X-MEN: Kai & Logan: Canada 1/2

[Kielle]

Nope, this one isn't mine -- it's by a first-timer, and I must
say I hope she sticks around! Please, please, please give
her a drop or two of feedback at Kayle...@aol.com --
remember, I probably know where you live. Bwah hah hah!!!

.-=K=-.
~~~~~~~

Hola. I'm not a professional writer, and I'm not associated
with Marvel Comics in any way. (Except as a fan and loyal
payer of huge amounts of money to the company every
month.) I'm earning no money whatsoever from this. Honest.
Don't sue me. The following is a work of fan fiction focusing
on Wolverine of the X-Men. Joining him is my own character,
Kai. Some of you may remember her from an aborted fanfic
series I posted over on CompuServe, but I advise you to forget
whatever you read over there. That was her "formative"
phase, when she was intended to be nothing more than another
two-dimensional butt-kicking woman with an attitude. She
kinda went and grew on me, so I decided to let her develop a
real personality and all the warts that go with such.

Umm...a little info that might prove helpful: Kai isn't a mutant,
but she was bonded a long time ago with a symbiont that acts
as a healing factor and hypes up senses and strength. (Can we
all guess who I planned to pair her with?) Anything else
important about her history more or less comes out in her
stories over time, so I'll leave it with that. Oh, and though this
can easily be read as a one-shot, there's actually a whole bunch
of stories following this one that deal with Kai, Logan, Victor
Creed, and a handful of others. If reactions to this one are
positive, I'll upload them. Forgive the lack of creativity in the
titles...I figure it saves time to keep 'em simple.

Responses to Kayle...@aol.com. I do like feedback, even
the bad kind.

Enjoy!

Kai & Logan: Canada
By Kaylee
(Kayle...@aol.com)

We came up to Canada for one reason...to find out why an old
acquaintance of mine, Benny Hallings, hadn't checked in with
his wife in over a week. May sound like a silly reason to go
haring off to another country and hiking through snow-
encrusted wilderness, but Benny's wife Maggie has been real
good to me in the past, and when I heard the nervous little
tremble in her voice, I made up my mind to settle her questions
one way or the other. I knew that Benny was a stubborn old
coot...liked to drag himself up a little mountain to his tiny
shack once in a while. "Get some space," he calls it. "Breathe
real air." I understand that well enough, but when you're going
on sixty and not in the best of shape, taking off alone into the
woods isn't the brightest move.

I say that "we" came up to Canada because when Logan --
Wolverine of the X-Men, a group I've been hanging out with
lately -- heard that I was heading to his old stomping grounds,
he all but insisted on coming along. I didn't know him all that
well, but he was an X-Man, after all, and had a rep for being
pretty good at the wilderness survival bit, so I didn't mind him
joining me. He made an all right traveling companion, too;
didn't talk too much or distract me, and easily kept up for the
hike. I kinda got the feeling that this was like a Sunday stroll
for him. We didn't bother with any real conversation. I didn't
figure he trusted me, what since I'd been spending time with a
guy he hated, Victor Creed, while Creed was a "guest" at the
X-Men's mansion. Since I was also pretty sure I knew what
we'd find when we reached Benny's shack, I wasn't in much of
a mood to jaw, anyway.

When we pushed open the door, we found something kinda
like I expected: Benny's body. Only thing was, the old guy
didn't freeze to death or have an accident and break his fool
neck...he blew his brains out with an old single action shotgun.
There was a note on the table. Said, "Whoever finds this, tell
Maggie that I love her, but I'm just so tired. I'm sorry.
Benny." There wasn't even enough left of his face to see what
his expression had been before he pulled the trigger. The body
was nearly frozen, too, since he'd been considerate enough of
anyone who came up here later to turn off the gas generator
that ran the small space heater in the corner.

I stared at the note for a minute, rather than the body.
Seventeen words, if you included his name. Seventeen words
to sum up the end of a man's life.

