Logan pulled his dust stained paisley bandana down from his face as the fuel cell light on his hovering chopper flickered dangerously close to low. Glancing up the black-top road that wound through the martian frontier, he vaguely made out the blinking signs of a small town, prefab metal housing units stacked fortress style with thin-slit windows to protect against outlaws or bandit attacks on the red planet’s barren plains. Rolling through the security checkpoint via the flashy white security clearance hologram that signaled to waiting guards, he pulled in to the first food joint on the side of the road, jerking his data chip and fuel cell out of the chopper and pulling his napsack from the storage bags on the back. Slinging them all over his shoulder, he stalked through the hissing forcefield door.
“Welcome to Vic’s!” a chipper voice called, ringing from the back room of the dive located a little ways off the highway underneath the massive Mars Dome Gamma, the third million square mile living structure the United Space Exploratory Alliance had constructed around twenty years or so back.
Logan had traipsed out to Mars some fifteen years back to continue his quest to find her. Unluckily for his classic motorcycle, fuel cells had long since replaced fossil fuels. Reluctantly, he put the beautiful black chopper into climate controlled storage on Earth, and sadly purchased a beat up hydraulic Demon-stylized motorcycle-esque machine at Dome Alpha. The only reason he’d stopped today, at Vic’s, was because the damn thing’s fuel cell needed recharging.
Logan frowned, feeling older than ever. I mean, how’re you supposed to feel if you’d been born in the early 19th century and currently sat in a bar-diner combo with retro sixties Earth decor, in the year A.D. 2175, pondering the fate of a classic motorcycle that ran on now obsolete and non-existent gasoline? I mean, he remembered eight track tapes and VCRs, not to mention DVD players! Shaking his head, he dropped his weathered, ancient ruck-sack on the martian bedrock countertop, coughing as red dust leapt up in clouds. It was impossible to travel anywhere on Mars without getting this crap in your craw, hence the dirty bandana slung around his neck.
Reaching into the pack, he pulled out a blue crystalline 21st century flash drive look-a-like which stored a small portion of his accumulated wealth. Despite the Wolverine’s penchant for living life simplistically, inheriting Charles Xavier’s accumulated property and investments in faster-than-light travel as the last living original Alpha Team X-Man had made him quite wealthy. And once you’ve lived a little over three hundred years, these things also tend to accumulate interest.
A blue-space-jumpsuit clad waitress came from the kitchen to hand him a holographic menu. He tugged on his beard thoughtfully as he contemplated his food selection. Ah, hell? Why not.
“Beer, whatever’s on draft - burger and fries, all the way, add some cheese if you’ve got it.” he said. The menu snapped closed as the waitress took it from him with a smile. She had blazing red hair, she wasn’t natural though, if his faded memories of Jean Grey gave him any indication. In other words, the Wolverine was pretty sure that the carpet did not match the drapes.
Snickering to himself, he reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of glasses frames. Placing them over his eyes, he punched a glowing blue button on the side and datastream shot out from both temple pieces, uniting to form a blue screen that displayed the galaxy’s hottest news.
“Nova Corps Severely Decimated,” was the first headline to catch his eye. Automatically, iris recognition opened the newscast, and he cursed at the damage and casualty totals. He had heavily invested in the Nova Corps latest outpost station during the last fiscal year.
“Fucking skrulls,” he growled. A faction of the shapeshifting aliens had broken away from the larger whole, causing absolutely no end of trouble for the remaining humans and Mutants that had spread across the galaxy following the third world war.
Not human versus human.
Human versus mutant.
The war that had claimed the life of the only soul in the universe that the Wolverine had ever, really, truly given a serious damn about.
His Marie.
Shaking his head to clear away the ghosts, his nose told him when his food and beer arrived, and still busy reading his headlines, he slathered the whole pile with dehydrated ketchup and began to scarf it down, guzzling his beer. He only had six hours of daylight left before night fell, and night on Mars could be a long fucking time, consequently, he needed to get hopping on this fuel cell repair, or he could be stuck in this run down dump for a week.
The waitress brought him a glass of water and leaned against the counter, her only other customer, a trader from one of the andromeda galaxies dropping a cred chip on the table as he got up to leave.
“So, where you from stranger?” she said, smiling genuinely, “I’m Bess.”
Logan smiled back, unintentionally, taken aback by her genuine interest. Glancing down, he noted the slim onyx wedding band around her ring finger. This chick didn’t want to get laid, but she was looking for gossip.
“Name’s Logan, Earth,” he replied back, noncommittally. She didn’t need to know exactly where. Let her guess, it was a big damn planet after all.
“I’ve never been,” Bess said, with a sigh of disappointment, “I was born in Dome Alpha and game to Gamma with my husband to start this place.” She gestured to the quaint decor, “I decorated it myself, got the idea from one of those rerun sitcoms from the 2000s, think it was That Seventies Show or something like that.”
“Your husband the cook?” Logan said, lifting another fry to his mouth. The screen of his newsprompter was now politely opaque.
“Yup, he’s from Earth. One day we’ll visit,” she beamed, confidently, “First we gotta get this bun out of the oven though.” Her joke, one that Logan hadn’t heard in at least thirty years made him crack a small smile.
“Congratulations, when’re you due?” he said, giving the standard reply for anyone who was willing to patronize a beaming, expectant mother. Who knew, she might throw in some free apple pie or something.
