All These Woes Shall Serve
1407 Graymalkin Lane, town of Salem Center, Westchester County
The Library. Midnight.
It is now five months after the Leslie Treaty on Human-Mutant Relations was signed in Washington D.C.
****************************************
The library at the School felt unused.
There weren’t any classes held any more. Logan wondered if that meant it wasn’t a school, either. Did the place keep its identity even when it wasn’t being used for the same purpose?
Logan reached for the whiskey bottle he’d set down beside him, and rubbed a hand over his face wearily. He’d been back here, as close to a home as any place he’d ever known, for six months.
Six months wasn’t long enough to forget everything he’d seen.
He stared out the window at the stars glittering over the wintry grounds. Remembering.
Six months ago…
***************************************
Verona Juvenile Facility. Somewhere in Pennsylvania.
The old van rattled to a halt in the underground garage, and the driver swung himself out of the cab, adjusting his glasses. Then he stopped short.
Instead of the lone guard and a silent gurney or two, there were two figures standing in the exit bay. The guard had something in his arms, and he hadn’t even waited for the van to come to a complete halt before he’d seized the handle of the rear door and swung it open. He gestured to the girl who stood beside him, similarly burdened. “Go on. Get in. Now.”
“What the hell—“ The driver reached for the guard’s arm, only to be knocked backwards by an angry gesture as the other man shook him off. He stumbled, fell, and his glasses skittered across the floor of the garage. “Goddamnit!” Blindly, he fumbled along the dirty floor. “Fuck!”
“Come on.” The guard slung a bag that had been sitting on the floor in after the passengers and slammed the doors on them. “We’re leaving.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? I can’t—“ The man found the glasses; one earpiece was broken off. “Damn it to hell—I can’t drive like this.”
“I’m driving. Get in.” The uniformed man climbed into the driver’s seat. “Get in. You can bitch at me later.”
The original driver hesitated, then ran to the passenger side. The other man hit the gas before he’d even managed to get the door shut; he almost lost his glasses again as the van screeched away and out of the garage. He reached for his seatbelt and managed to get it fastened without losing the eyewear again. He glanced over at the new driver; the man’s jaw was set and he pressed harder on the gas pedal as they reached the gravel road that led away from the facility. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
There was no answer, but a second later he ducked automatically as an explosion shook the whole area, and another a moment later. The van swerved with each concussion from the blasts, but the driver kept it on the road. Then they were coming to the gates.
“Oh, no.” That was all he had time for before the van simply crashed through the chain-link fence, not slowing for an instant. It skidded as they turned hard onto the road, and then they were speeding up again and driving away from the compound.
Logan glanced back; no one seemed to be in pursuit. Presumably the explosions had been the distraction he’d counted on. Then he looked over at the passenger seat. The man who sat there was holding his glasses in place as if his life depended on it, and staring straight forward at the road in front of him as if he were able to alter the course of the van by the power of his mind alone.
Not so far-fetched, really, but not this particular guy. Logan’s mouth twisted in a wry grimace of amusement. “Doin’ all right there, Scooter?”
“Just. Watch. The road,” the younger man gritted out. “You might have given me some warning.”
“No time.” Logan swerved suddenly onto a side road and the other man clutched at the dashboard reflexively. “Take it easy. I haven’t wrecked anything yet.”
“Not for trying.” Scott Summers took a deep breath and tried again to adjust his broken glasses. “You know, that was a goddamn stupid thing to—I could’ve lost control.”
“And done what? Wrecked the place?”
Summers glared, but there wasn’t really any reply he could muster to that. When he finally spoke a few minutes later, he’d gotten his anger under control. He was good at that. “So you mind telling me what brought this on?”
“Yeah. I mind.” There wasn’t any single answer to that, not really. It was just that he had reached the end of his ability to hold back. He wasn’t going to be part of ‘minimizing the damage’ for one more minute. Not this time. Not ever again.
“Fine. You didn’t have to stay in there, you know.” It was the note of real concern that Logan heard that bothered him more than anything else.
“Yeah. I did.”
And that was all that was said. A few hours later they were pulling up in front of a large, run-down stone building. It had once been a showplace, that much was clear, but now its once-beautiful façade was faded and crumbling. As Logan brought the van to a halt, a woman appeared in the doorway of the building and came, slightly hesitantly, toward the vehicle.
The tall, white-haired woman continued down the steps as the battered van pulled up in front of the building. Her finely-arched eyebrows rose as two men, not one, emerged from the front seat. She moved to the rear of the van as the larger of the two came from the driver’s side to join her. The other man hurried up the steps and into the building.
