all Victor has given him. 

It pisses him off. It infuriates him so much that his hands hurt from the grip he has on the steering wheel. He wants to drive this stupid fucking car off the road, crashing it, making it so Logan dies fucking painfully, and only Laura and Victor survive, and how’s that for having anything you selfish piece of shit?

It also, mortifyingly, breaks his fucking heart. 

Logan is- and this Victor is sure of, and has been for nearly 100 years- his soulmate. They’re the same type of man, same type of animal. No one knows Logan as well as Victor, and no one could know Victor as well as Logan. They’re meant to be together; Logan needs Victor, and Victor loves Logan, what more could they be?

Even when everything was wrong in the past, even when he thought Logan was dead for nearly two years, there was a part of him that thought, maybe one day, he’d see Logan again, see how they were supposed to be tied together. Maybe in Hell; probably in Hell. If his Pa was right, and such a place exists, Victor knows he’s not going anywhere else. 

Victor is willing to believe in Hell just to imagine a world where he could have seen Logan again, and Logan can’t even hold his hand?

“We’re almost out of gas.”  Logan’s voice cuts into his musing. 

“What?” It takes Victor a moment to realize what Logan said, and when he does, he looks at the fuel gauge. Logan was right, the needle is hovering dangerously over E. “Well, shit.”

They’ve already left the town, and Victor doesn't want to turn back, so their only hope is that they come across one of those shitty gas stations by the side of the road.  

“You couldn't get gas when I was at that walk-in?” Logan snarks, but when Victor’s eyes shoot up to glare at him, Logan’s got a playful smirk on his face. Oh. 

The whiplash this man causes, Jesus. Worse than any wound. 

“What, and leave you an’ Laura to the wolves? For shame, pup.”

And here Victor almost feels dizzy , because Logan gives him a look that Victor nearly dares to call fond. 

Laura peeks her head out between their two seats, looking at Logan, and then Victor. 

“I want music.” She declares. “ They had it at the doctors.”

“Yeah, kid, it’s called the radio.” Victor tells her, flicking it on. Both he and Logan make slight sounds of distaste as the radio immediately starts playing some modern pop song. Logan quickly changes the station, flicking through them until he lands on a classic country station. 

Someone please watch over me

I’m not accustomed to these feelings

Loneliness is burning my soul

Sometimes the mind is so misleading

Logan quickly turns the radio down until it's almost completely off, and avoids Victor’s eyes when he tries to catch Logan’s, looking out his window instead. 

Laura makes a displeased sound, leaning further in the front of the car, and tapping at the radio randomly, both turning the music up and changing the station.

“What are you looking for?” Logan questions her, hesitantly putting an arm out to keep her from falling completely in the front, off balance.  

Laura shrugs. “ Something better than that. ” 

Victor snorts out a laugh, shoulders shaking. Logan has always liked that kind of music; he’s stuck in the country music around the 60s, as Victor had with rock, but he’s always been one for the soulful, sad, simple tunes. 

“What did you say?” Logan demands Laura, before turning to Victor. “What did she say?”

“She hates ya music, sweetpea.” Victor informs him, before making a pleased sound as Laura finds another station. “Hm, wait, this is a good one.” 

Victor barely has time to hear ‘ My love is strong enough to last when things are tough ’ before Laura makes another displeased sound, changing it again. 

Logan laughs at him, smiling as he says, “Guess she hates yer music too, handsome.”

“Whatever.”

They let Laura pick the music, which means that they listen to an 80s rock station for 20 miles, until they thankfully find a gas station, the car having been running off fumes at this point. 

Laura had drummed off beat to the music she picked out throughout the car ride, banging lightly on the back of Logan and Victor’s seats. She had smiled wide everytime a new song played, growing each time when she realized she liked the music.

Victor realized he was watching the kid find who she was, when he saw her eyes light up as a Joan Jett song played. 

There’s nothin’ left for me to do, no, so

I’m gonna run away!

I’m never comin’ back to you!

Victor was surprised to feel himself get protective over the kit, watching her find her music, her self. It’s a stupid thing, maybe, but damn. He really is fond of this kid. 

Victor looked over at Logan, who was looking at Laura. His eyes were soft, and mournful, as if he was seeing something he knew he couldn't keep, couldn't even try to keep. 

Logan felt Victor looking, and turned to face him. They shared a smile over Laura, Victor’s indulgent, and Logan’s bittersweet.

The gas station was simple; four pump stations on either side of the place, and a service attendant who was currently taking a midday nap at their post. There’s another car on their right getting gas when they pull in, a young man with some sort of music player. An IPod? Victor hasn’t known what kids actually use since the early 2000s.

The three of them get out of the car, Logan digging out the bloody envelope of cash, and pulling out a few 20s. Victor almost offers to pay for it, just so Logan would fight him on it, before he remembers his wallet, inside his jacket, was left at that motel.

Damn.

Laura tugs on the hem of Logan’s shirt to get his attention. “Hm?” He questions, looking down. “What is it?”

“What is that?” She asks him in careful English, pointing to the music player the young man had. 

“Um.” Logan scratches the back of his head. “Ya put songs on it, and it plays music. I don’t know what it’s called anymore.”

Victor watches Laura’s eyes widen at Logan’s words, amazement in her face. “ I want one.”

Logan either knows enough Spanish to get that, or maybe the longing was just that obvious in Laura, because he shakes his head. “No.” he says firmly, before walking towards the gas station attendant. 

Laura huffs at him as he passes her, and Victor watches the young man with the music player. He wraps the headphones around it and places it on top of his sedan, leaning in the front, probably to get something. 

Well. The kid wanted one. 

“Laura,” Victor calls. She looks up to him, frown still on her face. Victor crouches down to her height, speaking softly so the young man couldn't possibly hear, “Yer faster and stronger than that man. If ya can get it without him noticin’, ya can keep it.”

Laura gives him one of her blindly bright smiles. “ Really? ”

“Yeah,” Victor confirms, standing back up. “Get what ya want, kit.”

Without another word, Laura quietly starts running towards the man’s car. She creeps towards the back left of the sedan, looks to see if the man was watching, and then leaps over the car. She grabs the music player as she leaps over the car, landing on the other side with an audible thud. The young man quickly gets out of his car and looks around at the noise, but Laura stays low, hidden by the car tire. She clutches her prize in both her hands, a wide smile peaking through the hair that is covering part of her face, as she looks over the trunk at Victor, who smiles back.

The man turns around, his back towards the car, and therefore Laura, and the kid quickly runs towards Victor, music player to her chest like it’s her toy horse.  

Lil ninja, Victor thinks affectionately, patting the kid’s head when she reaches him. “Good job. Make sure to hide them from Logan til we get back on the road.”

Victor helps her figure out how to work the music player, and then they find out that all the music on it is electronic pop shit with grinding chords. It’s shit that both Laura and Victor hate, so he manages to reprogram it, hacking into the music database that the player uses, and downloading all the songs she’d enjoyed in the car so far, and then some more he thinks she would like. When he hands it back, Laura shoves the music player into her jacket pocket, still smiling. 

When Logan comes over to them, she leans into Victor’s side a bit before heading into the back of the car, and Victor has a dawning realization that what he feels for the kid is beyond fondness and affection; he actually cares for her. 

Aw, fuck. 

Logan is the one to drive when they get back on the road, something both Laura and Victor try to stop.

“I’m fine to drive,” he stressed to them, Laura and Victor sharing a look. “ Stop that.”

So Logan drives, and also forces them to listen to his sad music, to both Laura and Victor’s distaste. 

“Yer gonna give the kid a complex, pup.” Victor tells him a few hours on the road. 

“She’s not even listenin’,” Logan argues. “She’s listenin’ to whatever ya put on that music player. I told ya she would copy if ya started stealin’.”

Laura is listening to the songs Victor put on, head pressed against her window, earbuds in and sunglasses on, munching on a bag of chips Logan got her at the gas station. 

Victor, just like when Logan saw Laura playing with the music player in the back of the car when they first got back on the road, doesn’t tell him that he told Laura she should steal it. 

Victor says instead, “Let the kit have some fun.” 

Logan rolls his eyes at him, and Victor wishes he could kiss him. That’s nothing new.

It’s dark the next time they stop, simply pulling over on a stretch of dirt road.

They don’t mean to pull over, but Logan is hit suddenly by one of his coughing attacks, and Victor has to hold onto the steering wheel to keep them from swerving, carefully pulling over, while all Logan can do is take his foot off the gas. 

Laura is fast asleep, her music blocking out the sound of Logan’s coughing, but Logan and Victor still try hard not to wake her as they get out of the hastily parked car, Logan still coughing.

It’s a wet, hacking sound, and when Logan falls to his knees with the force of it, Victor can see tiny drops of blood hit the ground. 

“Logan…” Victor murmurs, going on his knees beside Logan, holding him up so he doesn’t fall face first into the dirt. Even when the coughing stops, Logan still lets out gasping, ragged breaths, as if all the coughing made him unable to breathe. All Victor can think to do is rub Logan’s back through it, and hope for the best. 

Thankfully, soon Logan gets control on his breathing, leaning heavily against Victor. 

“Ya good?” Victor whispers into his hair. 

“Fuck off,” Logan tells him, embarrassed, which Victor takes as a yes. They stand up together, and Victor follows Logan when he starts to walk away from the car, Logan’s steps unsteady.

“Pup?” Victor questions. Logan isn’t walking like he has a destination in mind; he’s walking like he’s running away. 

Logan spins around to face him. “I think you should take her.”

“What.” Victor stares at him flatly, sure that he must have misheard him.

“Victor, look at me. I’m fucked up.” Logan rubs at his forehead, avoiding Victor’s eyes. “It's another day of this. I can barely drive . I can’t take her there.”

“You think I’m just gonna leave ya here?” Victor growls, stomping closer to Logan. “Or what, drop ya off at the next town, see ya later?”

“ Victor .” Logan stresses his name, grabbing at his shoulder, and bunching the fabric in his fists. “I’m dyin’ -”

“Ya think I don’t fuckin’ know that? Ya think I forgot?”

“-and Laura shouldn't- she saw Charles, she shouldn't-”

“She saw a lotta people die, pup.” Victor grabs at Logan's face, making him look at him. “And it sounds like she lost a lot too. You gonna make her lose another one?”

You gonna make me?

Logan swallows. “She’s gonna lose me anyway.” 

Victor doesn’t know if he’s talking about his inevitable death, or when they leave her if Eden is real. Doesn’t matter, either way. “Take it from someone who’s livin’ it, sweetheart. It’s real nice gettin’ this journey with you, even knowin’ the endin’.”

Logan leans in as if strings holding him up were cut, and presses his forehead to Victor’s jaw. With Logan’s hands still on Victor’s shoulders, and Victor’s hands on his face, it’s almost like a hug. 

“I hate you,” Logan murmurs to him, although this time, it starts to sound like something else. His breath tickles Victor’s neck, and Victor thinks, I love you. 

Victor moves his hands down to wrap his arms around Logan, properly holding him to his chest. “I know,” he responds in Logan’s hair. 

Victor has always been good at lying to others, but never himself; inversely, Logan has always been good at lying to himself, but been shit at it with others. 

Logan pulls himself out of Victor’s arm, and Victor lets him, but only for a second. Victor leans down and kisses Logan, a brief touch of lips, nearly chaste. Victor can taste the blood on his mouth. 

When Victor leans back, Logan’s eyes are closed, his lips parted. Logan whispers, “You should be crueler to me.”

“Why?” Victor questions. He’s been plenty cruel to Logan in the past, and Logan always hated it. You’d think that any sense of kindness would get his heart fluttering. 

“I deserve it.” 

“Since when do I care about what someone deserves?” Victor huffs before drawing Logan back in. He kisses Logan again, less chaste, and Logan’s hands slide down Victor’s arms to his hips, holding him tightly.

“What if I told ya,” Logan says against Victor’s lips. “The worst thing I’ve ever done?” 

He’s trying to pick up that cross again, Victor knows. He won’t let him. 

“You ain’t got any sins that can shine a light on mine. Yer so worried about what ya deserve, about being yer God’s disappointment?” Victor kisses Logan again, and then the corner of his mouth, before going back to his lips. “Then let me eat yer sins, sweetpea. Put ‘em in my mouth,” He pulls gently at Logan’s bottom lip, keeping it between his fangs but not piercing, before letting go. Logan shudders in his arms, drawing Victor closer. “And I’ll hold ‘em for you.”

No sin of Logan could add more weight to Victor’s shoulder, because no crime of Victor’s weighs him down. If Logan is perturbed with his ethics, concerned with the idea of virtue, then Victor can shoulder that for him. Any life Logan has ended, any life Logan has destroyed, whatever he did to survive these past few years so that Victor could see again, Victor doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter to him. 

“I’ll hold ‘em for you.” Victor repeats, leaning away. He doesn’t get far though, as Logan moves a hand up from Victor’s waist to the back of his head, and brings him back in. 

Logan kisses him frantically, as though he truly could transfer his sins to Victor this way, and the sins were ample. Victor has to pull away when he hears Logan start to get out of breath, and kisses Logan’s forehead and cheek instead. Logan presses his forehead into Victor’s neck, the hand not on the back of Victor’s head moving to hold onto the back, pressing them together. 

“How did we get here?” Logan sighs. 

“Don’t know,” Victor answers. He knows what Logan means; how did they get to the point in their lives where the only person Logan could lean on was Victor? How did the world fall apart at their feet so bad that Victor was the one to carry this for him? It doesn’t feel as out of the blue to Victor as it must be for Logan, but it's still a wonder. That’s not surprising, though. “But hey- I’ll be yer huckleberry.”

Logan laughs wetly, and holds him closer. 

Laura wakes up when the sun is rising, shining through the car windows around the flat South Dakota backwoods. She yawns loudly, wiping at her eyes. Her music player fell to the ground in the drive, and she picks it up, frowning when she sees that it’s dead. Victor reminds himself to show her the charger they got for it at the last station.

They’ve been driving through the night, only stopping once to get gas before dawn- during which Victor pressed himself to Logan’s back as he pumped the gas, holding Logan to his chest and kissing his neck. Logan let him, seemingly over whatever tiff he was having- before Victor took over driving.

Logan fell asleep on and off throughout the night, and each time he woke he would look up at Victor, smiling softly. 

“Ya might start to make me think you like me, ya keep staring like that.” Victor said to Logan the last time Logan woke up, shooting a flirty wink his way. 

Logan had scoffed at him, cracking his neck. “Keep dreamin’.” He told Victor, who could still taste him on his lips. 

“I have to pee.” Laura tells them now.

Victor huffs. Kids . “Can ya wait til we get to the next stop, or are ya pissing in the road?”

A moment of silence. “ Now .”

“Don’t just pull over.” Logan reprimands Victor when he starts to do just that. “Find a bush, or somethin’, so she can hide in that, Jesus.”

“I was gonna ,” Victor lies. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Laura just dropping trou on the dirt road. It’s not like anyone is here to see her, and Victor and Logan are here to make sure nothing happens to her. And it’s not like they never pissed on the side of the road, and much more active ones than this, too.

But he finds a spot off the road with tall bushes, and pulls over there. 

Laura bounds out of the car quickly, and once hidden away in the bushes, Logan turns to Victor disapprovingly. 

“Oh, shut up,” Victor says, not wanting to hear it. He doesn’t think the road pissing is a big deal. It’s not like Laura is a little princess or something. She’s an animal, like them. 

Logan smirks like he won. Not being able to have that, Victor grabs him by the collar and kisses him, brief and hard. Then, almost as soon as it started, he lets Logan go, gently pushing him back in his seat.

That’ll get him, he thinks, smiling smugly when he sees Logan blink in surprise, and not much else. 

“Asshole,” Logan clears his throat, and Victor laughs at him. 

Laura soon heads back to the car, and neither Logan nor Victor say anything, just start the car up and head back to the road. 

“What were they like?” Laura asks Logan a while later, leaning forward in her seat to look at him. 

“Hm? Who?” Logan turns to face her properly. His eyes still are filled with sadness when he looks at her, still sure that he’s gonna have to leave her, but at least he looks at her. Victor is sure Laura appreciates that. 

Laura holds up her comic book, this one having a solemn cover of the comic version of Logan, the prof, Cyclops, that Phoenix chick, and someone Victor guesses is Colossus, based on the little cartoon head in the corner, standing at a grave in the rain.

Logan’s expression shudders close. “Nothin’ like those things.” He tells her, looking away. “They were…” Logan rubs at his mouth, glaring at nothing. 

