Moonlight and Adamantium

Chapter 2: Lost and Found

Meanwhile, back in New York…

Xavier Institute, Westchester, New York, Summer, 1970

A leopard does not change his spots.

But a leopard is and animal, and James “Logan” Howlett, was not an animal, he was a man, and an X-Man.

Those who told Charles Xavier that he was making a terrible mistake, that Wolverine was little more than an animal, that he could never become a member of a team, teach at a school, live in one place, that he would be gone in a month, they had all been wrong.

Wrong for a little over half of a decade.

Wrong today.

As Professor X saw him, Logan was a noble man, with a highly-developed sense of honour. It was well beneath his code of personal ethics to even attempt to steal a woman from a colleague, especially when that woman was also a colleague.

Even if he was in love with Jean Grey, hopelessly and desperately so.

Even if she had some feelings for him, as well.

A lesser man would have taken advantage of that, grabbed what he could get when he could get it and clung, greedily to that stolen memory, but Logan was not a lesser man.

Still, nothing tears a man down, even an indestructible man , the way unrequited love does.

And when he is in a moment of weakness, even a strong man can be vulnerable, especially to a woman, a young, beautiful woman, who promises him that she can take all his pain away.

Especially when she can.

It was an old story, older than Logan, one of the oldest stories of all time, and probably happening all over the world.

Classes were no longer in session, the young woman in question whom he had gone with was of age, Cyclops swore that he had lent Logan his shiny new red truck (?!) and so Charles looked upon Wolverine’s abrupt departure as a vacation, not a disgrace.

Then, about a week later a package arrived for him at the school.

A knapsack containing some of his clothes and things, and his wallet were in the package, along with a note in the absent student’s handwriting that simply said “Logan, thanks for everything, but it’s better this way. I didn’t mean to take your stuff, so I sent it back to you. Good bye and good luck, Mel.”

The sender clearly thought that Logan had returned home, but he hadn’t.

In the light of these events, Cyclops reported his vehicle stolen, and Wolverine was officially missing

Weeks passed by with no news.

Cerebro told Charles Xavier that Logan was in Canada and that he was still alive, and while those were comforting certainties, they raised uncomfortable questions.

Why hadn’t Logan contacted him? Was he in some kind of trouble? Had he been harmed in any way by the prolonged exposure to the young woman’s powers?

Was he coming back?

Should I wait, or should I send his fellow X-Men after him?

A development came in the form of a telephone call from US customs agents at the Canadian border, followed a few hours later by a disconcerting special delivery.

"Yukon Mel" Reinhardt, of Howlett, British Columbia, most recently from San Francisco, and a student about to enter her sophomore year at the Institute, found herself in Professor Charles Xavier’s office, after she attempted to cross the border into the US from Niagara Falls in a battered late model red Chevrolet pickup truck, with a large amount of booze and a small amount of pot.

She had recently been badly beaten, claimed to know nothing about the drugs or the liquor, and told authorities that she just wanted to go home to the X-Mansion in New York, to return the vehicle and resume her studies.

After Canadian authorities discovered that the truck was registered to Scott Summers, of New York State, and Yukon Mel reported that she was "with" the X-Men, they returned the young mutant, the truck, and the wallet and duffel bag to Professor Charles Xavier, leaving the mess completely to him to sort out.

And quite a mess it was.

Yukon Mel was an unusual student. She was twenty or 21, and in her sophomore year because she had spent her teenage years on the highways and bi-ways of the West Coast of North America, sometimes a hippie gypsy, sometimes a mountain man in the snow, but most often only one of two full female members of the San Francisco chapter of the Hell's Angels.

From her deceased mutant father, she inherited extraordinary strength, from her father's mother and grandmother and so on into time immemorial, blond, blue-eyed Yukon Mel, who really did look like the girl on the bottle of Logan's favorite German beer, was a Nymph.

When she came to the Mansion for help, it was because she had gotten to the point where if she came within six feet of a man, any man, he would become so hopelessly devoted to her that after they passed in a crowd, by the time she was gone, he would be lost to lovelorn madness and suicidal hopelesness.

Charles had helped her gain a great deal of control over her powers so that she could associate normally with men, in social situations, but when she and Wolverine, who had grown out of the same snowy mountains met up, they had become fast friends, and wanted to get a little more than social.

"Melanie, I do remember telling you that you did not have adequate control over your powers to...embark on an affair with Logan. Yet."

"I know, Professor. I know. But Logan told me I couldn't hurt him, and after two years of total celibacy, six months of which I spent in close quarters with him. I was willing to take Logan's word over yours. And now I've fucked everything up. He got hooked on me, and, Professor, I got hooked on him. We were both totally out of control. Drinking too much. Drinkin' too much then tearin around on our bikes. Crazy shit. I admit it. I mean, we did it all over the school. Even outside. It’s a miracle we never got caught. But, yunno, I think we really needed each other. Still it got to this point where if I would have asked Logan to go to Rio and get me a coconut, he would have done it, and if he asked me to ski down Mount Everest naked with a carnation up my nose, I would have gone right to the flower shop and then to the airport. And this one night, we went for a ride in Mr. Summers truck. We were drunk. Really drunk. And I had some pot and I don’t think Logan smokes a lot of pot because he got, like, really high. And we were in the truck, drinking and passing this joint back and forth and laughing like idiots and playing the radio really loud and he ended up driving us all the way to Toronto. We got this hotel room, and I started telling Logan about my grandmother in Vancouver, and how she was the only one in my family I was in touch with and that I hadn’t seen her for seven years, and before I knew it, we were on the way to Vancouver.”

“I see. So how did you become parted?”

“I realised that things were getting out of hand. He started getting crazy on me. Violent. I went to go get us some smokes, and he jumps outa bed, sticks his claws in my face and tells me that if I try and ditch him, he's gonna find me, and cut me up, so nobody will want me but him. And that ain't like Logan. This thing with Ms. Grey, it was driving him crazy, and what I was doing wasn’t helping. It was like drugs.I hate to be crude, but I realised I was fucking the man's brains out. I sorta gave up, ant that point, I figured, fuck it, I'll drive the rest of the way home, build myself a shack in the mountains around Howlett and stay away from peopole, where I couldn't hurt anybody, anymore. So I left Logan to go cold turkey on me, I took the truck and I paid the hotel bill and I split. I had no intention to ever come back here. As for Logan, I really thought that he would just call here in the morning and get the jet to come get him. I was about a hundred miles away before I realised I still had all his stuff, but like I said, I figured he would be back here, so I sent his stuff along.”

“And how did you come to be back here, Mel?”

“Me? I got into trouble on my way home. Drinkin'. Ran into this one guy, he tried to steal Mr. Summers truck and he wrecked it and he beat me up, but you should see what was left of him. I figured I couldn't outrun my problems, and I didn't wnat to just ditch Logan like that. He's, yunno, my old man. And now he's lost out there, somewhere. Jesus, Professor, what if I killed him? What if he woke up the next day and I wasn’t there and he went off and killed himself?”

“I’m sure that didn’t happen, Miss Reinhardt. For one thing, that would be almost impossible for him to do. For another, Logan lived alone in the wilderness where you left him for many years, before you or I were even born. I’m sure he’s just been taking some time off, to compose himself before the school year starts. Now, I will let you stay on as a student. But I’m putting you on probation for eight weeks. You’ll be confined to your quarters except during classes, you will eat lunch here in this office and you will study in your room. And you’ll have to make restitution to Mr. Summers for the damage to his truck. I’m afraid I can’t let you take an off-campus job, just yet, but I have arranged for you to do some work at the library. That should take up a good deal of your free time to get into trouble. As for your relationship with Wolverine, you’re both adults and I can’t tell you what to do. But I would suggest if you want to continue that you control your powers in his presence to some extent, and that both of you should do less drinking, and be a lot more discreet. But, if you have any further instances of extreme misconduct, I will have to dismiss you? Are we agreed?”

“Yes, Professor. We’re agreed. Thanks for giving me another chance.”

“Fine, then. You are dismissed, and you may return to your room. After I escort you to the Infirmary. Welcome home, Melanie. I’m glad that you’ve come back to us.”

Professor X wasn’t lying, he was glad to see Melanie Reinhardt had returned; she was quite alone in the world without the Institute, but he, himself remained worried as he left her in the capable paws of Dr. McCoy

Where was Logan?

And , would he ever return?

( Author's Note: For those of you who want to know more about Mel, read onto "Soap Gets In Your Claws" It's all there, and I didn't want to waste people's time and print the same thing twice)

The Batcave, Wayne Manor, Long Island, New York, Summer 1970

Had the supervillains, the press, or even the general citizenry of New York City known that Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Captain America and Dr. Manhattan were all meeting in the same place at the same time, they would have been quite curious as to know what world-shattering event such a formidable cabal were planning to thwart.

They would have been disappointed, as the only world that would have been shattered by the event was a private one.

