Call Back Yesterday

Damned for Caring

The three Logans puzzled Remy. There was the Logan he met back in '90, the one he called Original Logan. That man was set for blood, no mistake, and it was obvious he knew how to spill it. But there was a weary honour to his anger, a penitent Lancelot avenging the death of Guinevere.

Logan in 2005, mentally tabbed X-Logan, seethed with confused anger. Something or someone in the school soothed it to the point where Remy wasn't the least bit afraid of him. X-Logan would think twice before stabbing. He might even run from a fight if it meant protecting the students.

Then there was Logan of 2013, Doomsday Logan. The man scared the shit out of Remy because that man had nothing to lose. His desperation outlined every sinew in his deformed body. He was willing to die for his mission and he didn't care who had had to kill and what the collateral damage. What could have flipped X-Logan's mellowness so completely upside-down?

Hazmat suit, forty pound helmet, big metal sphere, wormhole, puke. Remy went through the second time and the vertigo worsened. He barely got the sphere open this time. Vomit dribbled down inside the hazmat suit. Dragging himself out of the sphere, he shakily got to his feet. The sphere made a nice solid surface to prop up against. He stayed there for a few minutes, filling his chest with air.

To keep things simple, he went to the same rental place to get the same Ford Mustang and drove the same way. He couldn't enjoy the view this time, preoccupied with assassination methods. It wasn't his forte. The way he saw it, there was no chance in hell he'd be able to kill someone who could remake the world on the atomic level. Only by sheer luck did Logan manage to stab her and even then, Grey's inexperience with her powers allowed him to heal. Doomsday Logan told him about dimensions with whole cities recreated according to her whim and entire planets consumed by her hunger.

Damn but Rogue made all of this time travel bullshit kind of all right. Even if he couldn't touch, that first sight when she opened the door blew his weariness away.

"Come into the study. I'll get one of them to come out." She opened the door wider, gesturing into the wide foyer. "Just go through those doors and I'll get you something to drink."

He stuck his hands in his pockets. "How long until you graduate?"

"Just one semester," was her answer. She smoothed the wrinkles from her gloves then crossed her arms. The "Stay Away" sign lit up in neon.

"Good luck with that."

"With what?" And there he was, All American Mutant Ken, Bobby Drake, with his spiky hair and his arm around Rogue's waist.

"I was telling Remy that we graduate high school at the end of the semester," she said.

"Yeah, cool, huh? Are you in college right now?" asked Drake.

Remy shook his head. "I found work straight out of school." Which was true; he jacked cars expertly by the age of thirteen and dropped out of formal schooling before he turned fifteen. The only good to come out of The Island were the books the soldiers and scientists brought in.

He told the Xavier the same story as before and, like before, the old man insisted on waiting until the next day before he stopped Summers from heading out the door.

"You say the last time you tried to change time, you were unsuccessful because you didn't personally see to Jean's death. Do you intend to go to Alkali Lake yourself?" asked Xavier. Summers, Logan, McCoy and Munroe surrounded him, in matching poses of distrust. Since blunt truth didn't work last time, Remy went for charm.

"I know y'all still recovering from her death. From the sound of it, she was everyone's big sister, hein? What I'm saying ain't matching to what you know of her and, hey, I'd love to be wrong. All I'm asking is for you all to wait and see. If she don't come out, then I'm crazy and you can poke my brain until it's right again. If she come out good, we throw a welcome back party. She come out bad--" He did his best to look apologetic, "-- you gotta let me do what I was sent here to do. It ain't just my life, it's at least a hundred other people she's gonna destroy."

"Jean wouldn't do that," said Summers.

"Boy, no one hopes you're right more than me."

Logan volunteered to show him to a room which, knowing what little he did of both Original Logan and Doomsday Logan, put Remy on the edge. Best case scenario, he'd threaten to cut off his balls; worst case, he'd make good on the threat. You never could tell with the Wolverine.

To his surprise, Logan was chatty. "What did you do after the Island?"

"Went back to New Orleans to grab my stuff. Flew over to Cancun and laid low for a while in case Stryker got whiff of me. Damn but that's a pretty place. Bikinis far as the eye can see."

"A lot of tourists with fat wallets."

He shrugged, nice and easy. "True enough. At the tables or on the street, makes no matter to me. Credit cards are where it's at now. I got a good connection; they skim a dollar from a couple thousand people every month or so. Keeps me out of the water between jobs."

"And you stay untraceable."

"Mais sho'. SSN's mean government records and swear by my good looks and towering ego, Stryker has access to those."

Logan whipped around. "You know Stryker?"

