Fighting the Still Life (Part One)

As I had expected, I did get in trouble for all of the problems that had gone down with Laura and the Facility. Not as much as you would think when you looked back on all of the terrible things that had happened, but there was a reason for that. I didn't give the whole story. I omitted the unnecessary parts.

You know... the me likely killing several people. The illegal border-hopping. The car thefts. All of those juicy details. No one needed to know about that.

On the flip side, I kept in the things that would garner sympathy. Mostly relating to Laura's hardships, again leaving out the unnecessary stuff, like her coming just a hair away from having her organs harvested. You left certain things out when talking to people about superhero stuff when they had no idea what that world was like.

It worked. I got off much easier than I thought I would have. I didn't even get grounded, I just had to stay somewhere my parents could keep an eye on me for a while, which just meant more shifts at the theater. Hell, they even let Laura work with me.

God, maybe Laura was right? Maybe I was good with people? There was a word for that. Charismatic? No. Magnetic? No, not that either.

Manipulative. I might have been a manipulative piece of garbage. Rallying a team together into a solid crew was one thing. Getting a group of kids who had no allegiance to you to fight for you was another. So was being able to talk your way out of serious trouble.

It made me feel like a jerk to think about it that way. But I was not going to spend the rest of the summer on lockdown at my house. What kind of a vacation was that?

...Probably more relaxing than the one I ended up having, but not nearly as stimulating!

"I can still smell popcorn," Laura complained, sitting around with me in the living room. We had finished an afternoon shift and had since changed out of theater clothes, "After showering and changing, I can still smell popcorn."

"It's on our uniforms, hon. You want it out, you've gotta wash 'em," She went to stand and do just that when I grabbed her and sat her back down, "You are not wasting detergent and water to wash our uniforms after one shift. You get used to the smell."

Laura remained obstinate in the mindset that I was not making a big enough deal of this, "You do not experience smell the way that I do."

"I don't experience most things the way you do," I acknowledged with a shrug, "So did you tell Logan about the whole Facility thing?"

Laura nodded, "Yes. He is on his way here," She revealed with no fanfare whatsoever.

"What?"

"I called him late last night, and he said he was coming here in the morning. I told him that you and I had to work today, so he said he would be here this evening."

"So by this evening, do you mean-?"

*DING-DONG*

"Now," Laura 'helpfully' informed me right after the doorbell rang.

I gave her a look before giving up on my attempt at relaying my annoyance with my eyes, "...For future reference, this is the kind of thing you're supposed to give me a heads up about," I said, "What's the use of having insomnia if people don't tell you about shit when it happens?"

Laura and I got up and headed to the door. My parents weren't home, still at the theater for the late shift, so that left me as the man of the house, for all that meant. It was probably for the best. Mister Logan probably wouldn't be subtle about what he wanted to talk about.

I opened the door, to find him standing there, dressed in a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and more denim than I had seen anyone wear since the late 90s, "Laura. Glowstick," He greeted before taking a whiff of the air, "Hm. Smells like popcorn."

Laura gave me a look that said 'I told you so', "Goddamn claw people," I muttered, stepping aside to let him in, "I didn't know you were coming here until thirty seconds ago," And that was not an exaggeration.

At this, Mister Logan looked befuddled, "Laura didn't tell you?" He asked, scratching at his stubble, "Huh. I told her last night."

Laura was quick to defend her failure to inform me of important matters, such as her guardian dropping by, "Isn't it courteous to observe curfew rules in someone else's home?"

Come on now. I didn't buy that for a moment. She had been at my house long enough to know better, "We don't have curfew rules. Just don't be a jerk and wake other people up. That's it."

Speaking of other people, Logan wondered why the two of us had been the only ones to see who had been at the door, "Where's your parents?"

"Working," I answered vaguely.

He accepted that he didn't need to know any more than that, "They know?" About what had happened to us, specifically with the Facility and all of the fighting.

"They know what they should," I said, remaining unclear. I didn't know how much Laura had told him or wanted him to know. Not that any of it mattered at this point.

Mister Logan eyed me closely before nodding in acceptance. He then grabbed Laura's chin and looked her over, as though he would be able to see anything wrong with her just by giving her a quick check like that, "You doing alright, darlin'?"

