AND OPEN UP YOUR EYES



“Romance (noun):

1. a pleasurable feeling of excitement and wonder associated with love.
2. a love affair.
3. a book or film dealing with love in a sentimental or idealized way.
4. a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.
5. a medieval tale dealing with a hero of chivalry, of the kind common in the Romance languages.”


Compact Oxford English Dictionary.


*


“…they needed large numbers of human test subjects. Several such trials were attempted, but they were risky: if word got out that the CIA was testing dangerous drugs on American soil, the entire program could be shut down. Which is where the CIA's interest in Canadian researchers came in…

The stated goal of this research was not for Western powers to start using mind control on prisoners; it was to prepare Western soldiers for whatever coercive techniques they might encounter if they were taken hostage.

The CIA, of course, had other interests. Yet even in closed-door meetings like the one at the Ritz, it would have been impossible, so soon after revelations of Nazi torture had provoked worldwide revulsion, for the agency to openly admit it was interested in developing alternative interrogation methods of its own.”


“The Torture Lab: Ewen Cameron, the CIA and the Maniacal Quest to Erase and Remake the Human Mind,” The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein.



*


“Testimony from Central American torture survivors in the seventies and eighties is littered with references to mysterious English-speaking men walking in and out of cells, proposing questions or offering tips. Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was abducted and jailed in Guatemala in 1989, has testified that the men who raped and burned her with cigarettes deferred to a man who spoke Spanish with a heavy American accent, whom they referred to as their ‘boss.’”


“The Torture Lab: Ewen Cameron, the CIA and the Maniacal Quest to Erase and Remake the Human Mind,” The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein.



*


“For if we were to begin to accuse ourselves, in asking forgiveness, of all the crimes of the past against humanity, there would no longer be an innocent person on earth – and therefore no one in the position to judge or arbitrate. We are all heir, at least, to persons or events marked, in an essential, interior, ineffaceable fashion, by crimes against humanity…

“In order to approach now the very concept of forgiveness, logic and common sense agree for once with the paradox: it is necessary, it seems to me, to begin from the fact that, yes, there is the unforgivable. Is this not, in truth, the only thing to forgive? The only thing that calls for forgiveness? If one is only prepared to forgive what appears forgivable … then the very idea of forgiveness would disappear.

“If there is something to forgive, it would be what in religious language is called mortal sin, the worst, the unforgivable crime or harm … forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable. One cannot, or should not, forgive; there is only forgiveness, if there is any, where there is the unforgivable. That is to say that forgiveness must announce itself as impossibility itself. It can only be possible in doing the impossible.”


On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Jacques Derrida, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes.


*


“If you really knew about your past—what kind of person you were, the work we did together—”


William Stryker, X2: X-Men United.


*


In the jet, she does not have to concentrate so hard until she begins to see channels, conduits everywhere.

She can see the plasma-magnetic field surrounding Jubilee, especially in her hands; the smoky, almost transparent haze around Kurt, as if his body is always just about to be elsewhere, in another dimension; the hard and brittle arteries of tension weaved throughout Piotr’s skin; the wholly balanced, but massive force coming from Hank’s entire body, down to his fur and nails, like harnessed momentum.

She realizes, for the first time—These are strong people. She is surrounded by strong people.

And she looks down at her own hand: the still flesh, the warm glow she can see radiating from it. Enough power in it to punch a hole in the floor of this jet.

Thinking of Gambit saying: Strong. Strong.


*


During the first day, she and Piotr do an initial reconnaissance of the grounds, while Jubilee and Kurt remain with Hank as he gets settled into his hotel room.

“Bobby tells me you know,” Piotr says lightly.

Inwardly, she rolls her eyes a little at how American Piotr’s accent is already; Bobby even calls him “Pete.” Sometimes even “Petey,” in a low voice filled with meaning, when he thinks no one is listening.

He adds, “About us.”

She replies, “I may have seen a walk of shame or two.” Piotr laughs, then he becomes more thoughtful.

“Walk of shame,” he muses. He sighs and says, “We haven’t told anyone yet.” Frowning. “Bobby is worried about what the others will think.”

“Fuck what they think,” she replies, craning her head to check the height of the drop from the rooftop of the building to the ground.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Piotr says. “Thank you.”


*


At the end of the day, Hank has still not met with any dignitaries, and she has still not caught even a glimpse of Harada or the Japanese ambassador.

She is sharing a room with Jubilee, while Kurt is sharing a room with Hank, and Piotr gets a room to himself.

As they are going to sleep, Jubilee asks her if she wants to fuck, a little bit.

Rogue blinks, says, “Didn’t you have a boyfriend?” Jubilee shrugs and says what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him; they’re pretty relaxed about that sort of thing, anyway.

And then she smirks, says, “I still remember how much fun we had.” She says she has gloves, a couple dental dams.

Rogue does want to fuck her, urgently; wants to close her eyes and let everything she remembers of Jubilee’s exceptionally talented mouth and hands take away everything else she is thinking about, everything else she now knows. But she cannot un-know any of it now, cannot un-live any of it anymore—and the time when she and Jubilee fucked seems like another life entirely. She has already become another person, when she wasn’t watching.

But now Jubilee is lifting her hands, a concerned look on her face, saying, “Whoa, whoa, sorry, hey, it’s cool.” She shrugs. “I didn’t know you had a serious thing going on.”

Rogue looks down at her hands. I don’t, she wants to say. She would have said it, even a month ago.

But she can’t, now. Not here, in Kyoto, looking for Logan’s past, with Gambit’s teachings showing her the shimmering around Jubilee’s fingertips.

Serious things, she thinks.

But she just says, “Sorry. I—want to, but.”

Then she doesn’t know what should come after the “but.”

Jubilee grins. “You look pretty miserable,” she comments. “Must mean something good.”


*


The first and second days of the conference are not only entirely uneventful, but downright boring—Piotr and Jubilee have resorted to rating the physical attributes of all the other bodyguards, on an extremely unforgiving scale; while Kurt remains politely and seriously at Hank’s side.