No one says anything for a moment, letting Logan have his silence, before Laura pokes Victor on the shoulder. “Did you know them?” 

“I tried to kill ‘em a few times.” Victor answers carefully. More than a few times, but maybe he shouldn't remind Logan just how many times he’s had the man’s friends’ blood on his hands. Logan just grunts, which Victor takes to mean he’s confirming what Victor is saying. 

Laura makes a face at Victor. “ ¿Por qué ?”

“I told you, I’mma bad guy.”

“Ya told her yer a bad guy?” Logan huffs. “Why?”

“It’s true, ain't it?” Victor snarks at him. He doesn’t want Logan to know what the conversation was, that Laura was asking if Logan was a bad man. But also, why wouldn't Victor tell her he’s a bad man? He’s never hidden what he was. 

Logan makes a disagreeing noise in the back of his throat, a slight frown on his face. 

“Were you a villain ?” Laura doesn’t gasp out the last word, but it’s near enough. 

“Kit, do you know who I am?” Victor laughs. She clearly doesn’t if she’s asking him questions like that. 

“Don’t-” 

Laura cuts Logan off, quickly questioning, “Who were you?”

“They called me Sabretooth.” Victor says this with a wicked grin.

Laura hits him on the shoulder, more shocked than angry, so Victor lets it pass. “You were a villain!”

“Yep.” 

Laura looks at Logan, stunned, as if Logan would share in her amazement. “You never said!”

Logan shrugs helplessly. “You read those comics, I thought you knew.”

Laura lets out a wordless scream, clearly irritated with both of them. She grabs another one of her comic books, flipping through wildly, before shoving the page in front of them. 

“Oh, Jesus.” Logan groans, covering his blushing face as he looks at the comic Laura shows them. 

Victor glances at it, and laughs again.

It’s a full page drawing, looking to be in some sort of snowy forest. Logan, in the comic book version of his Wolverine suit, is pinned to the ground, both by the hand on his neck, and the knee pressed to his stomach. Logan’s legs seem to be kicking frantically, and he has one hand reached out, claws out, while the other one is grabbing at Victor’s head.

Victor, who in this drawing is wearing the two toned cat suit those artists like to draw him in, fur collared and fur cuffed. His hair is shorter than it’s ever been as an adult, and he looms over Logan, the hand not holding Logan down by the throat raised above his head, claws sharp. 

Both their faces are snarling, angry things. 

Victor recognizes the issue, actually; it's one he owns, the only one he owns, hidden under his bed back in Wyoming.

God, he misses his fights with Logan. 

“ This is you?” Laura yells, back in Spanish. She shakes the comic as if to emphasize something. 

“Yeah, back when yer old man and me used ta dance.” 

“Fuckin’ christ,” Logan grumbles, covering his eyes now. “Put that away, Laura.”

Laura does, moving the comic back to her seat, but she still is looking at them, and in particular Victor, with wide eyes. Victor moves a hand off the steering wheel to cover her eyes, mostly just to piss her off. She moves it off her face with a scornful noise. 

“ I thought… ” Laura frowns at Victor, and then Logan, hand still over his face, before back to Victor. “I thought you were in love with him?”

“Oh, fuck,” Victor blurts out, caught off guard by that. Sure, he’s not hiding it at all, but he’s been trying to be more…quiet about it, for Logan’s sake. He knows Logan would want to talk to Laura about what he has with Victor, explain it away, and he’s been trying to save him from that. Save them both from that.

“ Laura .” Logan chokes out, whipping his hand down to stare at her. He looks horrified. Victor tries not to take it personally. 

“ What ?” Laura asks, clearly surprised by their reactions. 

“You can’t just- Victor and I-”

“Yer outta the cage, kit,” Victor reminds her, cutting Logan off before he can say something that would embarrass himself. 

Laura makes a sour face at him. “ Complicated .” She complains. 

“What gave you that idea?” Logan asks her. “Why do you think Victor-?” He cuts himself off, apparently not even able to say it now. 

Laura doesn’t answer, just looks at Victor. 

Okay, Victor will admit. That’s fair. 

They decide not to continue through the night again, having been made good time so far, as well as both Victor and Logan needing actual sleep, and more than anything, needing to eat. They find a clearing off the main dirt road they've been driving on, hidden away from the sparse plant life and rock formations, and drive through that, until they’re a good ways away from the road, a small creek nearby. It’s as safe as Victor and Logan feel like they can be right now. 

  Victor takes off his shirt as he watches Logan set up a makeshift camp, Laura close by Logan’s heels, and smiles when he sees Logan slow down what he’s doing. Logan doesn’t say anything to Laura as he makes a fire using just sticks and stones, but Victor observes as Logan’s eyes flicker towards Laura, seeing her watch him, and wordlessly show her how to do it. Laura watches this the same way she watches everything, as if this moment is direly important, and something that will either save her or end her. 

Victor takes a step away from them, and his chest hurts, for both of them. 

Shaking his head, Victor turns around, and heads deeper into the wildness to kill something. 

He comes back less than an hour later, elk over his shoulder, blood around his mouth, hands, and chest. 

The elk’s head is gone, Victor having torn it off with his teeth, and most of the blood is gone as well, Victor having hung the animal from a tree, holding its hind legs, and letting the animal bleed out. 

Victor plants the elk at camp, on the other side of the fire Logan made, a smile on his face. Laura is sitting down near Logan, rereading one of her comics- the one with Victor, he notices. Feeling dimly like a house cat who caught a mouse, he struts up to Logan, who is watching him with wide eyes, flicking between Victor’s bare and bloody chest, to his mouth. Victor crouches next to him, puts a single finger under his chin and raises it a bit. He watches Logan swallow. “Hungry?” he teases, before standing back up and heading towards the stream to wash the blood off himself. 

Victor’s first memory is himself covered in blood. He knows it’s not his true first memory, couldn't have been, but it’s the first one he’s got. He supposes there’s worst first memories to have, especially with his father. 

He’s a child, probably no older than Laura, and he’s in the basement. His fangs are growing back, and his claws are clipped, and the blood on him is his own. 

He’s been trying to overwrite that blood memory for years and years now. Most of the time he does, the pathetic little boy in the basement meaning nothing to him. Sometimes, however, it comes roaring back, and Victor has to go back out and bathe in blood again, just to make sure it’s not his blood. 

But the blood on him right now is not his, nor is it an enemy’s. It’s just an animal’s, and one that Victor killed for Logan and Laura. 

Victor licks his lips, tasting the blood. He thinks of that town he killed last year, all those people’s blood in his mouth. He thinks about how it didn’t do anything for him, not like how it used to be. 

Elk was never as good as people, but it’s the same premise, really. 

Victor finds himself wishing for the taste out of his mouth, so that he could taste Logan once more.  

You’ve gotten soft, he can hear Logan saying. 

So be it, Victor thinks. 

It’s just a new type of pain, this weakness that’s grown since seeing Logan again. Victor is an old hat at pain, though. Pain is his first language, the first tune he ever whistled. And although this pain is fresh and different, Victor thinks he can handle it the same way he handles the rest: just by enduring it. 

By the time Victor gets back, pulling his shirt over his head, Logan has already stripped, cleaned, and cooked the portions of elk for the three of them. 

He’s carved thin pieces, about half an inch, but made enough of them that it’ll fill them all up real good. Laura has hers pierced on her claws like a kabob, eating them with the same lack of formality she did at the Munsons. 

Logan is holding his, and presumably Victor’s, in his hands, watching Laura devour her food with the resigned and fragile affection he allows himself to feel for her. 

Victor sits next to Logan, taking the offered meat when it’s handed to him, and tearing into it. It’s good for hastily cooked meat. No flavoring beyond the flesh, which Victor likes, and cooked just enough so that it ain't raw. 

“Don’t eat with ya claws.” Logan reprimands Laura, who continues to eat with her claws. 

“It’s sanitary, ain’t it?” Victor asks. It's metal, so it should be. Right?

Laura makes an agreeing sound over her mouthful of food, even though Victor is positive she has less of an idea than him. 

Logan gives Victor a withering look. “ No , they are-” He turns to Laura. “ No , they are not . They’re in our bodies, how the fuck would they be sanitary?”

Laura looks at her claws, meat still pierced on it. She looks back at Logan, and takes another bite. 

Victor laughs, bumping his shoulder with Logan, who sighs, his barely there smile gracing his face, much to both Victor and Laura's obvious pleasure. 

“No, Laura, listen ,” Logan stresses, trying to explain to her why they both need to eat normal around people, how the claws as utensils is never a good idea. 

“I am not around people,” Laura argues. 

“What’s me and Victor, then?” 

Laura takes another bite of her food, and doesn’t answer, although Victor has a pretty good idea on what the kit wants to say. 

They’ve become this little girl’s whole world, in the days they’ve known her. Of course they’re not people to her- people are something you hate, something you fear, a separate group from yourself that you have to watch out for.

Family can be the same thing; family can just be a group of people, ones that can trick you into thinking they’re safe. 

But not for Laura, he knows. To her, family is a dead nurse back in Texas, and the two men in front of her. 

Victor is happy right now, being this child’s family, a thought that shocks him. He’s been content before, living, a lot of the time. Sometimes he’s even been satisfied. It’s been a while since happy, though. 

He is happy with this dying man and this little girl, and he wants to stay with them. 

When they finish eating, Logan, driven by his demented sense of morals, makes Victor carve more slices off the elk to be made into jerky, Logan setting up a drying station around the fire he made. 

“Don’t waste what you kill,” He says to Victor, although he’s really telling Laura. “It has to be for something.”

Laura decides to help Victor cut the elk, the two of them sitting over the animal, using their claws. Victor’s cuts, by nature of his claws, are more precise, but he thinks Laura’s not doing a bad job. 

He sees her hair fall in her face as she slices, though. She keeps pausing to put it back behind her ears, and Victor thinks back on the fight with the clone, her screaming through a curtain of hair, and when she stole her music player, smiling while her hair whips around in her jump.

Hm. 

They get enough pieces for a few days, and Logan lays them on the drying station he made, mumbling, “Thanks,” like it hurts. “Wash up.” he demands, louder, eyeing the blood on both their hands. 

“Sir, yes sir.” Victor snarks, licking the blood off a finger. 

“ Victor .” 

Victor snickers, getting up. “C’mon, Laura.”  He heads back to the stream, Laura following dutifully. 

They sit next to each other by the steam, washing blood off their hands, and Laura wiping at her mouth. 

Laura’s hair falls into her face again, and Victor can’t help himself, telling her, “Ya should tie yer hair up.”

“ What ?” Laura cocks her head to the side, unsure, as she moves to sit on the back of her legs. 

“It’s getting in yer face when ya look down, so unless you wanna fight with your hair all over the place, you either gotta put it up, or get used to seeing through it.” Victor demands. “I doubt you’ve got that last thing down yet.”

Laura looks at him blankly, tucking a strand that was covering part of her eyes behind her ear.

“What?” Victor questions when she just looks at him. “I know what I’m talking about, kid. Do ya know how many people I killed with my hair down? Put it up, or figure it out on yer own.”

Laura tugs on her hair, pulling it over her shoulder. She looks at it, and then at Victor.

“What?” He questions again, exasperated. She’s usually not this quiet, and he has the sinking feeling she’s feeling embarrassed about something. 

Proving him right, Laura looks down, softly whispering, “I don’t know how.”

“You don’t-?” Victor sighs, rubbing his eyes. Sure, okay. He pulls out a spare hair tie from his pocket and shows it to Laura. “C’mere, kit, I’m only showing ya once. Last thing I need is for you to get hurt on the way to Eden and yer old man to feel guilty.”

“He won’t,” Laura replies, sure of herself. 

Victor shakes his head as he moves to be sitting down, legs crossed, patting the ground in front of him for Laura to sit. “He pushes you away ‘cause he wants you.” Victor tells her, an expert on it.

Laura sits in front of him, her back to him. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s Logan for ya.” Victor sighs, putting the hair tie around his wrist. “Here, get yer hands over mine.” Victor puts both his hands out in front of her, palm down, and she follows his orders, her little hands in the center of the top of both of his. “Good. Now, feel what I’m doin’, ‘kay?”

Victor slowly moves his hands towards Laura’s hair, her hands following his. He’s slow as he ties her hair up, simply pulling it into the tie and twisting around it, securing her hair.  It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. He pulls his hands, but Laura’s stay there, carefully touching the bun her hair is in. 

“Ya feel how it works?”  Victor asks, heedful not to pull her hair as he takes the tie out. 

Laura hums a confirmation, and Victor puts the tie around her wrist. “Good, yer turn.”

Laura tries to replicate the hand movements Victor did, but when she tries to pull her hair into the twisted tie for the second time, she does it too far, making a ponytail instead of the bun, which- it’s not wrong , and would still work, but it’s not what Victor was showing her. 

Laura seems more upset about that than Victor, huffing. She rips out the hair tie, and before she can either give it back, or maybe throw it, Victor instructs her to try again. 

She does, and when she is about to pull her hair into the tie again, Victor puts his hand over hers, slowing her down and helping her tighten the tie around the hair, making a fine hair bun.

“Again.”

She does it again, and this time Victor doesn’t help her. She gets her hair set, touching around it to make sure it's secure, before turning to Victor with a smile. 

Victor puts his hand on top of her head, momentarily stunned by how small she looks under it, before saying, “Keep the tie, kit.”

They walk back to camp together, Laura holding on to the hem of Victor’s shirt seemingly just because. When they get there, Logan is leaning against the front tire of the car, gazing into the fire and the stand he made for the strips of elk. He looks up when he hears Laura and Victor, that sad look back in his eyes. His gaze stays on Laura’s new hair style, a wistful look on his face, before shaking his head.  

“You should rest,” Logan tells Laura. “We should be there mid afternoon tomorrow.”

Laura nods, letting go of Victor. She walks towards Logan, standing close to him, evidently waiting for something. When all Logan does is stare at her, she huffs, getting into the back of the car and slamming the door.

“Yer gettin’ better with her.” Victor tells Logan, moving to sit down next to him, shoulders brushing.  He’s being honest- the Logan of four days ago wouldn't have said anything to the kid at all. 

“You put her hair up.” Logan comments softly. 

“It’s been buggin’ me for a while. Kid’s gonna wanna fight next time, and she shouldn't with her hair down.”

“I didn’t even-” Logan stops himself. “ You always fought with yer hair down.”

“Yeah, idiot, ‘cause ya used to pull on it.”

That surprised a laugh out of Logan. Logan shakes his head, rubbing at his mouth as if he could smear the smile off his face. “Yer a freak, Victor.” He tells him, eyes shining in the light of the fire. 

“You always knew that.” Victor kisses him tenderly, hands to himself, just because he can again, and then lies back to wait for the jerky to dry. Logan leans more into Victor’s shoulder, and Victor almost wishes again, wishes to keep this moment. 

Eden may be real, and this will be gone by the next time he sleeps. 

He leans his head against Logan’s, hears Laura start to drift off in the car, and thinks, Fuck it.

He’s beyond wishing- he’ll pray if he has to. 

“Ya need me.” Victor tells Logan, a reminder, a tie, that prayer he’s afraid to say. He takes Logan’s hand in his own. 

“I don’t-”

“Ya do.” Victor cuts him off. “Needin’ someone ain’t the same as lovin’ them, pup. Ya need me, but ya don’t love me. I don’t need ya, but I love ya.”  Victor brings Logan’s knuckles to his lips. He knows Logan doesn’t love him, not anymore. He doesn’t hate him, he needs him, and he, Victor would dare to say, likes him, but he doesn’t love him. “Ya need me.”

Logan doesn’t respond, but he holds Victor’s hand, and Victor, just like in that bar in the 60s, can’t help but take it as a promise. 

They’re listening to Logan’s country radio station when they get there. 

It’s playing a crooning song of heartbreak, a man who didn’t appreciate his love before she left. Victor, of course, isn’t a superstitious person, but later, he thinks of it as maybe some sort of irony. 

They park the car in the wilderness of North Dakota, in a box canyon, nothing around them. Neither Victor nor Logan say anything for a moment, accepting that this really was a dream, nothing but that drug called hope, when Laura yells, jumping between them and pointing out the windshield, “ There!”

They look up to where she’s pointing, and ‘there’ is right. 

Up on one of the mountain side cliffs is a small building, resembling some sort of watchhouse, is Eden .

