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“Ororo.”

“Yes Scott,” the white haired Nubian beauty answered without turning to the man sitting next to her in the driver’s seat.
“You want to talk about it,” although he said it more as a statement rather than a question, the response he got was a simple headshake.
“No,” dull blue vacant eyes stared out the window. The only thing visible to them was the look those hazel eyes gave her. The look of anger, rage, sorrow and above all betrayal.

She could not forget the look that not the man, not Logan, but the girl, her own daughter Kendall gave her.

----

Time seemed to stand still as a wedding ring grasped in his hand, Scott Summers stared at the man who if he hadn’t been with his children would surely have attacked….attacked to kill him.

For her part, Ororo did not say anything either. She knew this day would come, she knew she would have to break the news to Logan…confront him, but not like this, not in the middle of a mall, in a jewellery shop, buying a wedding ring with the man she was going to marry.

Raising her hand to try intervene before the infamous Wolverine rage took over, she was shocked when Logan leaned down, picked Kendall with his free arm, the girl’s arms automatically going around her father’s neck and shoulders, turned around and walked away.

This she did not expect. She expected him to be angry, to lose control and show his outrage by trashing the shop or even worse attacking Scott…..maybe even her. She did not expect him to just shrug it off, shrug off five years of marriage and almost eight years spent together and just walk away as if it did not affect or concern him.

‘Which it doesn’t,’ a part of her piped up to remind her. ‘Remember. It all ended the day you signed the divorce papers.’

“Logan,” Scott made the move to step forward, to talk, try to explain the situation, but was stopped by a hand on his forearm…..a hand that fell away under the accusing stare of a nine-year-old girl.

Kendall Munroe-Logan glared at her mother and the man she had chosen to be her new husband. The man the girl liked earlier but did not anymore. Uncle Scott. That is what she would called him…but not anymore. If he wasn’t Uncle Scott, he wouldn’t be anything else….and he never would be her father.

She already had a father, a father whom she loved and who loved her. There was no way another man was going to take his place….EVER.

----

“We’ll talk to him,” Scott’s words although meant to be helpful got a, what, look from Ororo. Both of them knew, talking and Wolverine did not go too well together.
“No,” was Ororo’s single word answer.

“Ororo…”
“No, Scott,” was the firmly repeated answer.

“We’ll tell him….”
“No”

“That’s its for the best of the….”
“No.”

“Children….for Kendall and James….”
“No, Scott. No.”

“And Rachel.”
“No, Scott,” Ororo replied in a ‘that’s final’ tone. “He won’t understand…..he won’t understand”

The second repeat was so soft that even Scott missed it. ‘He just does what he wants, without a care for others.’ Even as that thought arose, her mind and her heart both cringed at its falsehood.

-----

Almost sixteen months ago,

“Logan STOP.”

Ororo’s voice boomed in the foyer of the X-Mansion, the man she addressed, her husband hearing but not paying any attention to her pleading command.

“Don’t do this Logan,” Ororo tried again. “This isn’t the way.”

“It is,” the snarl was pure Wolverine, as was the -snikt- sound of the metal encased claws shooting out from within his knuckles. “Its my way.”
“But not the X-Men’s w….”
“Fuck the X-Men,” Logan stopped, turned around and bellowed at her. “They didn’t attack the X-Men. They attacked my family.”
“Logan…”

“They didn’t take the X-Men. They took my kid…..MINE.”
“I know dammit,” a thunderous boom outside mirrored the tumultuous emotional condition of the Weather Goddess. “But we got her back.”

“Yeah, after one month,” Logan held up a clawed hand. “One month, she had to spend with those assholes. Do you know what that feels like?”
“I know….”
“No, you DON’T,” Logan cut her off. “You don’t, because you have been through it. You don’t know how it feels like to be treated like an animal, to be picked and prodded, to have your flesh peeled off just so they can run tests on it. To see how well you heal. How you respond to pain. To have those things shoved so deep down your throat that you can’t forget them….even if you want to...even in yer sleep. You don’t know anything.”

“Why, because I haven’t been through them?” Storm demanded.
“Yes,” his answer was flat and instant.
“And what about my feelings as a mother?” The woman who had lost her child to the same people who wanted to kill them…kill all the mutants, probably the ones who had her husband in the first place, was livid at being told that she couldn’t empathize with her first born child’s ordeal just because she hadn’t had those things done to her. “Don’t they count? Don’t they mean anything?”
“Not here. Not this time,” came the answer.

----

“Logan stop,” she called again, once Logan turned around towards the door. Everyone at Xavier’s knew what he was going to do. He was going to find each and everyone of the people who were at that particular base and he was going to kill them….the ones that got away when the X-Men located and stormed the base to rescue an incredibly weakened and fearful Kendall.

