Thread: Logan and Laura meet
Characters: Logan and Laura NPCs: The barkeep, some unlucky mutant Location: On Laura’s trail from Joe’s Bar & Grill to Essex Home Timeline: January 13th, 1976, night time Description: Logan gets on the trail of this girl he’s heard about, the one with claws like him. Rating: PG-13
By the time Logan got to Joe’s Bar she was gone. That was the message he got from Joe, who looked over from behind the bar as soon as Logan came in and shook his meaty head. Logan wasn’t entirely surprised. Piotr had come by HQ probably half an hour ago, mentioned in passing that he thought he’d seen that girl people talked about. The one who had rolled a few fellows, the one with claws. Logan had given a shrug, pretended he didn’t care. And he didn’t. But no sense letting some drunk get rolled on Brotherhood turf. Right?
Lucky for Logan the chick being gone didn’t have to stop him. He spoke a few words with Joe, found out where she’d been plying her trade. Spent the evening making eyes at some pervert, according to Joe, girl couldn’t be of age. They headed out together a bit ago. Joe’s bar was no stranger to hookers or underage drinkers, Logan didn’t even bother batting an eye about that. And he didn't bother answering Joe’s unasked question about why the Brotherhood was so interested in this particular underage drinker.
The table they had been at was still empty. Cleaned off, but lucky Joe’s staff didn’t seem to use a hell of a lot of cleaning fluid--the smells of the two were still clear. A guy and a girl, that was clear, some cologne, no hint of perfume. His nostrils were wide, breathing deep, but he avoided in his inclination to lean forward closer to the ground. He could already feel the eyes on him as he circled the table. Logan nodded to Joe and followed the scent out the front door.
A few blocks away, Laura was trying to get money the only way she knew how, the way Ilyana had taught her. She’d never done it alone before, but she could. She had the man pressed up against a wall in an alley, the claws of one had sharp against his throat, the others down as close to the fly of his jeans as she could manage. (She’d learned men tended to take her more seriously faster if she threatened their favourite organ, and much as it made her blush, there was a sick sort of appeal to it. It made her feel bad, like some villain from a gritty noir crime paperback.)
When he finally handed over his money, only forty-three dollars but it was enough to get her some food, at least, she retracted her claws and took a step back away from him. Without Ilyana there, it didn’t feel right. She felt... well, still bad, but in a bad way. In a way that made her realize she was a crook, and she was scaring people. There was an apology halfway out of her mouth when the man moved, and one hand was around her throat, slamming her back into the wall and cutting off her air supply while the other pressed over her mouth. She presumed to stop her screaming, but she didn’t scream.
She just stared at him while her face started to burn. Literally, burn, like he was pouring acid on her or something, and it wasn’t until she started to struggle that he slammed her head back into the wall again and everything went black.
It was presumably only a few minutes later when she woke up behind the dumpster in that same alley. She figured that because the light hadn’t changed much, and head injuries never took long anyway. She’d been hurt plenty worse in her life and always came back from it. Oddly, she still had the money she’d stolen. She wondered if her heart had stopped and the guy had panicked, thinking he’d killed her. That was a new one.
She got up out of the mucky mess he’d dumped her in at the end of that stupid dead end alley and began heading back towards the street. That hadn’t exactly gone as planned. At least whatever he’d done to her face seemed to have healed itself.
Before she reached the entrance to the street, however, someone moved into the mouth of the alley, blocking it, and she froze. Great. What now?
“Um, excuse me,” she said, hoping he’d just move out of her way.
By the time Logan arrived at the mouth of the alley, he had given into his instincts, hunched over, knees bent and eyes half closed as he followed the scent. The two scents, both leading off down the alley. It had been some time ago that they went this way, and so Logan didn’t necessarily expect to find them. Still, his senses grew heightened, his body poised for instant reaction. His claws didn’t pop though; there was plenty of time for that, and besides he usually didn’t need them.
He heard her movement and caught her scent - fresh now, and different. Logan instinctively positioned himself to prevent her escape. Now, here in person he could read more from the complex interplay of scents on her. One wasn’t so complex - filth. Smelled like she’d rolled in it. Another was blood - hers or his, he didn’t know. Logan had been too late, one way or another.
“Stop right there,” he growled. He was short, not a big brick like Piotr, and there was no way he could fill the mouth of the alley. But his presence managed to, a cold efficient menace in his stance.
“Where’s the guy?” he asked the girl, taking in a long slow sniff, sensing for traces of the man in the alley. His head tilted slightly, this way and that. Seemed like maybe the guy had hoofed it already. Still, no reason to relax. Paranoia was drilled deep into Logan, that of a soldier and something more as well.
