Work Text:
Dues Fic: Origins
Author: Neichan
Fandom: X-Men
Summary: Sometimes your memories are not what they tell you they are.
Rating: Mild. FRT.
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Victor told him tales of violence. Of maiming, killing, fighting wars, on and on and on. Every war, every where, since he was born and grew to adulthood, if adulthood was what this was. His brother's stories were lurid, fierce, told with sharp, clenched teeth, red face and vicious glee. Over the years, in between their battles, and during them, Logan learned more of the time he and Victor had spent. If Victor was telling him the truth in spat out words.
And of course there were the times when Victor hadn't been there. Logan knew there had been times when he was far from the beast that claimed he was his brother.
Still, who else could tell him about when they were young children, and what that had been like. Victor thought that Logan had been born around 1835 or so. It was hard to pin him down while blows fell and claws tore into flesh. But Logan put some of it together, not much, but something.
Sabretooth told tales about the wars with far more interest gleaming in his feral eyes. Guns, and blood and death made his eyes shine gold. It was hard to know if the stories were stories, or real, doubly since they were no longer friends or companions. It was nearly impossible, to get Victor to talk of things other than blood and death. So, Logan couldn't really be sure if he was 45 years old, or 145, or 345 years old. The flashes of memory weren't enough to tell him more than that Victor was telling some of the truth. Most of what he was being told, Logan didn't want to remember.
Logan had only Victor's word that Logan was the one who had killed their father.
Xavier told Logan the scraps of what he found. Not much, and not with any great detail. Just bits and pieces of news, history and events culled from a thousand vague sources. Logan had lived and worked in Canada. He'd been married, in all but name. He'd seen a picture of the woman, a face he had no recall of. But his skin...his heart...he did believe he had known her. Seeing her brought up pain, agony in waves and a sense of deep betrayal. He looked at her and understood why he stayed away from entanglements, women. It had something to do with her, and it wasn't a good story. He wasn't sure if he wanted to remember it.
Logan had been a woodsman, a logger. A hard, physical job. He'd worked out in nature, lived there, been truly at home with the sounds and the feel of it. The idea of it felt right. He wasn't happy living in the city, or even close to it. But he was here because the professor needed him to keep the place, the children safe. Not that there was any lack of warriors here to fight, just that most were under the age of fifteen, and none of them had lived as long as he, or had the experience he had. Face it, Victor he decided, had been right in at least one thing, Logan had been a soldier, a warrior for a long, long time.
One day a tall, slim figure had come to the school with seductive eyes more red than brown, a sensual mouth that could make any man weep, and curling dark hair that skimmed his shoulders at its shortest and cascaded down his back at its longest. He was almost too thin, but he blazed with life and resentment.
He was a loner, was Remy LeBeau. With languid, lazy movements, and a sweet insincere smile, that could flash into electric fast defense and dazzling fury, with artistic, beautiful fingers so slender, fatal and quick.
Logan felt drawn to him, the charismatic, secretive man, who slipped out of the school every night, ghosting his way to the city where he felt at home. Logan, prowling the grounds on restless nights saw him return when the dawn was breaking. Like him, Remy stayed at the school because Xavier had asked. He was no more friendly than Logan, no more nurturing. But he did like bourbon, and Logan could live with that.
Weeks passed after the Cajun's arrival before Logan and he came face to face. They knew about each other, but they made no effort at meeting. When Logan looked into the blood red eyes he knew the other man and he had met before. The recognition was strong, a jolt without fear, or the urge to do battle. So...not like Victor. If not...then how had he known this man?
It wasn't easy to get Remy to talk. Or rather to talk about the subject Logan wanted to talk about. His graceful dodges into other subjects, cards, gambling, flesh...those topics were superficial, easy, and of no interest. But eventually Logan got the dark haired man just drunk enough to talk and just sober enough to tell the truth.
He heard about their meeting in New Orleans, when he was looking for the Island. His fight with Victor. The planned raid on the Island and the flight getting there. He picked up on the Cajun's glee at discovering that the hard, no nonsense man next to him in the plane did have a very real fear, he was afraid of flying.
Logan let the needling go because it was true. He heard about what Remy knew about the Island, and a man who had stood over Logan while Remy was flying overhead looking for a place to land, and pumped two bullets into Logan's skull.
It wasn't much, but it was a little of who he was. Logan accepted it, or most of it, and moved on. He was what he was now, and to be the man he was he didn't need a past. So he let it go.
He wasn't any kind of friend with the man who claimed to be his brother.
And he didn't ever look at any woman he could really have.
And if he did occasionally share a bottle with a temperamental, easy to rile Cajun...well it was all part of who he was, not what he had been.
And that was fine with the Wolverine.
nei