“Logan? Why are you here? Is everything all right?”
Logan’s eyes were dark with anger. “Not really.” He yanked open the rear doors and gestured. “Look at this.” Inside the van there were three people: an Asian girl in her teens, and two others. Logan gestured. “Four and six years old. Fuckin’ doctor wasn’t even gonna blink.”
Ororo’s hand went to her mouth. “Dear goddess.” Logan climbed into the back of the van, lifted one tiny body from the teenage girl’s arms and handed it out; she took the little boy in her arms and brushed the pale-blonde curls back from his face. “They can’t possibly have manifested yet, can they?”
“They’re children of known mutants. Seems like they were stepping things up, not taking any chances.” Logan got back out, carrying a little girl who looked slightly older than the boy. “Brother and sister. We need to find their parents.” He nodded towards the silent teenager. “Her name’s Jubilation Lee. She doesn’t have any parents.”
“Jubilation. What a lovely name.” Even in the midst of chaos, Ororo Munore would still be regal and gracious. She put an arm around the young girl, who seemed dazed by everything she’d seen, and started back up the stairs. “They weren’t at the same facility?” She spoke quietly to Logan as he moved past her, cradling the other small form against his shoulder.
“There ain’t a facility any more.” Logan snarled the sentence. “The parents’ll probably get to one of the safe houses eventually, so find out.”
“Of course.”
They were nearly at the door when it opened and Summers reappeared, adjusting a fresh pair of ruby-quartz glasses, along with another figure. Ororo almost ran into Logan as he came to a sudden halt.
The woman who’d emerged from the building came forward to meet them. “Hello, Logan. I heard you coming.”
“Never could put anything past you,” he answered.
Jean Grey reached for the little girl Logan held and smiled when she sighed and snuggled her face into Logan’s neck. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you inside.” She took the sleepy dark-haired child from his arms and she whimpered a protest. “It’s all right, honey.” Jean reached up to kiss Logan’s cheek. “Welcome home, Logan. I’m sure there’s a lot you have to tell us, but get some rest first.”
“Yeah. Good to see you too, Jeannie.” He answered mechanically. She smiled again, but slightly more tentatively. She adjusted the child’s head on her shoulder.
“What’s her name?”
“Carolyn,” he answered. “And Michael.” Logan nodded at the little boy as Ororo moved past.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
Logan stepped back. “Not right now.”
“Okay. Well…I’ll see you later.” Jean paused as if there was something else she wanted to say, but she seemed to change her mind as Scott put a hand on her shoulder. They headed inside.
It was suddenly silent in the chilly about-to be-autumn night air. Logan went back to the van, its shabby doors still standing wide, and pulled out an old military-issue duffel bag. He’d torn off the uniform shirt after they’d cleared the perimeter; now he sat on the edge of the van’s floor and roughly yanked off the lace-up boots he still wore, throwing them ferociously one after other into the darkened interior behind him. He stood long enough to empty the pockets of the uniform pants before stripping them off; everything that had come from the facility followed the boots into the van, as did the pants themselves. He fished a pair of jeans and an old pair of cowboy boots from the bag and dressed rapidly. The last thing he did before slinging the bag over one shoulder and slamming the doors of the van closed was to yank the chain from his neck and throw the rigged tag with the fake name after everything else. The technology they’d stolen had kept his mutation hidden for more than two years.
Now he was finished with it. He was through hiding who and what he was.
He stalked off across the grounds, pulling a jacket on as he went. The once-pristine gardens were run to seed, the grass and shrubs growing wild, and he liked it better that way than he had when everything had looked manicured and serene. All he wanted to do was get to the woods, away from the thousands of questions he knew he was going to face in the morning.
He damn well wanted a drink, but that was going to have to wait until he could stand company.
He slowed his pace as he lost himself in the shadows of the trees. His hand went to his jacket pocket a couple of times, but he waited until he reached a quiet clearing and had slung the duffel bag to the ground at his feet before he finally slid his hand inside.
Logan leaned back against the trunk of an old oak and finally let his mind run over the images of the last days. He’d known things were coming to a head, and it was just a matter of time. Still, the end had come in a rush. It had never been intended for him to stay undercover as long as he had, anyway. He still didn’t know how he’d handled it for as long as he had; mostly by just not thinking about it, he figured.
He suspected that was probably going to come back to haunt him.
Slowly he drew a much-creased envelope from his pocket and turned it over in his hands. For the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth, he considered opening the envelope he’d sealed some months before. There was enough light filtering among the trees; he could see to read.
