Logan was already down there, walking among them as if looking for something. Leonie was staring at them with unusual concentration, taking his arm off her shoulders and propping him against the railing so she could leave him behind as she headed down the stairs to join him.  Bobby must have seen, because he moved up next to him to make sure he could still stand up. “What the hell is this, you think?” Bobby asked him, his voice hushed like it really was a funeral parlor.

“If I say people who really like putting up vegetables for the winter, you won’t freeze me, will you?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Then I have no idea.”

Bobby shook his head, then asked, “What happened to you anyways?”

“I was shot.” The wound was really starting to hurt now, and he could feel blood trickling down his leg, a warm crawl along his skin that was almost itchy, and it was starting to pool in his hiking boot. But all he could think was “Logan touched me! He tore his shirt to shreds for me!“ He really needed to look into Prozac when they got back to the mansion.

Bobby stared at him, slack jawed and wide eyed. “Shot? What happened? Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

Their attention was diverted as Logan suddenly shattered one of the coffins with his claws, causing a clear, slightly pinkish fluid to gush all over the cement floor. "Were these growing tanks?” He asked Leonie, sounding both angry and horrified. “Is this where you’re from?  Do you even know?”

Leonie stared at all the tanks, her head moving mechanically and her expression blank, as if she didn’t remember, or just didn’t want to. “I-I don’t-”

“Damn it, Leonie, don’t give me that shit!  I can smell you’re lying!”

Lying had a smell?  Well, why not?

“I don’t know!” She screamed, sounding both angry and scared. “I don’t remember this place - I don’t remember anything! I just know we shouldn’t be here!” her voice broke slightly, and she admitted, in a quieter, harsher voice, “I’m scared, all right?  This place makes me want to run away.  We should go.”

Coincidentally, there was a loud boom, like one of the hallway walls just collapsed, and both he and Bobby felt a cold breeze of outside air on the back of their necks. They turned to look, but currently saw nothing. “Company?” Logan shouted up at them.

“Maybe,” Bobby said, holding up his hand, getting ready to use his power defensively if he had to.

But the first thing they saw, thudding down the hall towards them, a silver metal guy in an X-Man jacket. Quickly the metal started melting away from his face, and they could see it was just Piotr, with Rogue and Yasha right behind him. “We have to go,” Rogue said, squeezing past Piotr to get ahead of him. “These places are rigged to detonate!  It was all a trap!”

“No shit, Sherlock!” Logan shouted back.  Leonie quickly started heading back up the stairs, and she ran her forearm across her face.  She wasn’t crying, was she?  Wow - would wonders never cease?

“Logan, come on,” Bobby said, as he was still down there, still wandering among the coffins - or 'growing tanks', whatever he'd said.

But Logan waved at them dismissively, never looking back. “Go without me. There’s gotta be a clue in here somewhere.”

“The place is gonna blow up!” Rogue exclaimed, exasperated.

“It won’t hurt me - go without me!”

“Like hell,” Yasha snapped, and barged past them, not bothering at all with the stairs, just leaping down to the cement floor some seven feet below them. “You're coming with us. There never was anything here. It's a roach motel.”

Was Brendan confused by the smell of his own blood, or did he smell more blood on Yasha? Well, she said she was a vampire, so that probably made sense.  He shuddered to think how she may have taken out any soldiers.  Logan may have killed some, but at least he didn’t eat them.

Logan turned sharply to face Yasha, claws still out, and even though it was too dim to read his expression, Brendan knew from his posture that Logan was entering the belligerent angry zone; it was not beyond the realm of possibility that he would lash out at Yasha, or anyone who got too close.

He wondered what a psychiatrist would say about his attraction to a man who sometimes scared the shit out of him.  No, he knew what he’d say, and that’s where the Prozac came in.

“Do you see this place?” He asked her. “Do you see it?!  Do you know what it means?”

“It means nothing now.  Don’t you get it? The girl was nothing but bait to get you here, and I’m not letting them collect.”

“I was not bait,” Leonie insisted, but her voice was shaky.  She now feared that she was, that she existed only to get Logan here, and Brendan felt kind of bad for her.  No wonder she had no memories - she didn’t need them, did she?  She was just a means to an end.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he shouted at Yasha. “I’ll be all right!”

“No you won’t.  Don’t make me knock you out, Logan.”

“I’ll help,” Piotr said, going back to steel.  Well, steel was nothing against adamantium, but it still might make for an interesting fight, in a Battlebots kind of way.

Logan held his arms open, and Brendan could hear the smirk in his voice. “You’re welcome to try.”