“I’m glad that you all came here tonight for this meeting. I almost wish I was here to tell you that some diabolical supervillain had a plot to destroy New York, because I would know what we should do about that. But the problem I have tonight is more personal. I’m not going to bother to couch it in formaility. My stepdaughter is missing. In the months since she obliterated the Brookyln Slasher, she’s had a complete mental breakdown, and I haven’t heard from her since she took all the money out of her checking account and drove out of town. She left me a note saying she was going to Toronto to get her head together. I’ve been doing some investigating on my own, which let me to a few pieces of shattered glass imbedded in the concrete and a fading brown bloodstain and some tire tracks along a deserted road just outside of Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. The tire tracks came from Liv’s car, and the blood was hers. I don’t know where she is, I don’t even know if she’s alive or dead.”

Bruce Wayne’s voice cracked a little, and he stopped speaking.

“I’ll fly to Canada, immediately, Bruce, and start looking for her.” Clark volunteered.

“She’s not dead, Bruce. I have memories of Liv that I know haven’t happened, yet. She hasn’t got the transmitter I gave her, but I can try to find her and transport her back to you.” Jon added

“You know, Wolverine’s gone AWOL around that area, too. They might have found each other. If she’s with Logan, she’s safe. I’ll talk to Nick. I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D would be interested in finding those two.” Steve decided

“If you pass me that phone, Bruce, I’ll bet I can make three calls and find the Harlequin.” Tony boasted.

Then, as if it had been summoned, the phone rang.

“Sorry to interrupt your meeting, Mr. Wayne, but you have been waiting for this call.” Alfred’s voice said, over the intercom.

Batman picked up the phone.

“Batman, here.” He said.


British Columbia, Canada, Summer 1970

I: Logan

Wolverine woke up to find the sun high in the sky, which was funny, because he didn’t remember falling asleep.

Passing out, possibly, but falling asleep, no.

Mel was a nice girl. Those powers of hers made him a lot of promises that she couldn’t keep, but Logan was used to women not being able to keep up with him; he’d only met two who ever could.

Make that three.

And to keep up with this one, he was going to have to make sure he ate his Wheaties.

He felt sort of like he’s been run over by a train, but in the best possible way.

He also wasn’t sure where he was, other than lying naked on a blanket in the grass.

There was red hair spread all across his chest, and when he turned his head he saw a little red-haired girl lazily sprawled on the blanket beside him.

The blanket which had a lot of holes slashed in it that probably hadn’t been there before.

She looked small and sweet and quirt while she was sleeping, lying there with her hair all in knots, dirt and leaves in it, a grin on her lips, dirt and leaves pasted to her skin as well.

Then, he remembered the events of the past 48 hours, clealy.

Particularly those of the past twelve.

It had taken a whole helluva lot of effort to put that fire out.

Not that he was complaining.

He found he was pasted to her as well when he tried to get up, and their bodies parted rudely with a sticky sound.

Logan staggered a little as he lumbered off into the brush to take a piss, brushing some of the dirt and leaves off of himself.

His back hurt, his mouth was dry, he smelled like he’d spent the night in a dormitory for nymphomaniacs, he was incredibly thirsty and he felt like his legs were made of Jell-O.

Other than that, he felt pretty goddamn good.

That said, he’d be surprised if the kid could actually get up and walk.

Nailed her like a railroad tie.

And then I got hit by the train.

But she was a fine, strong girl, and they were in no hurry.

After he had something to drink, he thought maybe he might lay a little dawn surprise on her.

There was beer in the car, yet, and he had one, but he wanted water, so, yawning, he made his way up to the road, intending to cross to the other side and look for a spring.

As he emerged naked from the brush, whistling merrily in the novel feeling of complete satisafction, and stiff enough to run a flag up the flagpole, with a can of beer in his hand, he happened upon a patrol car and two Mounties.

There wasn’t much a man could say in a situation like this.

“Good morning, officers. Lovely day, isn’t it?” he said, pleasantly.

Wolverine set his beer carefully down, and stood back up, covering his assets with his hands.

“You seem to be enjoying it well enough, son. Now, as it’s very early and you don’t look quite awake, I’m going to go ahead and assume you have some clothes down there in the woods to go with those dog tags.” The older Mountie said.

You could tell he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“I do, officer. I woulda put ‘em on, but I was lookin’ for a place to wash up, first. I got kinda dirty last night.”

The older Mountie cracked a smile.

“Son, you look like you spent the night wrestling with a wildcat.”

“I sure as hell did, officer.” Logan replied.

He was off the hook with the white-haired man, he could tell, but he younger Mountie, he was more of your “Just the facts ma’am,” type.

“Sir, there’s been a report from a passing motorist in this area that someone was murdering a woman right over this hill in those woods. The man making the report said he drove past here around two on the morning and as he stopped for a deer to cross the road, he said he heard a woman’s voice, screaming and a man’s voice hollering or bellowing and he could hear a lot of cursing and thrashing around, too. Would you happen to know anything about that, sir?” asked the younger Mountie.

A real by-the-book guy.

“I know all about it, bub. You see, I’m from right around here, up closer to the Yukon, myself, but I live in the States now, and I came up here with a girl. To get away from another girl that was in love with a guy a work with and not me. In the guy’s truck. Well, the girl I brought with me took the car and everything I had but the clothes on my back. I’ve been on foot for about a month, now, and I got picked up by another girl, this crazy little girl from Brooklyn, New York. Well, the way she was dressed, and she seemed like a real hard case, I had her figured for a dyke, but, boy, was I wrong. I’m tryna get some sleep in the back of the car, and she calls me outside, an’ all she’s wearing is nine or ten tattoos an’ a smile, and she tells me it’s time for me to start payin’ my way. When she picked me up she said something about a ride back to the States, but what she didn’t say that she was going to ride me all the way to New York! Holy shit! I’m just trying to catch my breath and get a little peace and quiet before she wakes up again. Officer, I feel like I’m a hundred years old this morning. But, if I wanna ride home, well, like I keep telling myself, you know what you gotta do, cowboy. Not that I’m complainin’, though. I’m even gettin’ free beer. Girl drinks like a fish.”

The older Mountie laughed and the young guy almost cracked a smile.

“Son, maybe you ought to stay away from women for awhile.”

Logan looked down towards that which he was covering with his hands.

“I hear you. But he’s hasn’t got any ears. And he does the thinking. Me, I just follow him wherever he tells me to go.” He replied, trying to sound as much like a dumb ox who got led into trouble by his cock as much as he could.

Well, considering his track record, lately…

The older Mountie was ready to let him go, but Joe Friday, whose dick was probably about the size of a cocktail wiener, was still playing it by the book.

“Do you think you could produce the young lady, sir?”

“Certainly, officer. Liv! Liv! Wake up, darlin’! You wanna get dressed and bring me my pants and come up here? There’s some Mounties who want to see you’re still alive.”

It’s not easy to make small talk with the authorities when they’ve quite literally caught you with your pants down, but Logan made do until Liv’s arrival.

The Harlequin came up the hill, and Wolverine put his jeans on.

“See. There she is. Alive and kicking.”

All of the sudden, Liv Napier the cocky bar-room roughneck disappeared, and Trivelino J. Napier, the cool, college-educated professional made an appearance.

She was dressed and had combed most of the leaves out of her hair, and was carrying a nylon bag with a zipper on it in her hands, which she opened in a crisp and professional manner.

“Good morning, officers. Sorry to trouble you, this morning. My friend here had his wallet stolen, so he doesn’t have any ID, but I’ve brought all of mine. Here’s my birth certificate. That’s my New York driver’s licence. And my registration for my car. And that’s my NYU Student ID. And here’s my NYU Teacher’s ID. And this one is my ID card for Dr. Manhattan’s laboratory. I’m working with him on my M.S. in quantum physics. I have a B.S. in evolutionary biology, history and quantum physics. I’m here on my summer vacation, doctor’s orders. I almost had a breakdown from overwork, so I decided to see the Great White North. You have such a lovely country…”

The Mounties looked impressed with her credentials.

Liv shot a look at Logan’s credentials.

“…such beautiful wildlife. Amazing specimens.” She enthused.

“Well, the only thing is, Miss Napier, this area isn’t a public campsite. Now if you and Mr…”

“Logan.”

“…Mr. Logan from up near the Yukon, here, if you want to do some camping, I’ve got a map here of all the campsites between here and Toronto. Here you go, son. Now if you go down the road into the next town, there’s a good supply store there, get everything you need. From now on, though, you’d better camp at a campsite. And get yourselves a tent. With a good, strong zipper, eh?”

“Yes officer.” Liv said

“Alright, then. You two have a nice day. Enjoy your vacation. And good luck to you, Mr. Logan. Come on, Jennings. Let’s leave these folks alone and go find some bad guys to arrest.”

After the Mounties left, Wolverine and the Harlequin made their way back down to the car to break camp.

“What the fuck was that all about?” she asked.

Back to her usual self.

“Somebody called the cops on us. They thought there was a man killing a woman in the woods. You’re pretty damn loud. Howlin’ like a goddamn mad dog.”

“It was a near miss, chief. That last time I popped your hood, not only didja go off like a fountain an’ nearly drown me, it was a good thing you got your hands off my head when you did. I heard those claws come out and tear up the ground pretty good. An’ I’m loud? That roar you let out, holy shit!”

“Darlin’, I didn’t think a woman could do something like that to a man. Not unless it was in a movie. Especially not a man my size. I couldn’t help myself. How the hell did you do that?”

Liv laughed.

“You know how a snake swallows animals whole? It’s kinda like that.”