Chapter Text

Victor is not good with kids, he knows this. Laura is a special case, and he’s not even that good with her, no matter what Logan says. He just gets the kit, that’s all. It’s easy too, she’s a lot like Logan. 

But this group of kids, looking at him and Logan, wide eyed?

Jesus.

The ten kids flock towards them once the three of them manage to climb up and get to the watchtower, rushing towards Laura and speaking to her quickly in Spanish, all their voices overlapping. Victor watches as she grabs one of the older boys by the arm, looking at him with tears in her eyes. 

“Rictor!” She cries happily. She says more of the kids’ names- “Delilah, Bobby, Jonah, Gideon, Charlotte!”- And Victor realizes that he had been thinking that, even if Laura was right about Eden, she would be the only one here. He looks at her shining eyes, and thinks of combat, of serving with someone, shoulder to shoulder. 

Laura pulls out the group hug she’s been having with her friends, rushing back towards Victor and Logan, taking their hands in hers, pulling them closer. Both allow it, although Victor can sense Logan is as uncomfortable as he is. 

“This is my dad, Logan,” Laura introduces to the kids. “And Victor.”

Logan jolts a little, when Laura says ‘ papá', but Victor is more caught on the fact she didn’t give him a title. He doesn’t know what it would be, per se, but he should have one, for Laura. He shouldn’t just be Victor . 

The kids crowd them more, and Victor has never felt more out of his element. What now?

“Laura-” Logan gets cut off by one of his coughing attacks, automatically grabbing at Victor’s arm to steady himself. Victor pulls his hand out of Laura’s to put it on Logan’s waist, steadying him, holding on tighter when Logan’s knees shake with the effort. Laura goes to Logan’s other side, face tight with concern. 

Logan’s breath catches, and Victor knows it's gonna be a bad one. The trek up the canyon took a lot out of him. Victor thought he should have carried Logan, should have ignored the refusals Logan would have given, just should have picked him up. Logan sucks in a sliver of air, and it’s only Victor’s arms around him that stop him from hitting the ground when his knees give out from under him. 

“Gideon,” the boy Laura called Rictor says, to a lizardy fishy looking boy. “Get the medicine.”

Victor carries Logan to a bed that the children show him to in their makeshift watchhouse turned home, gently placing him down. Logan coughs in his sleep, wet and horrible, and Victor can smell blood. He turns Logan’s head to the side so Logan doesn’t choke on it if more comes. 

He makes eye contact with Laura, and both of them frown at each other. He knows she smells the blood too. “What’s the plan now?” Victor murmurs to her. They got the kit here, yeah, but is this it? He doesn’t believe Laura dumb enough to think she’s safe here, that she can stay here, so there must be more. He looks down at Logan. Do they have more to travel? Can Logan handle it?

Oh, Jesus, do they have to take all these damn kids?

Victor delicately touches Logan’s side, where the doctor stitched him up two days ago. Logan twitches under his hand, and Victor can feel that the wound hasn’t reopened, the ridges of a scar under his fingertips. Victor can also feel the heat of his skin, hotter than it should be, clammy even through his clothes. 

Victor rubs a soothing hand up the right left side of Logan’s chest, where the least of the damage has been, trying to lull Logan into whatever fucked up sleep he can get, but he feels something in Logan’s shirt pocket. He slips his fingers in and feels body warmed metal, pulls it out with two fingers. 

It’s a bullet. What the fuck.  He pockets it immediately, and sees Laura look at him curiously. He shakes his head at her gently. Not now, Kit. 

“Everyone has ‘til tomorrow to find their way here.” Rictor tells Victor, having heard him ask Laura, moving to Logan’s side with Gideon. “We leave the morning after.”

Victor looks around the kids around them. “How many are left of ya?”

A dark look comes over Rictor’s face. “Many. Few we know are already gone.”

Gideon opens a small bag, taking out a huge syringe and a vial of some green stuff. He starts to put some in the syringe, but Victor stops him before he can, grabbing at the kid’s wrist. “What is that shit?”

“It’s okay, Victor.” Laura puts both her hands on Victor’s arm. “It’s medicine. It’ll make him stronger.”

Victor lets go of Gideon’s wrist and takes the vial out of his hands. The label on the vial says X Program , as well as some chemical ingredients that Victor doesn’t know of, all above a bold ALKALIAN. 

He’s never seen anything like this. Figures that if that lab was making kids, they would make new drugs for them too.

“Is it safe?” Victor questions, wondering if these kids would even know. If they were given it, and so they believe it is. 

“In small doses.” Rictor answers, taking the vial out of Victor’s hands and handing it back to Gideon.  

“What happens in large doses?” Victor asks, watching as Gideon pulls less than .5 ml of the green stuff into the syringe. 

“Depends.” Rictor shrugs. 

“We would go wild,” Laura answers. “They had to find out the right volume for each of us. Some of us would hurt, after. Badly.”

“Hurt?” Victor turns to Laura, and thinks of the basement of his childhood, feeling the familiar chill of violence down his spine. He focuses on Laura’s hands still on his arm to stop himself from doing something dangerous. 

She smiles at him, pleased, and for what reason Victor doesn't know. “It’s small medicine.” She tells Victor as Gideon carefully puts the needle in the crook of Logan’s elbow. “He’ll be better, now.”

Victor watches as Logan’s eyes flutter, trying to open. He doesn’t manage it, but he does try to sit up, muttering. “Victor. Laura. Laura .”

Laura lets go of Victor’s arm to crouch near Logan, one small hand wrapping around Logan’s wrist, like she did at the Prof’s grave. 

 “It’s okay, pup,” Victor says softly. He strokes Logan’s hair down, notices how it's slightly damp from sweat. “We got her here.” 

The other kids watch the three of them with wide eyes, like it’s some kind of show, surprised and uncertain. 

Basement kids, Victor thinks grimly.

“Where’s Laura?” Logan asks, still trying to open his eyes and get up. He doesn’t seem to notice Laura’s hand on him. 

“Right here. Laura.” Victor doesn’t have to clarify what he needs her to do, as without question she goes closer to Logan’s head, gently touching the side of his face. He relaxes before she even touches him, and Victor thinks she must be close enough that Logan could smell her. 

“ Sleep . Sleep. It’s okay.” She tells him, and Logan does. It looks more peaceful than any rest Victor has seen him have in days, and Victor makes a mental note to make sure he has some of that medicine on him for Logan, wherever they go. 

Victor gives one more stroke to Logan’s hair, before turning to Rictor, the obvious leader of these kids. 

“Okay,” he starts seriously. “Where the hell are you kids going?”

The kids are going to Manitoba. Victor thinks he’s technically from there- he was born before Canada actually was a country, and before all those lines and provinces were drawn, so he can’t be sure, but he’s reasonably confident that he was born there. And now, apparently, there’s a fucking commune there or something, a safe haven for mutants; off the grid and only able to communicate with the outside world through the ham radio Rictor has up on the birds nest they got. Victor highly doubts that such a place is real, let alone safe for them, but he also doubted Eden, so what does he know?

Victor sits on Logan’s bed as he watches the children prepare to leave. They pack up their shit, mark down locations on maps, and portion out their food. Laura helps when she can, but for the most part, she sits with Victor on Logan’s bed. She presses her side into Victor’s, and he knows now that she is seeking comfort from him. It’s just as strange as it was before, but welcome now. 

At one point, Victor pulls the bullet out of his pocket to stare at it. 

“What is it?” Laura asks as Victor puts it under his nose, sniffing it. 

Adamantium. Victor doesn’t want to think about why Logan would carry around a bullet made out of the only thing that could go through his skull, doesn’t want to think about what Laura told him the literal mind reader told her-

He said Logan wants to die.

-so instead he places it under Laura’s nose. “Smell it. You tell me.”

She does a quick sniff. Her face screws up, and Victor pulls the bullet away. “ The metal they put inside him.”

“You too, kit.”

Laura frowns, shaking her head. “ Not like him. Only my claws, my bones are still growing.”

And that’s a relief, honestly, because along with not wanting to be thinking of Logan carrying around his own suicide pill, Victor also didnt want to be thinking of Logan’s slow death, and it happening to Laura one day, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.

“ We have to keep it from him.” Laura decides, putting her hands over Victor’s, curling his fingers over the bullet, hidden from sight. 

“‘Course we do.” Victor puts the bullet back in his pocket. “That’s our job.”

And it is; Victor doesn’t actually know if Laura loves her old man, but he thinks she does, or at least is learning to. What he does know is that they have to stop Logan from killing himself before his body does it for him. 

Victor used to think that if Logan couldn't be what he was when they were together, he was almost better off dead. Funny how that changes when Victor actually thought Logan was dead, when he actually sees him dying. 

He’ll take any version of Logan now. He can’t be picky. 

“ Our job. ” Laura repeats, that solemn expression back on her face. 

Both of them watch Logan try to survive just sleeping, and Laura puts her hand in Victor’s. Comfort , Victor thinks. For who, this time?

Logan wakes when the sun starts to fall, the kids setting up a bonfire outside. The slight fever Logan had is down, and all the stitches he had are fully healed, but he still looks horrible. Victor knew the medicine, whatever it was, wouldn't be able to fix the poison that's in Logan’s body, but he’s still a little angry that Logan is dying like this. Alkali put this shit in him, their drug should fucking fix him.

Logan snarls as he starts to wake, a deep sound coming from his chest. He growls, his head shaking as if to escape someone’s grip, turning and twisting in the bed. Logan used to have different growls and snarls depending on what he was feeling. Victor hasn’t heard this noise in a long time, nearly 50 years. Logan tried to stop sounding like that near the end of Team X, when he started to get desperate to be ‘human’, and he hasn’t made it since, at least that Victor knew. But Victor still knew this sound, and knew Logan was afraid. 

Logan’s hands start twitching, and Victor quickly stands up, picking Laura from under her arms and placing her down on a chair near the bed. She yelps in surprise, but doesn’t fight him. He did it just in time, as Logan suddenly jumps up with a scream. His claws don’t come out like they used to, two of them barely peeking out under his skin before sliding back in with a noise that would be sickening to most. 

Logan, panting, meets Victor’s eyes first, disoriented and shaken. 

Victor puts a hand out for Logan, to let him know that they were there, that Logan was okay, that Victor had kept him safe, but instead Logan pulls his fist back in a clear threat, his claws out.

That’s fair, Victor thinks, even as it hurts. He jumped Logan in his sleep for a fight so many times, trying to get him by surprise. He wanted to have him be the first thing Logan saw when he woke, and he wanted to touch him; he was angry that Logan had forgotten them, and angry that Logan didn't want him. It made sense at the time. 

“What-” Logan sucks in a breath, and looks at Laura next. She stares back at him, calm, which makes Victor feel a sense of pride. 

“ Nightmare… ” She says softly, getting off the chair to inch closer to Logan. He flinches back from her, and she pauses. Laura looks at Victor, as if asking what to do. He doesn’t know.

Logan stares at Laura, and Victor watches as he slowly recognizes the two people around him. The claws go back in, and he lowers his hand. He falls back in the bed, out of breath.

Laura takes another step towards Logan. “You had a nightmare.”

Victor takes a chance, and goes back to sitting on the bed by Logan’s side. Logan doesn’t flinch, and so Victor takes his hand in his own, wiping the blood off Logan’s knuckles onto his own hand. 

Logan lets him, sitting up from the bed but leaning heavily onto Victor’s shoulder. His fingers flex in Victor’s grip, almost squeezing Victor's hand. 

Logan opens his mouth, closes it, and then asks Laura, “Do you have nightmares?”

For as long as Victor knew him, Logan has tried to connect with people. He does like people, does feel a desire to associate with them. He’s never been good at it though; Logan’s view of a heart to heart is more akin to surgery than anything. Victor, whose idea of a heart to heart was more like a meal, never complained. He loved it. He sees now that maybe it’s not the right way for Laura. Not right, but it’s the best she’s got. 

“ Si .” Laura nods, her expression the most open Victor has seen. She walks up to the bed, looking at Victor and Logan’s joined hands and not their eyes. “...people hurt me.”

Victor wonders if he could find all those doctors, agents, whatever and whoever they are who made Laura. Wonders if he could kill them all before Logan found out. He will, if he can. He’ll rip their spines out. He’ll scoop their brains right out of their skulls. He’ll tear their hearts open with his teeth. 

“Mine are different.” Logan tells her, a vulnerability for vulnerability. 

“ ¿Por que? ”

Logan avoids both their eyes when he says, “I hurt people.” His voice breaks on the word people , as if that wasn’t quite the word he wanted to say, not the word he really meant, but the only word he had. 

Who did you hurt, Logan?

Laura doesn’t respond to that, a dark look overcoming her face. Victor brings Logan’s still split knuckles to his lips, kissing it. “It’s okay, pup, ain’t no one here ya can hurt.”

Logan shudders at that. He presses his head more against Victor’s shoulder. “Don’t be so sure, Vic.”

Victor swallows. Logan hasn’t called him that in decades.

Laura looks conflicted as she stares at Logan, frowning.  “Because you-” She stops herself, continuing after a pause, “You want to die because you hurt.”

Logan closes his eyes, and doesn’t deny it. “What makes you think that?”

“We found yer bullet.” Victor reveals. He doesn’t tell Logan he has it now, can’t let Logan know it could still be an option. Why does Logan feel so bad about killing, that he would be willing to die? Can’t he see how much better he is than it all, him and Victor and Laura, how it shouldn't matter?

Logan gives a dark chuckle, lifting his head up and staring at Laura, and then Victor.

“Don’t worry,” he says, words biting. “I don’t have a gun to shoot myself with.”

“S’not funny.” Victor tells him, knowing Logan wasn’t joking. He doesn’t want to think about Logan dying, doesn’t want to think about this damn runt killing himself. Jesus . 

“Do you always punish yourself,” Laura asks carefully. “When you hurt people?”

This is a teaching moment, maybe. Victor feels sorry for Laura that all she has for teachers are him and Logan. The kid has killed people, he knows that, Logan told him what Laura did back in Mexico. But even if there were morals to tie the kid down, who has she hurt that didn’t deserve it? Who did she hurt that she wasn’t forced? Either the blood she spilt wasn’t her fault, or was meant to be spilt. There’s no blame that should be forced at her feet, especially from him and Logan. 

“It’s all the same.” Logan tells her. “Though some cut deeper.”

Victor has some regrets; they're less than the world wants, and they’re less than it was a week ago.

He won’t let Laura be one of them.

“Get used ta killin’.” Victor tells her, trying to save her. “Live with it, because that’s the only way to live in this world. We don't make the rules, kit, we just have to make sure we don’t get screwed by 'em.”

Logan shakes his head, and doesn’t say anything. He knows Victor is right, and he hates it, but not enough to lie to Laura. 

Laura looks at them, and even though she doesn’t have Logan’s eyes, Victor thinks they still look like his. They both carry more shame and pain than Victor can imagine. “Even good people?”

“Especially good people.” Logan won’t look her in the eyes, repentant again, although for what, Victor doesn’t know. “Especially ones you love.”

They sit with that, the three of them. Victor studies Logan and Laura, watches Laura take it in. Victor never has killed someone he’s loved before; any love he had for his father disappeared the first night. The closest he’s gotten is in the past, when he more or less tried to kill Logan, but it was more like playing than actual murderous intent. 

Logan probably has though; Logan must have, the way his body is shaking right now. Victor can’t help him with that; all he can do is hold Logan’s hand. 

Laura leaves to have dinner with her friends soon after, and Logan and Victor sit together on the bed, looking out the window at the children laughing and playing. 

Logan is still leaning heavily onto Victor’s side, head resting on his shoulder. Victor is absently running his fingers along the scabs between Logan’s knuckles, careful not to scratch. Once the kids are done eating, they start playing a game of what Victor is reasonably sure is tag, some of them using their powers.

Laura chases after a girl her age, the girl pulling the pine needles and bits of bark off the scant trees around them, pushing them towards Laura. Laura slices through them with her claws, not stopping her hunt. She jumps off the ground, and tackles the girl. Logan jumps a bit, but calms down once they see Laura has already put her claws away, the two young girls rolling on the ground. 

They can hear Laura’s laughter, loud and bright, as she pins the other girl down, victory hers. The other kid laughs as well, and Laura gets off of her, smiling. 

“She’s an animal.” Victor comments affectionately. “Think she’ll turn out like you, or me?”

“Hopefully neither.” Logan answers tiredly. 

Victor smiles fondly down at him, and kisses Logan’s hair. 