“Do you want those kids to die?” Yasha snapped at him. “I could give a fuck; I’ve got lots of deaths on my conscience, what’s one fucking more?  But what about you, huh?  Think you can deal with it, Logan?”

Oh, dirty pool.  Emotional manipulation.  Who knew vampires could use that too?  Logan looked up in their direction, and made a noise that was a half growl/half snort in disgust.

“We have to go now!” Rogue insisted anew.  How did she know?

There was a pause, no one moving, no one saying anything, for what seemed like too goddamn long.  Was Logan actually going to do this?  “Fucking get moving already,” Logan snapped, and finally started heading for the stairs. “Move.  Move!”

When Logan barked an order, it seemed instinctual to hurry to obey, if only to avoid incurring his wrath.  Logan retracted his claws as he bounded up the stairs two at a time, and Bobby now took the role of Human crutch, helping Brendan out into the corridor.

Brendan wondered if, for that moment, Logan thought about testing the theory of them staying here to die with him.  And if he actually considered fighting with his girlfriend and Piotr.

The place was creepy, sure, but why was Leonie so freaked, and Logan so upset?  What was the subtext the rest of them had missed?

He wondered if they’d ever find out, or if it was yet another thing that would get thrown on the “mystery of Logan” pile.

18

The buildings didn’t actually explode; they imploded.

A small quibble, but one worth noting.  Still, they imploded with enough force that the ground shook, and several of the trees around the immediate area lost branches with loud cracks, some possibly fracturing at the trunk.  Certainly if Logan had been in the middle of that, he’d have needed a bloody long time to heal.

Logan remained sulky and sullen, even once they started the flight home, and Leonie followed suit, retreating to the back to avoid everyone. Yasha was forced to try and put together the pieces of information she had, while ignoring the zoo around her.

Brachen boy was laying on one of the benches (the only thing Logan had said so far: “Lay down flat. If you sit up, you’ll bleed out faster.”) in the center compartment, with Bobby trying to work out the contents of the medical kit, and Rogue sitting by herself, trying to get soldier boy out of her head. The Russian was playing co-pilot to Logan’s surly pilot, but every now and then tried to worm useful information out of him. “Was that like the place they kept you?” He asked, quietly so presumably the kids wouldn’t hear. “I mean-”

“No,” Logan snapped, so brutally it could have been a punch. “It was a trap, that’s all. Drop it.”

But Yasha knew, even as she told him that, it was only a partial truth. It was meant to be a trap, but didn’t start out that way. Surely Logan knew that too, which is why he'd been willing to risk personal harm to stay.

Yasha went over to where Rogue was decompressing, and said, “So what was the master plan?”

“Huh?”

“When they acquired target one and two, what were they going to do to them?”

She thought about it a moment, and shook her head. “He didn’t know, he was just on the extraction team.”

“Where were they going to extract them to?”

“He didn’t know that either. They were just gonna load ‘em up in a truck.  Everyone only knew a piece of the plan, so in case they were probed by a telepath, they wouldn’t get much that was useful.”

That was clever.  Were the bad guys finally wising up?  Maybe they finally got tired of chalking up losses. “Does he even know where the head cheese is?” She knew she should use past tense, but that might get to Rogue, sensitive as she was.

She shook her head. “He only knew him as Home Front.  He’s not even sure he’s in a centralized location.”

“He keeps moving around?”

“Or no one really knows where he is.”

Siege mentality. Logan and friends really must have hurt them badly, or at least put he fear of muties into them.  But that would beg the question why they wanted him back so bad.  Surely there were other, more powerful mutants out there, ones much easier to manipulate.  And while it must have cost a ton to pump someone full of adamantium, eventually they’d pay as much or more in lost personnel, time, and equipment.

So what was it they were really after?

She stared at the back of Logan’s head - all that was visible from this position - and suddenly wondered if they had all been looking at this from the wrong angle.  The safe assumption was they wanted him back because he was a major financial investment.  But what if it was more than that?  What if they were more afraid of what he might eventually remember?

Logan, she thought curiously, who did you used to be?

***

Wonders never ceased.

Xavier actually utilized Bob’s name to find a “reputable” (was there such a thing?) demon doctor, who met them shortly after they landed.  Well, who knew what kind of special needs a demon hybrid might have?  Although Brendan wasn’t thrilled with the idea, Bobby had given him a pain killer, and he was so stoned he really didn’t care.  At least she was one of those Human-looking demons.

Leonie tried to avoid them all and disappear, but that didn’t work.  Logan went after her, for all the good it would do. “What do you remember about that place?” He demanded.