“That’s disgusting, kid.”

“You didn’t seem to think so at the time. It was somethin’ ta see! You went off like a Roman candle. All your muscles flexin’, roarin’ like a wild animal, all your claws out. Ah, yes, moonlight and adamantium. Such is the stuff that dreams are made of.” She said, almost sounding dreamy.

“You find poetry in some strange places, Liv.”

“Well, when ya live in the sewer, the gutter looks like a trough.”

“I never heard that one before.”

“It’s true. There’s very little absolute truth in the universe. And there’s very little real beauty. I mean, you said yourself that you were a mountain man. So you know nature is beautiful. And it’s the source of the only absolute truths that exist. But it can be arbitrary and cruel. Maybe not today, where the sun shines and the grass is green, but if some God-awful hellacious storm blows up out of a lovely day like this, you ‘n me will be huddled in that car like a coupla wild animals in a cave, hopin’ it blows over rather than blows us away. But that don’t make nature any less perfect. Or any less beautiful. And every creature that walks, crawls or flies feels lust and rage, to some degree. Lust is truth. Rage is truth. And in truth there is beauty. It might be a strange kinda beauty, but at least it’s real. And when ya live in the sewer, the gutter looks like a trough. Yunno what I mean?” She replied.

“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. You just better make sure you don’t get the two confused. Lust and rage. You’ve got a little too much, kid, a little too much of both. Speakin’ of which, then what happened to me?”

“You went down for the count like somebody reached into your neck and pulled out your spine. I thought there was really something wrong with you until I heard you start to snore.”

They packed up the trunk and got in the car.

Liv cracked a beer and started the engine.

“C’mon, let’s get to that campsite. I need a shower. I still got leaves in my hair, and dirt on my ass and I’m covered in come stains.” She said.

Logan cracked a beer for himself.

He smiled.

“You’re welcome, darlin’.” He said.

***

Logan sat in the black Wildcat for awhile, after the little red wildcat went into the supply store.

He was thinking about what Charlie had told him about damsels in distress.

The Harlequin was not a damsel.

She was three damsels.

And all three of them were in serious distress.

One was a regular Mr. Spock. A cool-headed and brilliant scientist with a razor-sharp jet engine mind that took everything apart, reduced it to its component particles, and then reassembled it, painstakingly until it was understood, and catalogued. This was the part of her that looked at him as a miracle of evolutionary biology, the part that was working with a man who was, for all practical purposes, a demi-god, working on unravelling and harnessing the mysteries of space and time.

Unfortunately for her, and everyone else on the planet who may have benefited from same, the second was The Great Beast, something dark and feral and disturbed that fed and delighted on blood and sorrow and the chaos of destruction rather than that of creation.

The third was the Harlequin, a superhero trying to follow in the footsteps of her foster-father, Batman, and trying to avoid the tempting path laid out by her real father, the Joker, when, in very different ways, she loved and respected both men

And these three warring factions lived in the body of a confused, traumatised 20 year old kid called Liv Napier who liked to drink and fuck and fight and work on cars and had absolutely no idea how to resolve the war inside her head and was trying to muddle through without anybody to help her.

As a man who didn’t even own the space inside his own mind, Logan knew he wasn’t the one to do it.

He felt like the kid needed something, something from him, specifically, but he didn’t know what it was.

What he could do was get them all back home to Wayne Manor, safe and sound, so that Bruce, who hopefully had a plan for what to do with the kid, could put it into action.

It suddenly occurred to him that the shape Liv was in, she probably hadn’t thought to call home for a long time.

He got out of the car and walked over to the supply store, and dropped a whole shitload of change into the rickety old pay-phone out front.

“Wayne Manor, Alfred speaking.”

“Hiya Alfred. Long time, no see. Could I talk to Bruce? I found something he’s been looking for, up here in the Great White North. Tell him it’s Logan.”

“Do you mean our Miss Napier, sir?”

“Sure do.”

The Bat was on the line in ten seconds flat.

“Batman, here.”

“It’s Wolverine. Is this an, uh, secure line?”

“Yes it is. And you’re talking to Clark, Tony, Steve and Jon, too.”

“I am? Well, I got good news. I found Liv Napier. She’s alive and well, and inside the little general store I’m standing outside of, buyin’ supplies. I guess we’re going to Toronto, to catch up to somebody named Slim, who stole three grand from her.”

“What about you, Logan? I heard you got mixed up with some woman who had mutant powers to use her, uh, feminine wiles, on your brain to get you addicted to her so strongly that men kill themselves after she leaves them.” Captain America broke in.

“Yeah, Liv has that effect on guys. I’ve lived a hundred years and I never met a woman like her.”

Tony Stark laughed.

“He’s talking about the mutant girl. Your student.”

“Who, Mel? Shit, Mel was a real nice girl. Kinda mixed up. Do you guys know if she made it back?”

“Yes. And after you’re done talking to us, you should phone home.” Tony replied.

“About my stepdaughter. How bad is it? And don’t bullshit me, Logan.” Bruce broke in.

“You got a plan for what to do about this her, Bruce? Because I can’t figure it out.”

“Yes. And it’s so crazy it just might work.”

“Eddie?”

The name hung in the air in front of the assembled superheroes like the elephant in the living room.

So to speak.

“Eddie.”

“It’ll work, Bruce. The Devil made those two in Hell for each other.” Logan opined.

Captain America laughed, in spite of himself.

“So, tell us, how bad is it? What was she doing?” Batman insisted.

Iron Man leaned over to speak privately to Captain America.

“The way Bruce talks you would think that the Harlequin got up out of a hospital bed and blew up a bridge and killed a busload of nuns just to get to the guy who shot her.” He said.

“That almost sounds like something Liv would do.” Dr. Manhattan interrupted.

“Well, I was having a beer in a dive and I put a bet on a brae knuckle prize fight in the back room. I saw this nice, pretty redheaded girl in a screaming, frothing berserk rage like a rabid dog bring down a man twice her size, and I felt sorry for the guy. I followed her outside and I fit the girl with the car and tracked her to the campsite where she was halfway to going native, and after I jump-started her great big brain with a little friendly conversation and an offer to help her out if she gave me a ride back to the States, she saw the claws come out of my hand, looked at the claws, looked at my hand, felt the bones in my hand and my wrist and my arm and explained everything about the mutation I’ve had for years to me in the terms of evolutionary biology in a very clear and simple fashion that has completely changed the entire way I look at my fuckin’ life. Then she went and won us a G and a half bringing down this motherfucker who looked like Paul Bunyan. And I mean this big bastard is gonna wake up every morning and remember what she did to him every time he looks in the mirror. Then, when the bartender wouldn’t pay she drove her car through the wall, shot his place up with a chopper and made him pay us and the other guys he cheated. After that she found someplace to buy a shitload of booze and drove halfway across BC hammering it down like a lumberjack driving in the dark at eighty miles an hour on cowpaths before she pulled over to make camp and, uh, made me feel like I was a thousand years old. Now she’s in this supply store, buying a tent and sleeping bags and I’m outside, talking to you.”

There was a pause on the other line as Bruce took it all in.

He pushed a button on the phone, excused himself and turned his back on the assembly to speak privately to Wolverine.

“Its’ just me on the line , now. Could you do me a favor, Logan, and make sure that every morning when she cracks a beer and swallows it in one gulp that she washes down one of those little white pills? The world is not ready for an indestructible mutant with deadly claws and an IQ of two-hundred and the liver of a Norse God who’s a little foggy on the difference between good and evil and calls the Joker grandpa. Especially if it’s a girl.”

Logan had a good laugh until he realised Bruce was completely serious.

“I’m not kidding. Tell me you saw her take the goddamn pill.”

“She did today.”

“Today doesn’t do either of us any good.”

“Bruce, you’re practically her father. Do I have to say this to you?”

“You pulled out?”

“I pulled out. Every time. I’m a hundred and twenty years old. I figured this shit out awhile ago.”

Batman breathed a sigh of relief.

“You must think I’m a rotten father. And a horrible man. You tell me you found my little girl, my ward. My apprentice, who I’ve trained to be a superhero lost in the wilderness, living on an income from bare knuckle prize fights and not only do I sound relieve that’s all that’s happened to her, I tell you not to knock her up and get her home so I can deliver her into the hands of the Comedian as soon as he finishes up murdering half of Vietnam.”

“If you turned that kid into a hero, you gotta be the father of the year, Bruce. And you can’t help the way she is. It’s her nature. At least you’re not tryin’ to deny it and lookin’ the other way.”

Meanwhile, Superman’s ears were burning and his face was bright red.

He could hear every word that Bruce and Logan were saying.

He coughed, uncomfortably.

“What’s wrong, Clark?”

“Nothing, Steve. I just wish I couldn’t hear so well, sometimes.”

The private conversation continued

“She’s not an animal, Logan. I keep trying to convince her that she’s not just a beast, but s easier for her to be one than it is to do anything else. Try to be kind to her. No matter what she does to you when she’s drunk or off or head, or having her Troubles. She doesn’t mean it. She can’t help herself. She’s so…lost.”

Easier to be an animal than it is to be anything else.

“That’s what she was tryin’ to do when I found her.”

“What? Be an animal?”

