Chapter 7: Now

The TV blared in the background. A sliver of brown liquid loitered at the bottom of the glass bottle, the smell of aged oak and anise. The comforters were rumpled, clothes strewn about, the trash piling up. Over it all, a heavy stagnancy lingered in the air.

The wrinkles on Charles’ face, blankets pulled up around him, muttering something about it not being too late for Logan in the dark. The drops of blood pooling around the old man’s mouth. The dead kid in the hallway.

As Logan lay on the bed, his brow furrowed. He closed his eyes briefly, willing the memories away, locking them behind doors and shoving them in boxes as quickly as he could. After a while, his eyes darted over to Laura in the chair, who was once again bundled up into a ball, fast asleep.

Enough of this.

Enough of what?

This. You gotta get up now. You gotta face it.

What the fuck should I do?

Drive. Go north.

To what?

To whatever life you can give her.



---

The dark, paved road cut its way through the mountains as the Bronco ascended into the Canadian Rockies. On either side, a dense forest of tall pine trees dwarfed them. The windows were cracked just slightly, letting the cool northern breeze rush through the interior. Laura gazed lazily out the window through her sunglasses. Logan kept a steady grip on the wheel. They had ridden like that, in relative harmony, for hours.

His wounds had healed, and Logan found even his lungs had settled into a steady respite for the last couple of days, the telltale spatter of red as he coughed into his hand ebbing. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that it was gone for good, but, for the moment, he tried to savor the peace this afforded him. Logan had noticed that a stillness, almost an unearthly, eerie calm, had started descending on them both the farther north they drove.

So far, Logan had been impressed with Laura’s patience on the road. The small music device that Laura had acquired had died days ago, and now she had little to entertain herself with except a map, an envelope full of cash, and the same two X-Men comic books, which by now were dog-eared, waterlogged and blood stained. The radio let out the tinny croon of some old Waits tune, but he doubted that was much to Laura’s liking.

Logan was not entirely sure of where they were headed, but rather let his instincts take the helm, his senses feeling out the current of the mountainous terrain, making occasional turns until they were on a lonely stretched of forested highway. He wasn’t quite ready, he realized, to actively think about the last time he had been this far north and what it had meant, but he did find himself casually flipping through the knowledge of the tiny, northern Alberta towns that he had frequented over a lifetime ago. Of course, another part of his brain realized all of this knowledge could be in potential jeopardy, being that most of it was from before the jump, before his reality had become splintered.

Logan knew that eventually he would have to find Laura some semblance of stability. She was incredibly resilient, but still awfully young, and they couldn’t keep running forever. Logan distantly hoped that at least some portion of Canada was the safe haven Gabriella had promised, but Logan had buried his head in the sand so deep for so long that he had no real knowledge to corroborate Gabriella’s claims. Eden had existed in some form, she had been right about that, so maybe there were mutants left out here somewhere, going about their lives. Logan, however, felt no particular urge to run into any. They could make their way on their own, at least for now, with the threat of the Reavers growing more distant each day. Logan no longer had the feeling they were being hunted, and, if he were maintaining some aspect of honesty, he knew that finding a remote, somewhat permanent location was almost all he was capable anymore of doing, mutants or no mutants. He had barely been planning days in advance before he had discovered Laura in the trunk of his limo a few weeks ago. To plan months, maybe years in advance had been something he had dutifully left behind in the rubble back east. He was weak, tired, on the verge of something he didn’t want to understand. Besides, after everything Laura had gone through, Logan thought the girl deserved some sort of real chance at a normal life, something outside of a lab, a battered limo, or a farmhouse caked in blood.

A chill traveled down Logan’s spine at this last thought, before, again, he desperately buried the memory.

“The place we’re going,” Laura asked him sometime later, “what will we do there?”

“Lay low for a while, and if everything stays quiet, settle down somewhere,” Logan muttered a response. He figured she’d eventually need more schooling. He was beginning to understand that Laura’s knowledge of English was good, handy and tactical, but far from perfect. He also knew she could read and write in both languages, but as he looked back over to her attentively, he wondered about math, history, all the rest. She needed a large helping of social etiquette as well, and that judgement was coming from Logan, who was far from the epitome of chivalry and good manners. Plus, for all Laura knew about combat, Logan was beginning to realize there were other things, personal things, he needed to teach her about who she was, about what she would likely have to face. It was knowledge he would be absolutely certain he wouldn’t leave her without, especially if he wasn’t always around to impart it on her. Logan swallowed at that last thought, a bitter taste in his throat.

“Settle?” Laura tried to clarify, confused by the word he had chosen.

“You know,” Logan murmured. “Stay put, at least for a while. Somewhere remote, but still close enough to a place where maybe I can find some work. Maybe even get you set up in school.”