It’s probably for the best. There’s something wrong with both of them, something that makes it so the world is better off without them. They’re so good at causing hurt, a domino effect of it all, pain for pain, rippling across lives, more than they can see. Victor knows this; Logan always had trouble with that. Maybe now he’s finally got it. 

Laura is a lot like both of them, but hey, maybe she’ll be better. Maybe she’ll be more. 

“Hopefully neither.” Victor agrees, face still in Logan’s hair. He breathes him in, smells the poison and blood, and pulls Logan closer to him, no endgame in sight, just wanting him closer.  “The kids leave after tomorrow night. Headin’ straight to the homeland. Ironic, ain’t it?” 

“Ironic.” Logan sighs. It started in Canada, and it’ll end in Canada. “I’m tired, Victor.” 

“Rest then, pup,” Victor tells him, even knowing Logan isn’t just talking about right now, isn’t just talking about his body. Logan carries a bullet around, and he’s tired. “Just rest. I’ll keep here, and keep ya safe.” 

“Keep me safe,” Logan echoes, voice drifting off as Victor helps him lay back down in the bed. Victor knows he means it to be scoffing, that Logan either doesn’t believe that Victor could keep him safe, or that Logan thinks he doesn’t need to be kept safe, but either way, Victor decides to take it as a request.

“Yeah, I’ll keep ya safe.” He strokes Logan’s jaw as the man gets comfortable- as much as he can- in the bed. Logan presses his face to the hand, turning his head to brush a kiss to Victor’s palm, before falling asleep.

The kids come back inside soon after. Victor had repositioned Logan so there’s enough room on the bed for him to lean against the wall touching the head of the bed, back against the wall as he sits. Logan is on his side, one arm around Victor’s waist as he sleeps, face pressed into Victor’s side. Logan breathed deeply when he first rolled over, taking in Victor’s scent, Victor thinks, something that is confirmed for him when Logan relaxes in his sleep even more.

Now Logan is snoring, which Victor thinks might be a bad thing. He’s never snored before, not when they were together, not when they were on the road. But he’s asleep, and not having another one of his nightmares, so Victor guesses this is the best he can hope for right now. He distractedly traces his claws against the back of Logan’s hand on his waist, faintly enough that it doesn’t leave any mark. 

Laura, hair free of her bun, the tie around her wrist, goes to one of the bunk beds closest to Victor and Logan’s bed, and then pauses. She looks at them, unsure, and doesn’t say anything, so Victor whispers to her, careful not to wake Logan, “Whatcha thinkin’, kit?”

She doesn’t answer, glancing at the kids who file into this communal bedroom, all of them not quite ignoring her, but not paying attention, more preoccupied with their own bedtime rituals. Laura takes a deep breath, making Victor think of jumping into battle, before walking towards them, shoulders straight. 

Without a word, she crawls into their bed. She snuggles up to Victor’s side, making herself as small as she can, legs moving over Victor’s knees. She wraps an arm around Victor’s and holds the arm to her chest at his elbow, like it was her toy horse. With her other hand, she moves Logan’s hand off Victor’s hip and places it on her shoulder. She makes direct eye contact with Victor and glares, threatening him to say something. 

Instead, Victor just shakes his head fondly. He pats Laura’s knee as well as he can while in her vice grip, and says, “Night, kit.”

Victor doesn’t sleep. 

He finds himself unable to, too focused on the sounds of all the children breathing, their shifting in bed. He hasn't been around this many people- this many people that he wasn’t killing, or hurting in some way- in a long time, let alone while trying to relax, trying to sleep. It’s overwhelming. 

He moved Laura once she was asleep, rearranging her slightly so that she wasn’t so perilously on the edge of the bed. More or less laying on the entirety of Victor’s leg, head resting on his thigh, Laura sleeps soundly despite how uncomfortable it looks. 

Logan has stayed where he is, only his hand moving, gripping Laura’s jacket tighter. 

Victor is trapped between the two of them, and unable to sleep. It’s worth it though, to have Logan and Laura in his sight; he’s almost nervous to have them out of his sight now, concerns of something happening to Logan in his sleep, of the clone and whoever holds its leash finding them again. 

They’ve been in the same spot for almost a day; last time they barely made it an hour. 

He pulls Laura almost impossibly closer to him, and holds on to Logan tighter. 

It’s almost funny, in the way horrible things can be funny, how everything has changed for him in such a short time. Five days ago he was in his cabin, alone in every sense of the word, and now he was back with Logan, and with a kid that he thinks he would do more for than he would for nearly anyone else. 

Victor’d say he would kill for them, but it doesn’t take much for him to kill; can’t say he’d live for them, because that’s the one thing he knows he’s the best at, better than even Logan, and so that doesn’t mean much. 

Maybe he’d die for them. The thought should be repulsive: Victor doesn’t put himself in danger for people, not true danger. But if it came down to it, Laura and Logan, Logan and Laura, or himself, Victor knows which one seems the most impossible to him, the one he hates the most. 

So yeah. Huh. Maybe he’ll die for them. 

Victor’s musing is interrupted by a shadow coming from one of the open doorways of the room. He smells one of the kids, Bobby he thinks, creeping closer, until the kid steps into the room, the few camping lanterns around the room lighting him up, casting a strange glow with the way Victor can already see in the dark. 

The kid sees that Victor is awake, and slowly creeps his way up to him. Victor sees toys in his arms, and almost laughs when he realizes what they are. 

Two action figures, one of Wolverine, and one of Sabretooth. 

Kid’s a fan. 

“Are you really Sabretooth?” the kid whispers, careful not to wake anyone in the room. 

“Yeah.” Victor answers, rubbing Laura’s back when she shuffles at the kid’s voice. “I am. That scare ya?”

“No.” The kid takes this like a champ. “Laura said that Logan said all the comics are lies. Are they?”

“Some is true,” Victor answers. He hasn’t actually read any, not really, but he knows what they said, what they made the world believe. “A lot ain’t. Got a lot wrong, they did. Mostly about Logan and I, I think, but it could just be that I knew the truth. Maybe they got all of them wrong too.” 

“What did they get wrong?”

“More things than can fill a night, kid.” Victor snorts. How Logan and he met, what their relationship was like, how old they were… the list goes on. The only thing Victor can think to what they got right is the nature of their fights. That could be Victor reading into the drawings though. 

“They got the Weapons program right.” Logan says, mumbled and faint. Victor didn’t realize he was awake. The snoring hasn’t stopped; Logan is just breathing like this now.

“Yeah?” Victor didn’t know that, didn’t know the details of what they wrote about that place. He didn’t want to. 

He watches Logan’s hand flex on Laura’s shoulder, staying there, as Logan moves his head to better look at the other kid in front of them. 

“What’s the weapons program?” The kid asks, pulling his toys closer to his chest. 

“It was a program we were in…” Logan answers, voice far away; back in that damn lab, if Victor had to guess. “Me n’ Victor. Sorta like what they did to you.”

Victor didn’t think of it like that. Raising soldiers, building soldiers, pumping them full of chemicals, of metal, trying to make the best thing the best at killing. Jesus, how many times are they gonna try it before they realize it’s fruitless?

How many times are they gonna try it before it works?

The kid looks thoughtful at this. He gazes at the toys of Sabretooth and Wolverine, and then at Victor and Logan.  “So you did mean things together?”

Mean things together, mean things for each other, mean things to each other. Mean, mean, mean. 

“Yeah.” Logan says, looking away from the kid into nothing.  

The kid thinks this over. Victor wonders what it’s like, to meet your heroes and to find out they’re people, and not even good ones at that. 

“But now you guys are doing good things.” the kid says, sure of it. 

Logan lets out a bitter laugh, more air than anything. “No.”

That surprises Victor, although he guesses Logan is right. Victor never found out what made Logan be filled with so much guilt that he thinks he doesn’t deserve Laura, doesn’t know what made Logan take the kid anyway, but it probably wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart. It definitely wasn’t out of Victor’s. 

They may be doing something good, but does that really matter if it’s for selfish reasons?

The kid frowns at them, glancing at Laura. “You’re not?” he asks quietly. 

“Kid,” Victor sighs. “We’re just tryin’ to live.”

Victor manages to catch a few hours. They’re fleeting and not that restful, but he’s gotten worse over the years and doesn’t have it in him to complain, especially when he wakes to Logan more or less gently shaking his shoulder as the sun rises. 

“Get up.” Logan tells him, voice rough, although from sleep, the coughing, or disuse, Victor doesn’t know.

“I’m up.” Victor grunts. He cracks his neck as he looks around. All the children are gone from the room, even Laura, although Victor can still hear them talking outside and around the safe house. 

There’s childish giggles, as well as serious commands to pack that, check this; even the familiar sound of guns being loaded and ammo being stocked.  Victor remembers that this is the kids’ last day, and is almost struck.

What now?

Victor gets out of bed, helping Logan to do the same when Logan gives him his hand. Logan struggles to stand, but once up, he manages to walk, albeit with a pronounced limp, his hips and lower back seemingly causing him pain. Victor puts his hand on where it seems the pain is, hoping that it would help, but Logan flinches under his hand.

“You oka-?”

“I’m fine.” Logan snaps, rubbing a hand over his face. He leans against one of the walls, avoiding Victor’s eyes. “How long have we been here?”

“Just a day.” Victor answers, staying where he is despite everything in him yowling to touch Logan again. “Kids leave at dawn tomorrow.”

“To Canada.”

“To Canada.” Victor confirms. Logan doesn’t say anything for a moment, so Victor listens closely to the kids outside, Laura in particular. He can hear her talking softly to someone, words unclear, but Victor can hear that serious tone she has when she’s learning something new. His heart squeezes, and Victor decides to jump out of another plane without a parachute. “We should go with them.”

Logan snorts, looking at Victor like he’s crazy. “What are ya talking about?”

“Laura,” Victor tells him, a correction and an answer, taking a step closer. “We should go with Laura.”

“Why would we go with her?” Logan asks sourly, before quickly adding, “There’s no we.”  

“She’s yer kid, pup, I thought that would mean something to ya by now.” It meant something to Victor, surely it meant something to Logan; Logan who actually liked kids, who wanted them safe and warm and happy. 

Logan, who tried to keep Laura happy, tried to keep her safe, tried to keep her warm. The little girl they’ve been taking care of for days now. How could that not mean anything to Logan?

“I only met her like a week ago.” Logan argues. “I’m not gonna go to Canada with her. With you.”

“Stop that shit.” Victor snaps. “Stop pretendin’ that ya don’t care about the kit. It’s gettin’ old. If ya can love me, you can love her.”

“I don’t love you.” Logan argues, face tight.

“I know ya don’t.” Victor tells him, because he does. “But ya can .”

And Logan can. He must be able to. Logan loved Victor once, so he can love him again. Victor doesn’t even care if Logan can’t fall back in love with him before his inevitable death, he just needs to know that he can .

“What does it matter to ya, anyway?” Logan grits his teeth. “It’s not like you care about her.”

“What makes ya think I don’t care?” Victor snarls, offended. After all he does for Laura, all he’s been trying to do, the little maggot dares to say he doesn’t care?

“You don’t care about the people ‘round ya, Victor.” Logan gets off the wall just to shove an accusing finger in Victor’s face. “You care about nothing .”

Victor grabs at Logan’s wrist, pulling it away from his face, grip too tight for Logan to take back. “Of course I fuckin’ care about people.” He hisses, chest squeezing painfully. “You just gotta earn care, punk. And guess what? Ya and the kit earned it. Fuck you.”

“How fuckin’ honored I am.” Logan sneers. 

Victor knows why Logan acts like this, even explained it to Laura that night on the road. There’s a fucking life for Logan here, with him, with Laura, and because of his own fucked up sense of guilt and rules, Logan thinks he can’t have it, so he pushes them away. Victor knows that Logan wants him, he knows that Logan is acting like this so that Victor would hurt him, prove Logan’s point that it’s a bad idea, of fucking course he knows that. 

Victor can’t help himself though. Logan is hurting him, so he has to hurt back.

“You’re such a fuckin’ asshole .” He tightens his grip on Logan’s wrist, feeling the shift of bones against each other. “Real big man, huh? Too good for fuckin’ any of us, is that it? The fuckin’ X-Man, the hero, so me and the kid are just dirt on your fucking feet?” Victor shoves Logan away from him by the wrist. “King of the dead men, aintcha?”

Logan tries to punch him in the face, but Victor just takes a step back, and Logan stumbles, falling to his knees. Victor picks Logan up off the floor by the front of his shirt, both hands scrunching up the fabric near his shoulders, and pushes him against a wall. 

Logan looks horrible. He got better at the doc’s, and better with the medicine, but he’s going down, and he’s going down fast. His breath is choked and short, his eyes hazy. There’s such a look of exhaustion about him, every part of him dragged down. Victor thinks that if he let go of him, Logan would just drop to the ground again. He tightens his hold. 

Stop going back on your promises, Victor thinks as they stare at each other. Just let us have this. 

“I don’t want ya.” Logan informs him though his shaky breath. “I haven’t wanted ya. Ya were good with Laura when I couldn't be, so I kept ya around. And then ya were there, Victor, a good fuck when I was blue, and ya stayed there, and that’s it. But it’s over. She’s goin’ to Canada, and I’m goin’ to the nearest bar, and I don’t give a fuck where ya go after this.”

Victor’s hands are shaking, and there’s a sharp pain behind his eyes, a telltale sign of holding back tears. Logan must see, looking straight at him, but he still continues, “Because yer nothing to me, ya hear that, Creed? Yer nothing without me, and yer nothing to me. Ya know why? Because I see ya. I see who ya truly are: a pathetic, obsessive, scared man, who’s never gonna feel whole. And that just doesn't do it for me.”

There’s a brief but powerful moment where Victor thinks he should kill Logan. He should let Logan go, and slice his throat open, let him choke on his blood the same way Victor is choking back tears. He should tear out his heart from his chest, crushing it, just like he’s doing to him. He should find a way to bash his skull open, let his brains spill, matching Victor who can’t think straight. 

The only thing that stops him is Logan’s smell. 

Victor smells Logan’s fear, the same type of fear he smelt when he kissed Logan gently in the car, but more importantly, he smells his lies. The runt is lying . Not a single thing he said to Victor is the truth, at least not to Logan. Some of it might be true to Victor, but he knew that already. 

So instead of killing Logan, Victor lets him go. 

Logan hurt Victor, and so Victor has to hurt Logan, and he knows which would hurt more.  

Logan, like he thought, drops back down to the ground. He looks up at Victor, and Victor is struck by the expression on his face. Logan is no longer snarling, no longer sneering at him. He’s trying to, putting his best effort in it, but Victor has seen that look the past few days, and he knows what it is. 

Logan is looking at him like he’s losing him. He is looking at Victor like Victor is something he knew he couldn't keep. 

Victor wants to kiss him, and he wants to hurt him. Only one is allowed though, once again. 

So be it.

“You’ll regret this.” He warns Logan. “And you’ll die miserably alone.” He grabs the car keys from the small desk in the room, and storms out. He wants to walk out without looking back, but he knows that’s not what love is, and despite what Logan just said to him, he still loves him more than anything. 

And so, when he reaches the door, he pauses and turns his head to look over his shoulder at Logan.

Logan stays on the floor, and stares at him. 

Please, don’t leave me. You can’t leave me now, Victor hears in his own voice, but wishes it was Logan’s. 

Logan doesn’t say anything, and Victor walks away. 

He should've known. It was nice while it lasted, the nicest it’s ever been for Victor, but given who they are, what other ending could there be?

The world is still a comic book, Eden proves it, and it’s just like those books say; he’s a bad guy, and the bad guy doesn’t win. 

Laura is smarter than most adults think she is.

The handlers thought she was a dumb person but a smart tool. 

She didn’t speak, but she solved the problems in front of her, and she attacked when and how they taught her. She didn’t scream or cry or cut herself over and over and over again until she was alone in her locked room, and she knew they thought there was nothing in her head but what they told her.

She knew they thought her the best. 

But one kid out of 23 does not make an army. 

Laura knew that as well. She didn’t know they would try to kill them-and kill some of them they did. Five friends gone before she and Gabriella left the building- but she knew something would change. 

Her father was a surprise. Victor was a bigger one. 

She didn’t know what to expect when she met Logan; she hoped for a hero, feared for a villain. Who she met was just a broken man, though. One who has done horrible things- a horrible thing- in front of her. He feels guilt for what he’s done, Laura knows, for all he’s done. She doesn’t know if that makes up for what he’s done. 