“A couple more months, one of the girls from Dome Beta is going to be my midwife, she’ll be traveling over a few weeks before the birth, just in case.” Bess replied.
“Hey, Bess?” a gruff voice called from the kitchen, “Any more customers before siesta lock up?”
“Nope, we’re cool Vicky!” Bess replied, then turned to Logan to explain, “Sorry to rush you, but Dome Gamma gets pretty hot when the solar shields come on during the afternoon to recharge the generators, so our businesses close in the afternoons.”
Cursing his luck, Logan handed her his cred chip and finished his meal, now desperate to find the nearest repair shop. Tipping Bess heftily, he left the dive with a to-go piece of pie and the directions to a third-floor walk-up fixit shop called, simply, ‘Skylady’s.’ He could feel the heat soaking into his black bomber jacket, the weight of his pack making him sweat as he trucked the three blocks towards the escaladder that lifted him from street level to the top floor.
Clangs and bangs emanated from within the fabric covered outer door. The sound of a hydraulic-machine-saw whirling and exacerbated cursing made him smirk.
“Son of a mutant-Skrull-loving-whore-bag!” a vaguely familiar voice snarled. The ubiquitous repairperson’s tool, a silver wrench, went flying by him to slam into the forcefield wall that acted as a railing for the skinny walkway. Taking the somewhat silent interlude as his chance, Logan knocked.
“Come mother fucking in!” the voice yelled again, muffled. Inhaling deeply, Logan confirmed that whoever this “Skylady” was, she smelled damn good beneath the layers of grease and machine spooge.
Pushing the fabric away, Logan was taken aback at the amount of junk that littered the workshop from floor to ceiling. What most certainly was the carburetor from a ’67 Skylark sat atop an R2-D2 made from legos. Screws, wrenches, screwdrivers, and digital hydraulic tools littered worn metal containers. Drill bits from an ancient Black and Decker kit were spread out across a massive holographic sketching table, next to which a rusted skill-saw impaled a piece of corroded metal.
“I’m in here!” the voice called again, and Logan stepped through, over, and around the pile of crap through another cloth covered doorway.
This room was completely different than its predecessor.
A black, 1967 Chevy Impala two-door sedan sat on worn tires, hood propped open with a prybar as a lithe body peered around underneath the hood, giving Logan a beautiful glimpse of a taught tush clad in denim shorty-shorts and a white tank top.
Holee shit. Hot bodied girl (what, he hadn’t seen her face yet!) working on a car that he hadn’t seen the likes of in a hundred years and somehow or another had been imported to Mars.
Fucking luckiest day of his life.
“Eck, em,” Logan cough-growled, and the hot-mama mechanic turned around, wiping a streak of grease across a pale, freckled cheek. Waves of brunette hair were pulled up into a messy rooster-tail bun, and heavy schematic holo-goggles covered most of the kid’s face.
“What can I do you for?” she asked, and he grunted, passing her the fuel cell for inspection.
“This thing’s shot, what’re you driving, a 2150 hydro-cycle? Sheesh, that thing’s a death trap, it’s got no speed limiter,” she groused, reaching up to pull her goggles from her cheeks, revealing soft chocolate brown eyes, a delicate nose, and a mouth that Logan was intimately familiar with.
“Marie?” he gasped, hoarsely, pack falling from his hands on to the floor with a dull thud.
Logan’s heart skipped, stuttered, and stopped beating. He stepped forward without even realizing it, cornering the mechanic against the door of the Impala.
“Excuse me?” she eeped, hands pressed tightly against his chest as he leaned in to her neck to inhale her scent.
Beneath the smell of grease and body-odor, was the distinctive, never forgotten scent of Marie. His Marie.
“Oh God, it’s you,” he practically sobbed into her, hands pawing at her clothes, feeling, touching, just for the sake of knowing that after two hundred years of searching, he had found her, the one that Destiny had predicted would come.
“Dude, you’re seriously freaking me out,” she yelped, pushing her hands against his and pulling them away from her, “Stop touching me!”
But Logan was too far gone in sincere delirium to stop now. His lips crashed into hers, her tiny fists punching and kicking him as he groaned like a dying man in the desert, finally presented with a cool spring of water.
He pulled back dazed, staring in shock once more at the girl before him, who opeend her mouth, inhaled a massive gulp of air, and screamed, “VICTOR!” at the top of her lungs.
The last thing Logan saw were Marie’s bewildered eyes as clawed hands lifted him bodily away from her, and slammed him through the roof of the beautiful, classic Impala.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
I'm throwing this in with my OneShots series. The bunny bit me and I had to had to write it. This is a crazy free-write pretty much, so it may be a little more disorganized than my normal stuff. Baby o' Mine chapter is coming up soon, plus more Finding Home. :)
Song, "Far Away" by Nickelback
This time, this place
Misused, Mistakes
Too long, too late
Who was I to make you wait?
Just one chance, just one breath
Just in case there's just one left
Cause you know, you know, you know
That I love you
I have loved you all along
That I miss you
Been far away for far too long
Song, "Far Away" by Nickelback
This time, this place
Misused, Mistakes
Too long, too late
Who was I to make you wait?
Just one chance, just one breath
Just in case there's just one left
Cause you know, you know, you know
That I love you
I have loved you all along
That I miss you
Been far away for far too long