"Benny, you son of a bitch," I muttered.

Logan stood silently in the doorway, looking at me. Judging
my response, I guessed. If he expected utter horror and
disgust, he wasn't gonna get it. Not from me. I've seen uglier
deaths, for stupider reasons.

"Gotta call his wife," I said aloud, as much to myself as to him.
The two-way radio Benny had used to contact her before was
still working after I got the generator running, wonder of
wonders, and I toggled with dials until I heard her hopeful,
fearful voice coming across. Logan's eyes weighted on my
shoulders, assessing me against some scale I didn't know.

"Kai? Kai, is that you, sweetie?" Poor Maggie. Always so
kind to me, even when she had to know why I was the one
contacting her, instead of Benny.

"Yeah, Maggie, it's me." I swallowed once before diving in.
"Maggie...I'm sorry. You were right."

A staticky pause. Then a whisper I could barely make out.
"So it's true, then? He's...dead?"

"Yeah. I'm...really sorry, Maggie."

I thought I heard a sob, but might have been mistaken. "How?
How did he die?"

My head turned to look at Logan, doing my own bit of
assessing as I answered her. "Looks like his heater gave out,
Maggie. He froze. In bed. Went in his sleep...probably never
even knew what was coming." Logan's eyes didn't flicker.
Neither did mine.

"Can you...can you bring him back to me, Kai?"

"I don't think I can pack him out down this mountain, Maggie.
There's a blizzard on the way, and it'll make footing pretty bad
for a while. You know how he loved this place...what do you
say I bury him up here? Put him to rest where he always came
for peace? You could come up in the spring and visit him."

Maggie's a trooper. She understood the logic of what I said,
and she agreed without more than a moment's hesitation. I
told her that I'd lay him to rest and put a cross over his grave
for her, and she said that would be nice. As quickly as she
rang off, I'm sure the tears were about to overwhelm her.

"Bastard," I told Benny. "Weak-willed little bastard."

Logan didn't comment on my narrative. Instead, he
disappeared outside for a bit, then came back around with a
pick and a shovel from the all-purpose shed out back. Leaned
in the door again and just asked, "Where do you want to bury
him?"

I led the way outside and found a bit of ground that would suit
Maggie. Logan tossed the shovel aside and started tearing up
hard-packed and frozen earth with the pick. I went around and
picked up the shovel myself.

"I can handle this," he said without looking at me.

"It'll go faster with two."

"Suit yourself." I did.

We worked for a while, until I felt the muscles in shoulders and
back aching from the strain, and until sweat had formed a
chilling layer over my skin. The frigid air bit into me, but I
ignored it with gritted teeth. As soon as Benny was put to
ground, I'd turn on that space heater and put on some extra
layers of clothing to warm up before we trekked down the
mountain. Until then...well, a little chill wasn't gonna kill me.
Even if my mind tried to tell me it would.

The hole, by the time we finished, was deep enough for any
law codes. I stood at the bottom and realized with some
surprise that the walls were a good bit higher than my head.
I'm short, yeah, but it's strange and disconcerting to be
completely beneath the surface of the ground, standing in a
grave. I tossed the shovel out, then caught the lip of the grave,
spilling dirt down into my hair, and sprang lightly up, levering
myself out easily. I turned at the top and realized that Logan
had stepped forward to help me before seeing that I could
make it. That brought a grin, which I was surprised to see him
answer. I leaned down and offered him my hand, thinking that
turnabout was fair play. He gave me a wry look and pulled
himself out as easily as I had, without help.

Then it was just a matter of wrapping Benny's body in a
blanket and carrying him to his resting place. Logan offered,
but I told him that it was my responsibility. He nodded and
backed away as I carried the almost too slight weight and
dropped down into the grave to lay him out. I didn't bother
with much ceremony during the process. The body was no
longer Benny; and even if it had been, I was pretty pissed at the
old coot about then. When I finished there, I jumped back out
and started to reach for the shovel. Logan already had it.