She has already seen the Japanese ambassador, and his circle of bodyguards—but no sign of Harada. She wonders if he is sitting this one out, perhaps; or maybe, as head of security, he can direct their actions remotely, without having to be there on site. He is old, after all, she thinks to herself. He acts as an advisor, not an actual guard.

And on the third day, when it seems like everything has been a monumentally foolish waste of her time and effort—she sees him.

She is walking next to Hank, escorting him to the pavilion where the dignitaries will be breaking, for a publicly photographed luncheon, when she turns her head to the side—for no reason, for every reason—and sees a tall, older man in a gray suit, stepping out of an armored black town car parked near the entrance of the hotel.


*


Harada does not enter the pavilion; but from where she is standing—close enough to Hank’s table that she can be near him in a flash, but far enough to observe everyone else in the room—she sees the Japanese ambassador excuse himself from his table, stand, and leave.

She moves, about to follow.


*


But then realizes—if she does, she would have to leave her post as Hank’s guard.

She looks around; Kurt, Piotr and Jubilee are all here, at other strategic points in the pavilion; more than enough power to contain a sudden attack.

But then she thinks about Storm’s face when Hank’s house had been first burned down; about Gambit’s newly scarred body and his growing beard in the medbay.

She realizes—if she has to choose between remaining at Hank’s side, and finding out whatever she is going to find out from Harada—then there is no choice, at all.

And she remembers that Logan had been given that choice, too—had been given that choice multiple times; the choice between them, whom he barely knew, and Stryker, who knew everything about him. And every time, he had chosen them.

That night, during the attack on the mansion, he had closed the hidden door on his own name as she shouted it in horror—

And it is the first time she has let herself think of that night; and the long-silenced thought opens up something in her, a wound she didn’t know she had.

That night, that time; what she did, what she took from him. Once again, taking things from him he didn’t even know he had; taking things from him that he had been looking for, without hope.

That night she had been selfish, afraid— she hadn’t hesitated to ask Bobby to put the ice wall between Logan and everything that might take Logan away; watching him touch the wall in despair, grieving the loss of something he had barely even glimpsed—

And she had called out to him, knowing he would not turn away from her voice, knowing he would sacrifice everything, again, to protect them, protect her.

And in the car, she had asked him who Stryker was, hoping he would know that at least; hoping against hope that she hadn’t really just robbed him of a moment that could teach him some part of who he was—

—and he had said, in a voice that broke her, that he couldn’t remember—

—and she realized only then how little he knew; and how much she knew.

Because she had known—not everything, but some things, God, already, she had known some things about Stryker, about Harada Kenichiro, and she could know more if she stopped forcing herself to forget it all—

But she had said nothing, was too afraid to give him anything, afraid of what he would say if he knew she knew.

And then, also—afraid of what he would do if he got everything back. Yanking him back from the first sign of hope for recovering his past, unable to let him walk down a path that would take him away, that would make him more himself and less theirs, hers—

And then, even more, afraid of what he would do if he knew what he was, who he had been, what he had done. As she knows, as she knows, as she has tried every day not to know—

—So she had given him back the dog tags she still slept with, instead.

A tiny part of the past she had stolen. A tiny substitute for everything she still did not have the courage to tell him; a tiny substitute for the answers he longed for, which she could not bring herself to give, or even truly let herself know.

A teenager, selfishly in love.

And then he had chosen them yet again: leaving Stryker to die at Alkali Lake, though he considered him to be the last link to the person he had been and would now never know. He had entered the jet, a resolute and resigned look on his face.

And Jean had asked him if he was okay, and he had looked at her, with all the intimacy they had between them.

And he had said, honestly, “I am now.” Choosing them, again. Choosing them, finally.

Later, after they had left Jean at Alkali Lake, with Scott still in tears and Logan with his arms around him, Xavier had asked her—for reasons she suspects—to be the one to hold the files about Stryker’s mutant experiments. The files which she would later personally hand to the President, in the Oval Office.

And in the jet she had looked inside the folder only once, while everyone else was too distracted, staring at Scott and Logan, thinking about what they had all just lost—

And in one glance she had seen more than enough to confirm everything she knew and half-knew, without wanting to know it or half-know it.

Everything he had decided to abandon, when he chose them. Refusing to betray the present for the past.


*


So now, she looks around the pavilion. She sees Hank’s large form, his profile facing her, as he quietly eats his meal—while across his table, two other ambassadors observe him, utterly amazed that such a savage figure knows how to use eating utensils; and so well, so civilized, just as if he were human.

She can see Hank’s tense face as he tries to give the impression that he does not notice the stares and whispers.

And she turns her head—outside the hotel, the black armored car is still there, and the Japanese ambassador is re-entering the pavilion, flanked only by two young bodyguards. The car is not moving; she could stop it, catch it if she flew—now, now, now.

But she stays where she is, watching over Hank—Hank, who is still being gossiped over by the two dignitaries across from him; still eating his meal with all the dignity and grace inside him.


*


She thinks, I am not going to betray the present for the past.


*


That night, there is a cocktail reception inside the hotel’s banquet room; and once again, Hank seems supremely uncomfortable to be there, with his four conspicuous bodyguards, in their leather jump-suits.

The Japanese ambassador is in attendance, but once again, he is accompanied only by three younger men in black suits. No sign of a tall, silver-haired man.

Hank approaches her. “Good evening, Rogue,” he greets her, handing her a flute of champagne.

She hesitates to take it. “Hey—I probably shouldn’t. I’m on the job.”

Hank exhales heavily. “I’m more than aware, believe me.” He waves a hand at her. “Please, I insist. It’s the least I can offer for the time you’re wasting here. Watching us extremely ineffectual diplomats evade any genuine discussion of the issues at hand.”

He looks tired, frustrated, ready to go home. She doesn’t really know what’s going on at this conference, but if it makes him look like this, it can’t be great.