“Nothing,” she insisted.  She was a couple of feet ahead of him, leading him down an empty hall, and never looked back.  But her posture was stiff with tension, and she still smelled scared.

He couldn’t blame her for being afraid; he could remember how freaked out he was when he finally saw the Alkali Lake complex.  Still, that’s why he needed to know what was going on.

She stopped suddenly, and it was easy to see why: Xavier had headed her off at the pass, appearing at the head of the corridor. “I can help you sort your thoughts out,” Xavier offered.

“Fine,” she spat. “You wanna look into my head so bad?  Do it then!”  It sounded like a threat. If her memories were anything like Logan's, it was.

Xavier took a deep breath, as if steeling himself, and then closed his eyes.  It seemed there was only a few seconds before he opened his eyes again, looking startled, and she said, “Happy now?” She then continued on, storming around the Professor, who made
no move to stop her.

“What did you see?” Logan asked, letting her go.  There was no point trying to get blood out of a stone; at least Xavier might actually answer his question.

He took another deep breath, then looked up at him, eyes clouded with concern. “Her memory loss seems progressive; I’m not sure she even remembers how she came here.”

“Seriously?  What the fuck’s that about?”

Xavier shook his head. “I don’t know.  She has some idea about the loss; it troubles her.”

He could understand that. “What about the place?  Are you telling me she had no memories of it?”

“No, she did.” He paused for so long, Logan wondered if he was trying to weasel out of saying it. “She recalls leaving it.”

“Escaping the place?”

“No, leaving it.  It seems … she was let go.”

“Let go?” He almost couldn’t believe what Xavier was saying. “So, Yasha was right?  She was nothing but bait?”

He shrugged. “She really doesn’t know.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. If she was just bait, why weren’t they ready for us?  The resistance we met with was pathetic.”

“You weren’t alone.”

“I know, but they should have factored that in.  I don‘t get it,” he admitted, feeling like he was missing something obvious. “They had no hope of capturing us.  So why bother with all of this?  To make me realize they have dozens of new, improved versions of me, and I can do shit about it? To drive me crazy?  And what about her?  Why release her out into a world she’s unprepared for?”

“Trying to understand their reasoning can drive anyone crazy,” Xavier commiserated. “Right now, I’m worried about Leonie.  She feels used and lost.  She doesn‘t know who
or what she is.”

“That makes two of us.” So, great.  Not only were things unresolved, they were possibly worse than before.  Shit.  He ran a hand through his hair, and grudgingly said, “I’ll go talk to her.”

“No, not right now,” Xavier advised. “Give her a little time to calm down.  She’s shaken, and I think she’d like to be alone for now.”

He nodded in agreement; it was yet another thing he and Leonie had in common.

“Speaking of being alone...” Yasha said behind him.  He thought he'd scented her creeping up the hall, but didn’t think much of it; she wasn’t going to attack him now.
“Can I steal the hairy guy for a moment?”

Xavier smiled tightly at that, clearly still uncomfortable with her. “Of course.  I’ll go see how Brendan is doing.”

She waited until Xavier was out of hearing distance before she said, “Boy, he hates me, doesn’t he?”

“It’s not you. I don’t think he likes vampires in general.” When he turned to face her,
he was surprised when she leaned in and gave him a kiss on the nose. “Was that an apology?”

“For what, saving your iron ass?  Hardly.  I just wanted to let you know I’m hitching a ride outta here with the good doc - I still have some things I have to take care of.  But I’ll be back soon.”

“Things?  Like kicking some cult ass for Cujo?”

“Oh, no, I forgot about him. Some other things … but in a similar vein, excuse the pun.”

He wanted to ask, but knew she wouldn’t tell him.  He also understood that she needed her secrets, like he needed his, just like he understood she had wasted most if not all the soldiers unfortunate enough to run into her; he could smell the blood on her. That was why he wanted her to go with the others, though; she wouldn’t try to save any lives but those of Piotr’s and Rogue’s.  Brutal, yes, but sometimes you couldn’t afford to be gentle, and it insured they would come through it alive (and they did, didn’t they).  “Need some help?”

She raised an eyebrow at that. “No.  Do I ever?  But if I think I could use a little extra muscle, I’ll give you a call, yojimbo.”

“Were you really gonna fight with me?”

“Of course I was. I don’t bluff.”

There was something else they had in common. “You know they call me the Decapitator in Los Angeles; you couldn’t win.”

“Yes I could - I know to avoid your claws.”