“Don’t take it so lightly, Bruce. The kid was half-savage. I could smell the goddamn wildness in her. I mean, she sniffs the air and howls and the moon and snarls like an animal…”

“She’s always done that.”

“Yeah, well, she was crouching naked in the bushes. If I wasn’t me, somebody she knew, and that she knew she couldn’t kill, she probably would have leapt on whoever it was and tried to tear his throat out. The kid was alone in the woods for a month and she was ready to go back to the trees. What the fuck is she running from in New York?”

“Herself.”

“That’s bad.”

“I sent her to doctors. Doctors couldn’t help her. I sent her to Professor X. She wouldn’t let him help. Finally she just took off for Toronto. I was beginning to think I’d never see her again.”

“Maybe she’s doin’ what she needs to do to get better. Maybe I can help. I’ll took after her, help her find this Slim asshole an’ her dough, an I’ll get her home to ya in one piece before classes start.”

“Would you really do that, Logan?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I came ta her camp. I was broke and I was starvin’, and all she had was three cans of beer an’ a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and jelly an’ she shared her food with me. An’ the money she made, literally, with her sweat and blood. Wants to give me a ride back to New York. So I owe her. Right? Wait a minute. Here she comes.”

“I’ll make the call public again. Hello? Liv?”

“…Jesus, I can’t fuckin hold everything, Logan, canya get this stuff, Okay, here’s the keys. Hello, Pop? Is that you?”

“Me and Superman and Iron Man and Captain America and Dr. Manhattan.”

“Really? Jon, I’m sorry I’ve been gone from work for so long. Do I still have a job when I come back?”

“Of course you do. Who would I find to replace you.”

Tony Stark looked interested.

“Thanks, Jon. Bruce, can you go to Arkham and tell the Old Man I’m alright?”

“They paroled your father. Again.”

“Oh. Well, fingers crossed. I’ll hafta call him.”

“What happened to you, Liv?”

“That cocksucker MacLeod shot me while I was sleepin’ in my car and robbed me and left me to die in the fuckin’ road! Oh, uh, sorry, Clark.”

“Actually, Liv, I think that’s a pretty good characterisation of a man who shoots a woman and leaves her alongside the road to die.”

“Well, at least he didn’t get the car. Goddamn junkie bastard was either too dumb or too scared that I wasn’t quite dead to steal it. I’m goin’ after him. But I’m gonna take my time. Me an’ Logan, we been talking, and we both need a vacation. He’s gonna show me the sights.”

“I’ll bet.” Iron Man chuckled.

“Is it okay if I take the rest of the summer off?”

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with Bruce.” Superman agreed.

“Just try not to get into any of your Troubles, Liv.” Batman warned

“Your work can wait until September.” Dr. Manhattan agreed.

“I’m not due for the Troubles until fall. Don’t worry so much. Look, I hafta go. We’re outa change. Pop, I’ll callya back next time I’m near a phone? Okay. Bye everybody.”

Liv hung up.

“Well, that’s…settled.” Bruce said.

“If you can call it that.” Clark agreed.

“She sounds happy. She’s safe. What’s the problem?” Tony asked.

“Tony, we just found out that a woman whose friends call her Napalm, who happens to be the biggest brute to hit the city since the Comedian in 1938 is on the loose in the Great White North with Wolverine. They have a car, and camping supplies, and money and guns and liquor, and they’re heading to Toronto to meet up with some poor bastard who wasn’t smart enough to know that f you want to kill the Harlequin, you’re going to have to shoot her more than once.” Captain America explained.

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Superman agreed.

Iron Man shrugged.

“How bad could it get?”

Bruce Wayne smiled in spite of himself, and shook his head.

“You have no idea.”

****

Liv went over to the car, and handed Logan a wad of money.

“Here’s the cash. You go get what you need. Clothes, a knapsack, whatever. It’s on me. I’ll pay myself back when I get to the next town that has a bank in it.”

“C’mon, Liv, let me pay my own way.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You will. Like you told those cops, man, I’m gonna ride you all the way back to New York.”

“You’re a bad girl, Liv.”

“I know. I’ll be in the car. Don’t get anything complicated. I’m also impatient.”


Xavier Institute, Summer, 1970

Professor Charles Xavier was also holding a meeting that morning, of the X-Men, to discuss Wolverine.

“This is what we know, X-Men. I have located Logan with Cerebro. He’s in Canada, and he is alive. Just as he was the last time Miss Reinhardt saw him. Other than that, I can’t say in what condition Logan is, mentally or physically, and when, or if he’ll be returning.”

“I don’t see why you’re so worried, Professor. He wore Miss Reinhardt out, and now he’s probably drunk, and shacked up with a different girl for the summer. He’ll be back.” Cyclops volunteered.

“Maybe he just needed a vacation. And he just figures that we ought to know he’s okay and he’ll be back. You know Logan. He’s not the reach out and touch someone type.” Beast opined.

“I sink ve shoult go looking for him. Eff he vants to take a holiday, zen ve vill leaff him alone. But ve should find out for sure.” Nightcrawler added.

Jean Grey got up out of her chair.

“I agree with Kurt! That girl could have been paid to deliver Logan into the hands of some old enemies! He might need our help. And while we’re discussing Little Miss Irresistible, do any of the rest of you think she ought to be expelled? I’m the first one to agree with anybody who thinks Logan is far from perfect. He’s crude, and he’s got a filthy mouth, and he drinks too much and seems to be constructed primarily from hair and stink, and powered by beer. But you all know as well as I do that Logan is a decent man, an honourable man, even, and what this girl did to him was inexcusable. Just because he has healing ability doesn’t mean that her powers didn’t affect him. You gentlemen know yourself that before she learned to shield her powers you couldn’t even be in the room with her without crawling the walls! Imagine if she was focusing them at you like a laser beam. You would have been doing her bidding, as well. This is not Logan’s fault. But, being the old-fashioned type, he probably thinks it is. He’s probably out there because he doesn’t want to come back here with her again. We need to throw her out and get him back here. Wolverine is an X-Man, and a teacher at this school. That girl is some piece of trash that came in on the road looking for a man to hop on to get what she wanted.”

“I agree mit Jean. Zat Reinhardt girl is a menace. Und ve neet to find Logan. Ve don’t know if she has done zomesing to his mindt.”

Charles Xavier suddenly smiled.

“I think our problems are over, my X-Men. The phone is about to ring…”

The phone rang.

Professor X pushed the button for the speaker.

“Yes Operator, I will accept the charges, thank you. Well, good afternoon, Logan. Say hello to all of the X-Men.”

“Awww, shit! What is this, some kinda ambush? Twice in one day!”

“See? I told you he was fine.”

“Sure, I’m fine? What’s gonna happen to me? Did Mel ever show up with your truck, Cyke?”

“Yeah. She just about wrecked it.”

“I’ll pay for that. It was my fault, I shoulda known better. But she handed me one ‘a those reefers, and I’m like an Indian with whiskey when it comes to those things. I can’t take it. Look, Charley, I’m sorry. If you want me out, I won’t come back..”

“Nobody wants you out, Logan. It wasn’t your fault!” Jean interrupted.

“Zat iz right, Logan. Ze girl did zomsing to your mindt.” Kurt agreed.

Wolverine laughed.

“What, you mean her spooky man-eater powers? Shit, I coulda let it go if I wanted to. I shoulda let it go, but, powers or no powers, I’m just a man, yunno?”

“Logan, I don’t expect you to be any more than just a man, and you did partially follow my directions. And Miss Reinhardt did admit her fault in the matter, but she did not intend to rob you. Your things made their way back here in the mail before she did. And Scott insists he lent you his truck. But…”

“I know. You don’t have to say it. If a guy with my background can fall like that for a twenty-year old girl, there must be something wrong. And it is my fault. Mel didn’t do shit to my mind. Jack Daniels and Old Granddad and Jim Beam did something to my mind. I was drunk for two months. I really went on a tear.”

“You certainly did, Logan. You were blind, stinking drink for two months, Logan. I’ve been worried about you. We all have. I hope that this embarrassing incident has led you to see the error of your ways.”

“Charlie, I been wearing the same shorts for more’n a month. And for five weeks, while I was wearing out the boots on my feet and the shirt on my back, tryin’ to find a dry place ta sleep in the rain an’ a warm place ta sleep if it got cold at night, I kept telling myself how fucking stupid I’ve been. I just got some new clothes today, and I’ve got my shit together, now. I’m gonna take a little vacation with a lady I met who saved my ass. I’ll be back in September, good as new.”

“See? That’s what I said. I knew you found some girl.”

“Yeah, you know all about me, Cyke. I’m just that kinda man. She’s one of us, a mask. Any of you know the Harlequin?”

“Oh no.” Professor Xavier said,

“Napalm? You’re with Naplam! Logan, you idiot! Is she there with you?” Jean exclaimed.

“She’s in the shower, Jeannie.”