"You've done more than enough," he said firmly. "I'll finish."

"Sure," I said, and went inside to survey the mess I'd have to
clean before leaving this place. A shotgun is a pretty
inconsiderate way to kill yourself. The wall behind where he'd
been sitting was liberally splashed. I listened to the sound of
the shovel "shushing" dirt over the body as I went to turn on
the space heater and dig out some rags to clean with. By the
time Logan finished, the shack was warming and the wall was
coming more or less clean. I'd probably have to find something
to coat it with, to cover lingering stains, but at least there
wouldn't actually be parts of him on it.

"You got a good stomach," Logan observed, watching me
finish with the wall.

"Not about everything."

"You're takin' this whole thing pretty well."

"I knew he'd be dead. Only question was how." I tied the rags
into a larger one, then set the bundle aside. It would have to
be buried later. Then I grabbed a match from the tin on the
rickety counter and took the suicide note outside to the grave.
Standing over the freshly turned earth and the flat stones
Logan had laid down, I lit the note and held it so the ashes fell
over it. It seemed like a moment to say something...some sort
of parting to Benny.

"You weren't a bad guy, Benny. You drank too much, and you
got stupid notions, but you never hurt anyone. Sorry Maggie
won't get your final message, but it's better for her this way. If
you don't see that, wherever the hell you are, then you're a
selfish old codger and I hope you rot." Whoa, bad choice of
words, there, considering. "I mean, I hope that if there's an
afterlife, yours is miserable. If you don't see that."

No answer from Benny. I took that to mean I'd said enough.
The last of the note blackened and crisped away to fall to the
earth, and then I backed from it and just stared at the grave for
a bit, letting one of those moments of...not deeper thoughts,
but...cessation of thought on a deep level take me.

Eventually, I turned away. Logan was staring at me again. I
gave him a raised eyebrow. "What?"

"Blizzard's movin' in. Don't think we're gonna make it out
before it hits."

"Figures." I headed into the shack to check supplies. I tend to
over-pack when heading into cold wilderness, so with what
we'd brought with us we should be fine for a few days, if
necessary. And hell, we were both pretty tough individuals. If
push came to shove, I was betting we could make it through a
snowstorm without killing ourselves.

I took a moment to pull on an extra layer of warmth, then set
about ordering the shack to make it somewhat less
uncomfortable for a slightly extended stay. There was only the
one bed, little more than a cot really, but there were some extra
blankets that could cushion the floor for whoever elected for it.
Logan was off somewhere outside, so I dug out rations and
started preparing some food with the weak little hot plate I
found in the cupboard. My cooking's absolutely abysmal, but
the rations were plain enough fare and couldn't get much
worse.

Night was falling and the wind was picking up before I heard
the scuff of boots through snow and then caught a whiff of
Logan's wild, masculine scent. (Strange, part of me noted. His
scent's not the same as Victor's, not nearly...but there's
something in common about them. Just as there's something in
common about the men themselves.) The door opened, letting
out precious warmth, and then he tossed a dead, field gutted
rabbit on the counter.

"Thought we could flesh out dinner a bit."

"Sure. Build us a fire, would you?" I prepared the rabbit while
he got a flame going in the long neglected fireplace. He almost
smoked us out before realizing that Benny had shut the
chimney off to preserve heat. By the time the air was semi-
clear again, we had the rabbit roasting and were munching on
the cooling stew I'd already prepared.

Slightly fuller stomachs and the scent of cooking meat brought
on conversation. "So, this Benny guy...you weren't too close
to him."

"Nope. He an' Maggie took me in for a winter, once, but it
was really her I got to know. Benny was just the old drunk in
the corner. Never hurt her or anything, but she deserved
better."

"You were pretty handy with that rabbit. Do that sort o' thing
much?"