"Yeah." Remy glanced down at Logan's forearms. His claws slithered under his skin, ready to emerge.

"How?"

"I know you got shot bad back on the Island but you ain't remembered yet?"

"Cajun, I can't remember a damned thing before I woke up with your ugly mug staring down at me."

Remy let out a laugh. "I didn't know you felt like that about me, cher."

"Fuck that. Seeing you was probably what traumatised me." But he started to crack a smile.

The man was too proud to ask but Remy read desperation in his stance. So he told Logan what little he knew of his history over a couple beers. All right, so he skipped the bit about the elbow to the face and the fire escape. "None of this is lighting any bulbs, is it?"

"No," said Logan. "I get bits and pieces when I dream but it never stays around long enough."

"Lucky man." At his disbelieving snort, Remy said, "I like rum as much as the next person but I wish to God I didn't need it to forget. Stop looking or you could find Stryker looking back."

"Stryker's dead."

Ah. Hard to believe when Remy still felt a bull's eye between his eyes. "Did you make him suffer?"

"I didn't make it quick."

"Good."

Nothing happened for the rest of the day. May 8th was equally boring. By lunchtime on May 9, Remy began to believe maybe he was crazy but he felt the chip under his skin, ticking away. The twenty-first century had much to recommend it. MP3 players were the best of these, immediately followed by twenty-four hour gourmet coffee shops and high-definition digital television. On the downside, Kurt Cobain was dead, restaurants forbade smoking indoors and there was nothing on TV except reality shows.

Summers went out of his way to die. Well, okay, maybe that was just Remy's interpretation of the events but when a man tailed him on a bike, going at 100 mph on winding country roads without a helmet, he got to thinking. As far as he knew, Summers' optic blasts couldn't protect his fool head from cracking. Remy leaned into a hairpin turn. His elbow skimmed the asphalt. Was it just him or did his microchip tick louder?

They shrieked to a stop at a strip mall. Remy yanked his helmet off, his teeth clenching as he dismounted. "What the fuck, Summers?"

The other man rolled his shoulders meaninglessly. "We need to pick up bathroom supplies."

"We coulda done that four strip malls ago."

"I like this mall."

"Bullshit. You're trying to make my job harder than it need to be."

"Gosh, you think so?" Damn those shades of his anyway. Summers held himself as still as... well, as still as Remy himself and he couldn't read a thing from his body language.

"I'm just trying to keep you alive."

"And keep Jean dead," Summers shot back. "That's not exactly going to put you in my good books."

"You really want an evil zombie girlfriend?"

He went all up in Remy's face. "Want to say that again?"

"Okay. Tasteless, yeah, but considering she's going to go psycho and kill you when she comes back, I think you're protecting her too much."

"Don't use that word."

Nonplussed, Remy asked, "What word?"

"Psycho. Jean has-- had-- a chronic mental illness. It's the same as having diabetes or allergies. She went to therapy and took medication. She had good days and bad days but it was under control. Calling her a psycho is the same as calling her a mutie and expecting her to kill people because it's 'in her nature'."

The shop doors slid open. Summers grabbed a plastic basket, stalking forward as though Remy wasn't beside him.

"Did you know she was like that when you got together?"

"Why do you care?"

"I'm a curious kinda cat."

"Scientists don't name their lab rats because they know they'll have to be destroyed at the end of the experiment. You're helping us buy toilet paper and disposable razors."

That statement gave Remy a pause. He understood what Summers was getting at and he was right. But he couldn't help himself. Remy liked people. He liked to know people, talk with them, watch them, figure out how they tick. A place like Xavier's? A time like this? Might as well let a preschooler loose in a candy shop and tell him not to eat.

"So, you got with her before or after you knew she was sick?" He was going to shoot himself in the foot this time around. Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time.

When he wasn't babysitting Summers or checking up on Xavier, Remy hung around the younger students. They were fun, them, all giggles and shrieks. They played dodgeball and kicked his ass in Super Mario Galaxy.

"You're good with them," said Munroe. "Have you got children of your own?"

"Naw, not one anyone's told me about. 'Course, I travel a lot. You don't happen to have any unbearably cute possedès, 'round twelve to sixteen years old?"

"I'm afraid at that age, most children act as though they're possessed."

"Co', they can't all be mine. I ain't that big of a slut." He winked even as he bent down to carry Sarah, a tiny thing who'd become his tail since his arrival. She snuggled into his neck, her horns scratching up his neck. He flipped up his jacket collar over the spot.

Munroe struggled against her smile. "I doubt that. Do all females fall in love with you or just the ones within a ten foot radius?"

"Why you ask? Is it working on you?"

