Chapter Text
The wind was howling around him as he stalked down the long, winding road. Rain pelted him with each step, soaking into his hair and clothes, but he continued with a dogged determination. His sights were set on the dark building looming in the distance, an inner turmoil brewing as he thought about what had to be done.
He hadn’t heard your name, hadn’t seen your face, in a very long time. Logan never knew what happened to you. One day, you just seemed to slip away and he simply had to accept that fact. He’d learned from experience that hunting you down would only make you hide longer. You were like a stray cat; he usually just waited for you to finally come to him.
This time was different. With the professor gone, he was left with no choice but to search for you. He was sure that it would take a lot of hunting. He thought that he’d need to look around the places he knew you used to live, perform a few interrogations to get your location. To his surprise, and frustration, it was much easier than that.
You had completely disappeared from his life, but you had been talking with Charles off and on after you vanished. There were letters, dated and addressed, stacked away in a desk. When Logan found them, he instantly bristled. Part of him was relieved that it’d be so easy to find you this time, but part of him was furious. You couldn’t be bothered to tell Logan where you’d gone, but you’d been talking to Charles for years.
Where were you when he needed you? Where were you when he was going through the heartbreak of Jean choosing Scott over him? Where were you when he had to see Jean’s womb swell with Scott’s kid? As he walked along the iron fence, his nostrils flared and he could smell traces of your scent in the air. Faint, but strong enough to make his blood pump hotter and his muscles tense as an animalistic fury churned in the pit of his stomach.
Logan wanted to tear you apart. He wanted to pin you down and stare into your eyes, to demand where you got the audacity to disappear on him when he needed you the most. He hated that he needed you, but he hated it even more that everyone needed you now. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, go back without you.
His hair was soaked and plastered to his scalp as he stopped in front of the iron gate. Logan snarled under his breath as he forced the gate open and stormed up to the wooden door. The dark purple paint was peeling and the door knocker was so rusted that it looked like it would break into pieces if he touched it.
“Eulogy.” Logan growled your codename as he pounded on the door with a fist and he waited. Listening for movement beyond the door, sniffing the air for hints of your scent. Instead, he caught an unfamiliar smell and the hesitant footsteps of someone else. When the door opened, he found himself looking at a girl.
A teenage girl stood there, frowning back at him from the dimness of the foyer. Unfamiliar, yet with features he recognized. She had your eyes, your nose, the same lips that he saw twist into a frown so many times in the past. The girl stepped back, pulling the door open wider to let him in.
“Lookin’ for Eulogy,” he told her, wary of stepping inside until he caught your scent again. As he stepped into the foyer, Logan’s gaze swept over the small handful of faded family portraits on the walls. His muddy boots left prints on the worn rug as he stalked towards the stairs.
“Auntie’s not in here.” The girl winced when he turned his glare toward her and she took a step back. “She’s been in the cemetery for the past three months.”
“The cemetery?” Logan saw her flinch and he knew he had to be just a little bit gentler. “She’s not dead.” He knew you weren’t dead; that was impossible.
“She said she had to recharge,” she replied. “Do you need her for something?”
He was tempted to demand to know why she thought he was there if he didn’t need you, but he held himself back. This girl was one of your descendants and she probably knew where you were buried. She could save him the trouble of sniffing you out through the dirt. “Something came up. Need her to come with me.”
The girl nodded and led him past the stairwell towards the back of the house. Past a kitchen that smelled like cinnamon and cloves, past a study that was packed with paperback romance novels and hardcover classics. She stopped at the back door and gestured towards the sprawling field behind the house.
Through the small rain-speckled window in the door, Logan could see the rows of aged headstones. Among them were a few small mausoleums, but he knew you wouldn’t make it that easy for him to find you. His upper lip twitched, a snarl tugging at his features as the girl shouldered a shovel and grabbed an umbrella. “She’s in the ground.”
“She’s in the ground,” your descendant confirmed. She stepped outside ahead of him and popped open the umbrella. The girl jogged over to the woodpile down the path and pressed her hand to a piece of firewood. As Logan watched, the chunks of chopped wood began to shift and shudder. The wood began to split and pieces wove together, sliding into place as they pulled themselves into the shape and size of an adult human. The wooden golem took the shovel between its fingerless hands and obediently plodded along behind the girl as she started off towards the cemetery.
Logan was completely unfazed. He didn’t care about the kid as long as she could take him to you. He’d dig you up with his bare hands if he had to. He’d burrow into the graveyard mud and haul your body out into the rain.
You were unaware of the events taking place above the ground. For the past three months, you had been in a state of stasis. Something you were able to do, something that you had to do on occasion. The deepest, most refreshing rest that you could possibly get. Something that no one else could ever experience.
Three months before, you had instructed your descendant Creatrix to bury you in the stone casket so you could refresh yourself. She was instructed to leave you in the ground for no less than six months. Which is why you were confused when you were dragged out of stasis by sounds in the earth above you.
With your eyes closed, you tried to listen for the sound of voices. All you could hear was the wet noise of metal sliding through mud and a low snarling. Like a rabid animal, like a feral beast, like the familiar growl of a beloved acquaintance. You tried to press yourself further into the cushions of the casket, but movement was still impossible.