“Good. Take your clothes, take your money and go. Don’t say goodbye. Just start walking. I know Napalm. I went to school with her. I was her roommate at NYU for a semester, until they kicked her out of the dorms for the kind of conduct you wouldn’t even expect from a drunken pirate. We were friends. We are friends. She’s like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When she’s good, she’s very, very good, and when she’s bad she’ll kill you with her bare hands. Liv can be a good friend, but she’s a destroyer, by nature and by her scientific training. She’s an avatar of entropy. And sometimes she gets the entropy that engenders creation mixed up with the simple forces of destruction, and that’s when bad things begin to happen. Very bad things. Napalm even has a little maxim she likes to repeat. It’s a pun on the first law of thermodymanics. Everything that can be created can also be destroyed. She’ll think up a way, in her mind, to reduce you to your component parts, the way she does with everyone and everything, and if she gets drunk or crazy enough, she’ll do it. She’ll hate herself in the morning, she always does, and she’ll try to make amends, but if you’re dead, you’ll still be dead.”

Logan just laughed.

“I think I can handle it, Jeannie.”

“I’m not so sure, Logan. Will you excuse me, I need to speak to Logan in private about Ms. Napier. Jean, I think you should stay.” Professor X replied

“Jean, what’s the story with this woman?” Beast asked.

“Henry, pretend you never heard of her.”

“But I’m the Beast.”

“Compared to Napalm, you’re the pussycat.”

Professor X waited until he and Jean were alone.

“Logan, I think it’s noble of you to try and help the Harlequin. Who knows, you may actually be able to do it. I couldn’t. Bruce sent her here to me, to try and help her, where many psychiatrists failed. I failed, too. That young woman’s mind is, as they say, locked up tighter than a steel trap. There are parts of it she doesn’t even permit herself to reach. She’s very brilliant, but she’s very damaged, and very angry. And when I say angry, I mean capable of a kind of blind, naked, uncontrollable rage that even I have rarely seen the equal of. The phrase “Heart of Darkness” comes to mind, and I really must warm you that until the Harlequin develops the emotional maturity to control that destructive force, master her intellect, and integrate the feuding aspects of her personality, anyone can be a potential target of her rage. Even you. Worse, she has a great degree of largely un-harnessed psi ability, as a result, most likely, of her chromosomal mutation.”

“Liv’s a mutant? I knew it! No woman’s that strong!”

“Not really. Not the way you and I are mutants. She doesn’t have the X-factor. So she doesn’t have what we would consider powers. She is, however different from the average human being. Her mutation is chromosomal, one that’s becoming more common in the human genome, but is still rather rare. Instead of having the normal female double X chromosomes, she has an X and a Y, like a man. Something she inherited from her mother, who, I’ll bet, was probably called a witch…”

“Hey, Charlie, you can stop right there! I believe her mother was a witch, it makes sense considering her father is the Devil’s own, but Liv’s not a man. There’s nothing male about her. I had a real good, up-close and personal look, a few of ‘em, you can take my word for it.”

“Yes…well…”

“Already? You slept with her already? Well, you probably didn’t have a chance. She probably got drunk and mean and tore the clothes right off your back!” Jean interjected.

Professor X cleared his throat.

“I know the mutation hasn’t been sexual in nature. Rather, it affected her non-sexual cells. Without going through a lot of science jargon, I can tell you that the mutation has made her physically stronger and more aggressive than the average woman, and, as it has in other cases, for some reason the mutation also greatly stimulates the intellect and manifests itself in greater psi abilities. And…”

“Charlie, I get it. I know I’m not dealing with some dumb cupcake. I know how smart she is. And I know how dangerous she is. I can deal with it. I like Liv. She’s my kinda girl. And besides, I promised Bruce Wayne I’d get her home safe and sound and in one piece. Don’t worry about me.”

“Be careful, Logan. Don’t underestimate the Harlequin. I hope to her from you again, before September.” Professor X told him.

“I’ll keep ya posted, Charlie.”

“Professor, could I use your office for a few minutes to talk to Logan, privately?” Jean asked.

Xavier could not suppress the smile that leapt to his face.

“Certainly, Jean. I’m handing you over to Jean, now, Logan. Goodbye.”

“Talk to ya soon, Charlie.”

Professor X wheeled out of his office, and closed the door, laughing to himself.

***

“Hiya, Jeannie!”

Alone in the office, Jean let him have it.

“Logan, you no-good, sawed-off, drunken little degenerate! You rat! You slimeball! You scumbag! What the hell is the matter with you? The Professor gave you a chance to prove that you weren’t a disgusting animal, and what did you do? I just covered your ass for you, bub! I convinced everybody it was that Reinhardt girl’s fault and it was all because of her powers that you went hog wild and spent two months drunk off your ass and nailing her to the wall on every conceivable surface in the school. Of course, you and I both know you did it because you’re a drooling, dirty old bastard who couldn’t keep your paws out of that sleazy little flower-waif’s cookie jar. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, then you stole Scott’s truck so you could go off half-crocked on some joyride with a sleazy little hippie grifter who mistook your dick for a Popsicle! And then you managed to let her get away with the truck and half of everything you own! How can anybody be that drunk? Or that stupid? You meathead! What if she was delivering you into the hands of your enemies? I suggest that from now on you try thinking with the big head, you dumb fucking oaf! How can you trade everything you worked for since the time you came here for a few cheap fucks and some sloppy blowjobs?”

Logan couldn’t help it, he laughed.

“Settle down, Jeannie! I didn’t even know you said nasty words like that, darlin’! D’you kiss Squeaky-Clean Scott with that dirty mouth? For shame, baby. You shouldn’t talk to a man like that. I’m standing here naked and if I didn’t have Liv in the shower waiting on me, I’d take matters into my own hands and ask you to say that again. So, you were worried about me, huh? Does that mean I’m offa red and onto yellow? Cos I don’t mind a woman with a dirty mouth. I kinda like it. Cyke seems like the kind of guy who likes it in the dark on Sundays with his BVD’s on, but you can talk dirty to me any time you want, Red. ”

“Logan, you pig! You insufferable, sawed-off little prick! Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you mass of hair and stink! I’m worried about the reputation of this Institute, that’s what I’m worried about. I’m hanging up on you!”

“Wait, Jeannie. Don’t get sore at me. I just wanted to let you know I was alright.”

“That’s the other thing! Logan, you are not alright! You are about as far from alright as any male human being can be. You’re like the frog in the frying pan who’s too dumb to hop out until he’s cooked. The Harlequin makes the Manson girls look like Girl Scouts. You do know what Napalm does, don’t you? There’s a trail of bodies behind her a mile long. And I know, that at least part of the time she’s a brilliant scientist and historian, and I know, they were all bad guys and she gets the job done, and there’s something to say for somebody who dedicates themselves to bringing justice, even if it is street justice, to the kinds of people that society and other superheroes ignore. And she’s my friend, and I know her good side is as good as gold. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s the Joker’s daughter, and a violent, brutal alcoholic…nut job from Brooklyn who’s known for mauling first and asking questions later. You’re not an animal, Logan, but Liv is. She’s a wild animal and a wild animal can always turn on you. Don’t forget that. Look after yourself.”

“Don’t worry about me. What’s she going to do to me?”

“Figure out just how she could possibly kill you and file it away in her mind. Listen to me, Logan. If she has the Troubles, do NOT piss her off. She’ll pull up that file and we’ll never see you again. Make sure you sleep with one eye open.”

Just then Liv called to him from the shower.

“Are you gonna be on the phone forever, chief? I mean I’m waitin’ for ya and I ain’t washed any of the more innaresting bits of me, and I ain’t used up all the hot water, yet.” She announced.

“Didja hear that? I gotta go, darlin’. I gotta earn my keep.” Logan chuckled.

“You think it’s funny, Logan, and you think you’re in the catbird seat because you’re getting all the…oh hell, I’ll say it, I said everything else…all the pussy you can handle, but I know Liv. She’s my friend, but I know I can’t trust her, and you can’t either.”

“Well, thanks for warning me, Jeannie. I’ll be real careful.” Logan laughed.

“You’ll see, Logan. You’ll see.”

Jean hung up.

Logan grinned, wolfishly to himself.

“Jealous.” He said.

***

Jean looked at the phone and then at her watch.

She called the operator, and got the number he had called from, and then called the motel and got the room number.

She left the Professor’s office, having decided that she’d call back from her room in a little while to talk to Liv.

Napalm.

Of all the women in all the world Logan could have taken up with, he had to pick Napalm.

It figured.

Jean tried very hard not to think that, for once in her life, Napalm had the right idea; drunk and naked with Logan sounded like a fairly interesting way to spend your summer vacation.

She banished that thought from her mind as she banished the rest of its kind.

He wasn’t her type; it was some kind of odd passing fantasy, something to do with mutant pheromones, most likely.

But, she did consider the feral little Sherman tank of a man her friend.

And Liv Napier was a friend to no man. When they were at NYU together, they were friends, roommates for awhile, but Jean knew all too well about Liv’s dark side. Jean used to call her Napalm. when she got crazy and drunk and had her Troubles, she burned people down like they were made of paper, and any man who was dumb enough to get close to her got incinerated along with everything else in her occasional explosions of all-consuming wrath. Even when she wasn’t in the midst of her troubles, she was still mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Goddamn Logan, thinking with the little head.

Even he was no match for Liv Napalm, the Harlequin.

He was going to get burned.

Bad.

Jean was a telepath, and she had seen what was inside of the Harlequin, and, until Liv learned how to control it, no one was safe around her.

Not even Wolverine.