Laura had a single moment of terror where she thought he was a cop, but her logical side quickly ruled that out. Or... mostly ruled that out. Weren’t detectives sometimes in plain clothes? Oh god, what if he was on their case, what if what she and Ilyana had been doing had caught the attention of the police? Laura didn’t want to go to jail.
She swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself, taking a little step back from him. Denial, denial, denial. That’s what she figured was the best way out of this. He hadn’t caught her actually doing anything, after all.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said, voice only shaking a little bit, as she watched him closely for any sign he was about to attack her too. She was scared to get too close. She just wanted to go home -- wherever that was, the orphanage, she supposed -- and get cleaned up and pretend she’d never left this time. It had been stupid to sneak out alone, and she didn’t even know where to look for Julian. “Look, I have to get going. ...People are waiting for me. Are you... I mean. Can I go?”
As Logan got a good look at the girl he relaxed a bit. Not that it was visible in his stance or the expression on his face, but she certainly didn’t look like she was going to come after him. She was younger than he had expected too - figuring that was part of the story that was exaggerated. Young, and to an untrained eye maybe looking too scrawny to be a threat. But Logan’s eyes picked up on the musculature under that skin, even the way she held herself - intimidated, yes, but with a straightness to her back that suggested a surprising confidence.
He didn’t exactly move, and he still looked like he could snatch her if she ran for it, but he stood up a bit straighter, like he was lounging there. Logan was dressed in some worn jeans and a leather jacket. He didn’t have any sort of gang insignia but it wasn’t hard to guess what sort of crowd he ran with.
“The guy you came here with.” Logan’s eyes flicked beyond her into the alley though he knew the fellow had gone. “That your blood or his?” he asked, glancing now at some of the blood on the side of her head.
Laura couldn’t figure out what this guy wanted, but whether or not he was a friend of that guy’s or if he was the law, which seemed less and less likely the more details about him she noticed, she just wanted to go. She had had enough. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t a hardened criminal and this wasn’t how her life was supposed to go and she just wanted to take a shower.
Still, his words had her reaching up to her head. The cut that had been there was healed now, of course, but the blood was still sticky in her hair, and her face tingled a bit with the few little remaining repairs from whatever he’d done to her face. She bet he had the power of acid secretion or something, because that had burned like nothing she’d ever felt before. After looking at her reddened fingertips, Laura wiped the blood on her pants and turned her attention back to the guy who looked like he was ready to jump her at any second.
“It’s mine, okay? The guy fine. I didn’t hurt him. And you can have his stupid money back if that’s what you want, but he didn’t have much anyway. I just... I need to go home, okay, so get out of my way,” she said, trying to sound firm but she just thought she sounded young and desperate. She wasn’t going to wait for him to attack her to. She’d just learned that trying to be good didn’t get anyone anywhere on the streets, so young and desperate or not, she clenched her hands into fists and extended her claws, adding, “Get out of my way or I’ll have to hurt you.”
Despite the fact that Logan had come here specifically to find a girl with claws, he still reeled a bit when she popped them. Lucky for him she brought him right back down to earth by threatening him.
“You ought to know better than that, kid,” he informed her, taking a couple steps forward without giving up his control of the alley mouth. “This is Mutant Town, you never know who has claws.” With that extended his arms down and snapped his claws out.
He stood there facing her, letting her see, letting her think about it while he examined her. It wasn’t just that they both had claws. He’d seen a couple other mutants, Morlocks mostly, with some kind of claws, but nothing like these. This girl’s though, he couldn’t deny the similarity. The back of his neck prickled as he smelled the air, wishing he could tell something more from her scent.
“I heard there was a girl with claws. I thought I’d better see it,” he stated simply, the threat from his voice gone now. Simply stating why he’d come. He wondered what she’d make of it, if anything.
Before she could respond to his approach, or his words, Laura was struck mute and still by the revelation that he had them too. The fight visibly went out of her as the tension of her arms relaxed and she was reduced to simply stare at him. His claws were like hers. There were three instead of two, but it was close enough, and she looked up at him with wide eyes.
“Do you heal too?” she asked, voice small. She was suddenly reminded that she’d come to New York to try and find her father, but had given that up ages ago. The city was too big, and she had no real resources. She had nowhere to start. But now here was a man who had found her who had the same mutation, or at least partly the same, and she couldn’t help but think it was too easy, too good to be true. She felt doubt and wariness flare up inside her, and she raised her hands again, claws still out. “Because I do. You can’t kill me, so you might as well not try.”
She wasn’t scared, not really. Laura hadn’t been scared for a long time. What was the worst that could happen, really? She’d already found out she could break her neck and shatter her skull jumping off a roof, and her body fixed itself in a matter of minutes. She’d cut off the tip of her finger once just to see if it would reattach. It had. She’d been meaning to find some train tracks and try it with her leg.