Oddly enough, she didn't react to this. If it were me, I probably would have gotten slugged or stabbed, "Bellamy was able to reach me before anything irreversible could be done."

"Yeah, totally," I said, trying to play up my role in helping her out, "...You can't grow back organs, can you?" I whispered to Laura.

She took a moment to think about it. Thankfully, this was one thing she hadn't had to experience, "I'm not sure. I don't want to find out."

"You can," Mister Logan confirmed, getting a weird look from the two of us, "Don't ask how I know that."

With that behind us, Mister Logan came in, and Laura apparently had enough of the lingering theater popcorn smell that I couldn't notice, "I'm going to do something about this scent."

We had been over this already, and I expressed as much, "I told you, you're not gonna wash all of our clothes after every shift-."

"-I am going to do something about this scent," Laura reiterated with emphasis. I backed off. I didn't care that much, I just didn't feel like getting admonished by my parents for using up all of the detergent, "I will be right back."

With Laura traipsing off upstairs to gather up her work uniform, and presumably mine, that left me alone with Mister Logan. For the record, having a teacher in your house is really weird. It's even weirder when he raids your fridge for your dad's beer. I had to explain that later.

It didn't take Mister Logan long to get comfortable, kicking his feet up after taking a seat in my living room. Was he just going to hang out the whole time like that was cool? Not that I had a problem with it, but I really didn't need to bring any X-Men weirdness to my parents' doorstep. I had dodged a bullet with the Facility. Still, with Mister Logan being there, it opened up a solution to a problem that I'd put on the backburner for days.

"So, I need something from you," I ventured to ask, given that he was in my house, intruding on my hospitality. He raised an eyebrow and took a sip from his can, but he kept silent and didn't shoot me down outright. "I'm okay with tech for a kid, I think, but Saberwolf's stuff is way out of my league. After what happened, he needs someone to patch him up. And Laura told me about this guy the X-Men know – Forge."

"Let me guess. You want me to take robowolf to him?" I nodded, glad that he had caught on. He was less enthused about it than I was, "Why should I have to take your goddamn pet to get fixed?"

"Other than the fact that I don't know this guy? Because you owe me one for having Laura stay with me."

"Right. She stayed with you and she went and got kidnapped. Great job."

Now that was a sore spot. A very sore spot, "Fuck you," I said, much to his surprise. I didn't need to be reminded that this happened while she was my guest, "You seriously aren't blaming that on me. Look me in the eye and go ahead and fucking blame that on me."

He had probably been trying to make a joke. He did things like that sometimes. That was just how his humor tended to swing – to sarcasm and dark humor. If he had really been blaming me about it, he would have been a lot more fired up when Laura and I saw him. But I didn't see it that way at the time. The whole thing made me angry to think about.

I didn't care if squaring up to him got my ass beat. I'd take that beatdown all day to get my own shots in if he insinuated for a second that Laura got hurt because I was negligent. I would defy anyone to deal with that same situation under the same circumstances without advance knowledge and handle it.

He knew. He held my gaze for a long time to see if I would back down, because he would be damned if he was going to let a teenager get away with talking to him like that. I was already running through excuses in my head as to how the house got ruined because of a fight with my teacher. But that never came to pass.

Eventually, he got bored of the standoff and turned his eyes back toward the TV, "No. It happened on your watch, but it wasn't your fault. You did the best you could," I winced at that crap excuse for things not going right. I'd heard it already, too many times – once with the Danger Room, and again with Breakworld. Mister Logan noticed, "...Kid, I-."

Whatever he was going to say, I didn't want to hear it. The only thing that mattered was making sure my friend got patched up, "Are you gonna help Saberwolf get to this Forge guy, or not? I'd ask you to just give me the address, but I don't think my parents will let me out of San Francisco again for the rest of the break."

He seemed surprised to hear that I was going back, "They're still letting you go to the school?"

There had never been any question that I was. I was in too deep to go running scared back to public school now, "You say that like bad shit happening is exclusive to Xavier's school."

"Hm. Touche," Mister Logan admitted, lifting his hat off of his head as a form of kudos, "...You alright?"

I frowned at the question. I wasn't physically hurt. I'd been a little banged up after the incident, but it wasn't anything I couldn't just sleep off to recharge from, "I'm fine. Why?"