Victor says she shouldn't blame him, but what does he know?

He doesn’t know what they did on those days before him. He wouldn't care, either way, Laura knows.

Victor says he’s a bad man, but from what Laura can tell, his bad man is different than hers. 

Victor has protected her, and has made her smile. He has tried to teach her in kinder ways than Transigen, and has not hurt her. 

He loves her father, and loves her too. 

She doesn’t know what kind of bad man would be willing to follow a dying man to his grave just for company. A lonely man, maybe, or maybe not a bad man at all. 

As Laura looks out the telescope as Rictor shows her the border to Canada, she wonders how long she will have with her father. She hopes he manages to live longer than it looks like. 

Victor is going to be heartbroken when Logan dies. He’ll stay with her when Logan passes, she thinks, sure of it. Of course Victor will stay with her in Haven. He’s almost as much as her father as Logan is. 

Laura looks up from the treeline when she smells Logan come up the bird's nest.

He looks tired, is the first thing Laura thinks. Tired in a way that goes beyond any weariness she has seen in him since she met him. He looks like all the fight has been ripped out of him, leaving him just like this, a man standing awkwardly at a doorway, body sagging down. 

Where’s Victor? Laura thinks. It’s strange to not see them next to each other. 

“Come inside,” Rictor says seriously, heading towards one of the boxes where Laura knows Rictor stashed the money Gabriella gave Logan. 

What are you doing? Laura wants to ask Rictor, stepping down from the telescope.

Logan steps inside, looking at Rictor, but not seeing him fully. 

Laura has seen that look before; he had a similar look when Charles-

“Laura told me what you and Victor did for her. She was lucky to have you two.” Rictor tells Logan.

Fear shoots through Laura when she sees the face Logan makes at the mention of Victor, a pained sort of grimace. 

What did you do? Laura wants to ask Logan. 

Rictor hands Logan the small blood stained envelope of money, and Logan doesn’t take it. 

“Take it. I know it’s yours.”

Don’t take it, Laura thinks frantically. Get Victor, and don’t take it. 

“It’s why you did it, right?” Rictor asks. Logan looks over Rictor to stare at Laura.

He looks lost. 

He shouldn’t- they’re where they are supposed to be, they found their way. Why does he look lost? Where is Victor?

Laura knows before he even opens his mouth that she was wrong, somehow. That she thought the world was one place, but it’s another. 

He’s not coming with her.

“Well,” Logan looks back at Rictor. “I don’t need it where I’m goin’. Keep it.”

And with that, Laura’s father walks away. 

She chases after him once the shock is gone, anger replacing it.

How could he decide to leave her? After what they’ve been through? After what she’s forgiven him for? Is Victor leaving her too? Or is Logan leaving both of them?

Laura notices as she darts through the camp that she can’t smell Victor. She smells traces of him in the air, faint impressions of where he’s been, but she can’t smell him. 

What have you done? Laura panics, running faster to the room Logan had been staying in. The stale smell of Victor, while still in the air, is gone to her now; all she can smell is Charles’ blood. 

Laura rushes into the building, and doesn’t see blood, nor the body of Charles or Victor. It is just Logan, staring blankly at a wall. He absently rubs one of his wrists with one hand, and doesn’t look up when Laura gets in. 

Laura rushes in, looking around the building. Victor’s scent is strongest here, which makes sense, but where is he? Why is he gone? Why is Logan leaving?

Logan grabs her arm to stop her running around, asking her seriously, “Hey, hey-what’s wrong with ya? What’s goin’ on?”

Laura rips her arm from his grip, glaring at him. How could he ask that? Where is Victor?

“Hey . I asked you a question. What are ya pissed about?” Logan scowls. “You’re with your pals, you made it.” 

Laura hisses at him, the way Victor hisses. 

Logan, like when Victor hisses, seems to know what is wrong. Of course, that doesn’t mean he fixes it.  “What- you thought I was comin’ along?”

Laura glares at him, upper lip in a snarl. “Where’s Victor?” She asks instead, because the answer is Yes, but how can she say that, if Logan is laughing at the very idea?

“He’s gone.” Logan answers, snarling himself now, a mirror to her.

“Like Charles?” She accuses, proud in the way he flinches back.

“No, just gone. Is that it? You just wanted Victor to come with ya? Wanted Sabretooth ?”

“Is that so bad?” Laura hisses. Of course she wanted Victor and Logan. Laura’s not dumb; she knows about love, and family. Gabriella wasn’t her mama, but she loved Laura, and therefore was family. Logan is her father, and is her family, whether they love each other or not. And Victor is her family, because she loves him. Families should stick together. Why is it so hard for them to stick together? Why is everything so much more complicated when you leave the cage?

“Listen, I didn’t ask for this- for any of this! For you, for Victor! Caliban didn’t ask for any of this, Charles-” Logan cuts himself off, that pained expression on his face again.  “I don’t know what Victor put in your head, but he- but we- neither of us are what you think we are. You’re better off away from us. I suck at this, and he would be worse .”

Logan opens his mouth, goes to close it, but then his face hardens, and he says, “Bad shit happens to people I care about. You know this.”

Laura wants to yell at him, scream at him for Charles, for Victor, for herself. Why does he do this? What makes him kill like this? Is this what Laura will be like, if she lives past this man?

“Then I’ll be fine.” She says instead, and watches as his expression splinters.

Laura never should have trusted him. That should have been her first lesson outside the cage.

Victor knows who he is. This, most of the time, is good; he knows what he can do, knows what he is willing to do. Any battle or struggle he makes or is forced into cannot get him by true surprise, because once he knows the costs, he knows what he will do. There’s no wonder for him. 

Sometimes, however, it’s bad for him. 

Sometimes, knowing who you are means sitting in a stolen car in the bottom of a canyon, unable to leave a dying man who has your heart. 

Victor can’t leave Logan, not really. He’s never been able to, always had to sneak his way back into Logan, one way or another. So even though he left Eden, he has to stay outside of it, buzzing around its perimeter like some sort of carrion fly. 

‘With loss of Eden, till one greater Man restore us, and regain the blissful seat’, Victor thinks bitterly. 

When Victor first walked away from Eden, before heading back to the car, he went around the wilderness and killed any animal he could, for hours. Wolves, coyotes, foxes, even a bear. Logan would have been pissed, but it’s his fault anyway. 

Just like that town over a year ago, the blood did nothing for Victor. 

It just left him sitting on the ground, covered in the stuff, his heart still not in his chest.

People used to think he was heartless. Victor doesn’t blame them, can’t even get mad about that part. Call him almost any name you want, and it either slides off his shoulders, or gets ripped out your guts. 

He’s not heartless though. Or maybe he is. Maybe he is heartless, because Logan has his heart, and has had it for so long. 

Logan has it, and has misused it, over and over, and now Victor is this thing. 

This pathetic, obsessive, and scared thing. 

Victor punches the driver’s side window, shattering the glass. The pain is brief and sharp, and then gone, leaving him with only his own blood and the shards of glass that fall from him.

It’s more than just Logan now, though. 

There’s something wrong about this to him, about leaving Laura like this. The last time they see each other shouldn't be when the other was asleep. They should face this parting head on; A part of him, a big and strong part, wants her to know why he’s leaving. He wants her to know that it’s Logan’s fault that the three of them can’t stay together, and wants her to put all the blame on his feet.

He won’t, though, he knows this. 

Logan is suffering, and although Victor is still a sadist, he can’t get any pleasure in the pain Logan has now. 

He just has to bear it.

Between the hunts and his rage in the car, the sun rose and stayed in the sky. It’ll be setting soon, and the kids leave in the morning before dawn.

Victor wipes his own blood off his hand, and makes a decision. 

When Victor heads back to Eden, careful to sniff out Logan so he doesn’t bump into him, he finds Laura alone. She’s sitting outside underneath the sorta bird’s nest tower they got. Her arms are around herself, a scowl on her face, although her head shoots up when he gets closer. Her expression clears, relief on her face when she catches sight of Victor, and Victor can see that she has put her hair back up. Laura stands up from the crate she was sitting on, taking a step out under the bird’s nest tower before stopping suddenly, as if she remembered something. 

Laura stares at him as if she knows something he doesn’t. 

“Where were you?” Laura asks, her hands curled up in balls.

“The car.” Victor answers, not wanting her to know about the trail of dead animals he left behind him. With how she acted with horses, he figures she would be mad at him for that as well.

Laura absorbs this, a small defiant expression appearing on her face. “You will leave too?”  She asks frostily. 

Ah. So Logan already told her. 

Victor shrugs helplessly. “Kit-” He takes a step towards her, but she takes a step back. Her eyes are in slits, and she huffs, fuming. She looks a lot like Logan, right now.

“You are a bad man.” Laura tells Victor.

And- that surprises Victor, how it hurts. He knows he’s a bad man. He’s the bad man, one of the boogeymen that scared baby mutants. He’s killed and ate and tortured and destroyed whole families, whole towns, and never blinked an eye at it. He was okay being a bad man. But to hear Laura call him that? 

Just the other night she put her tiny hand on his. She trusted him. 

But the world is a comic book again; the ending is not for him. 

Logan and Laura do not want him.

“I never hid that, kit.” He reminds her, because what else can he say?

“Where will you go?”

“Wyoming, I guess.” Victor answers, even though the idea of heading back to that stale house buries him in dread. That damn quiet house, where the only voice is his own.

He wonders if he could just follow Logan from a distance, far enough away that Logan wouldn't know, but Victor could still see him until he dies. He wonders what he would do after that, if he could kill himself. If he should. He still has Logan’s bullet.

“I thought you said he pushes people away that he cares about.” Laura accuses. 

“He does.” 

“So why are you doing the same thing?”

“Why do I-” That stops him. He thought… Laura was Logan’s kid, of course she wanted Logan to go with her, and where Logan went, Victor was supposed to go. Why else would Laura want Victor to go with her, if not for his connection to Logan? “Kit, do you…do you want me to go with you?”

She looks at him like he’s stupid. It’s very similar to the look he sometimes gives Logan.

Victor would go to Logan, go with Logan, if he could, but he can’t. 

He could, apparently, go with Laura. He could protect his kit.

But first.

“Listen to me, Laura.” Victor crouches down to look her in the eyes. Laura looks back with the solemn expression that's often on her face. “I need to be clear about somethin’. I’m a bad man. Ya know that, but I need ya to know what that means. I used to be a hired killer, an assassin. I’ve killed more people than I remember. I’ve eaten some, too. Did they put that in yer books? I’ve killed parents, children, and whole towns. And I haven’t changed. There’s more blood on my hands than you and Logan could dream of.” 

He tells her this not to push her away, or to scare her. Laura, simply, should know. She should know what kind of monster has been watching over her, should know what monster she’s inviting to stay in her life. “Do you still want me to go with ya?”

Laura takes one of his hands, his forever bloodied hands, in both of hers. One hand is only able to wrap around his thumb, the other holding two of his fingers. “A man has to be what he is. Can't break the mold. There is no living with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand.” Laura says this as if she’s quoting something from heart, although Victor has no idea what. It’s important to her though, he can see that. “We have all killed, Victor. I still want you to come with us. You are not my father, but I love you.”

And that’s it, isn't it? Victor has only loved two people his whole life, almost 200 years old, and it's Logan and Laura. 

Logan won’t let him stay. Laura will.

It’s a simple, if not heartbreaking, choice. 

Victor puts his free hand to the back of Laura's head, under the bun she made this morning by herself, pulling her towards him so he could kiss the top of her dark hair, so similar to Logan’s color.

Okay. This is it. 

When Victor pulls back, Laura looks at him with shining eyes. 

There’s a spark in this kid, Victor knows. Something she didn’t get from Logan, or that nurse, or those scientists. This spark is pure Laura, something she had to bite and snarl to keep in her. This kid is a survivor, no matter what. 

And Victor will stay with her, and help her survive. 

Because he loves her. 

Victor lingers with Laura as she helps the kids get ready to leave, not doing much, but instead standing over her shoulder.

He feels a sense of responsibility he’s never felt before, looking at Laura now. He’s never loved a child before, never taken care of one. Laura is strong, and independent, but still a child, and Victor knows he has work cut out for himself in the future. He doesn’t mind; he’s okay with learning what he should and shouldn't do in regards to taking care of Laura. He’s smart, and doesn’t think it'll be hard to figure out.

He just wishes Logan was with them.

Logan is still in Eden, Victor knows. He can smell him still in the bed they shared.

Logan doesn’t come out, and Victor and Laura don’t come in. 

When night falls, the kids have one last hurrah, eating happily out of canned food and creating a huge bonfire. It’s stupid of them, creating such an obvious flare to their location, but Victor supposes children are like that. They’re able to hold onto joy despite what it costs. 

Victor’s mouth is dry, and he tastes cherry pie. 

He heads inside to see Logan, keeping his steps soft and quiet. He doesn’t want Logan to see him first, wants to be able to observe him.

Victor hopes Logan looks as heartbroken as Victor is, and is already regretting the choices he made. 

Victor stands at the doorway to the building, and watches Logan. 

Logan looks at the kids from the bed, yearning and nostalgic. He has his hands on either side of the bed as he sits on the edge of the bed, hands shaking. His eyes are wet and red, as if he’s been crying. 

Logan does look heartbroken. Victor wishes he got more pleasure out of it.

“Ya leavin’ in the night, or are ya hopin’ it feels less like a betrayal if they leave first?” Victor can’t help but snark at Logan, fully walking into the room, tossing the car keys back on the desk he grabbed them from. 

Logan jumps at his voice, looking at Victor with wide eyes. “You didn’t leave?”

Fuck you, Victor thinks, angered by the hope in Logan’s voice. I love you, Victor thinks at the open expression on Logan’s face

Logan gets up, not taking a step towards or away from Victor. His hands flex and Victor wishes he could hold him. 

“Just ‘cause yer not stayin’ with Laura doesn’t mean I gotta, pup.”

Logan’s open expression shutters close. “Ya leavin’ with her?”

“I told ya we should. What, ya thought I was just sayin’ that?” Victor takes a step closer to Logan, frowning at him. “Or did ya think I didn’t really care about the kit, and was just gonna take the car and go?”

“You just want her because she’s my kid.” Logan scowls. 

“Is that a bad thing?” Victor questions, arms out. If Laura was some random kid Logan had to take to Eden, Victor isn't sure he would have found himself so attached to her. But that can’t be a bad thing; it can’t be bad that he loves the daughter of his fucking soulmate. “Someone has to want her. Ya surely don’t.”

He says it to wound. He knows Logan wants Laura; that’s the point of all of this. 

No hands to hold your loved ones if you're dragging your cross to your own grave.

“You don’t fuckin’ understand, Victor.” Logan snaps at him, getting in his face. “You can’t understand what-”

“What? What can’t I understand?” Victor sneers down at him. This close, he can see where Logan’s skin is a bit cleaner near the eyes- where Logan wiped tears from, it looks like. “Let me tell ya one of them: I don’t understand why yer so determined to build yer own destruction.”

Logan puts a hand around Victor’s throat, not any pressure on it, and Victor thinks for half a second Logan is going to kiss him. 

Logan doesn’t, of course. Instead, he spits in his face, “Well, I’m just so good at it, ain’t I, Vic?” Logan uses the hand on Victor’s throat to keep them close as he hisses, “Ya think we’re so similar, but ya can’t even think of what I’ve done when you’re not around. Ya wanna know how good I am at ‘building my own destruction’?”

Logan pulls Victor by his throat so that his ear is near Logan’s mouth. “I killed Charles Xavier.”

Chapter Text

“I killed Charles Xavier.”

That- that doesn’t make sense. 

“You said he had a seizure.” Victor reminds Logan, rearing back to look Logan in the eyes. Logan said the Prof had a seizure, and Victor smelt the truth. What the fuck does Logan mean he killed the man? 

“He had a seizure, and was killin’ everyone at the casino.” Logan tells him. His voice breaks on the word ‘seizure’, and he closes his eyes. Logan’s hand falls from Victor’s throat, landing on Victor’s shoulder. “His medicine got destroyed, thrown by the men sent to kill us. Everyone was dyin’. Everyone was dyin’.” 

“And so you killed him.” Victor finishes for Logan, understanding dawning on him. He remembers how Logan didn’t want him to touch the Professor’s corpse, how Logan had gently touched the center of the dead man’s chest. How he apologized to the Professor at his grave. The rage is Laura’s eyes that first day. “And Laura saw you.”