“School?” Laura queried, her interest perking as she sat up a bit. He blindly hoped the concept wasn’t completely foreign to her.

“Uh, like classes, grades. Learning,” Logan pathetically offered. Laura scrunched her nose a bit at this, the inferred austerity of such an institution suddenly making her wary.

“¿Qué? Learning what?” she asked.

“Well,” Logan hesitated, “All the rest, I guess. Math, history, whatever knowledge those sons of bitches kept from you in the lab.” He looked over to see her small hands clutching her bag, practically feeling her unknown, unsteady future cautiously curling out in front of her.

“You’re gonna have to learn how to live in this world, kid. To grow up in it, to be an… effective adult,” Logan ended lamely. Before he could help himself, he thought of Charles. Logan had never been one to inspire the want and will to learn in others, but the Professor had. Logan was often surprised Charles had let him teach, and Logan often wondered if it was just so Charles could keep him around for his other useful abilities. Logan knew he had been a mediocre instructor at best, with the exception of maybe being in charge of a sparring class every once in a while. A ghostly image of a hallway at Xavier’s school infiltrated his mind momentarily, before he quickly shut the lights out on it.

“Effective?” Laura struggled with the word, peering at him questioningly.

“Uhh, yeah. You know. It’s about being useful,” he blundered. Before he could quite comprehend what she was doing, Laura suddenly sat up and unsheathed her claws on one hand, staring at them with a strange, satisfied smile.

“Useful,” she said, looking up at him for approval.

Logan’s eyes darted from the road back to her, taking in the insidious metal jutting out of her small hand and the trickle of blood escaping from between her knuckles. It was then that Logan experienced a strange, foreign twinge of something that felt a little like empathy and a whole lot like dread. The sight of Laura’s blood set him on edge in a way it hadn’t before, in a way he didn’t like. It didn’t matter how fast she could heal afterward.

“Cut it out,” he said curtly. She frowned a little then, as she slowly withdrew the claws.

“You need to stop doing that to yourself. Especially if you don’t have to,” he grumbled, fumbling for a spare t-shirt in the back of the truck with one free hand and then tossing it her way. Laura unsteadily held the fabric in her hands for a few moments before she started wiping the blood away, a disappointed, confused look blooming on her features. Shit. Logan realized quickly that in the moments of giving in to a stray, protective impulse, he had unintentionally made her feel ashamed. A fucking familiar feeling if there ever was one. Logan sighed.

“Listen, kid, it’s not that you can’t ever use ‘em,” he said, looking back her way. “And I know better than anyone that they sure as fuck can come in handy, in all kinds of ways, but…you know they have consequences. Not something to take so lightly. Understand?”

Laura’s face softened slightly but still stayed on the side of somber as she gave him a little nod.

“Consecuencias,” Laura murmured, considering this. “You mean, like how it hurts?” she asked, this time only mimicking the claws springing free on one hand. Logan practically winced at her blunt acceptance of such a fact.

“Yeah, there’s that. But I mean more what you can do with ‘em.”

“You mean… hurting people?” Laura asked, a little more consideration in her voice.

“Yeah,” Logan muttered, suddenly wishing this unintentional, fucked-up lesson was through.

“Sometimes, it might have to happen,” he said, exhaustion in his voice. “But you gotta be… more…than the instincts inside you. More than what…they made us. And that means learning patience, balance, got it? It also means schooling.

“What about you?” Laura asked, after some time.

“What about me?” Logan shot back at her guardedly, hands tightening on the wheel.

She gave him a bit of a knowing look, but didn’t answer, obviously sensing his standoffishness. He wasn’t naive enough to think she was clueless about how fucked up he still was, but it wasn’t something he wanted to get into with her now. He noticed her eyes grow a shade or two darker as she crossed her thin arms around her a little more tightly.

“Listen, Laura, we’re gonna do things real careful and slow in this new place, wherever we end up, alright? And you can rest assured I ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. Sorry, kid, you’re stuck with me for a while longer, and now that you are, I got things to teach ya. But you gotta follow my rules if you want to hang around, comprende?”

Laura smiled a bit at his miserable use of Spanish, and then nodded her head in agreement.



--

The black of night began to descend on them later on in the evening than it did in most places, and Logan was once again reminded of what it was like to live in northern Canada. It did eventually begin to set, though, and the further north Logan and Laura ventured, the less road stops and convenience stores they encountered, let alone places to turn in for the night. Logan wasn’t one for technology, but once more he wished Gabriella’s phone hadn’t been left behind in the Midwest. There was no way of knowing if they’d reach a place soon or not. And while Logan was willing to drive through the night if he had to, something about the darkened stretch of highway they currently found themselves on made him wary, cautious. For once, Logan regretted navigating solely on instinct.

