“So, uh, when I…if I make it back, I’ll be the only one who remembers any of this.”

Her dark eyes welled with tears. He didn’t have to hear the raindrops outside to know that this was hurting her. For the last several years, it was just them and now, he was abandoning her, too.

When she spoke, her voice was low, tinged with emotion she did not have the time to process.

“Then, I won’t have to miss you.”

That simple phrase punched a hole in his gut. Logan could say nothing, reaching for her as he had every night for the last three years. Storm went willingly into his arms, kissing him with the wild abandon that first drew them together in the midst of war.

When they parted, Logan felt his heart ache at the single tear falling down her lovely cheek. There was so much he wanted to say, so much he needed to tell her. He couldn’t find the words, though. In the end, Logan could only muster three words:

“I got this.”

The sound of clinking dishes and soft, feminine voices brought him away from the memory. It was the last time he remembered seeing Storm, the war-hardened hero sending him off on an impossible mission. He could still remember the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her lips against his.

Logan had told Ororo, this Ororo, that it was only war and sex. Was that entirely true, though?

As he opened his eyes, the time-traveling mutant realized the woman haunting his dreams lay beside him. One of his arms was tucked under her head and her back rested softly against his chest. From the steady rise and fall of her breathing, she was still asleep.

That seemed fair, since she’d spent half the night crying.

Deciding to see what the twins were up to, Logan slid out of bed. He moved carefully, with the ease of someone who often woke before their lover, ensuring his motions did not wake her. Ororo could use some more sleep.

He found a soft yellow bathrobe in his size on the banister, hesitating only a moment before pulling it over the tshirt and sweats he slept in. Once he was sure Ororo was comfortable where she lay, he crept silently down the stairs.

“Two eggs or four?” He heard one of the girls whisper from the direction of the kitchen. “Think Daddy might want some?”

“Just do two,” replied the second twin. “Mama probably needs some time to think or something.”

As he rounded the corner, Logan paused to stare at the dark haired preteens moving about the kitchen. Both girls were dressed for the day in plain t-shirts and jeans with boots strapped onto their feet. Long hair was up in a ponytail for one girl, loose around the shoulders for the other. Logan had a wayward thought: Had he ever learned how to brush a little girl’s hair?

Though he was content in watching them, he found that he wanted to talk with them. What kind of father had he been? Did he chase the monsters from under the bed? Was it he that kissed scraped knees? Had he ever done something completely undignified to get a sad girl to laugh?

Logan desperately hoped the answers to those questions were yes.

“Hey.” He kept his voice low, pushing off of the doorjamb where he had leaned to observe the girls. “What’re you two up to?”

The twins both turned as one, looking up with matching smiles. The kitchen was already a mess of eggs, orange slices, and bacon. Logan arched a brow in question, wondering why the girls seemed insistent on making breakfast.

“Whenever Mama’s sad or worried, we make her breakfast,” one of the girls said carefully. He thought this one was Anna-Marie.

“Huh.” Logan nodded, stepping a little further into the kitchen. “Just you two or do I usually help?”

Laura, the twin with a slightly more…Wolverine air to her, chewed on her bottom lip nervously. “Usually, you help, unless Mama’s sad because you’re on a mission or being a butt or something.”

“Laura!” Anna-Marie hissed, a blush rising on her dark cheeks.

Chuckling, Logan shook his head. These two must have driven him and Ororo insane in all the good and bad ways.

“Ok, so what’s my job?”

Laura and Anna-Marie shared a look. Logan was sure they probably expected the worst from all of this. Maybe they even feared the end of their parents’ marriage. Logan didn’t want that. He hadn’t saved the world to destroy someone else’s family.

Would this version of him, the man that built this life, hate him for what he had done?

“Coffee.” Anna-Marie answered, her silent conversation with her sister finished. “And bacon. Laura makes eggs and toast. I usually get the fruit and Mama’s smoothie ready.”

Logan nodded, clapping his hands together. “OK. Coffee and bacon. Step aside, girls, man in the kitchen.”

To his great delight, both girls giggled.

They worked in general quiet for several minutes. Logan was content to watch the girls out of the corner of his eye, admiring the strength in those teeny bodies. Part of him hated that he couldn’t remember them, that he felt a keen disconnect between himself and the daughters Ororo had given him.

Still, there was something familiar there. A lift of the brow, the way Laura moved, the intensity in Anna-Marie’s concentration. They were a mirror of some of Logan’s more charming attributes. He couldn’t deny that there was a part of him, however slender, that knew he was connected to the girls.

When Ororo’s breakfast was ready, Laura put it all on a tray and carried it up to her mother. Anna-Marie poured Logan a cup of coffee before she sat at the kitchen counter with a bowl of some sugary cereal.

For his part, Logan watched the girl as she watched him. It was disconcerting to see a familiar facial expression that wasn’t actually on Ororo’s face.

“You’re a good dad.” Anna-Marie said suddenly. “Aunt Jean, she thought you might be worried about that.”

Logan swallowed the too-warm coffee, letting it scald his throat. Hearing her little voice say those four words meant more to him than he really understood.

“Am I?”

Anna-Marie nodded. “I mean, you’re kind of a butt when it comes to curfew and seeing PG-13 rated movies, but you taught us how to play baseball and you’re never too busy to help with homework.”

Logan felt an alien, emotional lump wedge itself in his throat. Could any of this be true? Had Logan really come into his life as an assassin only to find a woman he loved and children to adore? How was that his reality, after so much fear and doubt?