Logan opens his eyes and smiles at him. It’s the sort of smile one would expect to see bloodstained. “Laura was holding his hand.”

He’s done a bad thing. If someone does a bad thing, they should be punished, Laura said to Victor.

“Pup…” Victor moves to touch Logan’s face, but Logan pulls out of his touch, hand moving off Victor’s shoulder and back to his side. “Pup, c’mon.”

“I don’t deserve-”

“Fuck off with what ya deserve.” Victor cuts him off, not caring when Logan fights him as Victor puts both his hands on the sides of Logan’s face. “I don’t give a shit.”

How could Logan think this would drag him away? So what, Logan killed Professor X. A mercy killing, even. Laura forgave Logan, she must have, and Victor doesn’t care . No one who matters will use this as a lash, so who cares ?

Victor pulls Logan in and kisses him. He bites into Logan’s mouth, as much as the punishment Logan desires that Victor's capable of giving right now, hands tight around Logan’s face. 

Logan doesn’t kiss him back. He doesn’t move out of Victor’s grip, just shifts his head so their lips aren’t connected anymore, Victor’s lip brushing Logan’s cheek instead. 

“I lied,” Logan presses the side of his face into Victor’s, and Victor realizes this is truly it. The most affection he’s getting from Logan right now is this, and after, he won’t get Logan back. “Yer not nothing to me. Never was. I’m sorry.”

He’s not apologizing for the venom he spat at him this morning, Victor knows. He’s apologizing for caring for Victor at all. 

“Stay,” Victor tries, the closest he’s ever been to begging. “Put the cross down.”

“Don’t ask me to do that.” Logan says, shaking in Victor’s arms.

“Put the cross down.” Victor repeats. Logan is dying, and he’s leaving, and Victor is so damn tired of rules and morals and guilt and everything in this world that isn’t the two people he loves. “Put that fuckin’ cross down.”

Logan steps out of his arms, and Victor stops himself from preventing Logan from moving. He lets him go, and when Logan looks at him, the setting sun casts an orange glow around Logan. His hazel eyes shine like fire, and all the blood fades away. 

Logan is the most beautiful man Victor has ever met, and will ever meet. He tries to remember the way Logan looks right now, tries to keep it locked in his brain so tightly that even if someone tries to rewrite him again, wipe his mind and put something else inside, they would still find this right here: Logan, bathed in the sunset, looking at Victor.

“No.” Logan answers. He cups Victor’s face with one hand, fingers trailing down the side of Victor’s whiskers. Logan’s eyes flit over Victor’s face, and Victor wonders, hopes, that Logan is trying to keep this memory as well. Hopes that even if Logan refuses to keep him, he keeps the image of Victor in his head. 

How much time we got? Victor thinks. No time at all.  

“Remember this one for me.” Logan whispers, before leaning in. He kisses Victor softly, slow and gently, like Victor tried to do for him in that car. It’s a sweet kiss, and one that breaks Victor’s heart. It’s as beautiful as it is brief, and when Logan pulls away, he murmurs, eyes closed, “Remember this last one.” 

“Logan…”

Logan lets go of Victor, and heads to the desk. 

“ Logan .”

Logan grabs the car keys, and walks out without looking back. 

When Laura finds Victor a few hours later, he’s sitting on the bed and staring out the door. The pain of leaving Logan in rage compares nothing to the pain of Logan leaving him in resignation. That one is a newer blade, one that Victor didn’t know he had to build calluses for. 

Pain is the only gift life has ever given Victor. 

What a joke. 

Laura just looks at him for a moment in the doorway, and Victor stares back. 

There’s hurt in her eyes, the same as him. Victor marvels on the sharing of pain, even when you’re not the one causing it. 

She walks to the bed and crawls into it, knees to her chest as she all but clambers into Victor’s lap. She presses her head to Victor’s chest, ear over his broken heart, and Victor wraps an arm around her, holding her to him. 

They don’t say anything to each other. What is there to even say? 

Laura holds Victor’s hand as they walk to Canada. 

They walk in the middle of the group of children, Rictor leading them towards the route. There’s a bus that’s supposed to take them and the children to this haven, once they get across the border. Rictor would not, or maybe could not, say who would meet them once in Canada, who’s in charge of haven.

Victor feels Laura’s eyes on him a few hours into the walk, and looks down at her. She’s frowning, a furrow between her brow that means she’s thinking hard about something. “What?”

“We will be safe in Haven.” Laura says. “And we’ll be happy.” There’s a lift to the end of her sentence, almost making it a question. Victor can’t find anything in him to smile, so instead he squeezes Laura’s hand gently.

“Yeah,” Victor says, looking back towards the faint outline of what's left of Eden. “You’ll be happy.”

Logan’s not there anymore, but Victor knows he’ll think of Eden until his dying day as the last place Logan was, the little spot of sunlight where he still lives. 

It’s the man’s own damn fault, for dying alone like this. Victor hates it, and can do nothing for it. 

He tried.

Laura squeezes his hand back. 

He tried. 

Victor smells them before he hears them.

The scent of men and gasoline hits him, along with the harsh mechanical scent of military vans, and he stops where he’s walking, forcing Laura to do the same. The kids behind him freeze when he stops moving, the kids in front of him doing the same thing when they realize everyone behind them aren’t following anymore. 

Probably around five cars, 15 or 20 men, Victor would guess, sniffing the air. He sees Laura do the same thing, her eyes widening. 

“Run.” He tells her calmly.

“Victor-“ Laura starts, but Victor shakes his head. He can hear them now, and knows Laura can too. Soon the other kids will hear them as well.

“There’s no time,” Victor tells her, before turning to the other kids. “Run, or you’ll die.”

That’s all it really takes; the kids start running towards the border, trusting that Victor was telling the truth. Hm.

Only Laura stays by his side, pulling her hand out of his to unleash her claws, crouching down and ready to fight.

“Laura,” Victor grabs Laura’s wrist, pulling her out of her stance. “I said run.”

“ I’m not leaving you! ” Laura yells at him. “We stay together!”

They’re so close to them, they’re filling Victor’s senses. They’ll be able to hear Laura and him soon, and they’ll be able to see each other soon after. “Then fuckin’ hide . If I see you, they can see you.”

“ I can fight. ” Laura snaps at him, putting her claws up as if to prove to him she can.

Jesus Christ, this kid. She scowls at him, and he thinks of Logan. 

Victor picks her up by the back of her jacket and throws her in a bush. “Don’t argue!” 

She yells at him, calling him creative yet nonsensical slurs and names, but shuts up once they hear the vans come close.

Four vans and military convoys, each one filled with soldiers, and some soldiers running beside them on the ground.   

Victor has fought more, and won.

This is gonna hurt, though.

“You better stay hidden or run away, Laura, I fuckin’ swear.” Victor hisses, real fear shooting up his spine. Victor has always been careful to take damage he knows he can roll with, or at least make it so that his opponent hurts him in such a way that they lose something, and also knows how to make sure he’s not shot in the head pretty well. He’s not concerned about himself; but there’s almost always a moment in a big fight where they get the upper hand, and Victor is down for a moment, having to heal before he can continue ripping someone apart. 

It’s that moment he’s afraid of- the moment where he’s unable to watch Laura’s back, where she’s vulnerable. Sure, she apparently killed a bunch of these guys in Mexico, but the way Logan told the story, it was a handful of soldiers who wanted her alive, more or less. 

He’s not so sure now, and he’s not sure Laura could escape if Victor is down before he even gets half of them. 

“Promise me, kit.” Victor demands, glaring into the bush he threw her in. She had hidden herself in it, and he can only just make out her eyes shining through. 

“No.” Laura answers. “I’ll fight when I’m needed.”

Victor growls at her, but they’re too close now to say anything without revealing Laura’s position. 

Victor crouches on all fours, catches sight of the first soldier on the ground, and lets the beauty of a fight take over it all. 

He bounds towards that first soldier, skillfully dodging the gunfire, and cuts the man’s head off with his claws. Victor uses the body of the fallen soldier as a jumping point, flying through the air and landing on top of one of the military vans nearby. He hears more gunshots near him, but none hit him, so he ignores it. 

Victor slams his fist in the driver’s side window, smashing it and grabbing at the driver’s skull in one swoop. He shoves his claws into the driver’s eyes, feeling the familiar textures of brains being scooped, and pushes them towards the door. He hears two separate shouts from inside, one getting cut off fairly quickly, and the other being accompanied by a bullet going through Victor’s wrist. Victor takes in the sharp pain of the bullet breaking bone, and the dull pain of his body healing, and powers through it. He pulls the fresh corpse out of the car, ripping the door off its hinges. 

He swings himself feet first into the new hole of the car, kicking the passenger soldier out the window. He follows the momentum and uses it to throw himself out of the van as well, landing on the soldier and tearing his throat open with his teeth. He watches as the driver-less van crashes into a tree, and smiles. He flicks the bullet out of his wrist, dodging a shot to the head and accepting another into his shoulder, before attacking the next soldier he sees.

He guts them, taking a shot in his side, and slices the throat of the next soldier. Off in the distance he hears the other kids yell in fear, and he curses. 

He hears a gun click close behind him, and tries to duck out of the way, but doesn’t fully succeed, getting shot in the neck instead of the skull.

That drops him, however briefly, the bullet going right through his spinal cord, shattering it. Victor howls in pain, and falls, unable to work his legs now before he’s healed. 

He feels his neck push out the fragmented parts of his spine out of his body, bone regrowing and stitching nerves and muscle back together. It hurts so fucking bad, and Victor can’t even kill the man who did it, can’t enact the same levels of pain on him,  because he’s face first in the dirt. 

“RUN!” Victor roars as loud as he can. He’s not able to see Laura, but he knows she’s nearby and she needs to run, and now. A second is all it takes for the odds to tip into someone else's favor. 

One of the soldiers heads towards him, and Victor feels the muzzle of a gun press against the back of his skull the same moment he feels warmth come back to his legs. Just a moment now, that’s all he needs, just a fucking-

Suddenly, Laura is screaming- not in pain, but pure rage, like the scream she did that night at the motel. 

He hears her claws come out and, before the soldier manages to actually kill Victor, Laura yells as she jumps over him, tackling the soldier. 

Victor manages to heal enough that he can turn over, his legs more or less functioning again, and watches Laura. She gets her claws in the man’s guts, stabbing him again and again in the chest, continuing even after the man is dead. 

Victor stumbles up, and cuts a soldier rushing towards them at the femoral artery, painting them all in his blood. A bullet goes clean through Victor’s upper arm. 

“Laura, we need to-” Victor stops himself, as far away he hears another roar, one he knows well: Logan . 

Laura’s head shoots up at the sound, giving just enough of a distraction for the last soldier who stayed behind for them to line up a shot. Victor swiftly grabs Laura, spinning her around and taking the shot to her chest in his abdomen. Laura yells, placing her hands on Victor’s shoulder and using that to throw herself over him, claws out as she jumps the soldier. 

She stabs the man through the skull, and jumps off him before he hits the ground.

It’s not silent around them- Beyond the natural sounds of a forest, Victor can hear children screaming, men shooting, vans roaming, and Logan’s horrible breathing. Yet, he takes a moment to look at Laura, covered in blood and snarling. Victor thinks of the spark that he sees in Laura, and although he did nothing to cause it, he feels proud of the kid. 

Victor offers her his gore covered hand, and Laura sheathes her claws, taking it in her own bloodied one. 

They run, and soon find other soldiers. 

Laura and Victor growl and hiss, and start to attack. 

Victor slashes and rips the men apart, not caring for style or speed, not caring to check to see if he’s actually killing them, or just leaving them wishing they were dead.

He doesn’t care either way, as long as they go down and stay down. 

Laura does the same, but soon, soldiers surround them. “Contain her! Other target’s unwanted!” 

Victor and Laura go back to back, both preparing to attack again. Victor thinks he could take out a few of them quickly, but that leaves Laura to take out the rest before he can help and he sees another convoy back up, more soldiers on their way. 

The odds aren’t good; they almost never are. 

A soldier lines a shot up towards Victor’s head, and Victor gets ready to get out of the way, when he hears it again- Logan’s roar. 

It’s much closer this time, and when he and all the soldiers turn to the sound, there Logan is, rushing towards them, claws out.

He looks the worst Victor has ever seen him; his shirt is off, and Victor can see all the multiple open wounds in his chest slowly healing, the blood covering him. His eyes are red too, blood vessels split and dilated. His breath is that heavy, nearly snoring sound, almost muffled by his growls, but noticeable to Victor all the same. 

Logan charges one of the soldiers, making them shoot into one of the vans, killing someone, and then it’s a bloodbath from there.

The three of them slaughter the soldiers around them, and even though there’s still that fear for Laura, the anger towards Logan, there’s now joy . Joy of a good hunt, joy at having Logan here next to him for it again, joy from the three of them doing what they’re best at.

Victor laughs happily, smiling when Laura uses Logan’s back to jump on a man.

“Get behind us!” Logan shouts at Laura, and the three of them run through the soldiers, Logan and Victor in front and Laura picking off any straggling survivors. 

They quickly get all the soldiers around them, and almost the moment they do, Logan’s energy seems to wane. His breathing suddenly gets worse, his feet unsteady. The wounds on his chest and arms stop closing. 

Logan looks at Victor, and then Laura, the same pained and remorseful look in his eyes. 

“You took all the medicine,” Laura realizes. “It’s wearing off.”

Logan makes a choked sound, looking back at Victor. 

“Pup,” Victor says, the only thing he can say right now. Shame fills Logan’s eyes, and he looks away. He hobbles towards one of the bodies on the ground, stealing a gun from it and putting it in his back pocket. 

“Let’s go,” Logan doesn’t look at them, and continues to walk. 

Logan has been dying, is dying, but this is different. This is Logan slowly bleeding out, this is Logan who will be dead before the day ends, no other way about it. 

Victor ponders how many times he’s going to watch the back of Logan’s head and wonder if this is the last time he’ll ever see the man. He’s afraid he’ll get the answer soon.

Not letting Logan have a say, Victor goes up to him, wraps an arm around his waist, and uses himself to keep Logan walking straight. Logan looks at him, and then looks away. 

None of them say anything, and they continue on, quickly and quietly looking for either the kids, or the soldiers. 

They find both of them at the same time, the soldiers having captured the kids already, the early warning doing nothing to save them. 

More soldiers, more guns, more vans. 

Having Logan in his arms now, the thrill of the earlier fight escapes Victor, leaving him wishing for moments like the campfire, the night in the car, Logan’s head against his shoulder, Laura’s smiling face. 

“Go to your friends,” Logan commands Laura.

“No,” Victor quickly says. “Don’t do that.”

“ Victor .”

“She should be gettin’ away, not gettin’ closer to these fucks.”

“We have to save the other kids too, Victor,” Logan tells him solemnly. “Not just Laura.”

The other kids are nice and all, but they’re not Victor’s kid, and he’s not going to risk her for them. 

“She-”

“I’m going.” Laura tells Victor with the same amount of solemnity. She touches the back of Victor’s hand, and then looks at Logan. They share another look, but this time Victor understands it. 

Forgiveness. 

Laura sneaks away to help her friends, and Victor turns to Logan. “Ya have a plan, and I’m gonna hate it.”

“Yeah,” Logan agrees, a wobbly smile on his face. “Trust me, though.”

“Don’t do anything fuckin’ stupid, okay, pup?”

Logan doesn’t accept, but Victor didn’t think he was gonna anyway. “Stay hidden til it’s time.” 

Victor wants to make a joke about Logan being the one giving orders now, but Logan slips out of his arms, stumbling into the clearing with the soldiers. 

While Logan distracts the soldiers by getting in their sights, Victor sneaks away, getting closer to the van where most of them are standing guard.

A man comes through, with Rictor, to the clearing Logan is in, gun pointed at the kid’s head and a smile on his face. “That green juice wearin’ off, huh?” He says to Logan, a country twang to his words. “You know, for an ol’ mutie, it’s kinda a short high.” He briefly points to Logan with the gun, before putting it back to Rictor’s head. “Be hard to keep those claws out, soon. Now, where’s your plus one? Heard tigers aren’t as extinct as previously thought.”

“Waste this dick, Logan!” Rictor yells, getting smacked with the gun for his outburst, knocking the kid unconscious. 

