Sitting in ashes

DISCLAIMER: Logan belongs to the people who's toybox I'm rummaging in. He's not mine.


Logan wasn’t exactly certain what to make of the new man they’d picked up. Guy had tried to kill the President after all. Even if he’d been mind controlled at the time. The whole episode at Alkali Lake had stunk to high heaven, and they’d come away hurting and licking their wounds. Leaving anybody to that hellhole who’d been a victim of the men who’d run it wouldn’t have been right. And he’d apparently saved Marie’s life, so he’d been told afterwards.

When everything had been talked out, and everyone knew what had been happening with the people they hadn’t seen until they met up at the base. Some of it, like the fight with the Japanese woman, he’d kept to himself. Although he was certain that Xavier knew what had happened, the old man was keeping it to himself. Like Logan was keeping it to himself. Losing Jeannie had ripped the soul out of One-Eye, and he wasn’t exactly up to picking holes in Logan’s story at the moment. Good. Ro wasn’t either, for reasons of her own.

The memorial service they’d had had been...nice. Respectful. He’d felt out of place, sitting near the back in the suit that Ororo had managed to dig up from somewhere. Hadn’t been his place to be anywhere else. Wasn’t him she chose. She chose Scott, and he’d honor that, damn it. Besides, her parents had been there. He’d seen that they didn’t know what to make of him, or of just about anyone else who’d been there. Some guy with white wings, all clean cut and American golden boy...in more then one way, he’d just reeked of cash...had turned up as well. Him and Scott had gone somewhere after the service, alone. One of Xavier’s original students, apparently. Same as another guy who turned up, big, huge hands and spoke like he was quoting from a dictionary. Smelt like medicines and cold, so Logan had given him an uneasy berth. Doctor, apparently. Going to come in and take on some of what Jeannie had done for the Institute.

Never did find the body, so they’d had an empty casket.

Hell of a time to come under the wing of Chuck’s vast mutant loving umbrella. Could feel sorry for the guy. Being in the same place the trouble started, meant you had a tendency to get blamed for the trouble itself. Even if you were just as much a victim as everybody else. Human nature. Felt sorry for the guy, in a way. He was one of the people that other people looked at when they were looking for someone to blame. Unfortunately, this Kurt Wagner seemed to be of the same sort as well. But he had saved some of the kids, helped Ro and sort of seemed to be fitting in.

Looked creepy as fuck too. Demon eyes and tail, weird hands and feet, and he was blue. That was just what he’d been born with. The scars weren’t normal either. Sort of weird to look at, the shapes of them and the way they crawled across indigo skin. Like they said something, and apparently they did. Sins. Something that an angel had told his people, whoever they’d been, and Kurt wore the sins open on his skin. Scapegoat, maybe. And that kinda irked him, deep down in some angry part that said wait a minute, hold up. No matter what he looked like, this was a man too. Spoke, thought, bled...loved. Everything, apparently. He was a saint that looked like a demon and that sort of paradox made most people hurt in their heads. And then start looking for pitchforks and torches anyway.

Because if something looked dangerous, then it was. Huh. Funny, the way people relied on their eyes and so called common sense. No one had thought the Nazis were going to be a problem either, when they’d first got started. So why wouldn’t it work the other way around? Strictly speaking, Adolf Hitler had looked like a pretty normal guy, liked dogs, painted houses and was good to his girlfriend. The fact that he’d been the man who had organized the mass murder of millions of people and torn the world into pieces was just an aside. And he didn’t look like a monster. So why shouldn’t something that looked like a monster be a decent man?

Logan knew what monsters smelled like. Cruel, sick smell like something rotting. Inside their heads, where no one could see it and apparently no one but him – and telepaths, he supposed – ever guessed there was something wrong. There had been one man in Canada who had hung around schools, playgrounds, places where children were...and watched. Stinking like something dead and crazy at the same time. Logan had made sure that he would never actually get the chance to become a problem, and he’d very quietly disappeared. Adamantium blades could cut things up very, very finely. Lots of bits, unidentifiable as anything other then dead meat and several stray dogs had had a very good meal. Logan didn’t really like people who hurt children.

Didn’t like it at all.

So, Kurt was a good man. Strange looking, but still a good man who’d been made to do some bad things. Or rather, his body had been made to do some bad things. Kurt hadn’t really been there at all. At least, that’s how the professor had explained it. The German had just said it had been like a very bad dream he couldn’t wake up from, in his fractured and accented English. Someone really had to teach him English properly, or at least give him some more words to express himself in. Wasn’t like his accent was that bad. Sorta gave his voice flavour. Character. Something familiar in it, that nagged at the back of his head.

Of course, there were a lot of things that did that. And something about his blue skin sometimes grabbed a part of him that snarled and wanted to lash out. Mystique. Apparently she and Kurt had had a talk, exchanging views on what it was like to be blue, he guessed. He knew exactly what pissed him off about her. The way she crawled inside everything, looking at you with her freaky shit eyes and smiling. Like, haha, isn’t this funny? Oh, you don’t see the joke? So sorry for you. Pissed him off. And she didn’t stay dead. He’d smelt the death on her, not many people getting up from three blades through their chest. But she had. Relocated her internal organs at a guess, tricky bitch. She hadn’t been smiling when he stabbed her. Hadn’t been counting on his sense of smell. Somehow, she’d managed to figure out a way around that in the tent, so he didn’t know it was her right away. But it had slipped. She didn’t smell like he did, so she didn’t know just how to keep it up. Keep it right. Everybody saw, which made what she did such a good trick. All she had to do was show them what she saw herself.

Maybe tomorrow, he’d ask the elf out for a beer or something. He had to talk to somebody who wasn’t angsting or a teenager, or very soon he was sure he’d go mad. So, the blue German with a tail it was. In a very small field of candidates, it seemed he was elected.

Logan slapped down the part of him that suggested that the way he moved and the musky scent and sense of heat that radiated off him was really the reason he was so interested, and went to see if the man’s religion let him drink beer.