As the sun poured out of the horizon, the color left everything. Dark smudges of grey and blue shaded what was left, the trees throwing deep shadows on the road. Logan felt his senses naturally heighten. His eyes were shit nowadays, the reading glasses often resting on his nose to help with anything he had to look at close up, but, at least for the moment, his hearing, his sense of smell, remained in-tact. They were about the only things left on him that still fucking worked, and as the Bronco drove needle-straight now deeper into the forest, his senses keenly and vaguely hinted at a looming sense of foreboding.

He realized, quickly, that Laura had picked up on his wariness, and she too became rippled with tension. She looked at him questioningly in the darkened cabin of the Bronco, not necessarily anticipating him to answer, but waiting for a sign on what to do, how to feel. Logan said nothing though, and kept stubbornly driving.

Finally, the headlights illuminated an upcoming turn to the left, the first of its kind Logan had seen in about an hour. He intuitively pressed a foot to the break, and the Bronco slowed. He had seen a small, faded billboard advertising a local bed and breakfast, and he wondered, vaguely, if this was the drive up to it. He looked to Laura, who he could tell was both exhausted and antsy. Sitting too long in the same place was hard for any kid, let alone a feral one. The least he could do was try to find her a decent bed to sleep in, instead of once more having to spend the night in the Bronco. It was this thought in mind that he made the decision to turn, the intention to edge up the driveway a bit and look for signs of the bed and breakfast.

Almost immediately, however, the road ahead of them narrowed, winded, and steeped upward, just narrow enough for him to be unable to turn around without careening off the side of the cliff. Instantly Logan realized this had been a bad idea, and he quietly scolded his intuition for pushing him in this direction. Realizing there was no sign of life, Logan began to wonder why there was any road at all. Finally, after what felt like forever, he was able to detect the gravel road widening slightly. He stopped, putting the car into reverse and backed up a bit, cocking the wheel to the right, when there it was, right in front of them. The headlights illuminated a series of low cinderblock buildings a few yards ahead, derelict and abandoned.

The feeling of adrenaline and fear and something more sinister shot through Logan, as the hair stood up on his arms. Two Rivers Research Facility. Jesus fucking Christ. It was still here. He had relied on his instinct to take him this far, and this is where his fucked up intuition had led him, caught between two very real, but very distinct timelines. Even in an alternative reality, he had found it, tucked away on some lonely road, on some empty highway in northern Alberta. He had landed right back on the fucking doorstep. Except that you haven’t, he reminded himself, because, in this timeline, you have never been here.

He turned to Laura then, whose alert was on high. She was pale, eyes wide, waiting for somebody or someone to spring. She had assumed Logan had thought he had saw something between or inside one of the abandoned buildings, and although Logan wanted to explain, he found himself speechless to do so. Meanwhile, memories violently rattled their cages, clanking against locked doors.

“Sorry, kid,” he finally choked out. “Shouldn’t have come up this way.” She jerked her head up to look at him, before whipping it back straight ahead. The sense of trepidation still hung in the air, and he knew Laura felt it, despite her lack of context. They both stared at the light shining off the closest cinderblock building for a moment, gnats flitting in the beams, the dark falling in on all other sides. Logan’s hand shook as he put the Bronco into drive and started down the hill the way they had come, while flashes walked the fields and specters hung back in the dark.



--

Forty more minutes down the main highway, on nothing more sophisticated than another gravel turn off the road, the Bronco slowly rolled into a sleepy motel tucked back a few hundred meters in the woods. Logan was quiet as he killed the engine and shut off the lights, but it wouldn’t matter. Laura had been sleeping, but at the slight shifting of noises she stirred, her small body bristling once more with tension. Her eyes searched out his in the dark, a mild look of concern.

“S’okay, kid. Sorry to wake you,” his voice rough in the dark. Laura relaxed, blinking sleepily as she moved to open the car door. He noticed she kept closely behind Logan as they grabbed their packs and checked in.

Once in their room, Laura was asleep within minutes. Logan watched her for a moment, her long lashes brushing cheeks, her breath even and still. Logan sighed steadily, padding as silently as he could back over to the desk. He loosened a stale cigar from the pack he had picked up a day earlier outside of Edmonton, and headed toward the door. He didn’t intend on sleeping tonight, resigned, instead, to keep close watch over her.

Where you runnin’ off to, sugar? The voice taunted him, as he quietly closed the door behind him.

“Nowhere,” he murmured to himself.

You so sure nowhere is where you wanna be?

Outside, the only sound of importance was the lighter’s spark and the steady, crackling flicker of a flame lighting the crisp, rolled paper. The smell of tobacco wafted upward, long trails of smoke coiling into the starless sky. Logan paced their door for a long time afterward, wary, the sound of boots crunching under the loose gravel, protecting Laura against nothing but ghosts.
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