“Please stop, Mr. Howlett,” Another man says, older and with some sort of English accent, stepping out from behind one of the vans to stand next to the first man. “Or I am going to have to tell these men to fire on these children. And you don’t want that. You can see the effects of the serum are wearing off. You will not survive further wounds. Where is Mr. Creed?” The man walks away from the first man, and starts heading towards Logan. “I would be honored to meet him. Oh, but first, please, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Zander Rice. I believe you knew my father on the Weapon X program.”

“Yeah,” Logan agrees, putting his hand up to show his claws. “He’s the asshole who put this poison in me.”

Rice agrees, sounding disappointed in something, “Yes, he was one of them.” 

“I think I might have killed him.”

“I think- I think you’re right.”

Victor smiles. That’s his guy. 

“Why don’t you show some respect, mutie?” The man with the gun spits. “You’re looking at the man who wiped out your kind.”

“My friend Donald overstates,” Rice says in good humor, and then states the actual process of how he killed an entire race. 

Victor never cared about other mutants, never was one for sides beyond which one he thinks he can win, and which one he can stand. Yet, even he is disgusted at that. Victor stops paying attention to the men, focuses on the soldiers in his sight, and Logan. He creeps towards one of the vans, and makes eye contact with Laura across the way. She nods at him when she’s in the best position for her friends, and he nods back.

“Growin’ mutants of your own.” Logan growls.

“Dangerous times, James,”  Donald says. Victor chafes at the familiarity he gives Logan. “We can’t trust fate to-”

Suddenly Logan gets up, and shoots Rice in the neck, and then Donald in the hand, which Victor now sees is cybernetic. 

Victor guesses that’s what Logan meant when he said ‘it’s time’.

He and Laura waste no time butchering more soldiers, Laura taking care of the ones around her friends, and Victor taking out the ones that try to rush and stop her. He sees Logan run after Donald, his limp too strong to be anything other than concerning. Victor slices a man’s throat, and then yells, “Laura!” 

She looks up from the man she was disemboweling, and once Victor has her attention, he runs after Logan. 

“Showtime, boy!” Victor hears Donald crows, and then suddenly, two Logans are rolling into Victor’s eyesight. 

That fucking clone is back. Victor swears he’s gonna kill it for real this time. 

“Stay back, kit!” Victor warns Laura, before rushing to Logan's side. 

Logan is too slow when he tries to slash at the clone, the thing easily moving behind Logan and carving out his back. 

Victor gets to them before the thing can kick Logan down, pushing it to the ground and clawing at its throat.

It growls at Victor, shoving its claws into Victor’s chest, again and again, until Victor has to get away to heal enough before jumping right back in. He tries to put an arm around its neck, holding it still so Victor can shove his claws in its spine, but the thing shoves its claws in Victor’s inner thigh, just shy of missing his femoral artery. 

“Motherfuck-” Victor hisses, moving so he has his hand around the thing’s neck instead, trying to choke it out. He hears gasps of air, but that doesn’t stop the clone, shoving the claws from its free hand into Victor’s innards, and using that to throw him.

Victor is tossed straight into the open door of one of the vans, breaking it off. He hits the ground with a roll, and before he can get back up, he hears Logan's growl again. Logan picks up the huge door off the ground, swinging it at the clone as it tries to jump Victor, knocking it off course and into the ground. When the clone tries to get up, Logan smacks it in the head again, and then shoves the door at the thing’s throat, keeping it down. Victor runs to Logan and helps him press the door to the clone’s throat, the thing having to use all its strength to stop the door from breaking and crushing parts of its neck.

“Get up boy!” Donald yells, hidden away somewhere, as the clone growls and hisses below them. “Get up, BOY! He killed your daddy! Him and his pussycat! That’s right! Get ‘em!”

The clone yells louder now, letting go of the door with one hand to slice at it with its claws, breaking the door in two. Both Victor and Logan stumble, jumping in different directions when the clone leaps up at them, Logan too slow to miss it completely, getting kicked over a van. 

Victor hisses at the clone, slicing at its chest over and over again, shoving his claws in any soft and vulnerable part he can, when he hears Laura’s primal scream. 

“Laura! No!” Rictor yells. 

Laura jumps over the van Logan was just tossed over, wrapping her legs around the clone’s neck and using her body weight to throw it to the ground.

“Laura!” Victor roars for her, attacking the clone before it can get to her. Together, they fight the clone, anytime one of them manages to get it good, making it take a step back, the other would go for it again, not giving it a moment of rest. At one point, Laura falls to the ground, but she just uses her foot claws, kicking and stabbing the thing repeatedly. Victor wraps his hands around the thing’s head from behind, and tears out the back of it’s neck with his teeth.

“Victor!” Victor hears Logan give a broken shout. “Laura!” 

Victor looks away, just for a second, worry filling his head, when he feels a sharp pain go through his abdomen. He sees Logan’s wide eyed expression, and then looks down to see a fucking harpoon gun through his guts. There’s a swift pull, and suddenly Victor is being yanked away from the fight, leaving Laura to deal with the clone. 

Victor hisses, twisting on the ground as he’s pulled, looking over his shoulder to see Donald with a crank, pulling the wire towards himself, gun in hand. 

Laura gets on top of the clone, slashing at its chest almost faster than it looks like it can heal, and Logan crawls on the ground towards them.

The clone manages to get up, but Laura just goes up with him, getting on its back. She keeps one set of claws in the crook of its neck to hold her steady, the other savagely piercing its neck. 

“Laura!” Victor yells again. Donald isn’t cranking Victor towards him anymore, and Victor doesn’t stop to wonder why. Taking a deep breath, he pulls the harpoon arrow through the rest of his stomach, screaming, until the only thing connecting him to it is the thick metal wire going through him. 

Victor is panting with pain when Logan crawls towards him, slashing at the wire with his claws, freeing Victor. “Go, go, go!” Logan urges, eyes moving frantically between Victor’s healing gut wound, and Laura, who just got punched by the clone as she slashed out its eyes. 

Victor, growling, gets up, pulling Logan up with him. 

Rictor starts yelling before Victor can move towards Laura and the clone, the ground shaking under them. The earth shifts under their feet, and under the van closest to the clone crumbles and rises, a mountain picking the van up before dropping it on the clone, seemingly crushing it. 

That wouldn't kill Logan back in the day, though. The fight’s not over, despite the silence now around them. 

“Go, runt, I got this.” Victor pushes Logan gently towards the children, towards Laura. 

“I’m not leavin’ you again.” Logan promises him, looking like death. “I’m not leavin’ you two before I have to.”

There’s blood trickling down Logan’s mouth. He’s gonna leave Victor one way or another today. 

“Go, you bastard, fuckin’-” Victor cups his face, smearing blood on him, and shoves him towards Laura. “Laura, leave, go, right fuckin’ now.”

“Victor,” Logan chokes out, finally wanting to talk, but the worst time for it. 

“Go!” Victor yells at them all. 

The kids, minus Laura, back up hesitantly. Logan and Laura stay where they are.

“Go with your friends,” Logan tells her. “Me and Victor got this. Go!”

Laura doesn’t move.

The van creeks, and they’re outta time. 

The clone gets out from under the van, and leaps towards Logan and him. 

“RUN!” Victor and Logan yell at Laura, just before the clone swipes its claws at Victor's throat, nearly slitting it, and then in Logan’s chest, throwing him to the ground and dragging him away. 

“No!” Laura yells, fear freezing her. 

The thing doesn’t get far, as soon Victor is back on his feet, bounding on all fours towards it. He leaps on the things back, bringing it to the ground and making it let go of Logan, who stays limply on the ground. 

“Ya better hope ya didn’t kill him, pretty boy.” Victor threatens, twisting away from the clone to get a better angle of evisceration. “Because I’ll teach ya to talk, just to hear ya beg.” 

It growls at him, and Victor growls back. 

Victor holds the thing’s face the same way he cups Logan before he kisses him, but with none of the gentleness he’s been trying the past week, none of the reverence he had in the beginning, and none of the toying he had in the middle. 

He has pure hatred in his hands, and gives it right back. Victor shoves fingers in the clone’s mouth, in between teeth and cheeks, nails piercing the soft tissue.

Its bones may be metal, but its tendons are still flesh, and Victor could have a goddamn PHD in tearing flesh apart. 

Using almost his entire upper body strength, Victor rips the bottom jaw off the clone, throwing it over his shoulder in one swing.

It rains down a trail of blood on them like some morbid Hansel and Gretel, and Victor smiles sadistically at the thing, licking blood off his fingers.

Victor hopes the thing is human enough to take it as a threat, and not the catching of breath it is. People don’t notice your weaknesses if they’re too busy shitting their pants.  

The thing chokes on its own blood briefly, its healing factor not creating a new jaw, but generating a new layer of sinew and skin to stop the bleeding. It creates a strange open mouth overbite situation, like something in a horror movie Victor pretended not to like a few decades ago. 

It charges at Victor as soon as it can, and Victor takes its teeth first, tearing out its throat, and then going back for more. Blood pounds in his ears and all he sees is Logan, dead weight on the forest floor, and rage fills Victor like never before. 

He doesn't chew what he swallows, not caring for taste nor pleasure, just letting the need to have this thing gone overtake him. He feels the claws that go in his stomach, his chest, his neck, slicing important arteries and veins, but he doesn’t let it stop him. He swallows and spits this fake Logan out of his mouth, until all that's left is shiny spinal metal covered in blood. Victor puts his teeth around the thing’s cervical spine, fangs piercing tendons, and rips its head off. 

Victor pants as he drops the thing’s jaw-less head on top of its lifeless body, spit and blood dripping out of his mouth. 

“No, no, no…” Victor looks up at the sound of Laura’s voice, and sees her with Logan, now leaning against a tree, Laura’s little hands doing nothing to stop the blood leaking out of Logan’s body. Logan’s eyes are closed, and his breath is so shallow it’s barely existent. 

“Logan,” Victor rushes towards Logan, falling to his knees on the other side of him, pressing his hands to the biggest wound, the one in his chest. “Logan, pup…”

Tears build in Laura’s eyes as she looks at Logan, bottom lip wavering as she tries to hold them back.

“Victor…” Logan’s voice clicks as he talks, hoarse and dry. “Get Laura outta here. Take her, take her…Run.”

“ Logan ,” Victor, always prided himself as a smooth talker, someone who knows what to say, can’t say more than that, can’t say anything besides Logan’s name. He presses his hands harder in the wounds, Logan’s blood and the blood on Victor’s hands mixing. 

Wait. 

“The medicine, do ya have any?” Victor asks Laura frantically, an energy overtaking him. Logan’s bloodied hands move shakily, each grasping Victor’s wrist and Laura’s hand, holding them to him. His breath rattles. “Laura!” Victor yells. She looks at Logan’s face, tears building in her eyes. “Laura!” Victor tries again. He sees her bag on the ground near them, could probably reach over for it if he lets go of Logan, but- but he can’t let go of Logan. He can’t let go of Logan. “The medicine!”

Laura looks at Victor, tears falling freely now. “ He’s bleeding too much, it won’t-”

“Laura!”

“Don’t yell at her.” Logan murmurs, eyes fluttering open. 

At Logan’s voice, Laura digs through her backpack, bringing out a vial of the green stuff, and a syringe.

“Shut the fuck up, Logan.” Victor hisses, grabbing the equipment out of Laura’s hands with one of his. “‘Don’t yell at her.’ Do ya hear yourself?” Victor pushes the needle of the empty syringe into his own arm, drawing his blood. 

“Don’t be what they made you.” Logan tells Laura, already accepting his fate. “Victor’ll take care of you. Ya won’t hafta fight anymore…”

Laura grabs at Logan’s hands. “Daddy…”

“I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear any last words out of ya, yer not dying, pup.” Victor growls, injecting Logan with his own blood, right in the heart, and then getting a little of the medicine in the vial. “You know what I learned after ya left Team X? Some of us with a healing factor got real nice blood.” He injects Logan in the chest again, before getting more blood. “Blood-cells reconstruct wounds even in others, if we have the same blood type. You wanna bet we got that in common?”

Victor knows they do. He browsed Logan’s medical file back in the day more than once. He injects Logan with his blood again, and then a little bit of the medicine, and repeats it again. 

“Victor...” Logan coughs. 

Victor brings his own wrist to his mouth, tearing into it until blood flows freely. 

“Victor!” Laura stresses, reaching for him with the hand not holding Logan’s.

“Everyone just fuckin’ trust me for a second!” Victor feels close to tears. He opens the cap of the vial, and lets his blood pool in it, mixing with the little bit of medicine left. He puts the cap back on, and fills the syringe with the mixture, injects Logan with that. The wound in Victor's wrist heals up by the time he’s done. 

“You remember the first time we met, sweetpea? I think I do.” Victor doesn’t pay attention to the crowd of kids now watching them, all his attention on Logan’s chest as it starts to stitch up, groggily and slow, but healing. “We met at a bar. Ya were gettin’ in a fight, and I heard and swooped in. First time we played, and, boy, was it fun. Ya didn’t need my help, we both knew that, but ya liked me helpin’ anyway.”

“Ya killed Kayla months later.” Logan murmurs. 

“Yeah, I did.” Victor says without guilt, relief filling him as he sees Logan’s wounds close. Laura wipes her eyes, smearing blood around them. “Ya fought like a beauty. I fell in love with ya that day, for the first time. Fell in love with ya three times, ya know that?” Logan starts breathing better, no longer wheezing, instead having that faint snoring quality. “They keep remaking me, but I’ll always be your man.”

“Victor,” Logan mumbled, eyes fluttering close again. “Laura. Laura…” 

Victor puts two fingers on Logan’s neck, feels his steady pulse, and sighs with relief.

Laura, still holding Logan’s hand with one of hers, grabs one of Victor’s, smiling up at him in awe. 

Logan won’t die today.

Victor cleans the blood off his hands and face with a pond nearby before they head back out. He doesn’t know who’s gonna meet them at Haven, but a bloodstained man probably still is a shoot first, ask questions later sight. 

He carries Logan in his arms like a bride as they cross the border, Laura by his side, and a sea of children behind him. 

They get to the coordinances Rictor tells them by mid afternoon, and find in the middle of this Canadian forest a woman standing next to a minibus. She looks like she’s in her mid to late 30, tan skinned and dark hair. She has a black leather jacket on, furlined, dark jeans and combat boots on, as well a pair of green tinted glasses. 

“Welcome,” the woman greets. “I’m here to take you to Haven. You can call me Sage.”

Haven, it turns out, is actually a pretty nice place. 

It was started by two women, Sage and Dr Cecilia Reyes, both the last generation of mutants. Apparently, as Sage tells the story on the way there, Reyes discovered the illegal DNA manipulation Rice was doing via people’s food, and, knowing she could not stop it, decided to do the next best thing. 

Haven, its population mostly older mutants and the human children of mutants, makes its own food, this one with the opposite effects of the world’s corn syrup, and they believe that the next generation of Haven could have natural born mutants again.

“It’s a simple solution,” Sage told them on the drive. “But it was a simple cause, too.”

Haven is small, making Victor think of the settlement towns of his parents’ childhood. The place is apparently an abandoned ghost town that's been forgotten by maps. There looks to be only a hundred or so people who live here, each family with their own home, and beyond that, small farms where meat is bred and fruits and veg are grown. 

The doc is there to meet them once they all get out of the minibus, with another woman, and a man, the latter two taking the kids, although Laura stays firmly at Victor’s side. 

“Come on, sweetie,” the woman says to Laura, trying to corral her to join the rest of the kids. “We’re gonna get you settled in here.” The rest of the kids, exhausted, look more than happy to be taken to a place to rest. 

“She’s mine.” Victor tells the woman, holding Laura’s hand with one of his, and the other on a semi conscious Logan’s hip to keep him standing. “She stays with me.”

The woman looks at Laura, who nods, and then smiles at Victor. “Of course. Welcome to Haven.”

“I assume he needs medical attention?” the Doc questions dryly, gesturing to Logan.

“Got it in one.” Victor replies. “You got a hospital in this joint?”

Logan wakes up sense by sense.

First it’s sounds: Birds chirping outside, machines running closeby, people talking in other rooms, and breathing all around him. 

Next, taste: His mouth is dry, and he tastes old jerky, and blood. 

Then, it’s touch: He’s on a rough blanket on a hard bed. There's a needle in his arm, one he can tell is from an IV. There’s a light pressure on his side, and a large hand on one of his. His body aches, but it’s almost painless with how much his body has ached for years. His joints barely hurt, and his two year constant headache is gone. 

Quickly following is scent: The sterile smell of hospitals, and the faint authentic smell of pine needles and spruce trees. An ingrained scent, one more like his own than not, and one he has known for almost just as long. 

