No Life That Breathes
Logan:
Something I never thought I’d say?
I’m tired of killing.
Never thought it would last this long. It’s pathetic, really. I should’ve had the guts to go years ago, and take her with me. She would have let me, would have been glad to have me with her. The claws wouldn’t have worked on her, not by the end, but I could have found a way. Pressure on the right points, just over the carotids—it would’ve been quick, and she would have welcomed that, the closest thing to an embrace I had left to give her. And then me, through my own chest, my own throat. Keep the metal there until even my body wouldn’t have been able to close up the wounds fast enough.
Apparently I’m the only one who knows how to kill me. Big fuckin’ cosmic joke. Maybe I should hand out notes. All I want is the same thing she wanted, but she managed to get it done cleanly. Me—I keep coming back from everything they throw at me. I stand there and just let them take their shots sometimes, but it’s never enough.
And while I’m here, there’s only one thing that matters, and that’s ending them. Ending every last one of them that made it impossible for my girl to live on this earth, that told her everything she was evil and wrong, just for breathing. Every last one of them that turned a bolt or wrote a program or signed up for the cause. I got a list as long as my arm, but it’s getting shorter every day.
I know she wanted this. I knew when I left that all she was promising me was not to do it herself. I thought I’d accepted that the next time I got that call, it would be the end of everything. I just wasn’t ready for it. Never thought she’d get it done so soon.
Somewhere I even had hope. Not for her and me—that would’ve been too much to ask. But for her to find something, somehow. Six billion people on the planet, there must’ve been one who’d have a mutation powerful enough to match hers. To withstand her touch. To give her what I couldn’t.
While there’s life, there’s hope. But she didn’t wait for that. She saw her chance and she took it, and all that’s left is the mess to clean up. So I’ll do that. I’ll finish this, finish them, and then it’ll be my turn, because I’m the last one on the list.
Think that sounds brutal? I’ve been called an animal before now. No big insult. Animals have a lot over humans, if you ask me. And I’ve always been sort of amused by being misunderstood by those who don’t bother to look closely at what I really am. Or by those who think I don’t really know myself.
Yeah, I’m a killer. A fighter. I’m an animal. Whatever you want to call it. But let me give you some clearer information. I have a certain amount of pride, after all. The word you’re looking for is warrior. I learned my trade from a great tradition. Want to know where? Let me give you a clue. Sokotsu-shi. That’s what I’m doing. I may not remember it all, but I know enough to know what I am. I’m not just a brawler or even a soldier. I know more than that. I know duty. I know ritual. I know honor. And I know my fucking obligations.
The only thing I ever could’ve done for her was to save her pain. Big goddamn hero, I thought it was more important to save her life. So all I did was give her a few years of breathing through what she couldn’t live without, and I didn’t even have the decency to admit the mistake and fix it.
Can’t fix it now. So maybe tomorrow someone’ll get lucky or smart, maybe tomorrow my reflexes won’t be quite fast enough, maybe tomorrow will be the last day I’ll have to think about her dying alone, breathing her last in the dirt with bombs exploding around her, no one to hold her as she died. That should have been me. I owed her that.
So now I’m paying. In blood.
Scott Summers:
I seriously question whether I should let this continue.
I can’t really imagine what I could do to stop it, though. I’ve never had any illusions about what Logan is, what he does. It’s not like he needs to spell it out. Whatever happened to him, whether he remembers it or not, it made him into pretty much the perfect killing machine.
I can’t say it hasn’t been a godsend, having him back on the team. Whoever you’re fighting, it doesn’t hurt to have someone like the Wolverine on your side, and when you’re in a fight for your life, you just thank your lucky stars. But no one in command could be entirely comfortable, working with him. He doesn’t take orders. He doesn’t exactly not follow them—he’s never put me in the position of having to say our missions have been jeopardized. But his objectives and the team’s are…not entirely confluent.
He’s out to kill and be killed, that’s all it is, and if I don’t let him do it alongside us he’ll just do it alone. I can’t see that as a better choice. At least if he’s with us, there’s some rein, however small, on his actions. I’m not kidding myself. He’s only putting up with this because, insofar as our goal is to destroy the organization behind the anti-mutant forces in the government, we’re after the same thing.
We just never intended this fight to turn into the bloodbath it has, and he did. Eventually this is going to come back to haunt us—how the hell can we say we’re not dangerous, when everyone we go up against gets annihilated? But I can’t exactly argue the other way. He’s good. He doesn’t execute bystanders, though how he makes those decisions in the heat of battle I have no idea. Still, at the end of the day, it’s the soldiers and officers and researchers who are lying in pools of blood, not the janitors. And it’s hard to dispute the theory that anyone with a gun—or a needle—is a threat during this fight.
What really bothers me the most, I suspect, is something that it’s hard to even consider in my own mind, much less say out loud.
I wish it could be me.
I wish I could be the one letting loose on every instinct of rage and revenge, the one whose primitive impulses and drives direct my actions. But I’ve never been that kind of man. All my life I’ve had to be the one in control, had to learn caution and planning, accept the responsibility of command. I can’t be like that. Like him.