After a moment’s consideration, he refolded it and put it away, pulling out a pack of cigarettes instead. Not Cubans, but better than nothing. He had an old Zippo; it took a couple of tries to get a light.
Summers was probably inside giving his version of events to his wife and Ororo. Logan didn’t much care. He had no goddamn clue what had been going on out here anyway, and whatever stories Scooter had been spinning from previous runs might as well have their big finish. The last couple of years had been a hard cold dose of reality for the Boy Scout, but he hadn’t really understood what he’d seen tonight.
Logan didn’t really feel like getting into it, either.
All he knew was that two and a half years of control and anger had snapped, and between that seething rage and his intimate knowledge of the facility, the result had been a foregone conclusion. He’d opened the doors of the cells, shorted the alarm systems, handed out survival packs and sent groups of kids off in as many different directions as he could. It didn’t matter, anyway. The bastards were going to be way too busy picking through the remains of their baby Auschwitz to worry about chasing any of them down for a few weeks at least, and long before that the kids would be collected and safe. He’d made sure they all got out. The Lee girl had been a new arrival and she’d just seemed too shell-shocked to be sent out on her own. So he’d kept her with him, along with the two young ones.
And the doctor, the one he’d watched coolly poisoning a few hundred innocent children, well, he’d left him strapped down on that same goddamn table. Right where he’d thought he’d been exterminating the “mutant problem.”
There would have been a good deal of satisfaction in dispatching the man himself, but Logan had reluctantly decided that leaving him to die in his own lab was more fitting. Also, it would take longer.
Logan threw down the stub of the cigarette and ground it out with the heel of his boot. He pushed away from the tree and wandered further into the woods, not really caring where he went. It was just good to be outside again, good to be away from constant bright fluorescent lights and antiseptic smells. He walked slowly, his head down, and it wasn’t until the brighening moonlight told him he was reaching the edge of the wooded area that he looked up. Then he froze.
White stones. Glittering. Acres of them. For an instant his eyes were dazzled enough that he didn’t really take in what he was seeing. But there were hundreds, all white marble, nearly identical.
Logan took a step into the cemetery and stared down at the first of the stones at his feet, automatically noting the dates. Too close together. The name on it read Katherine Pryde. The math wasn’t hard. She’d been almost eighteen.
He didn’t remember the name. He wondered if he’d have remembered the face.
Logan walked along the rows as methodically as if he were back in the corridors of the containment facility. It took a while, and after the first few rows he didn’t really read the names any more; he glanced just long enough to to know whether it was or wasn’t the name he was looking for. He’d had no idea they’d done all this while he’d been gone; all of these names hadn’t passed through his facility. But there had been other places. Far too many of them.
Christ, he should have trashed the place ages ago and gone somewhere else. Done something more. Done something to end all this sooner. There hadn’t been any useful information to be gathered in a year; he didn’t know why he’d let himself be convinced to stay. Maybe, somewhere else, he could have made more of a difference.
The stone he was looking for was in the fifteenth row. He stood over it for a long time before he dropped his duffel bag to the ground and knelt to run his fingers over the cold carved stone. It bore a simple cross, a name, and two dates.
He hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t read the files, so it was news to him that her birthday had been in April. The other date, he knew.
Marie D’Ancanto. April 22, 1988 – March 26, 2006.
They never let them get to eighteen.
*********************************************
The Library. Three A.M.
Logan hadn’t locked the door of the library behind him, though normally he would have, out of the basic premise that it never hurt to take precautions. He seemed to be the only one who ever used this place anyway, even if he wasn’t exactly using it for its designated purpose. His mouth twisted wryly as he refilled his shot glass; the bottle he’d brought with him was half empty.
Was a library still a library if no one read the books?
And what was the purpose of a killer after a war was over?
His job was finished.
He took his shot and stared forward. The only light in the room was the lamp that stood on the end table beside the bottle, and he could still see the stars outside the window. They looked very cold and far away.
He couldn’t see the graveyard from here; it was discreetly placed behind a copse of trees. But this window would face it, if not for the intervening greenery.
Since the war there had been an increase in activity everywhere around the School, and the cemetery was no exception. People came there often, and there were flowers left on some of the graves now. Some of the graves were simply disappearing. A few of them were being disinterred as relatives reclaimed their formerly lost or disowned dead; Logan thought very little of them.
Waiting until after someone was dead to show your respect seemed like a waste of time to him. Pretty damn useless, in fact. Like everything else about the war.