“Protecting you isn’t wasting time,” she declares.

“I don’t know that I ever asked to be protected,” Hank replies dryly, taking a sip of champagne. “Let alone—”

Then he stops, eyes apologetic. “I’m sorry, Rogue, I don’t mean to disparage your efforts specifically; I do appreciate the concern, I just—” Then he trails off.

She smiles. “Storm’s pretty vigilant,” she says only.

He looks at her, then takes a long sip from his champagne flute again. “Yes,” he murmurs. “Well. At least this damned thing is over, and we can all go home tomorrow morning.”

The Japanese ambassador is standing now, exiting the banquet room and moving towards the hotel lobby—and then he raises his hand in greeting.

And her stomach drops again, when she sees a figure, from behind: gray suit, silver hair, silver walking cane. Then he turns, and she sees his face; the face in her mind, the face of a ghost.

She freezes, feels her breathing accelerate. Here, again. Another chance.

Then she jolts back to herself, looks at Hank. She won’t betray the present for the past—

—but to her dismay, Hank is now looking in the same direction, seeing the Japanese ambassador and his younger bodyguards, still in discussion with Harada.

“Is there some reason,” Hank begins mildly, “that you’ve been taking such an interest in the Japanese ambassador and his bodyguards—particularly his tall friend there—since we arrived here in Kyoto?”

She stares at him, horrified that he would have observed her so closely. “I—no, no, not at all, there’s nothing,” she says hastily.

“It’s hardly nothing if it puts that look on your face,” he replies evenly.

Her fingers tense around the stem of the champagne flute. “It’s nothing, Hank,” she says—and though she thinks of him as Hank in her head, she’s not sure if she’s ever directly addressed him as such, and it makes her feel more adult than being here, in this jump-suit. “Really, it’s nothing.”

He studies her. “If you have something you need to do, Rogue—”

“No,” she cries, though she wants to say the opposite. “This is my duty. I’m staying.” She is making a choice.

Still studying her, Hank is silent. Then he sips from his champagne glass again and says, “You know, on one of the first early missions Ororo and I were sent on, it was so dreadfully boring that we both snuck out midway and went to buy fast food. Well, she did, I stayed in car. We only went back several hours later.”

She stares at him. “What happened?”

Hank chuckles. “Nothing. No one ever found out.”

Without looking at her, he empties his champagne flute. Then he turns to her, pats her on the shoulder, smiles and walks away.

She watches Hank cross the banquet room, towards the hotel lobby. He strikes up a conversation with the Japanese ambassador, with more energy in his words now than he has shown all night. The ambassador looks slightly uncomfortable at the sudden interruption, but politely nods and acquiesces to Hank’s invitation—which seems to be to return to the banquet room, because now Hank and the ambassador are walking back, towards Hank’s table.

And now the ambassador’s bodyguards re-enter the room, positioning themselves in strategic areas, just as she, Kurt, Piotr and Jubilee are still positioned.

But Harada does not enter; he is still in the hotel lobby, talking to one more bodyguard. Then this last bodyguard leaves his side, and Harada is left alone, at the entrance to the banquet room, quietly surveying the figures within it. For a moment, she thinks his gaze may have passed over her, but there is no sign of recognition on his face, and his eyes keep moving.

And she looks at Hank, who glances at her only once—then gives her the same subtle thumbs-up gesture he did when she was talking to Joshua, at the first gala. Then he turns away and makes a great show of being deeply engrossed in conversation.

She turns her head back to Harada again. He is still gazing at the banquet room. Then he turns around, moving back into the hotel lobby, towards the exit—

And she is moving before she knows what she is doing.

As she walks, she already starts to concentrate, calling forth the attention that Gambit taught has her—and she starts to see the pathways emerging, in the floor of the lobby, its pillars, the giant pots holding decorative trees and orchids, in the hotel porters and other conference attendees, pushing suitcases or carrying drinks.

She can see the jagged, fatigued energy in Harada’s body as he walks, slightly bent over his cane—through the lobby, towards the revolving glass front doors, outside, where she knows his car will be waiting.

And she is already making herself still, ready to pull, to draw him in; but just in case the first kind of pull isn’t enough, she removes her left glove, too.

Now they are already outside the hotel, in the front gardens, and she can see his car waiting. She is now only a few feet behind him.

She hears herself asking, as if it is someone else speaking: “Sumimasen, Harada-san—excuse me, Mr. Harada—”

He turns to her, and for a split second his defenses are down. And she takes it—she holds her still-gloved right hand out for a greeting handshake. And, looking like he doesn’t know what he is doing or why he is doing it, he lifts his hand, too, in an instinctive gesture of courtesy, his face still confused—he does not recognize her, her hair is different now, he had not seen the white streaks in Manhattan, she had been concealing them—and accepts her handshake.

And she brings the entire force of her energy upon him—every wish, every unanswered question, every half-seen, half-known, half-remembered glimpse, every gap in Logan’s past she wants to fill—

Then she says, holding onto his hand, fixing him in the eye, with the firm voice that made Gambit grumble: “Harada-san, I would like to talk to you.”

He looks at her—and the vague and distant look is already there, and she can feel his energy, much weaker than she had expected, bending, bending, bending to her—

And he says, “Yes.”


*


Still holding his hand, she brings him, not far away, to a wooden bench just at the beginning of the hotel’s front gardens. They are now out of view of his waiting car, but still in view of the hotel lobby.

If his bodyguards come, if they see her—she will have no choice but to fight him, and everyone else who comes. She is prepared for that.

Harada’s energy is already dim, muted, his body half-limp and relaxed, despite his size. She realizes, with a start, how old he is. He hadn’t looked that old in Manhattan; he had worn his age with a kind of stately grace; he had been handsome, even powerful-looking.

But now he looks worn, washed-out, and she remembers that he had passed out after only two seconds of kissing her—and it occurs to her that she is most likely the one who has done this to him; that he still has not recovered, even from the little she had taken from him, in Manhattan.

