Spirit Quest Chapter 1: Father's Day by DreamWeaver
Author's note #1: Although SPIRIT QUEST is a sequel to SHADOW MAN in which Logan's trip to Alkali Lake pits him against Magneto, Mystique and Toad, it is an independent story in its own right.
Author's note #2: Hey, if Marvel first says Logan has blue eyes, then in Ultimate X they're black, I can have them green here for the purpose of the story to make them more unusual and distinctive.
The Pit Bull was a dreary, sepia-toned composite of all the dives Logan had gotten drunk in over the past fifteen years. All the joints he remembered anyway. And that's what he was doing tonight -- remembering. With the help of numerous beers. After his return from Alkali Lake, after the authorities put Magneto, Mystique, and Toad into long-term storage, Logan had surprised himself and everyone else at Xavier's school by carving out a Wolverine-sized niche among the students and faculty. And he'd done it totally by accident. He'd been moseying through the grounds one day, at loose ends as usual, when he came across two of the boys fighting. Bored, he stopped to watch, lip curling tighter and tighter in disgust, until finally, exasperated, he yanked them apart.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it right, dammit!" he snarled.
He demonstrated on the kids how to disable with pressure points on nerves, maim with certain punches and kicks that weren't in the rule book. Not using his full strength by any means, just enough to get the message across. And leave a couple of bruises as reminders. Then he made them try out their newly-learned skills on him, finally on each other. By the time he was grudgingly satisfied with their progress the kids were too exhausted to do anything more than lock arms in mutual support and stagger back to the dorm.
From that bloody beginning came a general demand for classes on self-defense. And Logan obliged with a grab-bag of techniques from judo, karate, tai chi, kick boxing, street fighting, plus some moves of his own devising. This then led to additional courses using ordinary objects as weapons -- what girls could do with a purse, a high-heel shoe, rings on fingers, what guys could do with chopsticks, a book, even a newspaper.
Chuck was pleased. The man told him so. It gave the kids more self-confidence, he said, more control over their bodies and therefore over their powers. And Logan himself was feeling pretty good about the lessons. He was teaching what he knew best -- fighting. He finally fit in. He was home. Then the nightmares started.
But these nightmares weren't the usual gory fare his perverse brain chose to serve up. Dreams of being cut and burned and tortured by the maniacs who had given him his adamantium skeleton and claws.
No, these latest horror stories were different. Still plenty of cutting, torture. Seems he couldn't get away from that. But now, he was doing the slicing and dicing. Killing. And when, panting, sweating, he jerked awake, there were his victims ringing his bed: Cyclops, Jean, Storm, Rogue, even Professor Xavier. They thought it was his usual brand of nightmare and Logan found he couldn't tell them different. A guy just didn't say to Cyclops, "I dreamed I chopped you into mincemeat, you bastard, and it felt damn good!"
Then, having to be around them all day long, trying to forget what he did to them at night and just act normal -- if he knew what normal was anymore. And all the while doubting his sanity, uncertain if he was quietly going nuts or if the crazy dreams were premonitions that meant one day he was going to flip out, go postal, start killing and killing everyone he saw, even the students, scything through the school like a bloody-clawed Grim Reaper.
And then last week --
Logan drained the bottle, slammed it down. "Beer!" he growled.
The barkeep slowly advanced with another, opened it, hastily retreated.
He grabbed the new beer, chugged down half, belched. But even the shock of cold beer didn't drown out last week. Last week he'd been in the crowded common room standing at the window looking out the rain and not seeing it, rattled by what was wrong with him yet reluctant to ask Chuck to dig around inside his head, when Storm came up from behind.
"Logan . . . " That's all she said in her soft, concerned voice, all she had a chance to say before, startled, he whipped around and slashed open her arm -- to the horror of the kids, the team, and most of all himself.
The cut wasn't deep, Jean said. A few stitches and Storm wouldn't even have a scar, anyway not a very noticeable one.
But Jean and Storm and Rogue and all the rest had looked at him and wondered. And that night he looked at himself in the mirror and wondered. Wondered if the berserker entity he contained, Wolverine, was becoming restless being caged so long, if the fighting lessons were not enough to satisfy it. Wondered if he remained at the school, the only home he remembered, he'd end by slaughtering the only people who cared for him -- or at least tolerated him -- his friends.
