Marie's the one who saw it first. The sudden cloud cover and flashes of lightning filling up a small part of the city sky.
"Think maybe the X-Men are out here?" she asked as we climbed out of the Suburban.
"The other mutants at the School?" Darrel asked as his dark eyes stared at the back clouds. "How many of them can do that?"
I grunted. "Storm's the only one who can call down lightning, and the Professor would have let us know if we were heading into the kinda trouble that needed the X-Men."
"Logan's right," Marie said as she stared at the now scattering clouds. She sighed. "Cyclops would just want to haul me back to the school straight away."
"Storm? Cyclops? These are names?" Darrel snickered.
"Codenames," I grumbled at the boy. "Don't worry, you'll get one too."
"We all do," Marie giggled. "Isn't that right, Wolverine?"
"Can it, Rogue." I didn't bother glaring at them when they both started to giggle. "Get back in the car. We still gotta find a place to crash tonight."
Of course that's when they started arguing over the music. Marie had found an oldies rock station and refused to let Darrel change it to that noise he called rap. She just drowned him out singing along to Cream's White Room. I choke back the growl I want to cut loose with, but they're just being kids so I let it go.
Yep, Marie has turned me into a bigger pansy than One-Eye.
Shit.
Stuck in a jail cell. Again. That made twice since I picked up Marie in Sunnydale. Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that the motel we crashed at was a den of drugs and hookers?
Okay, so I smelled it, but the place was cheap and not all that dirty as far as slums go. Let's make it "How the hell was I supposed to know the cops were going to raid the dump and Marie wasn't even in the same room with me and Darrel?"
Anyway, I used my one phone call to get a hold of Xavier and he said he had a friend in town who could help us out. Turns out the friend is a former detective from the unit that dragged me and the kids in. Darrel was in the cell across from mine, and the only thing that kept his ass from getting kicked by the gang-banging punks in there with him is the fact that the first moron that touched him got thrown across the cell. Really hard.
Go figure -- the boy has some kind of offensive force field.
But we didn't know where they took Marie, and that was starting to piss me off.
"You Logan?" asked a guy who looked like a scruffy version of Summers.
"Who wants to know?" I growled back.
He scowls at me then smiles a little. "You're Logan all right. The Professor sent me to bail you and your...charges out."
"Buddy, I'm telling you one more time," Darrel snapped at one of the bangers, "back off before you get the same as your idiotic friend over there."
"Mutie freak," the banger snarled.
Xavier's friend pointed at Darrel. "Get him out of there. He's one of the ones I'm here for."
"How do you know?" The uniform with the keys glared up at him.
"Because he's the one with the glowing fists," grumbled Xavier's friend. "Now get him and this guy out of those cells."
The jackass with the keys grumbled under his breath, and really, the only thing saving him from getting skewered was the fact that I still didn't know where Marie was. Darrel and I were not happy when we got back up to the lobby, mostly because we still hadn't seen Marie.
I sniffed, catching a hint of her scent, but when I started to track it Xavier's buddy interrupted. "Where do you think you're going?" He demanded.
"To find Marie," I snarled right back.
"She'll be right up," chimed a too-sweet voice that sounded as familiar as the too coying scent of this woman's perfume. "Good God. Logan?"
I eyed the platinum-blonde woman cautously. "I know you?"
"Very well," she half-purred, taking a step closer.
"I don't remember you," I growled as I stepped back.
She froze. "Logan, it's me, Amanda. You do remember the Princess Bar? Madripoor? Me and Tyger Tiger in a catfight over who got you and Duncan for the evening?"
"Kinky," I rumbled, "but anything farther than fifteen years ago is a lost cause."
"Logan?" Marie's voice called out over the crowd. "Logan, where are you?"
I turned and growled at the group cutting me off from Marie. They parted like a hot knife through butter. She was beside me and safely tucked under one of my arms a heartbeat later.
"And I thought he liked older women," Amanda mumbled. The man Xavier had sent just grunted again.