And then it occurs to her for the first time that she is going to be interrogating an old man. That this might be how old Logan actually is; if he isn’t even older. The Harada Kenichiro in her head is young, tall, determined. This one is only tall.

And it is so far from how she had imagined it would be; who she imagined Harada Kenichiro would be. She thinks of an elderly Logan—a Logan who wears his years weakly, feebly; who can be overpowered by a young woman, barely even old enough to drink legally.

Still—still—still. She is already here. She will not back down.


*


She begins, in English, still holding his hand: “Is your name Harada Kenichiro.”

“Yes,” he replies, also in English; and she can hear his accent; she can hear how he would speak the words, in his Kansai dialect, if he were to speak in Japanese.

“Who is James Howlett,” she asks, willing herself to remain still.

His eyes are half-closed, but even so she can see the expression of pain and anger that fills them, the deep crevices that now mar his forehead.

He says, “The American soldier who wanted to marry Mariko during the war.”

“Who is Mariko,” she asks.

He says, “My half-sister. The daughter of Yashida Shingen, the then-head of Yashida-gumi. I was only his illegitimate son, the child of his mistress.”

“Did James Howlett marry Mariko,” she asks.

“No,” he says dully. “He was an American soldier. That he would even think of taking Mariko away from us was an insult. I wanted to please my father; so I challenged him to a duel.”

She takes a deep breath. “What happened during the duel,” she asks.

Harada says, “At first we fought only with swords. I was only fifteen years old. My mutation had manifested, but was still undeveloped, very weak.”

Harada says, “But when I began losing, I wrapped my sword with what little of the tachyon field I could summon, and struck him through with it.”

Harada says, “He fell. I thought I had won the duel. But only minutes later he revived himself, completely healed.”

Some of the words he says in Japanese, his voice relaxing into its natural speech, but she finds she can still mostly understand him, with the Japanese that Logan has given her.

Harada says, “I realized, he, too was a mutant. I began to taunt him.”

Harada says, “I hated him, everything he represented. That he, an American soldier, might have a chance at becoming part of the clan I had never been able to truly enter. That he would take Mariko away, the only person in the clan who had ever treated me kindly. That he was strong, confident, arrogant, where I was weak, awkward, too tall, too skinny.”

Harada says, “All of this was hateful to the fifteen-year-old me.”

She can see him, fifteen years old, the tallest boy in the clan, gazed at with scorn and condescension.

Harada says, “As I was taunting him, he lost control of himself and used his claws to slash my chest, nearly killing me.”

Harada says, “The duel was put to an end, with James Howlett accused of unfair play and revealed as a mutant. No one in the clan knew yet about my mutation, or what I had done to the sword.”

Harada says, “Mariko rejected him; because he was a mutant, because he was an American, because she ultimately chose to side with the clan.”

The information is coming too fast, much faster than she had expected, much more easily than she had expected.

And as he says everything, she sees it, remembers it, now clearly, the way she knows Logan would remember it, if Harada were telling it to him, instead of her.

The pain of being seen for who he was by the woman he had loved; and rejected by her, for it. The pain of being revealed to be, as he had always feared: subhuman, a monster.

Harada says, “Still, our father was not impressed by my loss; soon after the duel, he disowned me.”

She can feel him struggling with every sentence; trying to figure out what he is doing, why he is sitting here, why he is not in his car, going home. Why he is speaking about these things.

But he is weak, he cannot overpower her. This Harada Kenichiro is not the one in her memories. Proud, angry, wielding a sword. This Harada Kenichiro is not that Harada Kenichiro.

But she knows that this is not yet the end of his story with Logan.

Now she asks, “When did you meet James Howlett again.”

Harada closes and opens his eyes, slowly, as if trying to see through a fog.

He says, “I saw him again, fifteen years later, in Canada, where Oyama Kenji was conducting experiments on him, under the direction of the American military.”

“Who is Oyama Kenji,” she asks. She only vaguely knows this name, this person; has only a blurry face to put to it.

Harada says, “My mentor. He was also related to the Yashida family. He took me in shortly after my father expelled me from the clan.”

She asks, “Why was he conducting experiments on James Howlett.”

Harada says, “Oyama-sensei was a scientist for the Imperial Japanese Army, and one of the lieutenants for Unit 731. He had been the first scientist to begin researching the possibility of bonding adamantium to organic and biological matter, such as tissue, keratin, bone. It was first tested on prisoners of war.”

She has to continue to tell herself to keep breathing. To hold onto Harada like a bird; not too tightly, not too gently. Like she is a part of his body.

She asks, “How did Oyama Kenji come to Canada.”

Harada says, “After the bombings, and the U.S. occupation, General MacArthur gave the leaders of Unit 731 total immunity from all prosecution for their war crimes, in exchange for seizing possession of all data and research completed in its laboratories.”

He says, “In 1950 or 1951, Oyama-sensei was asked to come to Canada, to continue to develop his research on adamantium, under the protection of the American government.”

He says, “Oyama-sensei brought me with him as his pupil, as well as his daughter, Yuriko, who was also my fiancée, later my wife.”

He says, “The research Oyama-sensei had begun at Unit 731 became the Weapon X project.”

At the words Weapon X, she feels her breath stop completely.

But she stills herself, calms herself. She can do this. She can do this.

She asks, “How did you meet James Howlett in Canada.”

He says, “Ten years after we had arrived in Canada, he was brought to the facility as a test subject.”

He says, “When I saw him through the glass, I thought it was my imagination. I thought he was a ghost. I couldn’t believe it. He had barely aged at all, in the fifteen years that had passed.”

She asks, “What kind of test subject was James Howlett.”

Harada says, “He had volunteered for the adamantium-bonding process. Oyama said he was part of a private mercenary team of enhanced mutants that the Americans were creating. He was recruited just as the war in Vietnam was starting, after high-ranking army officials had observed his mutation and its abilities.”

He says, “All the members of the team were undergoing improvements; but he was the only one who willingly volunteered for adamantium bonding.”