Stasis was the ultimate sleep. A temporary death that let every part of you rest and refresh itself. The problem was that it took quite a while for your body to fully awaken after stasis ended. Movement would be slow for quite some time, even opening your eyes would be difficult. As you heard the sound of metal scraping over wet earth, you tried to force your eyelids to lift, but your body was unresponsive.
The only things awake were your organs. You could hear your pulse in your ears, feel it beating at your wrists and within your chest. There was a very shallow rise and fall of your chest as your lungs drew at the limited oxygen in the casket. To preserve your air supply, you eased yourself back into your deep and dreamless slumber. You could only hope that if you were in danger, Creatrix would be able to protect herself until you were out of the ground and you could raise some corpses.
Logan huffed as he stood in the rain, water dripping from his hair and running in thin streams down his body. Mud was caked on his forearms and speckled the front of his shirt as he glanced towards the girl and her wooden golem. She stood there beneath the umbrella her creation held, watching him with a mix of curiosity and wariness. “You gonna just watch?” he snarled, shifting his gaze back to the remaining layers of mud separating him from you.
“She didn’t want to be disturbed unless it was an emergency.” The girl was quiet, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket as she watched him dig.
“This is an emergency! Why do you think I’d go to all this trouble-?”
“An emergency, as in a natural disaster or an attack. She left me a list of emergency contacts: if they showed up looking for her, I was supposed to dig her up for them. Different hospitals, mutants…” She met his eyes directly when he looked at her again. “You’re not on the list, Mr. Wolverine.”
It just fed his growing fury. You had the nerve to disappear, break his heart, and not even put him on your stupid little list?! After everything you’d been through together, after all those years together, Logan should have been at the top of that list!
He tossed the shovel aside and began digging with his bare hands. His blunt fingernails scraped over the mud, scooping handfuls of wet earth aside as he got closer and closer to where you were buried. If he flared his nostrils, Logan could smell you through the rain and stone and mud. Beneath the scent of the graveyard flowers, beneath the layer of wet grass all around him. A scent that was familiar, a scent that once brought him comfort, a scent that he had yearned for since the day you disappeared.
Finally, he could see the pale stone of your marble casket peeking through the mud. Logan gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw so tight that it ached, as he quickened his pace. Digging, clawing, snarling at the back of his throat as he slowly uncovered your resting place.
Logan paused once he had unearthed your casket, his breath coming in clouds of steam in the cold air. His skin prickled with goosebumps beneath his rain-soaked clothes, but he ignored the sensation. He pressed a hand against the lid of your casket and he could picture your sleeping form beneath it.
It was only once the casket was uncovered that the wooden golem moved to help him. As your descendant stood to the side with her umbrella, Logan and the golem hauled your casket onto level ground. The lumbering wooden figure took its place at her side again as Logan pried the lid off your casket.
There you were. Eyes closed, lips set in a gentle frown as you enjoyed the peace of a temporary death. There were dried flowers tucked around your body, the fragrance mingling with your own natural scent that stirred up heat in his groin. A soft, satin bed of cushions cradled your body and you might be mistaken for a real corpse if it wasn’t for your clothes. You were wearing jeans and a leather jacket with a tank top under it. A leather jacket that once belonged to him; one of the few things of his that you’d taken when you vanished.
“How long’s she gonna sleep?” Logan crouched down and slipped his arms under you. As he stood, he lifted you out of the casket. Your head rolled to the side, falling against his chest. It had been so long since he last saw you, so long since he last held you in his arms.
You looked the same way you did the day you left him. It was always like that, though. Ageless, timeless, like the world was ever-changing while the two of you remained the same. A flowery observation you’d made once, one that he’d shrugged off, but now he appreciated it. He needed this, needed you, and he knew he could count on you to never fully, truly leave him.
“Auntie said she’d know when she was ready to “wake up”,” the girl explained. “She wanted to stay under for six months. It might be a while before she…”
“I’ll get her to wake up.” Logan didn’t spare her another look as he began trudging towards the cemetery gate. He wasn’t going to wait around for you to wake up so he could explain everything. The clock was ticking and he had to get you back to the mansion as soon as possible. The sooner you resurrected the professor, the sooner everything could go back to the way it was. The sooner Logan could be sure that everything was going to be okay.
It would be a long walk back to the bus station and the rain continued to fall around him as he made his way onto the road. Puddles splashed beneath his boots, water stuck his clothes to his body. It was already soaking into your clothes, running in droplets down your skin. Logan tucked you closer against his chest, huffing to himself as he tried to shield you from the worst of it.
The bus rolled up to the stop just as the rain gave way to a true storm. The wind was becoming wild, tugging at your hair and clothes, as he waited for the door to open. Logan ignored the weird looks he got as he boarded the bus and handed the driver his return ticket. He knew how he looked: carrying an unconscious woman, both of you soaked to the skin and smudged with mud. When the man opened his mouth to protest that the ticket was for a single passenger only, Logan’s lip curled back into a snarl and the man quickly closed his mouth.
Logan stalked to the backmost row of seats and sat down heavily, draping you across his lap. Your cheek was leaning against his chest and he knew you could probably hear his racing heart. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cold glass of the window, exhaling in a heavy sigh. When you finally opened your eyes, there was a lot that you would need to talk about. For now, Logan just let himself rest.