The point was, she wasn’t scared. She was just... sure it was too good to be true. It was too easy. This man couldn’t be her father. It was just a trick, or the similarities were a fluke, or something. She’d stopped hoping long ago, since hope only led to getting let down.
It went unsaid between them, the possibility, the explanation. Logan was trying not to think about it himself. He’d seen a lot of mutants, seen a lot with similar mutations. But never two that were so similar. Even the ones that were like X, where it was all in their head, there always seemed to be differences. Hell, she had two claws, not three, but even Logan couldn’t delude himself enough to think that was significant.
He watched her raise her claws and bluster about her healing powers. It made him grin, showing off his teeth, only the slightly bit feral looking. He liked her cockiness, even if it were maybe a bit naive. “Maybe I can,” he answered neutrally, finding himself irrationally afraid of revealing too much to her, revealing it all. “But don’t get too cocky. There’s a way to kill anything.”
He trailed off, flashes of memories in his mind, the things they’d done to his body, to test it, to see what he could do - to see if they could hurt him. Apparently they’d hadn’t found a way to kill him, or hadn’t wanted to, but it hadn’t been pretty. “And there’s things worse than dying. Especially for a young girl.”
He sounded gruff, but inside he was pleased, at least a little. She wasn’t scared, and that was a good step. But hadn’t seen enough trouble. Logan knew he’d seen plenty, and there was worse out there for a girl like her. Being tough and being stupid sometimes overlapped.
The dark look on his face and the sinister comment about things worse than dying had Laura swallowing hard. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t scared of violence, but there were some things she was scared of. Some things she wanted to keep for herself, and the thought of having those choices taken from her was enough for her to back away from him. He couldn’t be her father. If he was, she’d know. She’d always thought she’d just feel it, but she didn’t want it to be him. She didn’t want it to be someone who could say something like that to her. She’d always hoped it would be... some nice man with a nice family who would take her in and fix her life.
She wondered if the disappointment showed on her face, if it came through the bravado. She’d never been very good at bravado anyway, and standing there covered in garbage, she knew she probably wasn’t at her best. Plus, she still didn’t know what he wanted with her, or why he was blocking her way, and after saying something like what he just had, she just kind of wanted to run.
Maybe she was faster. Maybe she could outrun him. He was stocky, after all, and she knew she was quick, but she had to go right past him and he just looked so ready.
“How about you just tell me what you want?” she asked, voice going soft again, though this time her arms didn’t fall. She didn’t shift a muscle out of her defensive stance. “I only have forty-two dollars, so if it’s money, you’re out of luck.”
Logan snorted. “I don’t need to roll punks in the alley to get by, thanks,” he told her. “And you shouldn’t either. It’s dangerous, even with claws and healing, especially in this town. There’s some folks around here I couldn’t even scratch. You get knocked out and you don’t know where you’ll wake up, healed or not. Might be jail for a good long time. Might be something worse.” He wasn’t sure why he was going on like this. What did it matter if this punk girl wanted to get herself in trouble?
He shook his head as if shaking off whatever had gotten into him, planting a sterner look on his face. she wanted to know what he wanted … well, what did he want? He’d been curious, really. He could care less who was getting rolled by who in this messed up town. Normally. “I just heard there was a girl with claws, thought I’d see …” he said, trailing off. No reason to talk about why that was, really. “Anyway, this part of town, it’s Brotherhood of Mutants territory. That means you don’t get to pull this shit here.” Just about every part of town was someone’s territory but Logan had done more lecturing than he was comfortable with already. “That gent, whoever he was, is under our protection. So, I’m just here to say, move it along.” Well, that was better.
When he first started talking, she watched him with a skeptical look. He was pretending to be concerned for her safety, really? Laura had learned you couldn’t trust anyone around here. Adults especially. They all wanted something, they all had ulterior motives. Even Essex, who ran an orphanage, did weird experiments on the kids, and gave her stuff that made her sick for days. She didn’t believe he was trying to help her, just like she didn’t believe this man she didn’t even know was trying to help her.
It made more sense that he was there to tell her to stop doing what she was doing -- she had expected someone to tell her that if she got caught. She didn’t know what the Brotherhood of Mutants was, but considering the title and the talk of territory, she assumed it was something she didn’t want to mess with.
“I won’t do it again. At least not here, okay? Can I go now?” she asked.
Logan shrugged his thick shoulders. “Word to the wise, unless you know where our territory ends, and where all the other gangs are, probably best not to do it at all.” There his mouth went again. What had got into him? Logan stepped sideways, making way for the girl to leave the alley. The girl. He didn’t even know what her name was. Glancing down at those claws - they both had theirs absentmindedly jutting from their hands - he wondered again. Part of him didn’t want to know her name, nothing about her. Part of him did. Wanted to know why she was rolling guys for $40 in an alley. How she’d ended up in Mutant Town. Where she came from …
He thought of introducing himself, but bit his tongue. The less she knew the better, that part of him said. Instead he just shrugged again and leaned himself against the corner of the building like he was going to just hang there all night. With the streetlight on her he could see the trash on her he had smelled, some drying blood on her head. He pushed down the urge to reach out and clean it off her smooth back that dirty dark hair.