A private mercenary team—that sounds familiar—but she only has flashes of scenes, through a haze, like a mesh blanket over her eyes.

She thinks she glimpses a warm country, fathers asleep in the same room as their children, bullets to the head.

She asks, “What were the experiments you performed upon James Howlett.”

Harada says, “I did not actively participate in the experiments myself; I was mostly there to observe and document results for Oyama-sensei. My English was better than his, I was able to translate for him.”

Harada says, “His role was to direct the American and Canadian military scientists about the properties of adamantium, and how to bond the metal to organic surfaces. It was just before James Howlett arrived that Oyama-sensei and another military scientist finally perfected the method of heating the adamantium, so it would be workable during bonding.”

She knows the other scientist is Stryker.

He says, “Because of his healing factor, James Howlett could not always be permanently sedated during the process, and occasionally fought against his holders. At the time, the scientists were still trying to perfect a mind-controlling drug; the formula they created worked on other mutants, but not on him. During one of his occasional rages, he killed at least two researchers.”

She swallows, feels her bare hand trembling. She asks, “What happened after the process was finished.”

Harada says, “After the bonding process was complete, they performed further experiments on his body to test the durability of the metal, as well as the scope of his healing factor.”

Harada says, “I personally witnessed only a few. He was shot with multiple types of firepower; he was burned alive; he was electrocuted; then almost completely flayed.”

Harada’s hand in hers is starting to shake; though his face is still vacant.

Harada says, “He survived every experiment.”

She asks, trying to keep the tremor out of her own voice: “What happened to James Howlett after all the experiments were finished.”

Wanting to know, not wanting to know. Knowing she already partly knows. Harada’s words are speaking to things that are already in her mind, awakening memories as strong as her own. As if she was the one shot, burned, flayed.

And that is how she knows that Logan was still awake, conscious, with his memory, during this process, at least. When these things were happening, Logan knew it—even if it was only in flashes of hysteria and struggle. They hadn’t been able to totally drug him, yet.

Harada says, “After the bonding process and all subsequent trials were completed, James Howlett’s memory was erased. His first official order was to kill Oyama Kenji, in order to expunge all evidence of the project’s relation to a Japanese war criminal.”

Harada says, “Then, he was to capture both myself and Yuriko, for future experiments.”

Harada says, “The military scientists had discovered—we did not know they were also observing us—that we were both mutants. My tachyon field, her superhuman strength. They even already had a code name for me. Silver Samurai. They were very simplistic, in those times.”

Harada’s hand is shaking uncontrollably now, and she looks down it. Then she sees that his face is not vacant, exactly, but numb, with remembered shock.

He says, “In the middle of the night, James Howlett came to the area of the facility where the researchers and scientists resided. With his new claws, he killed Oyama-sensei immediately, in his sleep.

He says, “When I woke up to the sound of the door opening, he was already dead. Right before my eyes, before Yuriko’s eyes; before we even realized what was happening.”

From this point of the story, she doesn’t remember anything from Logan’s perspective—or nearly nothing, at least. What little she sees of her own actions, his own actions, is only through a heavy stupor.

Now she knows that every dazed memory, from that point, comes to her drug-assisted. That is why she cannot, could not, see.

She realizes, then, that the reason she does not have clear memories of the events surrounding the private mercenary team part is because Logan must also have been drugged as they were happening.

She asks softly—until she remembers that she has to speak firmly—and then she clears her throat and repeats herself: “Then what did James Howlett do.”

Harada says, “Then he turned to me. I fought him with the only sword I had, brought with me from Japan to Canada. I was older, and stronger; this time I was able to wrap it strongly with my field. I even, at first, did serious harm to his body, though I was not able to injure that skeleton—and his body healed limitlessly.”

Harada says, “As we were fighting, Yuriko tried to come between us, to protect me.”

Now both of Harada’s hands are shaking.

Harada says, “She managed to knock him down with her strength. But as she was trying to subdue him, he stabbed her with his claws, killing her. Again, before my eyes. I was helpless to do anything, it was too late, he was too fast, too strong.”

Now his face is wet, though his face remains blank; and she thinks of herself, in Manhattan after she killed the woman; then at Gambit’s bedside in the medbay. Her body doing the weeping for her.

Harada says, “I see this fight like it is happening right now. I see this fight every day.”

And he sounds like he has forgotten she is there at all; like he is speaking to himself, to a phantom in his head that has come to pay him a visit. As if he is speaking something he has never shared with anyone, never even spoken aloud since the time of the events themselves.

She thinks—Harada doesn’t know that the woman was not dead, then. She had heard that Logan fought a woman named Yuriko, at Alkali Lake; she had seen the document in the files Xavier had given her for safekeeping. The woman had been taken into military custody, given a cybernetic healing factor, given an adamantium skeleton and talons, had been successfully mind-controlled.

She thinks, Yuriko and Logan might even have worked together, later.

She says only, “What happened during your fight with James Howlett.”

Harada says, “It was like fighting a robot: he had no weakness, no hesitation, no reaction, no emotion. Even with the field around my sword, I could only defend from his claws; I was unable to injure him. And I was weakened, frantic, sloppy. I could still see Oyama in bed, Yuriko on the ground.”

He says, “Perhaps, in some way, I wished to die; to die at the hands of the man who had already taken everything from me, and was doing it again, a second time.”

Just now, in front of them, she sees a group of dignitaries in evening dress, coming out of the hotel lobby, and she tenses, thinking they will notice the two of them, sitting here, for no apparent reason.

He says, “Then, with his claws, he was able to severely slash my hand, so I was no longer able to hold the sword properly.”

But the people in the group kiss each other affectionately, laugh at some parting joke, wave their elegant good-byes, and split up into two groups, each into its own black town car. Then those cars drive away, and she relaxes again.

She can feel Harada pulling away from her, trying to take control of himself again during this brief moment of distraction; so she snaps to attention, closes her gloved hand gently around his, again—and his shoulders sag, his eyelids droop. He continues talking.