"Not lately, but I used to. Had some pretty intensive survival
training a ways back, and then later came out to the woods to
clear my head, from time to time." I was tired of answering
questions. "What's it like, being with the X-Men as long as
you have?"

"It's gotten pretty intense a time or twenty. But ya know...it's
just one o' those things. Ya just deal with the day to day stuff,
and it's only when you look back you see how much has gone
on."

"Quite a lot, from what I heard. You guys have even been to
space." Oops, didn't mean to let that note slip into my voice.
I've always been a touch awed by the stars; by what's Out
There, beyond where we petty little humans can reach. He
caught the tone and smiled faintly, his eyes distant.

"It's...somethin'. Really makes ya value home that much more,
though."

We were avoiding an issue I knew would come up. It had to
be bugging him...might even be the whole reason he came. I'd
been visiting with Vic Creed to try to smooth out some of the
wildness he was feeling, being locked up and treated like...like
something less than human. I understood, after reading up on
him, why the X-Men felt the way they did. I even understood
the necessity for keeping the guy contained and under
observation.

But I also understood what it felt like to be in his position, and
so I'd reached out to him, just a little. And he'd been more
receptive than I'd expected, perhaps just glad to find someone
who didn't bring up the past or the future in every
conversation.

I suspected that Logan thought I considered Vic a friend. Not
quite. More along the lines of an unknown quantity that I
could somewhat empathize with. But if Logan thought I felt
pretty strongly about him, he had to be wondering if I bore him
a grudge for what had happened between them...when Logan
punched a claw through Creed's brain. The other man's healing
factor had kept him alive, but he acted now like...like an
animal. Not the savage, dangerous kind, either. Like a kitten,
or a puppy, or something innocent. Was it real? No telling.
Would it last? I doubted it. But it had certainly changed my
routine, and yes, I was upset that it had happened.

However, I also saw the security tapes of the incident. I heard
what Creed said about hunting down and killing everyone
Logan cared about. I saw the blood flying, and not all of it
Vic's. Under the circumstances, I'd have done the same thing.

Oh, what the hell. Why not get it over with? "Tell me
something, Logan...did you come along to sound me out about
the whole Creed thing?"

He blinked at my directness, but answered readily enough. "In
part."

"Are you wondering if I'm gonna have some sort of fit and try
to tear you a new hole?"

"Thought had crossed my mind."

I grimaced. Rose to turn the rabbit. Sat again. "Well, it can
uncross. I don't blame you. You were well in your rights,
doing what you did."

"You really believe that?" There was true surprise in his voice.

"Wouldn't have said it, otherwise."

His head shook slowly from side to side. "Wild," he mused.
"Even my own teammates think I overdid it, and the lady who
actually spent the most time with him understands."

"Yeah, well...my life's taught me a thing or two about the hard
choices."

"Has it?" He looked at me with something more in his eyes
than I wanted to see. Something like empathy. No wonder,
damn idiot that I was to go and let myself show too much.

Must be getting rattled by the blizzard, I thought. Getting
nervous about the...cold.

"Well," I said with a smile. "Rabbit's probably ready by now."
He didn't object to the rapid change of direction. I suppose he
wasn't too comfortable with the sudden bit of sharing between
us, either.

The rabbit was still rare, but I didn't mind. We partitioned the
meat and fell to with good appetite, though once or twice the
vision of finding Benny tried to intrude. I shoved it away
resolutely and ate. By the time we finished, the wind was
howling with a vengeance outside the little shack, and the walls
were shaking. The space heater wasn't doing much good,
anymore, and neither was the fire. I reflected bitterly that if
Benny hadn't offed himself, he probably _would_ have frozen
to death.

I tried not to show how much the cold was bothering me.

A full stomach finally allowed the exhaustion from a hard day
to crash down. I blinked tiredly at Logan. "Cot or floor?"

"I'll take the floor."