She rolled her eyes. " Try not to get too attached. You may not be able to do your job." Her disapproval stiffened her stride as she walked away. She liked him about as much as Summers. Probably was Grey's friend. Then again who wasn't Grey's friend around here? From what he could tell, she was a step down from the Virgin Mother.

Sarah stuck out her arm for his perusal. "Remy, I breaked my arm." Sure enough a bone spike that had been there this morning was just a stub now, oozing lymph.

"Ah, honeychild, you all right? It don't hurt none?"

"Nuh-uh."

"You just saying that 'cause you're brave." He kissed her temple and smoothed her hair.

"Remy, what's your job?"

The students didn't know anything about Grey's supposed resurrection. Instead, current gossip centred on Worthington Pharmaceutical's anti-mutation therapy, marketed as The Cure. Remy snorted. Robert Smith couldn't be too happy with that trademark violation.

"What do you think about it?" asked Jubilee. She and the rest of the senior students sat in the second floor study, books askew on all the desks although Remy ha yet to see actual studying.

He winked. "You just trying to get me to answer your ethics homework."

"No really!"

He noticed Rogue lean forward to listen to his answer just as Bobby leaned back, turning his embrace in an awkward pull on her shoulder.

"I think everyone's gotta make that choice on their own then live with the consequences," he said. "'Don't put much trust anyone who sells a cure to the highest bidder, me. 'Cause that's exactly what I would do."

The solemnity dissolved into laughter for everyone except Rogue who bit her bottom lip. Remy found her foot under the table and nudged it lightly. Her eyes widened. He nudged her again, this time by stepping lightly on her toes. Suppressing a grin, she pulled away. She was fixing to get the Cure, he realised. He didn't blame her, knowing what he did about her power. People needed touch. She had to be aching for human contact.

And damn but he had to stop that train of thought right there. He might be only three years older physically but chronologically, he was being a pedophile. How old would he be in '05? Thirty-seven? And her only seventeen. That was just wrong. Maybe in another lifetime.

They sat together out on the roof, him and Rogue, every night now since his arrival. (His second arrival. This time travelling thing was going to give him a headache.)

"It gets so stuffy in there, y'know? Everyone crowds. They don't even realise it. It's like there's no such thing as personal space any more." She picked at a thread on the tip of her gloved fingers.

"I don't mind the noise some. Every time I light up around there, Xavier tells me he's gonna turn me into a six year old girl."

She laughed. "He says that to Logan, too."

"Hein. Last thing I need is more in common with him." He flicked at his cigarette. "You don't mind none, do you?"

"I don't like the smell and I think what you're doing to your lungs is disgusting but it's a free country. Suck in as much cancer as you want."

"Thanks, chere."

"Don't mention it."

Heat from the daytime leaked from the roofing tiles. Apparently, the weather was unusually warm but Remy rarely felt heat. Part of his mutation, he reckoned. He zipped his jacket to his neck, the cigarette flopping at the corner of his lip. Ash flecked his sleeve.

Down in the garden, Drake froze the fountain for Pryde. He shaped blades on the soles of his shoes, took her hands and twirled her around. They laughed and didn't look up.

"High school sucks," said Rogue.

"Glad I dropped out."

"You say that pretty casually."

"Hein, the way I talk and dress, my job or the lack thereof, all pretty much declare to the world that I'm a no-good coonass. Don't see the point denying it."

"I'm sorry."

"Why? Folk're fine 'round the card table or in the nightclubs but in all other ways, I'm invisible. And I like that all right; makes it easier to bilk 'em dry."

"So why are you up here with me when you could be downstairs with everyone else?" she asked pointedly.

"Maybe I like the company."

"Bull."

Lightly, not wanting to spook her, he sought out the prominences of her spine through her knitted top. She didn't turn but she didn't pull away either, her eyes stayed on the two figures skating below. He knew, well as he knew the docks of New Orleans, her attention wasn't on them.

"I'm going to take the Cure as soon as I graduate," she said. The silence amplified her every breath and the creak of his leather sleeve. Her lashes fluttered every time he circled the bump between her shoulder blades. She tensed when he dipped into the small of her back. She didn't lean any closer but neither did she pull away. He sat there with her, touched her, long after Drake and Pryde re-entered the house.

This was how Logan went hard, became Doomsday Logan back in 2015. Living with these folk, especially the kids, having them around you, keeping you warm then losing them. Did Grey kill the kids when she went on her rampage or did their deaths come afterward? What changed the face of the planet? What was Legacy and how did it kill thousands at a time in tickertape news, like football scores. How did someone who healed from anything, with bones harder than diamonds, turn into a B-film monster?