He’d visited the cemetery yesterday. For the last time.
************************************************************************
The Cemetery. Westchester, N.Y.
There were always too many damn people there these days.
Young people, students returning to the school, searching through the names. Older people, sometimes couples, sitting on the newly-installed marble benches, holding each other for whatever comfort they could find. And sometimes men, who should have been wearing dark suits but who were instead discreetly attired in too-neat khakis and polo shirts. Logan didn’t know why they bothered. A uniform was a uniform.
He supposed Xavier knew what he was doing. The old man was smart; he was undoubtedly getting back more information than he was giving away. It didn’t mean Logan had to like it.
It was February now. Six months since the night he’d torched the facility, five months since the first of the treaties had been signed, four months since the government, frightened by the wave of unseated candidates, had dissolved the Department of Mutant Affairs and appointed a committee to “look into abuses of the system”. Logan had long since lost any sense of irony he might have possessed over those kinds of euphemisms.
It was February, and it was an icy grey day, and he hadn’t thought anyone would be there, especially not so early in the morning. But as the students came trickling back from wherever they’d been sent to hide, they always made the pilgrimage. Logan had heard the van arriving from the train station late the night before.
The cemetery was almost unbearably depressing in the faint morning light, with a light rain falling. The recently-opened graves dotting the ground looked like wounds in the earth. Near the periphery, there were two figures beside one of the graves whose ground was undisturbed. One was kneeling, head bowed; the other, shrouded in a long coat with the hood up, stood a discreet step behind the mourner.
Logan didn’t move from where he was standing, just beyond the trees, but after a moment the hooded figure turned.
Yeah. Should have left already.
Too late now. He watched as the cloaked figure leaned over the kneeling one, saying something he couldn’t hear, and started forward reluctantly as the young man rose to his feet and made an obvious effort to get his emotions under control. He wiped his hand
over his eyes before he reached out to take his companion’s hand.
Logan continued to walk toward them; there didn’t seem to be any good way to get out of it. And what did he expect? He honestly wasn’t sure. As he approached, the second figure pushed back her hood and he could see her face for the first time.
“Logan.” It was just one word, but it answered a thousand questions and made his heart sink.
It would have been so much easier if she’d been angry with him.
“Hey, kid.” He saw the joy in her eyes flicker, but she didn’t falter for more than an instant.
“I heard about what you did. At the facility. I thought it was wonderful. We all did. A lot of the kids wound up in Philadelphia, where Bobby and me were. This is Bobby,” she finished in a rush. “Bobby, this is Logan.”
“I’ve heard about you, sir.” The young man stepped forward and held out a hand; Logan took it automatically and found himself meeting the boy’s eyes. He had a firm grip. Raised to be polite. Knows how to introduce himself. “I wasn’t in a camp, but I spent the last year working at the safe house. That was how I met Rogue. And a lot of the other kids from…that place.”
“Verona,” Logan said, and there was a sudden silence. Bobby let go of his hand.
“Yes, well…anyway, we had more than fifty of your survivors. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“My ‘survivors’?” Logan repeated. Rogue dropped Bobby’s hand and stepped forward.
“I was number three hundred seventeen,” she said, and her voice had lost a little of that breathless drive to get the words out at all costs. Her right hand, encased in a black leather glove, scrabbled for a moment at her neck and then held something out, something that fit into her palm neatly but hung from a chain. “I got my number from Etch yesterday when I got here.”
Against his will, and certainly his better judgment, he looked down. The two small metal rectangles lay on that smooth black background, exactly the way they’d looked the day he’d—
No. Not quite the same. His own tag lay underneath the shinier, newer one, and it gave him a strange shock to realize she still wore it, but hers no longer showed the serial number Verona had given her. Instead, there was just that three-digit number, each numeral somehow distinct and artistic. He could see the figures and letters stamped on his own as well, and they looked crude in comparison.
Rogue’s eyes were on him with that same honest gaze that had induced the idiotic gesture in the first place. “Didn’t you know? We all have them.” She came a little closer, and Logan saw Bobby give her an odd look. “The two kids you brought with you were three hundred eighty-two and eighty-three. And Jubilee took three hundred eighty-four. She wanted the last number.”
It was insane. There were four hundred kids out there wearing these things like badges of honor? They should be doing whatever they could to forget every second of what they’d been through, not starting some kind of fucking alumni organization.