Finally, when Logan opens his eyes, sight: He is in a small hospital room, and was right about the IV- a bag is hung near him, containing what looks like blood. 

Amazingly, curled up next to him like he’s seen her do with Victor, is Laura, her hands tucked under her head as she sleeps away. 

On Logan’s other side, in a chair that he dwarfs, is Victor. His head is cocked to the side, resting against his shoulder as he sleeps, body turned towards Logan’s bed. Victor has a hand resting on one of Logan’s, his fingers curled lightly around Logan’s wrist, resting on his pulse. 

Logan is shocked he’s not dead. He thought he was a goner, thought that that was all he was gonna get, holding Laura and Victor to him, and accepting the life they would have without him, because they would have each other. 

Victor saved him though. Victor Creed saved his life. 

“Is it strange, tryin’ to save someone instead of killin’ them?” Logan asked Victor days ago, Victor responding, “No, just rusty.”

Victor was always one to get the swing of things quickly, Logan thinks with a smile, looking down at Laura, and then Victor. 

Oh, Logan thinks, amazed, as his chest expands at the sight. This is what it feels like. 

He loves them; will love them, can love them. The tense doesn’t matter, because he knows how it’ll end. 

Logan turns his hand up to slide his fingers between Victor’s, and holds on. He wraps an arm as much as he can around Laura, and falls asleep holding his family. 

A doctor comes into his room the next time he wakes, Victor and Laura gone, and introduces herself as Dr Cecelia Reyes. 

She talks about his condition and health status. Apparently he’s been unconscious for nearly a week, only coming through for a couple of minutes every day. 

“How do you feel?” She asks him, checking on the strange blood bag Logan’s attached to. 

“Good,” Logan replies, honest and surprised. The more he wakes the more he feels truly good, feels better than he has in years. He can breathe, he can move around, and the injuries he’s been carrying the past two weeks around are gone. “How’d this happen?”

“Mr. Creed,” Reyes answers, lips thinning in the way most people’s do when they talk or think about Victor. Logan can’t help but smile. “Kindly… offered blood donations for you. His cells work fast, and it seems his are able to jump start your own. They’ve completely rebooted your healing factor, mixing with his frankly much more powerful one.”

“So, what?” Logan asks, trying to wrap his head around what the doc was saying. He looks at the blood bag. “I don’t got Adamantium poisoning anymore?”

“Well, no.” Reyes says. “You do. The blood transfusion has stopped it from immediately killing you, and I believe that I, along with my associate Sage, can break down a formula with it with help from the medicine the kids brought, making a progressional pause on the poisoning, a supplement that you’ll have to take every now and again.” At Logan’s blank face, Reyes clarifies, “You’ll always be sick, Logan, but you'll have a life.”

The folks at Haven gave Victor and Laura a small house to live in, one of the few empty ones left. They spruced it up for them while Logan was unconscious that first day, helping the two of them move in the next.

It was strange for Victor, having so many people help him, not out of fear, but out of thanks. Laura, he could tell, thought it was strange as well. 

The house was simple, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and kitchen that bleeds into a living room. 

Laura doesn’t sleep in the room that should be hers the first three nights they stay there, deciding to sleep in Victor’s bed instead. She rests her head against his chest, lulled to sleep by his heart he guesses, clutching at his shirt. 

“What will happen when he wakes? ” Laura asks on their fourth night in Haven.

“Don’t know, kit.” Victor answers honestly, staring at the ceiling of this new house in this new town with his new kid. “Anything he wants, I think.”

“ He wants us, yes?”

“Yeah, he does.”

“But that might mean he’ll push us away.”  

Victor thinks that over. “No, I don’t think he will this time. I think he might stay.”

Laura doesn’t respond, just buries her face deeper into Victor’s chest as she tries to get comfortable. Victor lightly purrs, putting a hand over Laura’s head, and closes his eyes.

On the sixth day of being in Haven, Laura goes out and plays with her friends, all being taken in by different mutant families who live here. She waves as she runs out the door, a smile on her face, and although he never thought wrong on his decision to follow her here, he’s glad he made it. 

Victor sits on the edge of his bed, looking around the place he’ll be calling home. It doesn’t feel quite like it, but he hasn’t felt like he had a home almost ever. Maybe never. This feels the closest he’s ever gotten, this little house with Laura. He thinks of Logan in this commune’s hospital, and wonders if he’s the final missing piece that could turn this into a home. 

It doesn’t take a lot of wondering: Victor knows he is.

Soon, almost if summoned by his thoughts, Victor smells Logan before the man comes inside the house, and hears him before he sees him walk into Victor’s bedroom. 

“Hey, pup,” Victor greets as Logan leans into the bedroom doorway. 

Victor’s eyes trail Logan, head to toe; Logan’s knuckles aren’t the smooth skin that Victor used to know, but it’s no longer the constant open wounds. Three thin scars on each of his hands are what’s there, pale pink and even. 

Logan looks better, but he’ll never look the same. He still has that greying hair, and some of the scars are still there, albeit more subtle. There’s wrinkles around his eyes, especially when he smiles. And when he leans against the door, his hip cocked, it all fades away. 

It’s still Logan. 

“Hey,” Logan greets, shutting the door behind him and strutting towards Victor. He, in a movement that surprises Victor into silence, gets close enough that one of Victor’s legs is in between his own, moving down to sit on Victor’s thigh. 

Victor grunts, hands going to Logan’s hips to keep him there and steady. 

“Doc said I’m almost as good as new,” Logan tells him, as if this is normal for them. “Previous wear and tear not withstandin’.” 

“Yeah?” Victor asks. Unable and not wanting to stop himself, he slips his hands under Logan’s open collared shirt, dipping his thumbs in between his tank and jeans. 

“Yeah.” Logan smiles softly. He pulls Victor’s hair loose from its bun, running his fingers through the strands. “She’s gonna make me a special vitamin or somethin’, to stay healthy, and I’ll stay healthy a long, long time.”

“That’s good.” Victor presses his face into Logan's chest, breathing him in. “I wantcha healthy.” 

Logan smells good; the smell of rot is gone, as is the metallic poison. He still smells metallic, but that’s the same smell for the past 50 or so years. He also smells of the pine trees outside, of his sweat, of the antiseptic smell of the hospital, and under it all, a faint scent that’s Victor .

Victor kisses Logan through his shirt, and then faintly smells the warm scent of Logan’s arousal.

“You lettin’ me have this?” Victor asks, kissing Logan’s chest again. He doesn’t know where he stands with Logan again, but it seems to be tipping heavily in his favor.  It doesn’t truly surprise him, Logan unwillingness to leave him in the North Dakotan forest clear in his mind, but that was different. 

Logan was willing to sleep with Victor when he thought he was dying and wouldn’t see Victor, and was not willing to when he thought he would have to stay with Victor any longer than a day, although he was still dying. 

Now Logan is not dying, and they’re both staying in the same place. Logic follows that Logan would push him away again. 

He told Laura he thought Logan would stay- he didn’t tell her that he thought he might still leave. Logan was complicated like that. 

“I’m not lettin’ you have anythin’,” Logan argues. His hands stay in Victor’s hair, his arm.  

“What’s this, then?” It feels like staying, like giving. What else could it be?

Logan doesn’t answer at first, simply running his calloused fingers along the back of Victor’s neck. “You’ve been so good,” Logan murmurs. “I just don’t want it to be a lie.”

“It’s not a lie.” Victor denies. He’s been good because he wants to be good for them, for Logan and Laura; good to him and good for her. It’s all he wants in his life now. 

Victor’s never been a caretaker, but what if that’s because he never imagined he could be? What if that was because he never got the chance? 

He wants to take care of them, Logan and Laura, his little family. 

“Not a lie to me.” Logan clarifies. “Lying to yourself.” He runs a hand through Victor’s hair again, down his back. “I don’t- want this if ya think it’s something ya have to pretend with. I want you to be real with me. We’ve got a chance here, and I want it, but-”

“Ya want this?” Victor pulls back to look at Logan, who stares at him with fond exasperation. 

“ Victor .” 

“It’s not my nature to be good and kind. But I’ve been tryin’ for ya and Laura. I’m not pretendin’, I’m just tryin’.” Victor leans his head to the side, pressing a kiss to Logan’s hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been my guy for so long, Logan.” Victor admits. “I know I’m still that bad man, but I wanna be your man. I got that passion for ya, and I’ve got the drive to make it work. Is that enough?”

Logan kisses him. 

He was always better with actions than words. 

Victor opens his mouth immediately, a glutton for Logan, hands moving up his shirt, feeling the strong muscles, and the faint scars. 

“It’s enough.” Logan tells him, pulling away to take Victor’s shirt off. He pushes him against the bed, and Victor wraps a hand around the back of Logan’s neck, pulling him back in. “Yer enough.”

Logan runs his hands down Victor’s chest, grabs at his chest hair, and pulls, making Victor moan into Logan’s mouth.

“Yer more than enough.” Logan says, leaning back to take his own shirts off. Victor barely lets him do that, desperate like never before to hold Logan. 

Victor almost lost this man, in so many ways, but he’s here now, both of them, Logan’s with Victor in any way that matters, in every way that matters. Victor touches Logan all over, and it’s like the first time again.  

“You touch me like you wanna keep me.”  Logan laughs, voice light and fond. 

“Ya know I do, sweetpea.” Victor responds, kissing the crook of Logan’s neck as he works to pull Logan’s pants off. “Always have.”

Logan kicks off his boots, throwing them randomly in the room, pants and underwear coming off soon after. Victor feels damn near euphoric watching Logan get undressed like this, nothing like the near fearful way he looked at Victor when Victor did it for him. 

This man wants him, and isn't shy about it. 

Fucking finally, Victor mentally cheers, running his hands down Logan’s sides to grab his ass, forcing Logan to rub his hardening dick against the front of Victor’s pants. Logan hisses at the feeling, both pained and blissful, and Victor tries to lick the sound out of his mouth again. 

“Always have, always will.” Victor tells him, trying to take off his pants with one hand, the other one rubbing down Logan’s back, careful with his claws. “Now, tell me what I can do to ya.”

Logan helps Victor pull his pants off the rest of the way, and once they are off, licks his own fingers. He puts his hand behind him, and Victor feels Logan’s hand brush his before slipping between his ass cheeks. 

“This clear enough for ya, handsome?” Logan gasps out. 

“Yeah,” Victor agrees, kissing and sucking at Logan’s neck, watching happily as the bruises last for a few seconds, and then disappear. “Think that says it all.”

Victor moves back to Logan’s mouth, sucking on his tongue as Logan lets out little whimpers as he works himself open.  “Ain’t got lube here, frail.” Victor reminds Logan, pulling back a bit to reposition them, making Logan sit more  on his lap, Victor leaning against the wall. “Think ya can make do?”

Logan gives Victor a baleful look, causing Victor to grin, before scooching off Victor’s lap and taking him in his mouth. Victor can feel Logan build saliva in his mouth as he sucks him, getting Victor nice and wet for him, and Victor moans appreciably, especially when this new angle causes him to get a view of Logan fingering his own asshole.  “Yeah, precious, that’s real good.” Victor praises, hand going to Logan’s hair. He runs his fingers through it, careful not to snag, twirling a few of the longer ones in the back around his fingers. Logan pulls his fingers out of himself the same time he pulls off of Victor, kissing the head of Victor’s cock almost sweetly, before spitting on it. Victor can’t help but moan at the sight.

“That’ll do.” Logan states, moving back on Victor’s lap. “Ready?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Victor quickly agrees, holding his base to line up properly. “Told you, pup, all of me, all of ya.”

Logan huffs something that could be a laugh, and sinks down slowly, inch by inch, all the while Victor is raptured by his expressions. 

There’s pain first, only a slight twitch in his brow showcasing it, but there nevertheless. Next is his pleasure, that tightening in the face that still looks like pain. Relief is next, Logan’s whole body relaxing as he takes all of Victor in him.

“Fuck,” Victor hisses through his teeth, unable to stop him self from lifting his hips up when he feels the tight pressure of Logan around him. “Fuck, Logan.”

“Yeah,” Logan agrees, eyes falling shut, mouth falling open. Logan starts moving on him, slow and steady, figuring out a pattern. “Move with me.”

Victor moves his hips up again, sharper, and Logan nearly whines . 

Logan places his hands on Victor’s chest to steady himself, the two of them moving together, and already Victor feels delirious. 

Victor raises his hips in time with Logan, bathing in the noises it brings out of him, but it’s not enough. He grips harder at Logan’s hips, and moves him on his cock himself, up and down to the speed he wants.

“Ah, fuck.” Logan groans, head thrown back, eyes opening. The hands on Victor’s chest flex, nails digging in. Victor watches Logan pant, mouth red and open, and growls. He moves forward, sitting up fully but still moving Logan on his cock. Logan’s arms move from his chest to around his neck, holding him closer as their lips meet.

Victor tastes Logan’s gasps, licking the sounds out of him, eating the moans. Logan scratches down his back, pulling him even closer. Logan cuts into Victor’s back with his nails, and Victor pulls Logan’s hand to his mouth, sucking his own blood from Logan’s fingers. Logan moans brokenly, closing his eyes again.

 Victor pushes Logan down on his back, and forces his legs around him. Logan’s head falls off the end of the bed, one hand shooting up to hold onto one of the bedposts to steady himself.

 Moving away from Logan’s mouth to kiss his open throat, Victor demands, “Tell me ya need me.” 

“I need you.” Logan pants, sounding dazed.

“Tell me ya love me.”

“Victor-” 

“I know ya don’t, but tell me. Tell me.”

“I’ll love you,” Logan tells him, better than what Victor asked for. “I’ll love you.” he repeats, a truth, a promise. 

Victor feels tears in his eyes, and is almost horrified. 

Logan pushes himself off the edge of the bed, and kisses Victor. He moans, and Victor hopes he can taste the blood in Victor’s mouth.

“Tired of being without ya, tired of fightin’ it all, just wanna be your man.” Victor tells him, moving faster, burying his face in Logan’s neck. All he can smell is Logan again, just how it should be. 

“You’re my man,” Logan swears, reaching down to stroke himself. “Fuck, Vic .”

“I’ll be good to you for the rest of our lives, sweetpea. I’ll keep ya safe and clean and fuck ya in this bed like it’s our goddamn honeymoon everynight. Keep our kit healthy and strong and no one will ever hurt our family because I’m here, I’m here for ya Logan, I’ll always be here for ya, I’ll never leave you again. You'll never leave me again.” Victor isn’t aware of what he’s saying, isn’t really there at all, only thing that’s real for him is Logan’s eyes staring back at him, light with life and pleasure and it’s all because of him, he did this, he did this all for Logan. 

“Victor, Victor-” Logan cuts himself off, hand going faster.  

“Look at me, look.” Victor demands, pleads. 

“I’m lookin’.” Logan swears, just before he freezes, a choking noise coming from him. He comes, open mouth and panting, and Victor kisses him through it, jubilant in the feeling of Logan’s come between them. “Victor,” Logan sighs, dreamlike, as Victor continues to fuck Logan, wrapping him in his arms again and holding him tight. Logan shoves his face in Victor’s neck, breathing him in, and then promises again, “I’ll love you.”

Victor’s not sentimental enough to believe that’s what made him come, but it’s sure nice to hear right before he does. He gasps as he comes in Logan, resting his head against Logan’s as he tries to catch his breath.

Logan kisses Victor’s neck, hands moving to Victor’s face and bringing their mouths together. 

“Wanna move in with me?” Victor smiles against Logan’s lips. 

Logan laughs with him, bonking their heads together, and Victor has never felt so goddamn happy in his entire life.

Logan has been alive again for 152 days, give or take a few. 

Curiosity killed the cat, Victor used to think. But satisfaction brought it back.

Hope and nostalgia are still dangerous drugs, but Victor is a dangerous man, and he knows that sometimes you need that danger to live, to make sure you’re the safest in the world. 

His days now are peaceful; taking care of Laura with Logan, trying to figure out Haven’s mini mutant school program. Days and nights with Logan by his side, fond smiles and adoring snark. Fights that end in bed and not in blood. Helping Haven become a functional town, however hidden and small it may be. 

The peace won’t last, Victor knows, watching Laura spar with Logan in their backyard, their similar smiles lighting up the world around them. Peace never lasts.

But when the world comes knocking on their doors again, Victor’ll be ready, and even better than before. 

He’s got a family to protect this time.