He says, “I knew I was going to die. So I began to taunt him, as I did the first duel.”

He says, “All my hatred, all my rage—about Mariko, about the duel in Kyoto, about how I always knew he wasn’t human; about what a monster he must have been, to volunteer for this kind of thing, to choose this life for himself—

He says, “It must have triggered some still un-erased memory of his, because he began to break down, mentally.”

He says, “For the first time since we knew each other in Japan, he called me Kenichiro again.”

And then she feels wetness on her face, and realizes her body is doing weeping, for her, too.

He says, “His attacks became erratic and wild. He started a rampage that carried over to the rest of the facility, badly harming many scientists, and killing at least three that I witnessed.”

He says, “I was able to use the commotion to escape the facility, as the armed guards worked to contain him, to repeat the memory erasure.”

He says, “I ran and ran. My hand still bleeding. Only the next day was I was found by a group of campers in the mountain, who brought me to a hospital, where my hand was treated. It never fully recovered. I was never again able to wield a sword without pain. Although I still sometimes fought with one, it would hurt, each time.”

She freezes. Thinking of something else that hurts every time.

Harada says, “I remained in Canada for several months, alone, until I was finally able to make contact with Mariko, in Japan. Our father had long since died. She was now in control of Yashida-gumi. She asked me to come back to Japan, and I did, to rejoin the clan, under her leadership.”

She stares at him. “Do you know what happened to James Howlett after you left the facility,” she asks—

And this, she is afraid to know. The files about Stryker’s experiments that she had glimpsed in the jet, hadn’t covered Logan’s activities after the experiments. She only has memories to go on; and after the events at the facility, all of her memories from Logan are increasingly blacked-out, fragmented.

She had always thought they were blacked-out and fragmented because of the shaky, unreliable translation from his mind to hers. Now she knows that this is the actual look of his memory; this is exactly how he experienced his life, then. Constantly drugged; and she does not want to know how often or how concentrated it must have been, to have that kind of effect on him.

Harada says, “Not completely. I knew that Weapon X was meant to become a private paramilitary organization. Later, there were rumors that the expanding team, under various code names, was involved with much of the C.I.A.’s covert operations abroad: extrajudicial assassinations, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam; instruction and employment of death squads in various Latin American nations; orchestrating military coups; forcefully defending American corporate interests in foreign nations.”

Her body goes cold.

He says, “I only ever met one other woman who was also formerly part of that program, many years later: Carol Danvers. She was my most recent mistress.”

And she nearly drops his hand.

He says, “But her entire memory had been erased; I only knew that she was associated with the program because of a pair of dog tags she possessed, with her name and date of activation.”

And this time she does drop his hand, but quickly takes it back up again, feeling his energy lift in strength when the contact is broken; the thin, instinctive field around him, starting to buzz.

She can feel her hand, through the glove, start to sting; until she can bring her force over him again, and it recedes.

He says, “I recognized those dog tags as the same ones produced by the Weapon X program, and told her what I thought they meant. But I never told her that I had also played a part in the program’s actions.”

She asks, “Did you ever see James Howlett again.”

This, she does not know the answer to.

Harada’s eyes are glassy. “Every day,” his says. “Every day, every day, every day, every day, every day.”

Harada’s hand in hers is still shaking. She stares at him.

An old man with a damaged life. A tiny figure in an unbearable landscape.

Harada says, then, in a voice that sounds the way his hand on the cane looks—gnarled by scars, bent, permanently broken: “We are connected by a strange fate. I think we will meet again.”


*


As if a door has opened within her, she now remembers how Harada’s story continues after Canada, everything he had given her during that kiss, in Manhattan:

He went back to Japan, to join Mariko and the Yashida organization; slowly earned the respect of his fellow clan members through his loyalty to Mariko; was only ever capable of wielding the sword using his tachyon field, never having enough strength in his wrist to wield it normally—even after adding nearly one hundred pounds of muscle to his frame, in an effort to make himself stronger, reinforced, as if to make up for what Logan had cut from him.

Along with everything else Logan had taken—the esteem of a father; a mentor; a wife; a life.

She had come here to confront one of Logan’s foremost ghosts; a face she had seen in her dreams; a face she associated with anger, hatred, pain, loss, betrayal.

She hadn’t thought of the possibility that Logan would also be Harada’s ghost; that Harada would also be haunted, by what he had witnessed, what he had participated in—and by what Logan had eventually done to him, in the end. That Harada would be just as ruined, if not more.

Unlike Logan, Harada still remembered everything. He still saw and lived, each day, these events: his defeat at Logan’s hands, in front of his father’s disdainful eyes; the execution of his mentor; the brutal death of his wife; the lasting injury to his hand.

She sees that, despite the efforts Harada had made towards a semi-livable life—a clan, a sister; a growing respect by his fellow members as he became one of Mariko’s trusted advisors; a semi-legitimate position as a bodyguard, taking advantage of the Yashida clan’s powerful government ties—nothing has healed in him.

He had even taken a mistress who must have reminded him, every day, of Logan, of the program; a mistress who had nearly the same mutation as his murdered wife. Hating to be reminded, hating more to forget.

She had come here to find the person who had been so present at what she thought was the most painful juncture of Logan’s life; to find the person whose face loomed the largest in the memory she has stolen. She had come here to put Harada Kenichiro on trial; to judge, to punish.

Thinking, knowing: this is the one with the answers; this is the man I must take revenge upon.

Not realizing that Harada might be foremost in Logan’s thoughts, not only because of what he had done to Logan, but because of what Logan had done to him. That Harada might persist in Logan’s mind not only as a foe—but because he had been the last man Logan could still remember destroying.

The last remembered name. The last recognizable face, before years of faceless victims.

She knows it, feels it in her head: Harada was the last man Logan had been able to feel guilt over.

Though now, of course, the Logan outside of her head remembers nothing; having had that life, and nearly every life after it, erased, remade.