III: Logan

The nearest campsite was a real family-oriented place, and when the proprietor had a look at the dirty, rumpled roughneck emerging from the hot-rod and the equally dirty, rumpled and rough-looking, heavily tattooed girl with hair down to her ass, he figured they must be bikers or hippies or both and announced he was full up.

The gent who ran the nearest cheap roadside motel, a series of rundown cabins advertised by a neon sign that said “Stop n Stay-Color TV-All Nite Diner” was more forgiving.

“Well, you folks look like you really need a room. There’s a bath and a shower in every room, and color tee-vee. You want single beds or a double bed?”

“We ain’t married. Does that matter?” Logan asked the big, burly man in the leather vest with his bald head and his long, bushy mountain-man beard.

“Is the young lady of age, and has she got ID to prove it?”

“Sure she is! Hey, bub, what kinda man d’you think I am? Some kinda baby raper?”

“No offence, friend. But the law’s the law, right? Now, As long as she’s over 18, I’ve got nothing to say about the sleeping arrangements. It’s a free country, live and let live, I always say. Now, how many nights would you like? We got a weekend special going, two nights for the price of one. House rules, though, you pay when you check in.”

“You wanna stay two nights, Liv?”

“Sure. Why not. It’s been a long time since I slept in a bed.”

Liv produced her New York driver’s licence.

“See? I’m twenty.” She told the manager.

Logan winced, involuntarily.

First Mel, and now Liv.

These horny little baby boomer girls, they were like the poison candy that tasted so good you didn’t care if it killed you.

How did she get to be so young? She looked like she was maybe 17, but she was a college graduate, studying for master’s degrees and she said she’d been in the mask business for almost five years.

So he thought she was a helluva lot older than twenty, maybe Jeannie’s age, 25 or 26.

You know, closer to thirty.

God damn, the kid was just a kid.

No wonder Bruce was going out of his skull.

But they had cash and they could write their names, and that was good enough for the manager.

“Can we bring beer in here, bub?”

“You sure can, friend. And if you run out, my brother sells beer right over at the diner, by the glass, by the six pack, and by the case. And if you want, I can send my son here out for liquor. Just a two dollar delivery charge plus the price of your booze.” He said, cheerfully.

The son was a surly, half-stoned long-haired pretty boy with a face like a choirboy on Sunday morning to whom Liv was giving a look like a wolf eyed a rabbit it was planning on eating.

She leaned over and whispered one word in Logan’s ear.

“Prey.” She said.

He tried not to laugh.

“Thanks, bub. Just give the lady the room key, for now.”

The room in question was nothing special. There was a TV, a bed, two chairs and a table, an end table with a phone on it and a Bible in it and a lamp, a bathroom, and a closet, but it might as well have been a palace to two people who hadn’t seen a bed since they had been robbed and abandoned to their fates.

The kid hit the shower, first, and, Logan took off his unspeakably dirty clothes before he sat on the clean bed and looked at the telephone for a few minutes before placing a collect call to the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning.

After Logan completed his phone calls, he went into the bathroom, and got a little dirtier with Liv, and then they came out of the bathroom and fell into the bed.

The phone began to ring almost immediately.

Liv answered it as Logan dozed, happily.

“Hello? Oh, hiya, Jean. I thought I was gonna be hearing from you.”

“I’ll bet you did. Now listen to me, Napalm. Logan isn’t just some big dumb piece of meat you picked up in a biker bar fresh from Riker’s Island, or one of those willowy young fanboys with hair down to his asshole and a roach in his pocket next to his dick that you use and toss away like Kleenex. He’s the Wolverine. He’s a very important man, to the superhero community, and to the X-Men, and besides, the dirty little bastard is my friend, and I do not want you to kill him.”

“What? What the fuck am I gonna do to him, Jean? If I wanted to kill the man I’d have to cut off his head and throw it someplace he couldn’t get his hands on it to stick it back on in two seconds and gut me like a fish.”

Logan suddenly woke up when he heard her say that.

That was pretty much the only conceivable way to kill him that he could think of.

“See? You already figured out how to do it!”

“So? I’m a scientist, I figure things out. What am I gonna use to do it? How do I get close enough without getting sliced and diced? Jean, I’m lyin’ next to the man in bed, I’m gettin’ ta like him, I’m not gonna kill him.”

“You’re getting to like him? Don’t tell me you met a man you might actually want to know for more than ten minutes after you’ve screwed him? Figures it would be Logan.”

“You sound jealous. Am I stepping on your toes?”

“Don’t make me laugh. He’s your type, not mine. Now, we have business to discuss. Business named Melanie Reinhardt. Don’t say her name on that line. The little jerk is probably attached to her.”

“Men are like that. What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to really put the fear of God into her. Make sure she leaves Logan alone. For good. I’ll take care of her little pea brain…and you can take care of her skinny little ass.”

“Break some bones?”

“Yes. In her face.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Alright, I’m hanging up. Remember, Liv, if you harm a hair on his head…”

“Yeah. You’ll reduce me to my component parts.”

Liv turned to Logan and winked at him.

“Oh, and Jean? If I were you, I’d definitely take him for a spin. The man’s good. Real good. Shit, if you want me too, I’ll write youse a detailed , signed, personal recommendation.”

“I am hanging up on you, now, Napalm. You and Logan enjoy your debauch.”

“We will.”

Liv hung up the phone, and started to laugh.

“Boy, Logan, you really are in like Flynn. She’s crazy about you. Jean Grey is a genuine blueblood and she always expected to be treated like one. If anybody, let alone a man, dared to call her something like Jeannie, she would have never spoken to them again. She always went around with these clean-cut preppy types, but I caught her more than once giving the old lean and hungry look to some hairy, filthy biker I rolled up to the lecture hall with on a Monday morning. Man, I’ll bet she took one look at you and thought she’d died and gone to heaven. And she called here just to tell me what she would do to me if I went off my head and punched your ticket, and it wasn’t blueblood, ladylike, or pretty. She’s mad for you, my man.”

“I hope you’re right, kid. I’m really in love with her.

“No shit, for real? Must be nice. Me, I can’t do that kind of thing.”

“Aww, you just haven’t met the right man. Someday, kid, a big bad man, one of the biggest, baddest sons a bitches who ever drew breath is gonna walk into your life chompin’ on a cigar and laughing out of the corner of his mouth like a madman, and the first time you see him break a guy’s jaw into little tiny pieces with one punch, you’re gonna watch those teeth flyin’ through the air like Chiclets and fall head over heels.” Logan laughed.

“Sure. Someday my prince will come. I only hope I get to come first.”

Liv moved over to the other end of the bed and put the TV on.

“Yunno, man, when you’re a mask, life’s a funny day you’re going slowly crazy in the woods making chump change breaking chump’s jaws waiting for the clothes to rot off your back so you can be an apeman, and they next you’re cruising down the road with almost two grand in your pocket, taking a nice leisurely revenge jaunt across the Great White North with the only hundred and twenty year old man in North America who can get it up three times in 24 hours.”

“Four times, kid. And I’m sorry about that, but I was kinda worn out last night. Too much drinkin’ and not enough food. I’ll be up to my usual standards, later.”

“Man, you sure are the best at what you do, and for my money, it was real fuckin’ nice.”

Logan was about to tell her that she’d never seen him in action, foaming at the mouth and snarling in rage with his claws guts-deep in some poor bastard’s vitals.

But then he remembered that she had, and it didn’t seem to bother her.

Things had gone pretty catastrophically bad when a few brain surgeons decided they were going to rob the bar where him and the kid had been drinking, and kill everyone in it.

Turns out the only deaths were of the four bad guys.

The fourth of which the kid accounted for.

Caught unarmed, in a knife fight, she let him stab her in the arm, pulled his knife out and slit his throat with it, but for Logan’s money, the way that rib went into his lungs after she crunched them, he wouldn’t have made it through the night.

He wondered if that was when she started wearing the network of holsters for three guns and two knives under her clothes.

She leaned over and turned the knob, trying to find something she liked.

“You know what? I haven’t killed anybody for almost two months? And I don’t miss it. I guess I’m not as crazy as I thought I was.”

“So, New York’s got that bad?”

“It has where I do my work. It’s a dirty job, the job I do, and I’m swimming in the deep end of the pool with the sharks. But, hey somebody’s gotta do it. Everybody deserves justice. The way I see it, the city’s a fuckin’ jungle, man. If you’re not a predator, you’re prey. All the kids who come to hang out and be hippies or make it in showbiz or go to college, they’re all prey. And the forgotten people, bums and junkies and hookers and poor people who live crowded into the same tenements their grandparents and great grandparents lived in, cowering under the yoke of the mob and every other slob and two-bit criminal motherfucker who runs the slums, nobody gives a fuck for them. Except me. I do. They all know, everybody in New York knows, you got trouble where the cops can’t or won’t help, you call the Harlequin. I started trying to protect them and everybody else when I was 16 years old. I can’t believe how fast four years goes by. Somebody’s always got a knife or a gun or a piece of chain, or they wanna kick you and punch you and beat you with brass knuckles and trash can lids. They beat ya, they shoot ya, they stab ya. And you do the same. Somebody walks away. Sometimes the one who doesn’t walk away, dies. I learned that from Bruce and from my father. Known it since I was eleven years old. Maybe that’s not the way the world is for other people, but that’s the way it is for me.”