I tucked myself under the blankets and shivered while he
doused the little lantern and slid into his space on the floor.
Cold air blasted through little cracks in the walls. I pulled the
covers up to my ears and tried to think warm thoughts.

Found instead my mind drifting to an endless field of snow. Of
cold biting into my flesh, my lungs, my heart.

No. I could handle this. It wasn't all that bad, really. There
was the cheerful glow of the banked fire (going out! it's going
out!) and the hum of the space heater. It just felt colder than it
was, that was all.

I shivered and stared at the ceiling, trying to recapture the
feeling of being tired. It wasn't working. My instincts for cold
were to stay awake, to force myself on, to warm up and get the
hell out of it. Sleep was...giving in.

Stupid. It really wasn't cold enough to freeze us, not with the
space heater.

Right about then, the generator outside chugged a funny noise.
The space heater sparked once and then went silent, its red
glow fading.

"Well, fuck."

Logan shifted in his blankets and sat up. "Ya might wanna
move over by the fire."

"Yeah," I grumbled. "That'll really make a difference." But I
moved anyway, bringing every blanket on the cot and wrapping
myself in them like a sausage in a bun. He'd shifted over too,
and I saw his slightly amused smile at the picture I presented.

"Shut up," I told him warningly, before he could say a word.
He held up two hands in a gesture of peace, grinning.

I tried to sleep again, but the wind blasted through at odd
intervals, threatening to douse the fire or send sparks onto us,
and it seemed pretty perilous to actually close my eyes. I was
shivering even more, and my mind kept returning to the half-
real, half-imagined memory of men and women standing over
me where I was curled up naked in the snow. That was the
real part. The imagined part was where I tried to ask them
repeatedly for help, and they just laughed. See, I hadn't asked
for help back then. I hadn't spoken unless spoken to, back
then, because if I had they'd have done worse than letting me
freeze. Instead of laughing, they'd just spoken in clinical,
professional voices while they assessed how my body handled
the cold.

I didn't know how much time had passed, but the fire had
lowered a good bit when Logan spoke. "Still can't sleep?"

"Too...damned...cold," I chattered, not even feeling up to
cursing myself for revealing a weakness. It was pretty obvious,
after all. "Why couldn't Benny...have picked...a tropical
island...for a getaway spot?"

I heard blankets rustle, and then he shifted over beside me and
started to unwind my own.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked in a
reasonably calm and steady voice.

"I'm not after your 'virtue' or anything, girl. Relax. Two
bodies in twice the blankets'll be a lot warmer."

"Oh." We wrapped ourselves tightly in the covers, and his
arms slipped around my waist in a gesture that could have been
intimate...but given the situation, I wasn't gonna argue. And it
_was_ warmer, though still not precisely comfortable. After a
while my shivers subsided a bit, and I felt my mind willingly
drift towards hazy sleep and vague dreams.

***

I snapped out of sleep perhaps an hour later. The fire was out
and the air was bitterly chill, but that wasn't what woke me.
Logan's arms had tightened around me, and I felt a tremor pass
through his sleeping body. I shifted around and slid out of his
grasp, and his arms went to clutch against his stomach as if
bound there, holding tight. His face was twisted as though in
pain. His teeth were clenched, and agonized sounding little
groans bled out from his drawn back lips.

"Must be some nightmare," I observed to the air. I placed a
hand over one of his and said his name, quietly.

Then gasped and jerked the hand back as claws sprang from his
hand and sliced three shallow furrows along my palm and
fingers. Cursing at the sting, I held the bleeding hand away
from me and waited for it to heal. He was still moaning, and
occasionally I thought I heard a growl.

Blood stopped flowing, though the wounds still smarted. I
stood and grabbed a rag to wipe off the blood, then slipped
back into the covers and put hands to his shoulders, well away
from the claws.

"Logan, wake up. It's just a nightmare. Wake up."

