Title: Gift in Sepia-tone
Rating: Gen
Characters/ships: Wolverine/Logan, OC, allusions to other Marvel Superheroes
Summary: Someone gives Logan a gift for Christmas
Author Notes: This runs in movie-verse between X2 and X3
Gift in Sepia-tone
Logan supposed he should have pulled on a coat before he left the mansion, but then cold didn't faze him, not really. He hadn't been lying when he'd told Rogue that he could feel pain, because he could, but he had the notion that things didn't hurt him as much as they hurt other people. Walking around in the falling snow was hardly the worst thing he'd done to himself.
He had to escape the moronic Christmas cheer pervading the mansion. Some students didn't have families to go home to - most didn't - and so Storm and Scott had taken it upon themselves to merry the place up with twinkling lights, flashing tinsel, and more red and green than Santa's damned workshop. While Logan was hardly the touchy-feely-confessy type, he had been walking on eggshells at the mansion. After all that nonsense with Stryker, everyone had been - false. Falsely cheery, falsely optimistic, falsely everything. Except for Summers, who had been tight-jawed and silent whenever possible. Logan sucked in a deep gulp of icy air, glad to be free of the stifling tension. Those kids had been kidnapped and their school had been blown apart. Of course they were tense - but old Cue Ball shouldn't have gone along with Storm's psychotic Plan of Merriment.
Logan's hands curled into fists. Stryker. That bastard had been responsible for disrupting - disrupting what? The school wasn't Logan's home. The X-Men weren't his people. But they were - peace. A sense of zen, or something. They allowed him to be useful as something more than, well, a killing machine. Logan uncurled his fists and stared down at his hands, wondered how many men he'd killed. He wondered if he'd ever killed a child. He wondered if he'd ever had a child.
"Hey mister, would you like to play a game of chess?"
Logan snapped out of his brooding, furious with himself for having lost track of his surroundings. His preternatural senses would have warned him of any danger, but actual awareness was far more effective. He turned and saw a little boy gazing up at him. The kid couldn't have been more than nine or ten and looked bug-eyed from the thick glasses he wore. He was skinny even for a kid his age and had long, floppy brown hair. He wasn't smiling.
"What kind of chess?"
The boy had a chess board tucked under one arm. "I'm proficient at several different kinds of chess, including Chinese chess, but western chess is my personal preference."
Logan frowned. Something about the kid was - off.
The boy pointed to a table outside of one of the town's quaint little cafés. "We could sit there and play, if you like. The café proprietors and I have an understanding."
That was it. The kid didn't talk like a kid. In fact, he spoke better than most educated adults did. Logan narrowed his eyes, but the boy had already perched himself on the edge of one the of the wrought iron chairs and began to set up the chessboard. Logan, though he had no idea why, sat down opposite the boy.
The boy pushed his glasses up his nose and peered up at Logan. "Black or white?"
"White. Best defense is a good offense."
The boy turned the board around and settled in to watch Logan make his first move. Just as Logan was about to move a knight, the boy said,
"My name is Mattie. What's yours?"
"Logan."
"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Logan."
Logan searched the boy's face for any hint of insincerity and only saw blank politeness. "Not 'mister'. Just Logan."
"Then Logan is your given name?"
"It's what you can call me if you expect me to answer," he said. Because he didn't know his given name, did he? Maybe Logan had been his family name. He sighed and moved a knight. Mattie sent a pawn forward, and Logan frowned, pondering at the choice.
"I understand," Mattie said. He waited patiently for Logan to take his turn. Logan let him wait for a bit, considering. Most children would have been squirming by now, but Mattie was eerily still.
"Aren't your parents worried that you're out alone in the middle of winter?"
"As long as I keep myself adequately insulated and am home in time for supper, my mother makes no comment as to how I conduct myself in my own time," Mattie said.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" It was a school day up at Xavier's, at any rate. Logan made his move. He noticed that the boy made specific mention of his mother but no mention of his father. A broken home, perhaps?
"The local domestic relations department hasn't yet decided how to continue my schooling." Mattie took a bit more time to choose his next move, but again, it baffled Logan completely. "My mother considered a place for me at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, but she's a schizophrenic whose delusions take the form of a widespread government conspiracies, and she's convinced that the institution is secretly a façade for a government program to indoctrinate children."