Kidnapped almost a month ago from her school, the X-Men, including Xavier had turned heaven and earth to find the young girl, finally tracking her down to a secret government base in New Mexico.

It would be a week before Henry would allow the girl to leave the infirmary, a time in which, her father almost never left her side, only taking the usual bathroom breaks. Her mother, who had been injured in the attack on the base, also remained close at her side, while Jubilee, Rogue and others took care of young James. However, those three too were within sniffing and usually visual distance of the ‘at alert’ Wolverine. it was almost as if Logan was afraid that if turned his eyes away even for second, he would lose one or all of them.

What no one knew, not even Xavier, was, during his time in the infirmary, the Wolverine was carefully sorting through the memories and smells of the rescue mission to select and separate the ones that got away. He was going to find them and he was going to make sure they could not do this to anyone else….but more importantly, he was going to make that they did not get a second chance to come after his family.

----

“You step out of that door, you give up on your family,” Ororo’s harsh words did have the desired effect. Logan’s hand stilled at the stylish doorknob.
“What do ya mean?” He stared right at her, his claws still ready at his side.

“I know what you are going to do,” Ororo accused him. “You are going to find those men and kill them in cold blood.”
“No, they’ll be warm when I find them and so will their blood,” was Logan’s simple answer. However, that was not what he was interested in. “What do ya mean, give on my family?”

“I mean, you leave now and you will lose not only me but also our children.”
“Ororo,” Logan’s voice feel to a threatening growl. “You can’t….”
“I can and I will,” this time it was Ororo who was on the offensive. “I had stood by you in the past, toler….understanding your need to leave in search for your past, but not this. I won’t stand by while you commit murder.”

“They took Kendall,” Logan said in the same growling tone. “They took our Kendall.”
“And we got her back,” was Ororo’s answer.
“What if it happens again?” Logan questioned. After her rescue, Kendall had been withdrawn from the ‘normal’ school her parents had admitted her to. They did it because Xavier’s did not have the proper infrastructure to teach such a young child. The youngest student at Xavier’s was a ten-year-old boy with a very visible mutation in the form of chocolate brown fur covered skin and porcupine style quills for hair.
“It won’t,” replied Ororo, marveling at her own ability to speak the words that even she did not believe.
“It will,” Logan snapped in anger. “You see this,” he lifted his hand to her, his claws shining in the reflected light of the chandelier. “They did this to me. They did this to me and they still haven’t let me go, stopped following me…even after twenty-four fuckin’ years. What makes you think that they will leave my daughter…..my children?”

“We can guard them,” Ororo offered. “Keep them safe.”
“Yeah we can,” Logan nodded. “An’ that’s I am going to make sure of…..that they are safe.”
“By becoming a killer.”
“I AM a killer dammit,” Logan yelled, his claws swiping through empty space as if trying to find the men who had hurt his daughter. “I was a killer when I came here, I was a killer when you married me, I was a killer the day the kids were born and I am a killer now.”
“No, you are…” Ororo tried to deny it, but failed in the heated look Logan gave her. His body language and entire demeanor was telling her that he was struggling to maintain control over the beast within him.

---

“Daddeee!”

Anything either of them would have said was lost in the flurry of pink, mocha and white as a tearful Kendall ran past her mother and towards her father. The fresh tears staining her smooth cheeks meant only one thing….she had had yet another nightmare.

That, just like her father was her ‘gift’ from the bad-men that had taken her away from her momma and daddy. Even after more than a month back at the mansion, she was still waking up at nights, many times screaming against the men who were hurting her.

It was these nightmares of hers that proved to be the undoing for her father. Had she recovered completely, Logan might have relented a little, even let go of his lethal plan. However, seeing and hearing her cry, her small face wet with tears had pushed the pack-protection instinct of the Wolverine to the limit and beyond. He was going to make sure that those fuckers and anyone even daring to lift an eye towards his family would die a horrible, painful and prolonged death.

---

“What happened pumkin’?” His claws instinctively sliding in, Logan fell onto his knees in front of his daughter, only to have her throw her arms around him and literally climb onto his chest and into the safety of her father’s strong arms.

“Th-they….they…” Kendall tried to speak between uncontrollable sniffles and hiccups. “….hurt me.”

Ororo’s eyes snapped shut as she too grabbed the wall for support, her knees almost buckling under her. At such a moment, she did feel like a helpless outsider, able to hear and even try to help with the situation she had only heard about, not actually experienced.

The three of them stayed there for quite sometime, until letting go of his duffle bag, Logan carried his by now asleep daughter to her room, Ororo accompanying them.

The next morning Ororo woke up to find him gone.

----

That was the end of their time together.





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