Seventeen Years
Birth til I became a mutant, and stopped being a child.

Six Months
On the road, alone…had to become an adult.

24 seconds
Length of the first fight I ever saw.

Two Hours
Length of time til I saw another fight

Five minutes
Hiding behind anything I could til I got to his trailer, hid under a blanket.

Hour
Time it took for him to notice me back there.

Twelve seconds
How long I thought he really would leave me out there.

Two Minutes
Time I waited to ask about the claws.

Minute
Time it took for me to forget everything I had learnt in six months on the road. Never tell them your real name.

Minute
For it to be proven seatbelts are both a help and a hindrance.

Minute
To realise I trusted this weird, hairy man with claws; who didn't seem to feel pain.

Three Minutes
Saved by weird people, making sure that they didn't leave Logan behind.

Day
They kept him sedated while running tests. Set me up in a room with a two weird girls who didn't seem to understand why I flinched when they came too close. Sent me to classes, asked too many questions but wouldn't let me go down and see Logan…Wolverine, told them that was his name; the boss didn't believe me.

Two Hours
Know he's watching, pretend I don't. Met my first friend. Officially became a 'youngster'.

Three Hours
The Wolverine walked into my room, without knocking, scaring my roommates.

Two Minutes
He tells me he's staying, what am I doing? I'm staying wherever he is. Told him I was going to stick around.

Seven Hours
Can't sleep, and something is pulling me to his room. I'll just find him and check up on him. Maybe he can't sleep either.

Thirty seconds
Easy to find his room, I memorised the route earlier. I could hear him trashing from outside.

Minute
I don't know how to wake him without touching him, so I call his name.

Second
Feel of warm metal sliding into my skin, shock…then pain, but only after they pull out and I see his face.

Three seconds
He looks so terrified, like I'm already dead and he's dealing with what he did. I know I can save myself but I don't think I should. But I see it in his eyes; he'd do this if he knew how. I'll just touch him a little bit.

Four seconds
Having him in my head is different from having David up there. Logan is more powerful, his voice is louder and more dominant. It's telling me to run and I do, but not before Marie explains. Everyone moves out of my way, as the Wolverine expects.

Five hours
How long it took Logan to wake up. The time I spend hiding in a bathroom, remained there until everyone was out of bed and awake, outside, so I didn't have to face them. Run to my room to get dressed but I need to pass Logan's room on the way past, I disappear before he turns around but now I know he's okay.

Thirty minutes
Sitting under a tree hiding, but bobby finds me and tells me everything I feared is true.

Two hours
Time it took to get to the train station and get on a train. Five minutes and I'll be out of here.

Four minutes
He find me, sits down next to me like I didn't suck his life out of him like some weird vampire just last night.

Five seconds
He apologises, he does! Why?

Three seconds
Feel so young telling him what happened. But safe sitting next to him, and I realise I might have been a bit rash but my flight reflex is so much stronger than fight, even with the Wolverine in me.

Two seconds
Feel like an adult again when he decides he'll leave it up to me, when he makes it my decision. Whether or not to go back, even though I know he thinks I should. He thinks I'll be safe there.

Thirty seconds
I didn't tell him for his pity, I told him so he'd know. Why I needed to run. Why I was so very afraid of touching other people, even if I wasn't worried I'd kill them. All he did was watch me, see my almost-tears and wrap his arm around me. He felt almost careless like he wasn't aware of the need to avoid my skin, though I'll admit it would have been harder to touch it than it was to avoid.

Five seconds
Then he gave me his opinion, let me say my piece and then he told me what he thought.

One second
He realised through all that I didn't feel like I belonged there, everyone else had such control but me, I'll never be able to feel someone's skin. But he knew it and he told me he felt the same way, we were linked. Neither of us really belongs at Xavier's but both of us could rest there for a while.

Five seconds
I've had him in my head. I know what his protection means. It means no matter what, not matter where he will stand between me and whatever wants to hurt me. And I know it's selfish but I want his protection. And I'll take it, so I'll go back, as soon as we can turn around.

Minute
The train grinds to a halt. The back of the train disappears. Logan stands and I know this is the first time that promise will be proven. I can almost feel Logan's pain and I realise in taking his protection I was offering my own.