But I understand the urge. I’m envious of that ability. Logan has changed, since his return after Rogue’s death. He was never exactly a ray of sunshine, but he used to have a sense of humor, at any rate. He used to have bad habits I despised, but at least I assume he enjoyed the drinking and carousing. He doesn’t do any of that any more. Between fights, he’s doing nothing but waiting for the next kill. And there are moments when I’m sure that the only reason he accepts the pseudo-legitimacy of being on the team is that he reluctantly acknowledges that others among us (read: me) have suffered losses too. That buys me a little validity, I guess. And there’s another connection. He stopped me from going over the edge after Jean died, in a strange way, and that was when it stopped being a sheer battle of wills between us. I can’t seem to do the same for him, though. Logan is as unqualified a loner as has ever walked on this earth, and we have nothing left to bargain with for his association with us than the extent to which our mutual aims overlap.
It’s not a healthy situation, and I shouldn’t be letting it go on. But I have to. More than that, I want to. He’s never taxed me with it directly, but Rogue was under my command when she died. Logan was a soldier at some point, I suppose, certainly enough of one to understand the nature of war. He understands that people die in battle. But a nineteen-year-old girl had no business being in that kind of a fight, and both of us know it.
It’s always been that way. Old men have made wars and the young men have died in them, all through history. It’s never been right. But Rogue wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t an enlistee. She was just a kid who got saddled with more than her share of power, and we used her. Never mind the excuses and justifications. We needed what she could do and we put her on the front line. I put her on the front line. And I’ve never been one to believe the ends justify the means.
I owe him, owe them both, for that. So I turn a blind eye, so to speak, to the fact that I’m not really in control of what he does in the field, and I accept his methods and his actions, and I don’t ask questions about it later. Let him get the revenge for both of us.
Someone should get that much out of this, at least.
Ororo Munroe:
I knew that disaster was upon us, and there was nothing I could do.
Our life in those times had the feel of an immense tragedy, about to come to its crashing conclusion—unyielding, inexorable. It was as if what had been set in motion would not be satisfied without the inevitable completion.
And still we had to play our appointed parts. As difficult as it was to watch the carnage around me, I thought that I could survive my duty. In true tragic fashion, I never clearly saw what was before me. I never imagined that Logan would take that final step and turn on one of our own.
I should have known that would matter little to him, in the end.
We all suspected that that last day would see the close of all. We had finally found the central facility, the developmental source of the new machines. They knew we were coming.
It did not make a difference. By this time we knew their weaknesses, had depleted their numbers, and shattered the structure of their command. Those who were left did not have either the conviction or the confidence to make much of a stand. They broke and fled. None of them escaped for long. By the time I reached the ground, again there was blood soaking the earth.
And Wolverine was waiting. He simply gestured for me to follow him with a jerk of his head, and led the way inside the gates. Scott joined us, bringing a satchel of explosives and recording equipment. If recriminations were to be made, we would not be without evidence of our own.
It was eerily soundless, as we walked through those halls. We spoke little, only when necessary. I think the same thought was in all our minds: this was the final battlefield of the war, and we felt all the solemnity of it. Logan seemed even more withdrawn than usual, for once not leading the way but following in our wake. We found the way to the lower levels, even more silent, more desolate. Here the corridors seemed as though they had never known the tread of feet before ours.
And then we found the room.
I could not even enter. Scott moved past me, the camera steady at his shoulder, and I heard Logan swear, a low rush of words I did not completely understand. Then he pushed me to one side and stalked into the room, suddenly on the alert. And I did not guess, or comprehend, what he was searching for. I was too stunned by what I saw.
To call it simply a laboratory or a morgue would not do it justice. It was a panoply of death, made all the worse for its methodical and scientific presentation. Specimens stood in jars, infants warped beyond comprehension and body parts made almost unrecognizable in their dissociation from human form, floating in liquids of abnormal colors. Dissections, half-completed, on sterile laboratory tables. Photographs and x-rays in bold relief hung from the walls or were illuminated by fluorescent lights. Whoever these people had been in life, in death they were utterly anonymous. No one would ever know what name to place over these remains.
I was paralyzed by the enormity of it. I knew that I must make myself move, that there was still some act I had yet to fulfill, some influence or words to offer towards the outcome of the day. But I could not step across that threshold. I, with all the elements at my command, was helpless in the face of that level of systematic malevolence.
And then Logan’s litany of profanity came to a abrupt end, and without conscious thought I looked toward the sudden silence. Scott stood between him and something they were both fixed on, and as I watched Scott lowered the camera from his shoulder and Logan’s claws slid free of their sheaths. Scott turned at the noise, and then I could see past them.
A tank, larger than the rest, and filled with another peculiarly tinted liquid. It seemed to be lighted from within by the same unnatural illumination that lit the rest of the room. And within it floated a human form.
I knew instantly, even without a clear view, what—who—it was. And as I stood, frozen in place, Scott held up a hand.
“Logan—no!”
And the claws flashed down.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Here is what you need to know about this:
The definition of sokotsu-shi is 'expiatory suicide,' the very act wiping the slate clean.
Do you need the angst warning again? Three voices this time; they're listed before each section.
The definition of sokotsu-shi is 'expiatory suicide,' the very act wiping the slate clean.
Do you need the angst warning again? Three voices this time; they're listed before each section.