Rogue’s brow knit a little. She glanced down at her hand. “You’ve seen them, right? Etch—his real name’s Evan, I think—he can alter metal, and he makes them all. He was one of the first, number twelve.” She gave him a shy smile. “I didn’t let him mess with yours, of course, but he said he couldn’t do anything with it anyway. He said it was some really unusual metal.”
“Adamantium.” The word came out more clipped than he’d intended and Rogue looked even more worried.
“Did you want it back? I can—“
“No. Keep it.” Rogue let the chain and tags fall from her hand; Bobby stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Rogue, I’m going to go back to the house, all right?” Logan had to admire the kid. There was clearly nothing he wanted to do less, but he was trying to give her some space. There was really nothing Logan wanted less than to be left alone with her, though, so he adressed the young man.
“Friend of yours?” He indicated the gravesite with a jerk of his head.
Bobby’s expression hardened slightly. “No, sir. My brother.”
Logan nodded. “Sorry.”
“Yeah.” The young man swallowed hard. “He wasn’t one of us. He…went to work for the other side. We’re not sure what happened. Either they figured he wasn’t any more use to them, or they might have found out about me. Either way…” He trailed off. Rogue reached out and took his hand.
“Bobby just found out a month or so ago,” she said. “But we couldn’t leave any sooner.” She bit her lip and gave Logan a pleading look. “We should finish here, so—will you be around later?”
Logan took a step back. “Didn’t mean to intrude.” He ignored the way she was trying so hard to catch his eyes and stayed focused on her little friend. “Sorry the kid got caught up in all that. Lot of people got hurt.” He glanced the grave. “At least you know where he is.”
Bobby’s eyes were moist. “Thank you, sir.” Logan nodded curtly and turned away. He’d only gotten a few strides away before he heard the footsteps running after him, and felt her hand on his arm.
“Logan, wait.” He stopped, but he didn’t turn around; he made her come around to face him. “Please—I really want to talk to you, it’s just…” She swallowed hard.
She wasn’t meeting his eyes any more, which was one small mercy. “Go on. Go back to your friend,” he said, and even though he knew he should make it abrupt, he couldn’t help softening his tone. “I’m glad you made it through okay.”
“Can I see you later?”
He should just say no. He knew if her boyfriend hadn’t been watching, she’d have thrown herself into his arms the second she’d seen him. Good thing the kid was there, then. “I have something of yours,” he told her. “That letter you wrote.” Her eyes flew up in shock and he added quickly, “Don’t worry. I didn’t read it.”
She looked totally taken aback, and then she glanced over his shoulder at her waiting boyfriend. “That’s not—look, we can’t talk now, I know. But later, okay?”
Logan reached up and took the gloved hand that still rested on his arm, and squeezed it lightly before letting go. “Go on. Come to the library tomorrow morning, early, okay?” She seemed about to say something else, and he shook his head. “Go on.”
Rogue bit her lip and looked down, and then she gave him a quick, tight smile before she nodded and walked back up the slight incline toward the grave.
Logan turned for a moment when he’d reached the woods. Bobby was again kneeling beside his brother’s resting place, and as Logan watched, he put his hand to the damp earth. Suddenly the sodden ground changed, seemed to shimmer and reflect the muted sunlight, and when Bobby stood up, Logan realized that the grave now shone with crystals of ice.
Bobby put a hand to his eyes, and Logan saw Rogue reach up to put her arms around his shoulders.
That’s good. As he walked back through the woods, he felt as close to being at peace as he had since all the bullshit had begun. If there was some kind of answer to be had out of the whole goddamn mess, this was as good as any. At least he knew she was all right.
He was glad he’d stayed one more day.
*************************************
The Library. Five A.M.
Six months.
That was long enough.
Logan tossed back the last shot and leaned his head back against the smooth leather of the armchair. His fist closed over the shot glass and the muscles tensed in his arm.
Then he raised his head, and set the small glass down gently on the table beside the empty bottle. Reaching down, he picked up his knapsack from the floor beside his chair. His jacket lay across the chair next to him; he slid into it and shouldered the pack as he walked across the library, towards the window. No one would have guessed the amount of alcohol he’d consumed; really, no one would have known he’d even had a drink.
The library was on the first floor. Dawn was just beginning to break; the morning air was chilly. Logan opened one of the long windows and stepped outside. He paused for just a moment to zip his jacket, but he didn’t look back.
Two and a half years away, and six months back. It was long enough. Logan didn’t close the window before he walked away.
On the table beside the armchair, a drop of whiskey oozed its way down the side of the abandoned shot glass and onto the battered envelope beneath it.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Continuing warning: not for the faint of heart.