Though Laura didn’t know, her thoughts were very similar to Logan’s. Laura wanted to know who he was too, and she wanted to know where he was from and if there was any possibility that he was her father. Especially now that he’d again said something that suggested he didn’t want her in trouble.
But then he stepped aside, and so she lowered her hands and watched him for any sign it was a trick as she began to edge towards the street, towards freedom. She was past him, or at least to the point where she could run and he probably wouldn’t be able to grab her, even if her back was still pressed against the wall and she was closer to him than she’d been yet.
She paused in her retreat and looked at him for a moment, trying to pick out if anything there reminded her of herself, if there was anything that she might’ve gotten from him. Besides his mutation, that was.
She wasn’t sure asking about him was quite safe, but she bit her lip, cast a quick look up and down the street to make sure the situation was what she thought it was, and then turned back to him and asked quickly, as though spitting it out before she lost her nerve, “Did you know a woman named Sarah? I mean, about sixteen years ago.”
She couldn’t give him her last name. She hadn’t even said it aloud since she’d run away, and she wasn’t about to start now. But maybe... well. Sarah was probably the most common name on the planet, but it was worth a shot.
Logan watched her as she passed. She was wary, which was smart, but he wasn’t. He didn’t think she’d try something. If she did, well he didn’t doubt that he could handle it.
As she came close he found himself thinking much like Laura, examining her face for some telltale sign, some hint of what he was trying not to think about. She didn’t look unlike him, but there was no striking similarity that jumped out at him. Given how rough a life Logan lived, and how spotty his memory was, he couldn’t even say how much his face resembled his true one anyway.
He had just pushed those thoughts away, letting her go, letting it go, when she spoke. It sent a shiver down his spine, her words. Not because he knew any Sarah, but simply because he knew what that question meant. He knew that the girl had been pondering the same thing as him, and now it was there in the air between them.
Logan’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. He hadn’t been ready to confront this thought. And he had no real answer for her. How could he explain that sixteen years ago was like another lifetime for him? He had memories, sure. But they were riddled through like Swiss cheese with dark holes, and jumbled like an unassembled puzzle. He remembered women, yes. But who was who, and where he knew them, and when? It was impossible to say.
“I didn’t know any Sarah,” he said, more gruffly than he intended, a bit of the animal loose in his voice. He was scared, he realized, in a way he hadn’t been when he saw her claws, like he never was in a fight. “Not that I can remember,” he added after taking a breath, calming himself. His eyes looked her over once again, carefully, as if searching for a clue.
“Right. Never mind,” Laura said quickly, reacting more to his short response than to his much calmer addendum. She stood there, staring at him for a moment longer, feeling more emotional than the situation probably called for. It had just been a bad day and she missed Julian and she smelled like garbage and she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t be out here by herself. The tears in her eyes had nothing to do with this stupid situation. She hadn’t really expected him to say anything else, anyway. She knew she’d probably never find her father, and if she did, he probably wouldn’t want anything to do with her.
Laura turned away from the man, who’s name she didn’t even know, retracted her claws, and started walking brusquely. She didn’t want him to see the moisture in her eyes, and she rubbed them dry as she walked away.
Even if Essex gave her weird drugs that made her feel awful, at least she had a roof over her head at the orphanage, three meals, and Ilyana. Where else could she go back to, anyway? She’d run away from her home and she’d sworn she’d never go back there. Her options were pretty limited, after all. And even if this guy was her dad, clearly he didn’t want anything to do with her. So.
She just really couldn’t get away from there fast enough.
Logan could read the upset in her face before she turned away, as well as in the set of her shoulders as she stalked off. He watched her claws retract into her hands and felt another shiver in his spine. He did the same with his claws, standing in the alley way and watching her figure disappear down the road.
Except it couldn’t really disappear from him. As soon as she was out of sight Logan pushed himself off the wall and followed her. When he reached the point she had vanished out of sight he used her scent, following her trail as easily as if it were glowing. He didn’t need to stay in sight to follow her, strolling along with his hands in his pockets. He was just curious, he told himself.
At the end of the trail he stood at the wall that surrounded the Essex Home for Wayward Youth. Logan stared up at the lights of the building beyond. Her scent clearly went over the wall. He scratched at his jaw idly, watching the building for some time. It was a roof over her head, something the runaways on the street longed for. And it seemed she could get out when she wanted. Not the worst of worlds, he supposed. Logan turned on his heel eventually and strolled away, heading for the bar. This night deserved a drink.