Logan snorted and moved a bishop. "Whatever that place is, it doesn't belong to the government. If anything, the government wants to shut it down."
Mattie met his gaze. "I see." He moved another pawn. "I do hope I'm not interrupting you."
"Shoulda thought of that earlier, kid." Logan took the pawn, bit back a curse when Mattie took his knight.
"It occurred to me that you might have been staring in the shop windows for so long because you were looking for Christmas gifts to buy for your family," Mattie said. "It would be courteous of me to offer my assistance in selecting gifts, but I'm more than aware of my social shortcomings and would probably be unable to provide helpful advice."
At the word family, Logan felt another stab of fury lance through him. Damned Styker - he'd toyed with Logan, taunting him about his past, about all the things about himself he didn't know. What if Logan did have a family? If he did, they were being punished by Stryker as much as Logan was, not knowing who or where their - father? son? husband? brother? - was.
"Not shopping for family," Logan said.
Mattie hummed thoughtfully. "For a paramour?"
"What do you care, kid?"
"I'm attempting to make conversation suitable to the holiday spirit."
Logan studied the boy's face, and in those eyes he saw the same awkward insecurity all of the students at Xavier's school tried to hide. While Mattie might have had all limbs present and no blue skin or prehensile tail, he was just as different from other humans as Logan and the X-Men were.
"No family, no holiday spirit," Logan said gruffly. Because if he'd had a family before Weapon X, he didn't have one anymore - Stryker had stolen that from him. He would never find his pre-existing family, and he didn't call Xavier's school home.
Mattie's expression wavered slightly. "Then I apologize for my impolitic choice of words."
Logan found something akin to sympathy nudge at his conscience. "No need to apologize, kid. I know you're just trying to be nice. Or maybe distract me from the way you're beating me at chess." He moved another piece and Mattie snatched it up a moment later.
"You're doing much better than any other adult I've played," Mattie confessed, and he smiled.
Logan stared at the board and wondered how he'd gotten cornered so quickly.
"Would you like to hear a Christmas story?"
"Does it involve angels?"
"That depends on your definition of an angel."
Logan sat back. Warrior though he was, he was willing to stave off inevitable defeat for a little while. Maybe listening to the kid's recitation of A Christmas Carol or whatever would get his mind off of -- He shoved the man's name aside and crossed his arms over his chest, ready to listen.
Mattie straightened up. "My father used to tell me this story." He cleared is throat, and when he began, Logan was surprised and the lulling, lyrical quality to his voice. "Once upon a time there was a man named James Howlett."
"What kind of a name is Howlett?"
"From a prominent Canadian family in the nineteenth century," Mattie said absently. Logan didn't want to know how he knew that; he had figured out by now that the kid was some kind of genius.
Logan scooped up a pawn and gestured expansively. "Carry on with your story."
"Grandpa Steven always referred to him as Uncle Howl, but Mother never liked that much - said it was too violent for my precious ears. This from the woman who read me Chaucer." Mattie captured a rook cleanly. "At any rate, Mr. Howlett was a noble warrior. He fought alongside Grandpa Steven during the Second World War."
Logan arched an eyebrow. "Is this one of those soccer games between the trenches stories?"
"Those are from the Great War. Military strategy had moved beyond trenches by the Second World War," Mattie said. He rested his chin in his hands, and Logan felt trapped by those guileless brown eyes. How much did that child know?
For that matter, how much did Logan know? What knowledge had been erased by Stryker's avarice and bigotry disguised as patriotism?
"Grandpa Steven was serving in an armored battalion. The commander made a foolish tactical error, and the Germans overran them." Mattie and Logan exchanged pieces in a flurry of carved marble carnage, and when the battle was done Mattie was the clear victor.
"Tactical error indeed," Logan muttered, studying the chessboard.
Mattie leaned forward and rested his chin in his hand, game forgotten. "Grandpa Steven ended up in a POW camp. It was hell on earth - sensory deprivation torture to obtain information, some techniques left over from the Spanish Inquisition. Grandpa Steven didn't think he would make it home, and he was sad because he'd promised Grandma Lola that he'd been in home to see the baby born. That baby, of course, would grow up to be my father."