They stared at each other a moment, each giving the other sly “Admit I’d kick your ass” looks, neither admitting it.  Finally, Logan said, “There is no way to have a relationship if we keep threatening to fight each other.”

“True.  So don’t make me threaten you again.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Yer a piece of work, you know that?  I mean that in the best possible way.”

She grabbed him by the front of his torn shirt, pulling him closer. “You’d better.” She gave him a more meaningful kiss, then pushed him away. “Take care, tiger.  Don’t get yourself blown up.”

“No promises,” he replied glibly. “Stay outta the sun.”

She gave him a beauty queen wave before disappearing down the hall, and Logan was left wondering how things could get so fucked up in so many areas at once.  Well, why the fuck not? If things didn’t get massively fucked up, he’d know he was living someone else’s life.

Which really wasn’t a bad idea at all.

19

“Ymmy, we’re two grown energy beings - let’s discuss this,” Bob suggested, slowly backing up across the frigid wasteland.  He still refused to look past his alabaster legs, giving him time to decide that Ymir had kneecaps the size of Volkswagons.  How unattractive was that?  How had he ever decided “as big as Godzilla” was a good look for him?

“There’s nothing to discuss,” he roared, every single one of his massive footsteps making his entire realm quake. “I’m gonna squash you like the stinkbug you are!”

“Now wait just a minute-I don’t stink!” Bug he could live with, but at least he could name the correct insect!  He felt he was more of a dragonfly, or perhaps a ladybug.  Spiders could be okay, depending on the type …

It was then that he felt the air tremble, and behind him an energy portal opened and closed.  He turned to see … well, he’d be damned.  Again.

Ammit was standing there, looking around at the frozen tundra, and possibly cold, seeing as she was barely wearing a pretty but barely there opalescent sari.  She was still in her red panther body, though, so maybe the fur was warm; he wasn’t sure the crocodile tail dragging over the snow noticed. “So this is where you ended up,” she asked, a little surprised. “I supposed I should have guessed …”

“Who dares to defile my lands?!” Ymir roared, obviously not recognizing her.

She stared up at him, and her drugged look disappeared into a truly horrifying scowl. “Defile?  That’s a good one coming from you, Ymir.”

He froze (ha!), massive foot raised slightly, and in a strangely small, pathetic voice, asked fearfully, “Ammit?”

“No, Horus,” she snapped sarcastically. “Who do you think?  Now put your foot down this minute!”

Ymir slammed it down so fast Bob was rather surprised he didn’t break his own continent. Ammit may have given into indulgence and decadence like the rest of the gods, but she still had an almost obscene amount of power ... and her fearful avenger reputation.

“What brings you here, Ama?” He wondered. “Not that I’m not grateful.”

She shrugged. “I was bored,” she admitted. “I figured I’d tag after you, see if you needed a hand. I guess you did.”

“Indeed. Gracias.”

“Cammy gone?”

“Yeah, he went poof already.  But his big ol’ master plan was to leave me in the loving, frozen arms of Ymmy the jolly white giant here.”

“He killed another god,” Ymir proclaimed. “He should suffer-”

“I’ve killed gods too,” Ama interrupted savagely, the anger making her dark eyes glow. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Once again, Ymir was reduced to a little boy. “No, none at all, ma’am,” he replied meekly, scuffing his foot on the permafrost and leaving a divot the size of a Buick.  Bob was finding it very hard not to laugh.  Several bad puns about him being “pussy whipped” also came to mind, making it that much harder not to burst out snickering.

Well, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that Ama wasn’t all feline; she was also part reptile, at least this time out.

“So you’re done here?” Ama asked him. “Ready to go home?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe, darlin’.”

She cast a savage glance up in Ymir’s direction. “Would you like me to teach him a lesson about being a rude host?”

Bob wondered if that noise he heard was a glacier starting to shift, or Ymir whimpering. “Nah, let’s just duck out -what d’ya say?”

Ama continued to give Ymmy the stink eye for a good long minute, then gestured behind her, opening a portal that shimmered like desert heat. “Sure, why not?  Ever going to invite me to your place, Bob?”

“Absolutely, love.  Next time I have a barbecue, you’re on the guest list.”

Although he was very much looking forward to returning to the Earth realm, in another sense he wasn’t.  Because that bastard Cammy had been right about one thing: god powers in a Human’s hands was indescribably dangerous, to the Human and to the reality it chose as its home.  No good had ever come of such a thing, and no good ever would.

They were corrupt; as entities they were hopelessly tainted by their powers.  Most Humans could not handle that level of madness without going mad themselves.