Darrel rolled his eyes. "Can the love fest, you two. As much as I like hanging around the station back home, this isn't home. Let's go!"
Marie headed for the door tugging on my arm. "Darrel's right. I want to get out of here."
"Our stuff," I rumbled.
"I've already got everything but the bike and the SUV," Xavier's man said as he followed me and Marie. Amanda was cheerfully chatting with Darrel behind him.
"How long is it gonna take to get them?" I growled as we stepped out into the chilly winter air.
He shrugged as he lead us to an SUV, his own apparently. "Two, maybe three days."
"Scott's gonna have a fit if they scratch his bike," Marie sighed with a small scowl.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Maybe we can wait a few more days."
I could only grin when she swatted my shoulder. "You are such a boy sometimes, you know that?"
"That's the nicest thing anyone's called me lately," I chuckled.
"What's your name anyway, Mister?" Darrel asked Xavier's pal.
"Nick Wolfe," he said. "You? Xavier didn't have a name. Just a young man with mutant abilities."
"Darrel Banks," the kid said.
"Mutants?" Amanda yelped.
Nick snorted. "Don't start, Amanda."
"Don't tell me not to start, Nick," she snapped back. "Every time I run into mutants I get into almost as much trouble as I do with Duncan!"
"You cause most of the trouble you get into then run to Duncan to bail you out, so don't start," Nick growled.
Amanda huffed. "You can't blame a girl for making a living, darling." Her head whipped around to glare at Nick. "And who told you I run to Duncan to get out of trouble?"
"Lucy."
Something in my head clicked as I stared at the back of the blonde's head, like back in Sunnydale when I remembered what Vampires were. "You're a thief. Duncan's from Scotland. Tyger Tiger...is a mob boss?"
"And you're a badass with a Samurai complex," Amanda snapped back over her shoulder.
I just snorted while Marie and Darrel giggled.
We crashed at Amanda's place, and the penthouse defines "posh." Lucy turned out to be an older lady who lived with Amanda, and she was tickled to have the kids to gush over. And she had the nerve to flirt with me. If my heart didn't have Marie's name tattooed across it, well, I might have taken her up on it 'cause she was still a fine-looking woman.
That night I had a nightmare. It wasn't the normal nightmare of shadowed men, drowning and pain. I was on a battle field at night. Bombs were dropping around me. My uniform was ripped to shreads and a guy I knew was my buddy was just starting to climb off the ground with his uniform even more shredded than mine. It was Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod... He looked up, his eyes passing me by. I could see his mouth moving but I couldn't hear the words over the whine of another bomb coming down. I looked behind me only to be thrown into the air by the blast.
The last thing I heard was someone shouting. "Stop, damnit! You're on the wrong target! Call off the bombers!"
I woke up with a howl on my lips and my claws burried in something soft, warm and... Not Marie.
Amanda stared down at where my claws were burried in her chest. "Well, you certainly haven't changed much."
"No," I whispered as my claws automatically slid back into my fists. "No. Not again."
She caught my shoulders as my hands found her hips to keep her from falling to the floor. "Wait," she whispered.
Then her eyes rolled back into her head.
"Logan?" Marie whispered from the door. Darrel was standing beside her, staring open-mouthed at Amanda's body.
"Oh, dear," Lucy said from behind them. "I thought she knew better than to wake you up durring a nightmare. She's known you longest after all." She caught the fearful looks on all our faces. "Now don't worry, darlings. She'll be just fine in a moment."
"How?" Darrel stuttered. "He... She... But..."
Amanda's back snapped into an arch, gasping for breath. "Oh, I hate trying to wake you up from a nightmare!"
I blinked and let go of her. She made a sound like "oof" when she hit the floor. "What the hell are you? You were dead, damnit!"
"I'm Immortal, and twenty years ago you knew that, Logan," Amanda said softly. She reached for my hand and lightly brushed her fingers over the back. "Oh, darling, what happened to you?"