Baby. Grow up. Father. What did Logan know about babies or fatherhood?
He knew the cries of a child, the difference between food and tiredness, a wet diaper and fear. How did he know that?
"Grandpa Steven knew enough German to know that the Nazi soldiers planned on executing every single one of their prisoners and then abandoning the camp, even if such action was in derogation of the Geneva Conventions." Mattie turned his gaze on Logan, and once again Logan was struck by how piercing a child's gaze could be. "Uncle Howl was one of the men who'd managed to evade German capture, and the night before the execution, he rescued the camp."
Logan blinked at the abrupt shift in narration. Clearly Mattie had something to learn about narrative flow.
But then the boy's tone became lilting and lyrical again, and his brown eyes turned dreamy. "Uncle Howl was like an avenging angel on a winter midnight. He burst out of the darkness, moving between snowflakes he was so swift, and he brought down the entire camp around the Nazis' ears."
"You have some concept of Christmas angels, kid."
"Do I? A man who makes a Christmas miracle is an angel in my book, and probably many others would think the same, especially those who were saved, and their progeny," Mattie said. He smiled faintly, knowingly, and Logan felt suspicion whisper in his blood, but then that lyrical lull was back. "Uncle Howl swept through the prison, indestructible beneath a hail of bullets. He must have killed fifty guards before he set the POWs free, and he had nary a scratch on him when he made it to Grandpa Steven's bunker. It was amazing, or so Grandpa Steven says, how Uncle Howl made it all the way into the camp without firing a single shot. He didn't even have a gun. But he saved the prisoners, and he walked them all back to the nearest American camp. He carried Grandpa Steven so he wouldn't come down with frostbite. Because of Uncle Howl, Grandpa Steven made it home in time to see his only son born."
Logan stared down at that open, expectant child's face and realized he'd missed something. "That was a really cute Christmas story, kid."
"It wasn't meant to be cute." Mattie slid a rook forward. "Checkmate."
Logan blinked, then nodded his acquiescence. "You win."
Mattie smiled. "You put up a good fight."
"So, how does the story end?"
"What do you mean?"
"That's it? A heroic rescue by the avenging angel Uncle Howl?"
"That was the Christmas part, yes," Mattie said. He began to gather up the chess pieces and put them away inside the folding chess board.
"Why did you tell me that story?"
Mattie reached into his back pocket and drew out a worn photograph. "It was the only thing my father gave me before he left. He used to tell me this story all the time, and I thought it only right that I pass the story on." He slid the photograph across the table.
It was faded around the edges, sepia-tone. Logan stared at the picture, unsure as to whether or not he should even touch it. Mattie rose to his feet.
"Keep it," he said. "Consider it a Christmas gift." And he turned to walk away in the snow.
Logan watched the boy's retreat and wondered just how strategic it was. Then he reached out and picked up the photograph. He cradled it in the palm of his hand and really looked at it for the first time. Shock ricocheted through him, and he was on his feet, scanning his surroundings, but the boy was gone. Logan started in the direction Mattie had taken, but when he looked down, he saw that there were no footprints in the snow. The snow was smooth and unblemished, as if Mattie had never existed.
Logan looked down at the picture once more. It was of two men dressed in army uniforms, standing side by side on the ruins of Normandy Beach and grinning the grin of the damned who'd just avoided the reaper's scythe. One of the men was a total stranger, pale-haired and light-eyed, but the man beside him was Logan. He'd know his own face anywhere.
Written on the back of the picture were five words: Jim, Steve, June 6, 1944.
One of the men had to have been Mattie's Grandpa Steven. Which meant that James Howlett was...him.
Impossible.
Not so impossible that Logan wasn't back at the mansion fifteen minutes later, standing over Kitty while she searched the internet for the information he wanted.
"I'm sorry, sir, I can't find anything on James Howlett," she said. "But some records are so old that no one ever bothered to archive them electronically."
Logan dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated. He hadn't shown her the photo, and he didn't think he wanted to show the photo to anyone at the moment. Another thought struck him. "Hey, run another search for me, boy named Matthew, father named Steven, mother schizophrenic. Kid's a genius - that's probably documented by the government."
Kitty stared up at him. "I'm just a high school student, sir, not a world-class hacker."
Logan glared.