“Yeah. Me too, kid. Except I’m not out there trying to fix it all on my own, and when I get stabbed and beaten and shot and my bones broken, I heal.”

“So do I. It just takes longer. And I got the scars to prove it.”

She did. In the light of the motel room, he could see some serious scars along with the tattoos on the kid’s body.

“What happened when you were eleven years old?”

“I killed a guy.”

That stopped him, cold.

Considering her size, now, five one, maybe five-two, probably about 145, when she was eleven she must have been truly a tiny little thing.

“How the fuck did that happen?” he asked

“I was in the car with the guy who was lookin’ after me while my Old Man was in the joint, before I met Bruce. Mac. Mac’s brother, Kevin, he died four years before owing my father and the Mob. And some half-assed wiseguy came up to the car, to collect on Kevin’s debts. Mac froze when he saw him put his hand in his coat, but I didn’t. The Old Man, he made me ready for shit like that to happen. I reached for the gun the Old Man gave me when I was six. Snub-nosed .45 revolver. I still carry it in the holster by my ankle to this day. He told me to never go anyplace without it, and to make sure I practised shooting ever day. I never have, and I always do. Anyway, me and the hitman fired at the same time. He shot Mac once before I put five bullets through the car door and into him. Two in the chest, two in the guts and one right between the eyes. Blam! Then I drove Mac to the hospital. It was the first time I ever drove, too. Mac made it. The hitman didn’t.”

She didn’t seem too upset about it.

She didn’t seem too upset about any of it, one way or the other.

That was her problem.

“Hey, kid, lay off on the whole stone-cold killer routine. You wanna know why you can’t sleep at night? Because you keep lyin’ to yourself that it don’t bother you and you don’t give a shit. Everybody who does what we do gives a shit. The trick is to find a way to live with it, not bullshit yourself that you don’t care. Are you listenin’ to me?”

Logan grabbed hold of her arm, and squeezed.

“Yeah. I’m listenin’.”

“Good. Cos if you pretend to be a stone cold killer with no human feelings at all, you’ll turn into one. And you don’t want that, trust me. You do know you should only kill when you absolutely have to, right?”

Liv pulled her arm away.

“Sure I know that. That was the first thing Bruce taught me. Kinda wish the bad guys knew that one. I’d have a few less scars. I got a lotta little scars you really can’t see. But I got maybe ten real noticeable ones. And nine tattoos. It’s a thing with me, every time I get a scar that the wound coulda taken my life, I get a new tattoo that somehow reminds me of it.”

“I noticed the one in your shoulder.”

“That’s from the .45. That fuckin’ hurt! Still hurts.”

Liv switched of the TV, rolled over and went back up towards where the pillows were, and lay down.

“It feels good to lie down. I’m so fuckin’ tired. Goddamn horse doctor said it would hurt. He said the bullet took a lot of soft tissue out with it, and that the impact, or some related impact dislocated my shoulder. Said it would take a long time to heal, and that because the bullet nicked the bone and ripped the muscle up, it was gonna hurt worse than the other times I got shot. He was right. Every time I move my arm it hurts. Especially the way I was punchin’ that Paul Bunyan cocksucker last night. Felt good when I was hittin’ him, but it don’t now. Hurts. Bad. And I got one more tattoo to get. ”

Logan sat up beside her, and took a good look at her shoulder in the light.

That was a very fresh scar, indeed.

“Something you’re not tellin’ me, Liv?”

“Well, I didn’t think it was important.”

“I promised the Bat that I’d get you home to home safe and sound. It’s important. And that’s a real fresh scar, kid.”

Liv reached for a cigarette

“Slim did it. I didn’t even know the cocksucker had a gun. Good thing the asshole didn’t know that my heart was on my left, not his. Shot right through the window, and off he went. Left me on the side of the road, to die. That was one goddamn big bullet to take at close range. Left a big insulting hole on the way out, as you can see from the scarring. It was pretty bad. One minute I was asleep, and the next I had a lap full of glass and I was shot. Took some glass in my neck and my arms, too. And I never took a bullet in the chest, before. It hurt like a motherfucker. I had my gun in my hand in about a minute, flat, and I just pushed myself out the car door, and tried to go after him, but I wasn’t going anywhere except onto the ground. I couldn’t even stand up, I must been in shock or something. I got a shot or two off, but they were wild. I must have hit my head or passed out from the pain, cos I woke up face down on the ground, bleeding, with broken glass all around me. I remember when I got back in the car I saw there was a bullet-hole in the driver’s seat. Went clean through. The bullet’s still back there, lodged in the back seat. I just sat there in the car for a minute or two, bleeding, and I thought this was it, I’m gonna die out here.”

Liv stopped to light up, again.

“But I figured I’d give it the old college try. My survival training kicked in. I got out again and I literally crawled to the trunk where I keep the first aid kid, and I made a tourniquet and drove like hell to the next place where there might be people. After about a half-hour I came to this bar, and I staggered in and told them I was shot, but they could see that. I woulda fallen down again but this guy caught me. Some of the guys put me up on a table and the bartender used towels to stop me bleeding until some other guy came back with a doctor. The son of a bitch was a veterinarian, but he knew enough to patch me up and give me some penicillin. I didn’t want the fuzz in on it because I wanted Slim, myself, so I just split after I saw the doctor and I went and made my first camp. I cleaned up the car and put some plastic on the window. Then I just laid around for a week, in the back seat, mostly, takin’ my medicine and sleepin and usin’ my arm a little more, bit by bit, and when I was feeling good enough I drove back out in the car to get a beer. That was where I had my first fight; I only picked it to see if my arm was good, again. So I bought some glass for the window and I fixed it, and after that, I got in the wind, and you know the rest. Don’t look at me like that, Logan. It’s the fifth time I’ve been shot, it don’t really slow me down much anymore. I took a bullet for the first time when I was eleven, too. Went through Mac and into me. It was just a flesh wound, though.”

“I’m not lookin’ at you like that, kid. I’m thinking about that motherfucker in Toronto and all the ways he deserves to die.”

Wolverine was furious. What kind of man writes a girl he used to go around with to come and visit him, and then her out onto the middle of the wilderness and shoots her in the chest while she’s sleeping, and leaves her to die on the side of the road?

And for nothing, too. The bastard didn’t have to rob her. Bruce Wayne was loaded. Jack Napier was loaded. She probably had one hell of a trust fund waiting for her to be 21, and she could afford to just get three G’s together and split town. And when she had next to nothing and was camped in the woods half-savage, Liv had given him her last crumbs of food.

She probably would have just given the fucker the money if he’d asked for it.

Logan thought about Liv, half-crazy and far from home and everybody that loved her, lying on the side of the road beside her open car door, unconscious and facedown in a pool of blood and broken glass.

That was way beyond being a junkie, somebody like that was a vicious stone-cold killer with no regard for human life.

The kind who’s going to kill and kill again.

“Liv, I wasn’t serious about it before, but you and me, we are gonna find that motherfucker and we’re gonna kill him.”

Liv looked surprised at how furious he was.

“I can do it myself. This isn’t your fight.”

“It is, now. For one thing, a man who shoots a woman in cold blood doesn’t deserve to live. And nobody fucks with my friends, especially not a fellow mask, and gets away with it. That fuckin’ asshole is goin’ down. And if anybody gets in our way, they had better be smart enough to get out of it or else.” Wolverine snarled, extending the claws on both of his hands.

Snikt!

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Liv agreed.

Logan retracted his claws.

Liv got quiet.

She lay there, rubbing her shoulder, probably thinking about all the horrible shit that had befallen her in the past few months.

Poor kid.

He was about to put his arm around her, and try to comfort her a little, and that’s when Liv jumped out of the bed like it was on fire and started putting her clothes on.

Logan was confused.

A few minutes ago she was clinging him, and screaming out all the filthy things she wanted him to do to her, and they had pretty much been up all night the night before, going at it, and now, all the sudden, she didn’t want him to touch her.

Come to think of it, she did turn her head away almost every time he tried to kiss her, too, and she was all curled up with her back to him on the blanket.

“You okay, Liv?”

“Yeah. I’m just hungry. Let’s go eat.”

***

Walking into the diner was the first time that Wolverine and the Harlequin had been amongst normal folks for a long time.

And even though they were both freshly scrubbed and wearing clean clothes, brand-new in Logan’s case, he noticed they still got The Look.

He checked Liv’s reaction and the way she ignored it, he figured she was as used to getting that look as he was.

For some reason, she had arranged her hair in two pigtails on either side of her head and got a Coke to drink.

“You’re makin’ me feel like I’m some kinda pervert, Napalm. I didn’t know you were only 20. You really are a kid.”

“How old do you think Little Miss Goldilocks was who brought you on this wild goose chase? Yunno, Logan, you spent too much time in the good old US of A. You were starting to act like an American.”

Liv adopted a dumb Southern drawl.

“Drivin’ around in a shiny new red Chevy pickup truck, with reeeel big tires, drinkin’ a beer, listenin’ to Merle Haggard on the radio, smokin’ a two-dollar ceee-gar an’ gittin’ yer pole smoked by a sweet young thang. Yeeee-haw! Waaaal, doagies!”