Seconds that stretch too far
Not Logan. Me. He wants me. He wants my mutation. No!

One Second
Must help Logan…pain…blackness.

Unknown
I wake up hearing a motor, and water. A boat. But I can't see where I am and I'm not sure I'd want to. Logan's left over abilities tell me Sabretooth is here, and Magneto and two others, I juts don't know who.

Three Hours
I see Magneto and a blue lady, and the Statue of Liberty. And a dead man. I'm going to die.

Three Minutes
Magneto confirms my emanate death. And then starts to babble. All I can think is, Logan will save me, he has to…he promised.

Twenty minutes
Sabretooth straps me into a large machine and Magneto raises it, giving time for it to be secured. This is where I am going to die.

Five minutes
I felt like he was there, looking for me but I assumed it was just me being hopeful, I didn't want to cry but tears had been streaming down my face since I'd been left alone inside this thing. Slumped on the floor, attached to it by the wrist I knew that Logan wouldn't be able to save me, I was going to die here. And I'd die with Magneto's thoughts, his knowledge, overruling me and Logan, and I didn't want that more than anything.

Fifteen minutes
I hear fireworks, it would be happening soon. I start to yell. I hope that someone can hear me. If there are fireworks there are people.

Two minutes
Yelling, and no one answered, but Magneto.

Minute
Hear roaring, the Logan in me recognises himself, and Sabretooth. I will get out of here. But Magneto is touching me, even as I plead with him Eric…Magneto…feels different, older, angrier but not as strong as
Logan was. Until I get to more than just the surface, and see beneath so much pain and hate and horror. And it hurts taking him in hurts so much. I can't control it. It's just flowing out of me and powering this thing.

Moments
It's pouring out of me and I can't stop it and Logan can't save me from this. No one can. And then I see him. Above me. He's trying but it's too late. I can feel everything draining out of me, I'm dying, even as Magneto fights Logan I feel myself getting weaker.

I don't remember what being dead was like.

But I remember waking up to Logan chanting my name, it took me a second to work out he was chanting it from inside my head. So much was pouring in. Covering what Eric had left. Filling my brain with how much Logan wanted to save me and how much he cared.

Minute
I couldn't get him off me. I felt the fact he was willing to die, and knew if it were reversed I would too, I think that's when I feel in love with him. He just laid there. I cradled his head, til Jean and Scott pried me away. But even as Jean worked on him, even as I got back to the school I couldn't let him go. I needed to feel his pulse beneath my fingertips. I growled at anyone who tried to take me away. Even as Jean sewed him up. Even as he got settled. Until I passed out from exhaustion and Scott removed me from the room.

Four days
Growled, and smoked and drank and swore, and screamed out at night in Japanese and German. Weird metal things flew to my door in the night and when I woke afraid my skin would be open between my knuckles but it would close seconds later.

Three hours
He was awake and leaving. And I knew it. So I went downstairs and I played a game with Bobby. Logan couldn't worry about me. He needed to go find out who those bastards were in the masks with the hot metal and the sadistic medical degrees.

Two minutes
Bastard was going to leave without saying goodbye. I pulled Marie to the very front and raced over to him. Made him remember that it was the two of us.

Second
He touched my hair. Everyone else ignored it but he noticed and he touched it and I told him what no one else wanted to hear. It was one scar I would carry. Because it showed me that I have a hero and I was stronger than I thought.

Three seconds
Told him the truth, I didn't want him to go. So he gave me his only link to the past. No one else would see them an anything other than an ownership tag given out to identify the dead and brand a man's body if not his skin. But it's all he has. His name and this tag and giving it to me told me that he was coming back because he may be looking for his past but he wanted his history too, and these tags were his history.

Minute
I hear the motor and smiled. Even as I left Bobby and went upstairs to smoke and drink and swear some more.

That night
But see I know the truth, he's going to find out what happened and then he's gonna come back, tags of not. And when he does he'll go on protecting me. And if I need him while I'm gone he'll come back. And more importantly I know something he ain't willing to admit. Down beneath the Jean-lust there is Marie-lust and he's ignoring it and hiding from it. He's good at both but one day I won't let him be. But I'll let him think I don't know that I have him. When I'm ready he's all mine.

The End