Glad you picked this one up again. I find it your most compelling AU. Though these chapters do make me wonder if they'll ever really get over what happened in that lab. I keep thinking, "Ah, this is it. They've accepted it..." But then, no. Like life, I suppose. Once something like that happens, it's never really over. You're just moving on and picking yourself up.

Thought back to the first story, too. That first home that Logan built for himself, before he ever met Marie. The honey. Their little cave that they had to abandon. It's like they keep trying to build that, over and over again, but they're different people now. And that hide-out was more like some kind of symbol that Logan, all this time, even as a Destroyer, really wanted to take someone in and save them. But he's always thought of himself as obsolete, a Destroyer. He really needs someone to "Fix him", and he backs off at the last moment, believing he doesn't deserve it.

These few chapters reaffirmed for me how much W is part of Logan. I find W so thrillingly scary - he's Logan but cripplingly unemotional. But still human-sounding? Somehow? As W, he's capable of all kinds of things, but he's capable of selfless feats as well - saving Marie the child from a burning building, fighting off the guy in the forest, finding a mate, sparing the life of Mother and her Cub. And Logan is not exactly free from heinous acts; they just come from a different place. Anger and fear instead of expedience and need.

Sam is really out, I feel. What place does he have with M&L? In some ways, Marie seems to have abandoned the child for the father. And Sam is unlike anyone else. He's what the breeding program wanted out of everything all along. Makes him special and different and ultimately alone. I hope he finds where he fits in.

And Marie is at once empowered and left out. She has a power she can't harness and a past she can't shake.

All of it set against a backdrop of the war. As though the psychology of a war-torn country has been made familial and explicit.

I don't know if this series warrants it, but I hope they all find a lasting peace. Eventually.