Mister Logan shook his head, "Not because of this. I mean, with everything. Up here," He said, tapping his temple, "A lotta shit's been dumped on you lately. No one ever checked with you after Kitty went missing either. A lot of us had our own things to work out after that. Armor came to me for more training, like you do. She's gettin' real good too."

"Just don't make her too good. Like, better than me, good," I requested, dreading having a Hisako that could beat me consistently around, "The fact that I can kick her ass is like one of the only things I can hold over her head."

"Guess I just have to train you harder when you get back," He offered. I would for sure be taking him up on that when classes were back in session, "Seriously though, Glowstick. It's not good to keep all of this shit inside, or so I'm told. I ain't much for counseling, 'specially with kids, but do you have anything you need to say?"

The funny thing was... I really didn't, "No," I said, sounding amazed. I did have all of these nasty, cynical thoughts about the things that had happened to me, but after I had them, I let them go. That couldn't have been normal, to just get past such drastic events so easily, "I think that's the problem. I don't have anything I want to whine about."

"This ain't whining," Mister Logan growled, "You manned up and dealt with fucked up situations while they were happening, and you didn't make a peep. Good. I'm never gonna complain about having to work with a brat that doesn't act like one. But this shit sticks with you after the fact, and you don't seem like the 'drown your sorrows' type."

"No, I mean I really don't have a need to get anything off my chest," I said, trying to explain myself, "Mister Logan, I killed people. Killed soldiers working for the Facility. Killed U-Men."

"You did what you had to do to protect yourself and your friends. I know it's a drag to think about, but they'd have done a lot worse to you if-."

I held up a hand to stop him from his stock-standard survivor's remorse speech that he'd probably had queued up just for instances just like this, "No, dude, shut up. You're not listening. I'm trying to say I don't care," I deadpanned, "I killed them, thought about it for half a second when things got quiet and then-," I snapped my fingers, "-I let it go, just like that."

"Uh... well, just don't get used to it and you should be fine?" This was clearly unfamiliar ground for him. He might as well have shrugged at me, to give his confusion a physical act.

Ineeded to drive home just how foreign these thoughts of mine really were, "After we beat Kimura, my first idea was to drown her just so we'd be rid of her. The only reason I didn't was because it clearly freaked out the Hellions. That's not normal, right?"

No, it wasn't, because again, the Wolverine hesitated to say anything. It was a damning silence if ever there was one, "Did you like it?" He finally asked.

"I nothing'ed it," I grunted out sulkily, "It was like swatting flies... if the flies were racist and had hermetically sealed gear. It pissed me off that I had to do it for a second, and then it was over."

He took a moment to digest everything that I'd told him. That left an uncomfortable silence only broken by the sound of M*A*S*H reruns on the TV, "...You know I've got to tell Slim and Frost about this, right?" It sounded like he didn't want to but was aware that he had to.

In all fairness, he did. Having a mentally unstable kid in training with the other would-be X-Men was a ticking time bomb just waiting to happen. Besides, the whole X-Men don't kill was a load of crap for better p.r. with the general population.

Humans didn't like mutants to begin with. Having a team of them that could match the mighty Avengers and had no qualms with killing off human extremists that tons of people agreed with, whether they admitted it out loud or not, wouldn't go well. That was the reason why they didn't kill in the field. These were the things that went unsaid. You had to read between the lines for it, and a lot of people didn't. People like most students. The New Mutants were on the morality kick that killing was always wrong. The Hellions had the belief that we couldn't kill because we had to be better than our enemies.

I didn't have either of those one-dimensional mindsets, but to have no aversion to spilling someone's blood because they were bad guys trying to kill me? I remembered feeling disgusted about it back when I'd first met Saberwolf, and by the end of that same day I felt close to what I did now. It was that fast of a transition.

"I kind of want you to," I said honestly, "I don't know what's going on. I mean, I should feel something, right?" I didn't want to be a bleeding heart, but what if there really was something wrong with me? "Am I a sociopath?"

Fortunately for me, that leap of logic didn't pass muster for Mister Logan, "If you were, you wouldn't care enough to ask. Besides, you like people, and people like you. You're a surly, sarcastic dick a lot of the time, sure, but you ain't antisocial, and you do think about others."