wolvverine (wolvverine) wrote in x_2012, @ 2010-07-25 00:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | professor x, wolverine |
Who: Wolverine, NPC!Xavier
What: Narrative. Explains Logan's whereabouts during his more recent disappearance
When: Saturday morning
Where: Haven cemetery
Warnings: Brief but graphic description of violent crime scene, language, NPC death, extreme anguish
Logan was strangely silent throughout the whole service and interment. As far as he was concerned, that thing in the box was only so much meat. Not that he wouldn't gut anyone who dared even look at it funny but, still... That wasn't Serena any more. There was no life, no pulse. No scent but that of decay. He had kept a lock of her hair that still smelled of her a little. He couldn't believe she was gone. He couldn't believe he wasn't out there looking for her killer and clawing him to pieces, except nothing was ever simple when it came to his nemesis.
Creed.
He had taken Serena up to a cabin further upstate after Karr up and skipped town on him. The loss of the son he'd never known and with whom he had just started to establish some sort of amicable relationship had hit him harder than he'd ever let on, and he needed a break. With all this Cure and Legacy virus business out of the hands of doers and into the hands of thinkers and scientists, there was really nothing he could do, and they knew where to reach him if they needed him. So he took his lady love away for a long weekend, possibly more, if he could have talked her into being away from her shop and her hangar and her planes and machines for any longer than that.
On the second day, Logan had decided they needed fresh meat, so he went hunting at the crack of dawn. The truth was he needed some quality time with nature and his feral side, and Serena seemed to be loving the quiet and busied herself 'fixing the place up', saying it needed a female touch. Logan got to thinking that maybe he'd talk his boy into coming up here with him sometime.
Logan was humming as he came back to the cottage with a smallish deer draped over his shoulders. The metallic tang of the deer's blood masked the other scents until he got almost to the front step. He saw the door was ajar almost at the same time that the scent of death, human death, assaulted his nose. He dropped the deer and rushed inside to a scene out of nightmares. Serena had been savaged, but obviously not before her telekinetic powers put her assailant through a wall, thrashing the place up in the process. There was blood everywhere, but for a long time Logan could only stare at Serena's unblinking eyes with horror. This was somehow his fault, wasn't it? He had brought her here. This couldn't be a coincidence. Someone had done this to get at him, hadn't they? In the back of his mind he already knew who it was. His accursed scent was everywhere, taunting him, mocking him mercilessly.
He looked to the side, where the blood splatter thinned out but seemed to have odd shapes. Letters. The bastard had written him a message in Serena's blood.
WISH YOU'D BEEN HERE, RUNT
Logan howled, pained anger and frustration seeping from him like a tangible thing. He knelt down and cradled Serena's body to his chest after delicately closing her eyes. So much loss. It was unimaginable. And this woman was the only person in the Haven who had always treated him like a man, not an animal. Even Magneto and Xavier, who were unfailingly polite with him, smelled of caution with the vaguest whiff of fear whenever Logan was around. Only Serena constantly reminded him of his humanity. He was rattled by the deafening roars he realized were coming from him.
It was the beast that dashed out of the house on all fours, making a circuit around the house looking for the scent, making sure the one he'd caught wasn't a false scent. He followed until the trail became one of gasoline and machinery. The bastard had had a vehicle waiting for him, and he either hadn't been alone or he had recently stolen said vehicle. Possibly the latter. There yet more blood in the air. Creed was now toying with him for reasons all his own. "You coward," he growled. He then roared it, the echo bouncing from trees and mountains around him. "COWARD!! I WILL FIND YOU AND I WILL KILL YOU, damned COWARD!!!"
Those had been the last words he'd uttered until he had reached the Haven with Serena's body, to make sure she got a proper burial where that malignant animal couldn't easily dig it up just to spite him. It was the only reason why he didn't bury her up in the mountains. Logan had sleepwalked through life since, speaking mostly in monosyllables unless strictly necessary. Until now.
Now he just sat there, back in present time, staring numbly at her tomb. What to do now, he wondered? In the mental state he was in, maybe he should ask James to join him. Creed needed killing, but there was something he needed to do first. He had told Xavier as much that morning.
"I'm gunna find him, and I'm gonna kill'im," Logan had grumbled when asked, looking Charles straight in the eye, as if daring him to say any different. There was a meaningful pause, and then Logan averted his gaze. "But first I need to find m'son, and drag his ass back here if I have to, where he'll be safe." Another pause, and he grimaced before amending himself. "Safer..."
"Do what you need to do, Logan, but please remember you are needed, and wanted, here," Xavier replied without missing a beat.
Logan's response was an eloquent yet noncommittal grunt.
He knew what he had to do, and he had the motivation to do it. Right that second, however, he figured he could stand to guard Serena's body in death like he had failed to do in life, at least for a little bit longer.