The small lump, inside a brown cloth sack, squeaked imperceptibly as it hit the ground. A moment later the sack was torn away to reveal a small child.

She was a tiny little thing, probably only four or five years old, finely built, with long, curly black hair, big sapphire blue eyes, and shimmering, translucent blue... wings. She looked like the fairies Logan had seen in the kids story books at the school, her innocent beauty was captivating, and called to him in a wholly different way to the girl whose arm he held. Even as he paused in his trek toward the exit a soft exclamation from Kitty drew his attention, and he turned in time to see her throw a pleading glance at him, begging him to help the girl. ... She knew that no matter what happened to her, the X-Men wouldn't abandon her, and they were obviously close if he was there.

Mentally calculating how much money he had left for another purchase, Logan had made up his mind even before he caught sight of the girl in his own grasp. She was staring at him intently, and when she caught his curious gaze settle on her she spoke quietly, barely above a whisper.

"Please, I'll do anything, anything you want, I won't fight you, I won't try and run away, just please, please don't let one of them get her, she's just a baby, please?" the girl begged, as the crowd around them jeered luridly over the ethereal child.

With a calculating considering look, even though he had already made up his mind, Logan listened as the bidding began while the girl held his gaze, continuing to plead with her beautiful green eyes. An ETA update came through his comm and, without taking his eyes off his purchase, he called out a bid, immediately silencing half the crowd.

"That's not fair, he's already got a girl, he can't have two!" A furious competitor called out from across the room.

"Put your god damn money where you mouth is, jackass," Logan sneered across the room, finally turning away from the girl, catching sight of Kitty again just as her ‘owner’ dragged her out the door. Another bid was placed against him as someone took him up on his challenge, and he immediately fired back.

"Fifteen," he bid, slapping almost another ten grand onto the current bid. No one dared bid higher, and in near silence the auction was called, the depleted crowd watching with bated breath to see if he was actually going to put up the cash on such an insane bid.

Logan was mentally counting down to the X-Men's arrival, as he slowly counted out his bid, he didn't have the cash so he needed them to hurry up before he ran out of notes to distract with. He was up to four thousand when all hell broke loose, in the form of half the room being blown in by a beam of red light. Taking advantage of the distraction, he immediately lashed out at the three traffickers nearest him, two counting and guarding the auctions take, the third keeping hold of Logan’s pending acquisition. All three hit the floor in various states of deceased in moments, and Logan quickly grabbed the duffel bag full of cash, as his prior purchase grabbed the now loosed fairy and did her best to shield her from flying debris and running people. Grabbing hold of the teen, Logan dragged the two girls toward the nearest exit; a back staircase that he had seen another few traffickers disappear up.

Shoving the duffel into the older girls arms too, as they approached the door at the top of the stairs, Logan pushed her to the ground, with a warning to 'stay', before he launched out the door into a volley of gunfire. The guns fell silent soon enough as the last of this batch of human trash lay cooling in the blood soaked snow, and Logan rushed back to where he had left the girls, hoping the teen had been honest when she said she wouldn't run.

She hadn't run, whether that was because she had agreed not to, or because her escape routes were cut off, he couldn't be sure. There were three men, other bidders on the auction, on their way up the stairs when Logan stepped back into the passageway. He was covered in enough gore for them to do a double-take, pausing in their advance long enough for Logan to grab the girls, who still had tight grip on the bag, and drag them out the door, mumbling as he did for the teen to 'make sure baby doesn't see this'.

They jogged quickly across the dark parking lot to where he had parked his truck, and he threw open the driver's door immediately. Boosting the girl, and her charge, off the ground he shoved her into, and across the front seat, cringing a little when he heard her slip and fall to the floor between the driver's seat and passenger seat.

"Slide into the back," he demanded, as he leapt into the driver's seat, plunging the keys into the ignition and twisting to get the old diesels coils warming. "Come on old girl, it's now or never!" he murmured to the trusty old rust bucket, as he simultaneously slammed his door and turned the key. The engine coughed, and shuddered, then roared to life. "Hold on!" he called to his passengers as he dropped the parking brake, slammed the truck into gear, and floored the gas.