“And you love Mama.” Anna-Marie continued in a whisper, her gaze not leaving his face. “She’s really scared that she’s gonna lose you. I can’t lie, Laura and I are, too.”

He set his coffee down, warring with the strange impulse to hug the girl and known, accepted behavior to stay back.

“You’re my Dad.” Anna-Marie sniffled. “I still see you as my Dad.”

Giving up, Logan crossed the kitchen. He took Anna-Marie into his arms, shushing her softly as he hoped he had done in the past. He might not have remembered becoming a father or any of the important milestones that came with that job, but he could hold her. If nothing else, Logan could hold and soothe this scared little girl.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Logan whispered. “Cause no matter what, Anna-Marie, I’m still your dad.”

The little girl buried her face in his shoulder and Logan held on to her for a few minutes longer.

~**~

After breakfast, Logan ventured back to the mansion. For several minutes, he simply walked the corridors and hallways, enjoying the sound of children rushing to class. He hadn’t seen the mansion with his own eyes in almost ten years, since it was destroyed by the Sentinels.

His memory of the place seemed to have been eerily accurate. It still smelled of pine cleanser and dirty sneakers and chocolate. The sound was similar, all kids and arguments and “Hey! No powers!”

Outside of one classroom, Logan paused. Rogue was inside, standing in front of what looked like a new-aged display board, a small electronic device bringing up projections that seemed to be explaining key efforts in the Civil War.

“The blockade set up to keep the South from being resupplied, in hopes that the lack of food and basic necessities would force the Confederate Army into surrender.”

Rogue’s gloved hands manipulated the screen propped on her arm, showing drawn images from the period that depicted the series of blockade runners that became heroes of the Civil War.

“Blockade runners were hailed as heroes by the Confederates, but denounced as war criminals by the Union.”

A sniff told him someone was approaching before the other man spoke. Logan smiled a little to himself, turning as Scott Summers spoke.

“That’s your speech.” The X-Men leader said quietly. “And it’s one of her favorites.”

Logan shrugged a shoulder. “She’s from the South.”

“Yeah.” Scott chuckled, moving so he could lean on the doorway opposite of Logan. “How’re you holding up?”

For a moment, he could only stare at the man he had known so briefly in his long life. Really, Scott’s involvement with his time as an X-Man was so short, that it seemed ludicrous his memory was one that haunted Logan well into the war.

Where’s Scott?

Clearing his throat, Logan shifted a little uncomfortably against the doorjamb. He couldn’t resist the guilt that crept up his back. Scott was left alone in the world when he thought Jean had died and the creature that killed him had worn the skin of the woman he loved.

But none of that happened here.

“Can I ask you something?”

Scott turned that ruby-red gaze to him and Logan took a moment to map the other man’s face.

There were lines there that his memory did not have, especially around the eyes and mouth. Scott had aged well in the years within this timeline, years he’d not had where Logan came from. What was he like? What was his family like? Were he and Jean still ridiculously happy?

“What is it, Logan?”

At Scott’s question, Logan swallowed hard.

“You and me, are we friends?”

The smile that bloomed under Scott’s quartz glasses was something Logan couldn’t even remember seeing. A low chuckle came from the other mutant’s mouth as he shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, once you stopped chasing Jean around trying to get her to leave me for you, we became very good friends.”

Scott’s tone was an odd mixture of amused and irritated. Logan had the distinct feeling that was pretty normal between the two of them.

“Well, that part of my memory is in tact, then.” Logan said, half joking.

“It was only for a year or so, before Storm got back from Wakanda.” Scott shrugged it off. “She walked in and you were toast. I breathed easier, let me tell you.”

Interested now, Logan pushed off from the all, moving away from Rogue’s classroom. The children had noticed the elder two mutants standing in the hallway and were busily pointed and chatting under their breath. Logan stepped down the hall, with Scott moving beside him. They fell in step easily, as though they had done it a million times. How often had he and Scott walked this way down this corridor, talking of things both life-altering and nonsense? 

“Storm wasn’t here when I came to…kill Charles?”

“No,” Scott answered, looking just a little uncomfortable. “She was in Africa trying to help an old friend. She was gone about 18 months. When she came back, you completely forgot Jean existed.”

Logan wondered about that moment. Had he been swept away by her, and why? In the timeline he remembered, he had seen her beside Jean and still the red-haired woman held so much of his attentions. Storm was always there, on the sidelines, a friend and nothing more until the war left them adrift and alone.

Which was the true reflection of Logan’s feelings for Ororo?

Did it matter now?

“Look, Logan,” Scott reached out to take Logan’s arm, stopping them as they reached the Professor’s office. “We all know it’s confusing and hard. But I want you to know, we’re all here for you.”

Touched by the warmth in the other man’s voice, Logan thought back to everything he had done to Scott in the now-defunct timeline. If they all knew the choices he made there, would they still stand at his side now? The Wolverine that married Storm and had those children, who called Scott his friend, he didn’t seem to resemble the man Wolverine knew himself to be.

If they knew…

“Whatever you did, whoever you were, none of that matters now, Logan.” Scott said quietly. “The man I know is in there, you just had to make different choices, you lived a different life. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Astonished that Scott seemed to be reading his mind, Logan was too stunned to respond as the other man moved away. Chuckling to himself, the mutant known as Wolverine knocked on the Professor’s door.

Maybe Scott was right.