And now she sees that there is no trial, no judgment, no punishment, no revenge; that there are no answers to be obtained. Nothing that can be forgiven and nothing that can be redeemed.

Only these monstrous facts laid out before her; this collection of monstrous things they did to each other, while Logan was still partially his own person.

She thought she had come here to discover, to avenge what Logan had been turned into, what had been done to Logan.

Now thinking: Who Logan chose to become. What Logan has done to others.


*


And now, with Harada’s help, she is able to make guesses at the meaning of certain blurred images in her head, which she hadn’t ever been able to make sense of, which had been the first to be suppressed, forgotten—

—realizing now that they were blurred because of drugs; and that she must have forgotten them so easily, so desperately because Logan would have wanted to forget them, too:

Warm countries; training grounds to instruct foreign military junta; secret torture centers; rudimentary Spanish; claws in the limbs of kidnapped union leaders, students, peasants, poets, musicians; a young Stryker’s congratulations on his fine work in the service of free market capitalism and democracy; a free Ford vehicle every year.

Hearing male voices declare: “This is Wolverine—he’s the best there is at what he does—but what he does isn’t very nice.”


*


Who Logan has been; what Logan has done.


*


But now Harada is starting to stir, still trying to struggle his way out of her hold, like someone who has awakened in his mind while his body is still asleep—and she closes her hand around him, lowers her energy upon him, and once again he is subdued.

She realizes one of her hands is still ungloved, as a precaution, in case the hypnosis hadn’t worked.

And for a moment she considers what she can still do to him: take his life, take his powers. After everything, she knows—he is not what she can call a ‘good man.’ The pupil and adopted son of a war criminal; a willing observer, if not active participant, in the atrocities that had been performed upon Logan, no matter how willing he might have been. There is no reason she should show mercy to him. There is no reason she should show mercy to him.

But that is exactly why she uses the hand to wipe her own face—then puts it back in her jumpsuit pocket.

She says, “Harada-san, when I say ‘go,’ I want you to count to sixty. When you reach sixty, you will slowly come back to consciousness, with no memory of our conversation.”

She is not sure if that is a cruelty, or a kindness.

Harada says only, “Yes.”

She says, “You stopped here in this garden for a breath of fresh air. You will stand, go to your car, and return home.”

Harada says, “Yes.”

Then she takes a breath. “But I want you to remember what I am now about to tell you,” she adds.

Harada says, “Yes.”

She feels her hidden bare hand shaking.

She says, “James Howlett is dead. You will never meet him again.”

And this, too; she does not know if it is a cruelty or a kindness. She sees something that looks both like relief and regret flicker over Harada’s slack face.

Then she stands, facing him, still keeping in contact with his body, moving her hand up his arm to touch his shoulder.

Looking at him. Old face, haunted eyes, trembling hands, trembling knees. Scarred hand holding a silver cane.

A single life. A single, ordinary, inexplicable and incommensurate life. Like Logan’s. Like all of them.

“Go,” she says, with all the voice she can still muster, and walks away.


*


When she re-enters the banquet room, she is stunned to see that only slightly more than an hour has passed.

Hank is still at his table, talking to the Japanese ambassador, along with one of the dignitaries who had been watching him eat, earlier. He sees her appear, gives her that thumbs-up sign again.

The dance floor filled with people, bodies in gowns and tuxedos; chatter, gossip, laughter. A popular love song, played by a live band.

She stares at everything, seeing nothing.


*


In the hotel room, she and Jubilee pack their bags in preparation for the flight back home, early the next morning. Jubilee talks, without pausing a single time, about a flirtatious Italian bodyguard.

She hears nothing, feels nothing; when she sees her bag packed, before her, it is as someone else has packed it. She doesn’t remember touching it.


*


She had always thought the reason Logan had been unable to remember his past is because it had been taken from him—because Stryker, the scientists, had erased everything, again and again, against his will. That in his mind, the blank spaces, the brief flashes of reminder or recognition; all of this was their handiwork.

And while she knows this is still true, she now has another thought:

That Logan is unable to remember his past because some part of him does not want to remember it—because some part of him, as gnarled and withered as Harada’s hand, does not want to know the truth about what he is responsible for. About the person he had been, the things he had done, during all those clouded years.

She has spent all this time trying to forget Logan’s memories in her head; thinking she was doing it to honor him, to protect him. Thinking she was doing it because she felt guilty for taking it all from him, unwittingly. Thinking she owed it to him to discard something that didn’t belong to her.

Now she thinks she might have been trying to forget everything because that same gnarled part of the Logan in her head wanted to forget everything, too; discard everything, too.

Who Logan had been. What Logan had done.


*


And now what, she thinks, lying in bed. And now what. What can she do, undo.

She looks down at her hands, in their overnight gloves. She removes one glove, then the other, and stares down. Smooth palms, no calluses, no scars, unharmed bones. Two small, living hands.

And then she sees wetness on the hands. She wonders where it is coming from, and realizes that once again, her body is doing her work for her.


*


Thinking of souvenirs: memories, to remember.

Thinking of the things we bring back, the things we give to others.

Thinking of her own voice, saying, Were you in the army? Doesn’t that mean you were in the army?

Thinking of Gambit saying, You never want to know the things you know.

Thinking of reasons, but reason resists her.


*


Early the next morning, having not slept at all, she volunteers to be the one to go down to the lobby and await the arrival of the loaned armored van, which they will use to drive to the hangar, outside central Kyoto, where the jet is currently stationed. Jubilee thanks her for the extra ten minutes of sleep.

She takes her bag and leaves the room. In the lobby, she completes check-out for their two rooms, then inquires as to the whereabouts of the van.

The employee at the reception desk says the van is parked in the private garage, along with the other diplomatic vehicles. Staring at the white streak in her hair, the entire time he is speaking.

Tired, annoyed, she finds a ponytail holder in the pocket of one of her bags, ties her hair up, off of her shoulders.