The truck bounced wildly as it lurched forward, jumped the small curb hidden under the snow, drove straight over the side walk, and out onto the road, barely missing a drainage ditch in the process.

"Keep your heads down!" he directed, as he punched the gas harder, pushing the cold engine to its limit as he watched the group of men who had followed them pause, one raising a gun to shoot at the fleeing vehicle. The guy got a couple of shots off, laughably wide of his target, before the group were distracted by the building behind them collapsing into it's own basement.

For ten miles they quickly rumbled down the road, Logan constantly checking their tail to make sure they weren't being followed. All the while the girls lay quietly on the floor of the camper, the teen holding them wedged in place between the narrow couch bed and the table, while the fairy clung to her tightly, her face still buried in her chest. Once he was sure they weren't being followed, and had reached an appropriate crossroads, Logan slowed the truck, and pulled carefully to the side of the snow crusted highway.

Parked on the side of the road he turned back to the girls. "It's alright, we got away for now, come on up here darlin'," he prompted the teen, who collected the little fairy girl, and climbed back between the seats to sit down in the passenger seat.

She flinched when Logan reached toward her but relaxed when he simply grabbed the handle of the duffel bag she was still carrying, and pulled it away from her. Opening it, and pulling out wads of cash, he removed everything that wasn't actually money itself. The tender he transferred to a beat up backpack he pulled from behind the driver's seat - there must have been a good forty or fifty thousand dollars in there. Then he threw the duffel, with all the bill wrappings, and a thousand bucks for whoever discovered it, as far into the trees as he could from the road.

"Why did you do that?" the young woman in the seat beside him asked curiously, as he got back into the truck.

He did a double-take, seeing her watching him openly, no fear in her countenance, only wariness and the barest hint of concern. He found himself answering her even before he had a chance to think about why he was bothering to tell her - most of the time when working with the teens at Xavier's he did stuff and just let them figure it out for themselves.

"There's probably GPS tracers in the bag, or anything they added to the money, if I leave it all here, if they trace it, they have no clue from here which way we're going-" he pointed to each of the other three options of roadways- "Leaving a bit of money in it means whoever finds it, if not one of the bad guys, is more likely to keep their mouth shut about finding it," he explained.

The girl nodded agreeably after considering his statement, before she began to shift around in her seat. She was pulling the seatbelt around herself to secure her to the seat, before rearranging the little girl who was still clinging to her so she was comfortably cocooned in her arms.

Logan was surprised to note the little fairy wasn’t afraid, she hadn't been afraid at all this whole time, even when the human traffickers had her on the auction block. Maybe she was simply too young to realise the danger she was in, and that she should be afraid. Either way, the little girl snuggled against the teens very comfortable looking chest, her face angled toward Logan, where she watched him for a few minutes as the truck began to roll down the road again. Eventually she yawned widely, and promptly fell asleep.

"That other girl, the other mutant girl, she said someone was coming to rescue her, were you supposed to be getting her?" the girl asked softly after a time, so as to not disturb the sleeping child on top of her.

"Yes," Logan answered honestly.

"So, why did you buy me instead?" she asked in confusion.

"Because I felt like it," he replied with a shrug, how else could he explain what he didn't even understand himself, all he knew was he had to have her.

"Why did you buy her?" she queried next, indicating to the child sleeping in her arms.

With a soft grin Logan glanced over at the sleeping child. "You did ask me to," he pointed out. Sure he had already decided he was going to but if he told her that she would ask for more of an explanation, and he didn't have one.

"Who's going to rescue the other girl now?" she finally asked, softly, sounding concerned.

Smiling over at her Logan nodded. "Don't you worry, the rest of the team already got Kitty, she'll be on her way home by now," he assured her.

"And what about us... what are you doing with us?" the girl asked uncertainly.

Logan didn't answer. For several more minutes there was silence in the cab, before he reached over and fiddled with the heater knob, turning up the heat now that the engine was warmed up.

"So, what's your name darlin'?" he eventually asked, changing the subject entirely.
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