"I don't remember," I whispered roughly.
Over the next few days Amanda and Lucy told us stories that they remembered from the days before my metal-plated bones. Some of the stories actually triggered memories for me. Turns out that Amanda had known me since I was a child. The woman who had taught her how to use a sword, Rebecca, had raised me as her own after my parents abandoned me because nothing human could do the things that I could from the time I was seven.
I can remember what Rebecca looked like now. She was tall, with flowing blonde hair that fell down to her hips. Her figure was lean but powerful. I can remember her finding me teachers after another Immortal tried to use me against her. Including a man called Whistler who had taught me to kill Vampires.
I remember calling her "Mother."
My guts turned to ice when Amanda said softly: "We tried to find you when she was killed, but you'd vanished completely by then."
The glass of scotch Lucy had given me at the begining of that night's story telling shattered in my hand. "She was what?"
"One of her old students, Luther, took her head four years ago," Amanda said as she and Marie tried to pry my hand open. "Logan, this won't heal right if you don't let us get the glass out."
Lucy rested a hand on the side of my scowling face. "He's dead, sweetie. Duncan killed him. Now breathe, and let the girls and me take care of that mess."
"Man, you're growling," Darrel said sharply.
"Logan," Marie whispered as she stared up into my eyes. "Open your hand. Now."
I blinked and stared down at her. Slowly my fist unclenched. What a time for Nick to walk in.
"I got your bike and... Something wrong?" he asked, eyeing my hand as Marie and Amanda carefully plucked glass shards out.
"I just found out the woman who raised me was killed and avenged while I was a cage fighter with no past up in Canada," I growled. "No, of course nothing's wrong."
"Fifteen years ago Logan's brain got scrambled when some yahoos up in Canada decided he wasn't tough enough so they gave him an adamantium skeleton," Marie filled him in.
Nick sat down on the white leather couch with a sigh and a half amused, half reproachful glance at Amanda. "Looks like this time it's my fault."
"Nonsense, Nicky," Amanda chuckled. "I would have heard about Logan being around eventually, and then I would have gone looking for him."
"I'm lost here," Nick admitted.
Amanda shrugged. "He's practically my little brother."
I scowled as something else niggled at my memories. "That lightning we saw when we first got into town. That wasn't just a freak light show. Somebody got their head whacked off."
"Huh?" Darrel grunted as his face screwed up in confusion.
"Immortals fight to the death," I muttered as my eyes locked on Amanda. "Someone challenged you. And lost."
Amanda only nodded. "And it will eventually happen again."
"Immortals have been around longer than mutants haven't they?" Marie asked after a long moment of silence.
"I think so," Amanda said with a shrug. "We'd probably have to ask Duncan's friend Adam. He's been around longer than I have."
Nick rolled his eyes. "In any case, I got your bike and SUV out of the impound yard. So you three can hit the road again whenever you're ready."
"And remember," Lucy said cheerfully, "you can always come back for a visit."
Anyway, that's how I found out that I'm about two hundred years old. Talk about cradlerobbing. Amanda, I mean. She's twelve hundred and she's been on and off with MacLeod and he's only four hundred. And that Nick Wolf guy is only about thirty-two. They're starting to make me feel a lot better about me and Marie.
I started up the SUV with a glance at Marie beside me, fiddling with the radio. When she finally found a station she liked Darrel leaned forward.
"Not that again," he moaned.
Marie just started singing along to White Room again.
I shook my head with a chuckle and started driving. We waved to Nick, Amanda and Lucy as we left the parking lot. Damned if I didn't find myself with a family, even if there were still gaps in my memories, at least now I knew some of them were good.
I wondered if Duncan had any stories that Amanda didn't know. Good thing she gave me some contact numbers for the Immortals who knew me and were still around. I might even use them when we get back to Westchester.
~Fin
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Story Notes:
Torago is what several fic writers call the city that Highlander: The Raven was set in originally because no one could decide if it was Toronto or Chicago.