Then she laughed evilly at her own joke.

“Kid, you are some kind of sick….”

“Not that I blame you. Nothin’ quite like gettin’ head while you’re drivin’. You get on the open road, and get the car up around eighty or ninety, put on the radio, get a good song, have a drink, and then ya turn to that special someone in the seat beside you, and you tell ‘em that they’re goin’ down like the Hindenburg or they’re walkin’ home. Maaaaan, that’s good.”

“You’re an animal. A goddamn animal, do you know that?”

“And?”

“Do I get to drive, sometimes?”

“Sure ya do. Who told you my nickname was Napalm?”

“Jeannie. And it suits you. You don’t mind if I call you Napalm, do you?”

“Nope. All my friends do.”

***

John Price catered to all kinds of travellers, coming off the road at the Stop ‘n Stay, some of whom were more colourful and dangerous than others.

Some of them, he thought, warranted someone to keep an eye on them, and the short, burly man and the even shorter red-haired girl he came in with warranted it.

From the look of them, they had both been in the bush a long time, and there was something both colourful and dangerous about them.

Not so much dangerous to him, but, to someone who rubbed them the wrong way, holy shit.

Around two in the morning, the man came into the main cabin, with a paper sack in his big, meaty paw.

He was probably about thirty-five or forty, the girl was twenty.

The man was barefoot and shirtless; it was obvious he’d just gotten out of bed and put his jeans on to go to the front desk.

“I need a pack of Camels. No filters.”

“I got cigars.”

“They’re not for me.”

He looked like he had something on his mind.

While Price was getting the smokes, he saw the man put his elbows on the desk and run his huge hands through his wild black hair.

He was big for a little guy, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, muscular and hairy as a dog. Despite his short stature, he looked like he could handle just about anything and that he was used to doing just that.

Except now something was still bothering him.

He didn’t seem like a bad guy, just a tough guy. A tougher guy that Price himself was, and John Price was a real mountain man, he had seen and done some things in his life. He had been gone a long time, but Price still detected a slight accent on him, he was probably from up around the border with the Yukon, where old-fashioned tough guys like him grew out of the snow.

He bit off a little more than he could chew with the red-haired girl. She looked like she had problems, big ones, and this hairy little Sherman tank of a man was just beginning to find out how big.

And he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do, next.

“Something on your mind, fella? About that girl, maybe?” John Price asked.

“Yeah. There’s nothing I can do for her. Other than what I already done. And that ain’t gonna help her, much.” The man said.

John Price gave him the cigarettes, took the money, made change.

“I don’t know, fella. Sometimes the only thing a woman needs from a man is for him to shut up and be a man.” he replied.

“I dunno, bub. The kid’s real gun shy. Anyway, you got a laundry here that we can use?” He asked, putting the paper sack on the desk

“Not usually, but, you two look like you were in the woods a long time. Just leave that here with me, and I’ll have the maid wash your things along with the sheets.”

“Thanks, bub.”

“Don’t think twice, it’s alright. Good night, sir. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yeah?”’

“When you say gun shy, you mean to say as how she won’t let you out of bed, but if you try to touch her any other way, she just about jumps outa her skin?”

“How’d you know?

“I’ve got one of those at home. Came in off the road with a knife in her boot, a gun in her purse, a black eye and an armful of needlemarks. A real hard case. She’s only a year older than my son, but the wife’s been dead a long time, and she’s a wonderful girl. I couldn’t figure her out, though, for the longest time. Until I realised, John, you’re the first man who ever wanted to touch her any other way. These tough girls, men always assume they don’t need affection. Or tenderness. But they do. Hell, everybody does. No matter how tough they are. You and me, we’re both tough guys and we both know how that’s the one thing the world never shows you when they see you’re a real hard case. A little tenderness, a little kindness. People think you don’t have a heart, but you do. Think back, mister. Think about the first woman who ever made you feel like you were a man, and not a draft animal who was there to service her. If you never met that woman, if I never met my wife, may God rest her soul, we’d be rotting in jail with all the other tough guys who got so cold and hard and ill used they didn’t hardly know they were men, anymore. Hell, it ain’t no different for a woman. It’s probably worse on them.”

“Yeah. I guess it would be.”

“I suppose I should just keep my mouth shut, but that’s the way I see it, mister. Just one tough old Canuck to another, right?”

“Yeah. Right. Thanks, bub. I think…I think I’m gonna go take a walk.”

John Price watched him go, and then he busied himself, tidying up the desk.

***

A little tenderness, a little kindness.

Wolverine took a walk around outside, thinking, before he went back to the room.

He thought about when the Hudsons found him living like a wild animal in the wilderness, and taken him in and showed him how to be a man, again.

He thought about how Charlie had showed him mercy, given him something to believe in, and trusted him to be a teacher and a leader and a hero.

He remembered back in the war, with Cap and Eddie, how they treated him like a friend and not a freak.

He thought about all the women he’d loved, and all their fathers who’d given him the benefit of the doubt to do it.

A little tenderness, a little kindness, that’s what had saved him from madness and despair, from evil and savagery.

He thought all the way back to Silver Fox.

Like the big guy said, she made him feel like he was a man, not an animal, or a freak.

The first time she rolled over and put her head on his chest and put her arms around him, he’d felt like he was going to jump out of his skin, too.

Liv was a pretty tough broad. She had five bullet holes in her ornery little hide, and nine going on ten tattoos to mark all of the times that a knife or a gun or maybe a pair of brass knuckles and a piece of pipe had almost taken her life from her. With what she did and where she did it, and her whole ‘Nam vet with shell shock look with three guns on her body and motor oil under her fingernails, she probably didn’t run into a lot of men she didn’t scare the hell out of, and the kind that she didn’t weren’t the types to show kindness or tenderness to anybody.

Maybe you ended up here for a reason, Logan. Maybe it’s time for you to pay back all of the people who let you eat out of their hands even though you were rabid and foaming at the mouth by putting your hand in the jaws of a mad dog.

She’s a real young girl, and she was raised by a psycho supervillain who might have meant well, but that’s no way for a kid to grow up. Then she spent four years in the mean streets, doing a dirty job, all alone.

Bruce managed to give her a real family and a home, but it’s possible that all that is to her is a place to lie and lick her wounds before she had to go out on the prowl again.

Maybe all the kid knows in the world is lust, and rage, and violence, or maybe she does know better, but maybe she had gone so deep into the dirty end of the pool, into the gutter, and the sewer, like she said, that she had just forgotten there was anything else.

You know all about forgetting, Logan, especially forgetting how to be a human being.

And what makes you remember?

A little kindness, a little tenderness.

It’s worth a try.

When Logan got back to the room, Liv had the TV on, and the covers were pulled up to her nose as Christopher Lee glided across the screen to claim his next victim.

“Got your smokes. You like this kinda stuff?”

“Yeah. I love horror movies. Especially the British ones. Jesus, I wish I could get him to bite my neck.”

Wolverine cracked another beer, drank some, put the can on the nightstand next to Liv’s beer, took off his pants and got back into bed.

She tried to move over, but it was a small bed and he took up a lot of space in it so there was nowhere for her to go.

She stiffened up a little.

Never slept in the same bed with anybody crazy enough to lie down with her, she said.

Then she must trust me, a little bit.

He watched the movie with her for awhile, waiting for her to relax, and then he casually put his arm around Liv, and she went completely tense and rigid, like she was about to leap out of the bed and run away.

Jesus, didn’t even one of the yellow little punks and big fuckin’ stupid monsters and all of the sons of bitches in between ever even put his arm around her like she was something more than a dangerous animal?

Probably not.

“What? You don’t wanna watch this scary movie all alone, do yuh? That’s why they make these movies, you know. So little girls like you can get all scared and have to hang onto big guys like me to keep you safe.” He joked.

“When I watch TV with my friend, Joe Mac, he always puts his arm around me. I’ve known Joe since I was seven.” Liv said.

“Yeah, well we’re friends ain’t we, Liv? I mean we once got drunk together and killed a whole buncha guys. And you just saved my ass, and I saved yours, right? If that don’t make us friends, what does? Oh, and I got ya some smokes. I noticed you were out and crawlin’ up the wall.”

“Thanks. Couldja pass me my beer?”

Liv relaxed against him and Logan held her a little closer

“Sure. Holy shit, look at the tits on that one! I’d be bitin’ her a little lower, if I was him.”

He took a couple of sidelong looks at her in the darkened room, with just the horror movie flickering on the TV for light, and she had a funny look on her face, like somebody who eats Chinese food for the first time and realises it doesn’t taste as funny as it looks.

After the movie was over, Liv got up and went to the can, and Logan reached for the clicker in the nightstand and turned of the TV.

They had the blind open, so you could see the moon coming in.

Liv got back into bed.

“After all that time sleepin’ on the ground or in the car, this bed feels like heaven.” She sighed

“You tired, Liv?”

“I’m not that tired.”

This time, when he tried to kiss her on the lips, she didn’t pull away, although she seemed more interested in him kissing her in other places.

A little kindness, a little tenderness.

One thing no man in the world had ever showed her.

They never realised that even a mad dog needs a warm place to lie in the sun, and someone to pat it on the head and say kind words to it.

Something Wolverine knew all too well about.