Kitty squeaked and ducked her head, hands flying across the keyboard.
"Two matches," she said, "for such specific criteria. You recognize either boy?"
Logan would have recognized Mattie anywhere after spending all afternoon staring the child in the face. But the boy who gazed at him from the computer screen had a haircut and clothes at least twenty years out of date. Logan peered at the writing beneath the picture. A name. Matthew Rogers.
"He died about twenty years ago," Kitty said. "Genius, though - IQ of 175 or something scary. Froze to death in the snow, poor kid - his dad served in World War II and died soon after the war. His mom was schizophrenic, and he tried to take care of her, but one day she went nuts and locked him out of the house and he...died." Kitty sat back. "That's depressing."
Logan felt the photograph in his pocket burning through the layers of clothing. "Thanks a bunch, Kitty."
"You're welcome. It says he was from Winchester - buried down by the Methodist church."
Logan grunted and turned away, headed for the door. He walked with one hand in his pocket, the other cradling the photograph carefully. This was some sort of sick joke, wasn't it? Or had it been a hallucination? Logan closed his eyes and stopped in the middle of the hallway, leaned against the wall. He knew what hallucinations felt like, had felt the ghost of water and eyes on him as things cut into him, burned metal into his bones. That chess game with the boy hadn't been a hallucination, of that he was sure. Logan opened his eyes and gazed at the picture once more. James Howlett was even smoking a cigar like Logan, out the corner of his mouth and cocky, like a film noir detective.
"Hey Logan, would you like to help us make popcorn garlands?" Storm stood on the landing, holding a bowl of popcorn.
Logan shook his head and straightened up. "No thanks." He slid the photo into a jacket pocket and moved to pass her, intent on his destination.
Storm frowned and moved toward him. "Logan, I know this isn't your home and that you feel - displaced, after what happened at Alkali Lake. But the children need us to be strong. They need a foundation, and they deserve some happiness at the holidays."
"No," Logan began, but Storm cut him off.
"We deserve some happiness too," she said. "All of us. Not just Scott."
Logan had been steadfastly ignoring Jean, ignoring everything in favor of his unquenchable fury at Stryker. It was easier to hate Stryker than to agonize over Jean. Hate was so easy, and Logan had felt a modicum of - smugness? superiority? - that he didn't look wrecked every time someone even made a sideways mention of Jean Grey. These days Scott looked as soulless as Logan might have felt, had he focused on Jean instead of his past. They could never get Jean back, but Logan refused to believe that his past was gone forever.
Logan shrugged off the sympathetic hand Storm had tentatively placed on his shoulder.
"I've got me some Christmas spirit just fine," he said. "It's all the happiness I need." He supposed it was fitting, that his Christmas spirit had been offered by a ghost of Christmas past, by a ghost of a child who should never have died as he had. "Where's the Methodist church in town?"
Storm blinked. She stepped back. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to intrude, if you had religious intentions for the holiday --"
"Where is it?"
"On the outskirts of the town, past the coffee shop where the university students like to pretend they're grown up," Storm said.
Logan nodded once, curtly. "Thank you." And he dashed down the stairs. He figured it was no harm, no foul if he borrowed Scott's bike again. After all, the lovely machine had been Logan's companion during his last quest for his past. He supposed that, if the chess game hadn't been his imagination after all, the bike ought to be his companion once more.
The Methodist church wasn't difficult to find, between Storm's description and Logan's own innate sense of direction. He left Scott's bike on the sidewalk outside the cemetery walls and picked his way through the rows and rows of headstones, checking names. He was unsurprised to see a few Xaviers.
Then he found it. The headstone was dark granite, small, modest, and bore simply a name and a pair of dates.
Someone had left a single poinsettia that had frozen over in the snow.
Logan knelt and absently dusted some of the snow off the headstone. "I don't know if you're real or not, kid," he said. "But I thought I'd say...thanks. For trying to give me something no one else could give me. I don't even know if this picture is fake, or if this is some terrible cosmic joke, but in the spirit of the season...thanks." He tugged the picture out of his pocket and stared at it, wondering if he would ever recover what Stryker stole. Maybe it was his imagination, but as he knelt there, humming a soft Christmas carol, he thought he heard a voice, whisper-light on the winter wind, say,
"You're welcome."