Maybe he would have to put home on hold.  Maybe he would have to search for Jean instead, before she could return to Earth.

Before she could inadvertently destroy it all.

***

Even though she'd double checked the address, she still wondered who would open the door when she knocked.

After about thirty seconds, the doorknob turned, and the door was flung open with a caustic, “I told you, I’m not interested in a copy of “The Watch-” Angel began, and the stopped his rant as he saw it was her. “-Tower,” he finished, puzzled.

“I don’t like Jehova’s Witnesses myself,” Yasha agreed. “Their blood is always so bland. It‘s like diet blood.  Same with Mormons.”

Angel looked past her, down both ends of the posh condo’s blue velvet carpeted hallway, as if looking for Logan. “Uh, what-”

She pushed open his door all the way and stepped inside, shoving him back with a single finger to the chest. “I’m flying solo, Batman.  I had a favor to ask you.”

As she shut the door behind her, he laughed darkly, taking up an unconscious defensive posture even as he crossed his arms over his chest.  He was ready to fight her if he had to, and obviously thought he had a shot.  Men. “A favor?  Uh huh.  How did you get this address?”

“I told Spike I wanted to bug the shit out of you.  He not only told me where you lived, but he got a secretary to download a map from Mapquest.” She pulled it out of her coat pocket to show him.  After a wary second, he ripped the piece of paper out of her hand and studied it.  He crumpled it into a ball, and muttered, “Goddamn Spike.”

Yasha glanced around at Angel’s well furnished, tasteful suite, and knew he’d moved into it as is - there was no personal touch here, nothing that indicated he had actually accepted the place as his own.  Perhaps that was a point in his favor. “What the hell is it you want, Blood?” he asked, tossing the ball of paper aside.  He still wasn’t ready to turn his back on her yet.

A plasma screen t.v. was flashing its images quietly in the background, and she peered past him to see what he was watching.  She guessed that his using the latter half of her nickname was some kind of insult, so she ignored it. “The Maltese Falcon?” She asked, surprised.  Somehow she'd expected porn.

“You have thirty seconds before I throw you out the door,” he replied sourly.

“Mister grumpy.  Aren’t you even going to offer me a cup of blood?”

“Twenty five seconds.”

“Would it make you feel more charitable if I told you this is about Logan?”

He cocked his head to the side, his dark eyes full of suspicion. “What do you want from him?”

“What most sane women want from him - a really good fuck.”

He narrowed his eyes in distaste. “Twenty seconds.”

“Why is Wesley the only one trying to help him?”

That made him nearly flinch, a guilty look briefly flashing over his face. “What?  That’s not true-”

“You have the resources of an evil empire at your fingertips, and all you’ve coughed up are files so obscurely coded they’re indecipherable.”

He tightened his arms across his chest, and shifted into an even more defensive posture. “Do you know how large their achieves are?  They have records going back to the Inquisition.” 

"And you have an abundance of lackeys.  I’m not going to buy it.”

He threw out his hands in frustration. “You try riding herd on an evil empire then.”

“I’d love to, but somehow I think you’d reject my resume.”

“Are you done?  Have you made your point?”

“No.  Haven’t you ever wondered why the Organization would waste so much time, energy, and resources trying to catch just one man?”

He shrugged uncomfortably, clearly not wanting to discuss this. “He was important to them, and they’re evil.”

“Not enough.”

“He was, as far as we can tell, their top assassin.  Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I know that, but you know as well as I do, Angelus, that finding a killer isn’t that difficult; killing is easy.” He scowled at the use of his “real” name, but she ignored that. She wasn‘t about to let him pretend that he was somehow better than her because he had a soul - they were far more alike than he would ever acknowledge. “Why they really want Logan is hidden in those memories they tried to erase.  The key to his future is in his past.”

He kept giving her a stony look. “You really were cursed by Buddhists, weren’t you?”

“I know everything there is about destroying groups - remember the Templars?  And I’m telling you, if we want to save him, this is the way to go.”

He held open his hands in a universal “What the fuck?” gesture. “What is the way to go?”

“Look into his past, but not with the Organization.  We have to go beyond that; we have to delve as deeply as we can.  Do you want to save Logan from them?  Do you want to crush the Organization once and for all?  Then we need to find out who he was, who he used to be.  We need to find out what they keep trying to bury.” She paused, if only for effect.  She could see the wheels turning behind Angel’s eyes.  He didn’t necessarily trust her, but perhaps he was finally seeing the wisdom in what she was saying. “We need to find out who Logan really is.”

He continued to eye her with great suspicion, but she ignored it, and waited patiently for his answer.