He shuddered, caught up in something real bad. I didn't want
to be too rough in trying to wake him, since I've known people
who would come out of the dream thinking it was reality, and
if he was fighting someone in his sleep, I wasn't gonna
encourage him to wake up fighting me. Gently, I shook his
shoulders, ran hands along his face, spoke to him. All the
while, I wondered what the hell could be bad enough to cause
that rising odor of fear mixed with pain that tinged his sweat.

His eyes snapped open, staring wildly up through me. In them,
I saw the desperation of the trapped wild thing; being hurt,
being violated, being tortured. In a second, he was gonna go
nuts...I could feel it in the trembling tension in his shoulders,
hear it in the raging rate of his heartbeat, smell it in the wild
mix of agony, terror, and rising rage that wafted off of him like
some obscene cologne.

I pressed his shoulders down hard and shouted his name. The
eyes didn't change, and his hands started to rise for me.
Cursing, swearing, thinking, I raced through options in my
mind in the blink of an eye. With desperate decision, I eased
my grip on his shoulders and crushed my lips over his, hoping
that it would be enough of a dramatic difference from the
horror of his dream that he'd be shocked out of it.

*Please please please let this work...*

For a moment he was frozen under me, his hands hovering
somewhere near, ready to fight if his mind let them. His eyes
still stared wildly, but gradually the focus shifted from past me
to meeting my own eyes. I saw rationality in them at last, and
broke off the one-sided kiss.

"Are you okay?" I asked quietly. His throat worked. I'm sure
the stink of fear and the memory of the nightmare were
wreaking havoc on him.

"I...I..." He closed his arms on me and caught me to him,
pressing his face to my shoulder and trembling all over. I
slipped my arms up around his and sat back, pulling him up
into a seated position so I could wrap my arms around him in
return.

"It's all right," I said softly. "It was a dream." Something
occurred to me, and I added very quietly, "Or maybe a
memory." Didn't know how I guessed that...probably just from
seeing the intensity of the emotions. But the shudder that
wracked him at the word "memory" made it clear I was right. I
closed my eyes and held him, understanding far better than he
knew the power old ghosts of the past can have over us.

"There were these people," I told him. "Years ago. Did some
hard stuff to me. Ran lots of...tests. I get flashbacks
sometimes, like this. Just takes a while to remember what's
real and what's not."

"You're real," he said after a moment. "This goddamned
freezing shack is real."

"Yeah." I felt him squeeze his arms against me gently, then let
go. Sliding back to sit on my heels, I looked at him
searchingly. He still appeared pretty rattled, but more in
control.

And more than a bit embarrassed. I tried to ease it with a grin.
"It's a bitch when these things happen around people you
barely know, huh?"

A forced chuckle. "Yeah." Then he caught sight of my hand,
and the traces of blood that still marred it. He caught it swiftly
and held it up, looking for injuries. Only faint red lines marred
the flesh now.

"I did that?!"

"No biggie. My fault, really. It's fine."

"Oh god, I'm sorry, Kai. I didn't mean..."

"I know. It's nothing."

"It _ain't_ nothin'. I cut you."

I flexed the hand easily, smiling. "All better, see? I'm fine."
Another blast of wind rattled the shack, reminding me that it
was really, really cold. I pulled my hand away from him and
caught up blankets, snugging them around me. Then, seeing
the way he shivered a bit but didn't try to get closer for
warmth, I reached out and wrapped the blankets around his
shoulders, too, so that we were close together and sharing
body heat. He held himself stiffly, perhaps out of guilt for
injuring me. Since we were pressed so tightly together, that
was a bit awkward.

"Relax, would ya? I'm fine, you're fine, but we're both gonna
freeze if we don't keep warm."

Gradually, he relaxed against me, though it took a long while
for him to start easing into sleep again. We were considerably
warmer, though, so I let my eyes close and my breathing steady
until once again, I was claimed by the foggy world of dreams.

***

Continued In Part Two