The garage is not empty; there are other people she had seen the previous night, slipping into vehicles with their bodyguards. She sees their shuttle van, being watched over by a young man in a suit, an employee of the car company.

She approaches, shows her identification card. She tells him, in a Kansai-ben Japanese that belongs to both Logan and Harada, that she would just like to take a look at the vehicle before they drive it. The young man tells her, of course, he understands.

She examines the underside of the van, its interior, its engine, the trunk, the controls. Looking for anything that would resemble a bomb, an explosive, a tampered brake. Anything that would harm even a hair on Hank’s body. But there is nothing.

She thanks the young man, says she will take responsibility of the vehicle now. He hands her the keys, and walks away.

On the opposite side of the garage, she realizes the Japanese ambassador is there, too; shaking the hands of several departing figures, making last-minute jokes. Next to him are two black town cars—one with its doors open. Three bodyguards are leaning against the frame of the car. One smoking a cigarette, all looking bored.

The other with its doors closed, windows tinted. She stares at it, knowing she sees silver hair, a gray suit.

Then the door opens. A silver cane comes down onto the garage floor with a clack. Harada steps out of the car.

He is already looking at her—not in anger, not even in recognition—only in confusion, like an old man bewildered by the appearance of a strange figure from a strange dream.

Then he begins to walk towards her, still leaning heavily on his cane.

She looks around, for another bodyguard, one of his, this time, someone else whom she will have to fight—but there is no one, he is coming to her alone—and she realizes that her hair is up. That she must resemble the way she looked, in Manhattan.

“Who are you,” Harada asks her, in English; still perplexed. “Do I know you.”

She shakes her head. She tries to concentrate, to see the pathways, so she can exert her energy over him as before, but her hands are shaking, her mind is too frantic. She is more afraid now, having heard everything, than she was last night, having heard nothing.

Finally, she can feel his weak but barbed energy bending to her, and she reaches out her hand again, in a handshake, to stabilize it.

“No, we’ve never met before,” she says firmly, still reaching out her hand.

But he does not take it this time, looking at her. “We have,” he murmurs to himself, and that barbed energy is still crackling around him; weak, but not that weak, for an old man. “I have seen your face.”

And across the garage, she can see Kurt, Piotr, and Jubilee appear, escorting Hank towards the shuttle.

She turns back to Harada, reaches forward, and grabs his hand with her gloved one—more tightly than Gambit had taught her was wise.

She can feel Harada struggle against her, staring at her; can feel the field around him forming, erratically, instinctively.

“We have,” he says, still holding her hand, and the field sharpens. “You’re the one—”

And though he has no sword, she knows he can wrap the field around anything—and now, defensively, almost unthinkingly, he is doing it, around her glove, around the bare hand underneath her glove, so that the glove becomes a blade. She can feel the cuts opening, crossing her palms, her fingers—and now microscopic cuts start to appear, even in the glove—

Still, she knows she can stop him, if she wants to—she can throw him across this garage with the other hand, can peel back her other glove and drain him. The strength in his hand is only enough for this, can only wound her this much.

Through the tiny cuts in the leather of her own glove, she can see her own blood, starting to seep.

And she thinks of Logan’s blood seeping through his jump-suit, on the Statue of Liberty, when he had given her everything without hesitation—

And she thinks of the woman she had killed with this hand, whose memory she does not have completely, she realizes, not because Logan’s in her mind was more powerful, but because like Logan’s, it was also erased—

And she looks at Harada, still confused, still trying to figure out who she is and what her presence means; holding her with the hand Logan had slashed—

And she thinks, I can bear this much, at least.

She can feel the wounds going deeper, into her skin, and now it feels as though he is cutting through tendons, nerves, though he is not strong enough to cut through bone.

And it is neither a penance nor a punishment; not a response when she has no response; not a reparation when she can repair nothing, repay nothing. Just the poverty and smallness of this gesture, this trace; like a gift passed between them.

But the others have nearly reached them now, so she swallows the pain, takes a breath, and concentrates her mind again—now succeeding in bringing his energy under her thrall. The live stinging around her hand subsides, though the pain that is left is more than enough to make it difficult for her to speak.

She says, through gritted teeth, again, “We’ve never met before.”

And she can see Harada’s eyes go vacant. He says, “Yes.”

She says, calming herself now, her hand throbbing, “But it was very nice to meet you.”

“Yes,” Harada says.

She finally removes her hand from his, and sees that there are a few tiny smears of her own blood, left on his palm.

He blinks, looks at her, as if he has just awakened. Then he says, in his own voice, again, “It was nice to meet you.”

And he turns around, leaning on his cane once more, and begins to walk back towards the Japanese ambassador, where Hank is saying his good-byes, Piotr standing next to him.

She looks down at her hand. The cuts in the glove are not too noticeable; they are everywhere, but they are so uniform, so tiny, it looks almost like mesh.

Still, she puts the hand in her pocket, knowing that if she is asked for an explanation, she will not be able to give one.

Then she turns around and enters the shuttle van, where Kurt is already sitting in the driver’s seat, chatting with Jubilee in the passenger’s seat.

“Morning,” Jubilee says. “Your friend’s cute. If you like the grandpa type.”

Rogue looks out the window. She can see Harada sliding back into his own towncar. He glances once at the shuttle van. Then he ducks, slowly, back into his car. And now she cannot see him anymore.

Her hand still screaming, she says, “Just started chatting with him while I was waiting.”

Kurt says, “How nice.”


*


And in the jet, they are all mostly quiet; everyone still sleepy, still jet-lagged from the trip to Japan in the first place. She keeps her hand, now numb from the pain, carefully tucked into her jump-suit pocket.

Behind her, she can hear Piotr on his cell phone, saying: “We’re on our way back now. It was pretty boring. Mm. Mmm. Okay. Okay.”

Then a pause, and on her back, even in her pained and weakened state, she can feel the energy around Piotr’s entire frame warm with pleasure and joy.

“I know,” he says to the I love you that she doesn’t have to hear, to recognize. “Me, too.”