And so, without saying a word to anyone, that night he pretended he was asleep until the school was quiet, then pulled on his leather jacket, grabbed his prepared knapsack, and left. Hitching ride after ride, jumping on a train once, working his way farther and farther north, until he finally happened to end up here at the Pit Bull. Tomorrow he'd lose himself in the Canadian wilds. That's where a savage beast belonged, the wilds. But tonight he was toasting civilization with a farewell binge.
He sat by the wall at the far end of the Pit Bull's long, stained bar, his only companions a small army of empty beer bottles and an overflowing ashtray, claiming his territory with a menacing glower that kept everyone else at bay. Even the local toughs had thought twice about approaching him when he slit his eyes in their direction. Therefore, having established his privacy and now enveloped in his own little black cloud of cigar smoke and self-hatred, Logan didn't realize at first that he was being addressed until the persistent, repetitive word finally broke through his gloom and he swiveled around on his stool with a forbidding scowl.
"Dad. Dad? Dad . . . "
A rangy, skinny boy stood there, all elbows and knees, but not twitchy like most teens, Logan noticed. This one was rock steady, his gaze level from beneath his unruly shock of black hair.
Logan turned back to his cigar. "Beat it, kid. I'm not your old man."
"Mom says different."
It took a couple of seconds for that to penetrate the warm fog of beer. "Wha -- ?"
"If Mom was lying she could have picked anybody." The boy's green eyes took in the empty bottles, the overfull ashtray, finally settled on the green-eyed, disreputable, unshaven, unwashed man before him. "But she said it's you, so it must be true." He did not appear overjoyed.
"Now, lissen -- "
"She's waiting in the truck with the kids."
"There's more of you?" Of all the protests, questions, and disclaimers jostling around in Logan's brain fighting to be heard, that was the only one that made it to his lips.
"The twins Kelly and Casey, and baby Kevin. He's two. And I'm Connor. Since you didn't ask," he added with more than a touch of sarcasm.
"Somebody must like 'k' sounds," was all Logan could think to say.
"Guess that somebody's you," the boy shot back. "You named us. Dad."
Logan subjected the kid to a merciless examination, inspecting the worn jeans, thin and white over the knees, the faded, frayed navy tee under the stained flannel shirt, the shirt's ragged cuffs barely reaching the kid's bony wrists, the holes in the toes of the dingy gray sneakers -- the general tired air of long-term poverty. "Some bastard's paying you to bait me. This is a joke, right?"
The boy's laugh was tinged with bitterness. "I wish!"
Still suspicious, Logan scanned the cavernous room but could spot nobody getting his hoots by watching the two of them. He turned to his 'son.' "How old are you, kid?"
"Fourteen, almost fifteen."
So -- only technically speaking, of course -- it was just possible that Connor might be his. A fling from his forgotten past. Logan chewed on the cigar. But baby Kevin -- no way! And he had supposedly stuck around long enough to name this litter? "How 'bout the twins?"
"They're ten."
That settled it. He leaned back against the wall. "Look, have you ever seen me before?"
The kid studied him with growing displeasure from black, peaky-eared hair and scuffed leather jacket to dirty jeans and mud-caked boots. "Nope."
"Well, I got good news for you, kid. Your mom's made a mistake. I'm not your dad."
"Mom said you'd be here and told me what you'd be wearing."
"Gimme a break! Ninety-nine percent of the guys in this joint are wearing jeans, boots, and flannel shirts. What, she wants child support or something? Take my advice, kid, set your sights on some slob with more dough and less brains. Now get outa my face."
"She said you'd be stubborn."
"Damn right! Did dear old Mom also say I'd be pissed? I'm warning you, kid, leave me the hell alone!"
Grinning, the boy stood his ground. "Matter of fact, she did say you probably wouldn't be real happy finding out you're a dad."
Logan didn't even bother to comment on that, just laughed, so he missed the first of what his 'son' said next, coming in at the middle.
" -- give you proof." The kid looked straight at him, said soft and clear, "Logan, right? Claws, right? Metal skeleton, right?" And at his listener's blank expression, "Have I hit a nerve yet?"
Logan snapped his mouth shut only to open it again in a snarl. "Take me to her!"
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