GOLD TOXICITY

But God doesn’t answer. Nobody answers. Just like he hadn’t answered them, but- But he didn’t know. He hadn’t known. It had been just another day. He’d been on leave. On fucking vacation. At a fucking bar. Because he’d needed to, what, clear his head? Because he’d needed space? He’d wanted just one more day. One day to sit alone in the quiet and drown himself in cheap fucking booze he couldn’t even get drunk on, when now he’d give anything to be back home with the noisy chaos around him. Just to hear the kids laughing and bickering in the halls again. Charles pestering him about remembering his next therapy appointment. Storm puttering around the greenhouse, Jean and Scott flirting in the library, Hank and Forge in the labs- Fuck, he’d even sit quietly through one of Colossus’ friendship speeches if it meant they'd just be okay. If he could just talk to them one last time. So he could apologise to them. To Kurt, to Rogue, to Kitty - oh, God, Kitty-! 

She'd been the first one he'd found. She’d made it out past the gates. Anyone who didn't know her would have thought she died running. He knew better. She was a fighter to the bitter end. The ruined squad cars crashed into various trees was proof enough of that. Of course she fought. She was his little girl, after all. His pun’kin. His pun’kin, lying cold and dead in the dirt. 

He knew she was dead. Logically, he knew before he even fully saw her face. No heartbeat. No breathing. Still cooling off when he cradled her face in his hands. 

“No,” he’d rasped, as if that could change anything. “No, Kitty, c’mon. Wake up. Wake up, Kitty, please-” He wiped at the red stains on her cheeks with his thumbs. They left bloody, dirty streaks that were cut through by the tears that dripped off his face. Kitty didn’t respond. She wasn’t moving. She was never going to move again. He couldn’t even stay to mourn her. Not when shock wore off and the sounds of violence slammed into him from the school. Logan gives himself just enough time to press a shaking kiss to her forehead. 

Logan lays Shadowcat back into the grass. 

Weapon X charges the mansion. 

He doesn’t remember what happened next. It’s a blur. A haze. A red mist spattered over his skin and clothes. Thicker red dripping from his hands, his claws, his teeth, down his throat. Bullets tore through him and he didn’t care. Didn’t feel them. Took every shot without slowing down and added the prey firing it to the red. All of them. Every single fucking one of them. They hurt his family. They deserved it. They deserved worse, but he didn't have time for worse. Not when they were still in his home. 

He doesn't remember how long it took. Just that it’s quiet when it’s over. Too quiet. Not even the birds are singing. The only sounds are the wind, his own laboured breathing, the crackle of a few unanswered radios… And a slow drip, drip, drip. From his hands. His claws. His teeth. His face. Down his throat. No other movement. No other sound. Not even a heartbeat. 

Everyone is gone. 

Everyone is dead. 

He’d come to in the woods. Deep in the woods. A few of the invaders - the reavers - lay scattered dead and mutilated at his feet. A mess of limbs and useless armour and hamburger meat. Logan is panting, drawing ragged breaths from lungs that still expel copper-flavoured air. Sweat and blood mingle on his body, a gruesome sheen that cools rapidly in the night air. His skin steamed. His body ached as his factor caught up to him, stitching wounds that the animal had ignored. His head throbbed in time with his own elevated pulse. The burning scent of his own scorched hands filled the air. But none of it mattered. The only thing that was important right now was that Logan was away from his family, and they needed him. 

He needed to make sure they were okay. 

His body was too sore to run but he pushed it anyway. His healing factor would catch up, it always did, he just had to get home. Trees and underbrush whipped past him in a blur. Even moving so fast the wind barely kept pace felt too slow. And when he hears radio chatter, he pushes even faster. Who’s there? What are they doing-? He breaks the treeline and sees officers. MRD officers. They don’t get to be here. Not here. This is a sacred place. (If they’re still here, that means-) 

Logan wakes up again and he’s inside. The red splattered across him is fresh and warm. He isn't sure what time it is, but knows it's only been a minute or two at most since he arrived on the grounds. The MRD wouldn't have had time to call for backup. That was good. He would need the time. 

It took him a while to sort through the bodies. The reavers he tossed aside. Out the windows, down the stairs, anywhere so long as they weren’t touching his family. The reavers hadn’t given their victims any dignity in death.  Left them in piles like garbage, like fucking firewood. Left to rot. Logan could not, would not leave them there. One by one, he lifted them into his arms and moved them to the lawn. The little ones, no older than ten or eleven. They fit so well - too well - in Logan’s embrace, and even though they were so small and light every time he’d been too busy to check out the video game they were playing or found somewhere isolated when they got ‘too loud’ weighed down on him like a fucking planet. The teenagers. They’d only just been figuring out who they were meant to be, coming into their own, and every time he’d snapped at them for pushing harmless boundaries and just being kids welled in his mind like the bile in his throat. 

And then his team. 

His pack. 

His X-Men. 

One by one, he found them in the ruined mansion. Scott, Jean, Storm. One by one, he laid them out on the grass with the children they had fought so hard (he had failed) to protect. Rogue, Bobby, Hank. He closes their eyes, crosses their hands. Kurt, Kitty, Gambit. He returns to the mansion. Piotr, Jubilee, Forge. Makes his way through the charred, destroyed foyer. Betsy, Sam, Rodrigo. And it is almost impossible to open the door, but Logan does, and it’s in the office that he sees him. 

Charles Xavier. 

Fallen from his chair and laid out on the floor like an animal, executed in reverse order - two in the head, one in the heart. Like he hadn't spent his entire life helping people simply because he could. Like he wasn't the only person to ever give Logan a chance and mean it. Like he wasn't the last truly selfless person in this shithole of a world. 

And it's only then that Logan’s legs give out. He collapses to his knees, holding Charles’ cold, lifeless hands like they were made of glass, and his vision blurs and he doesn't have the strength to hold back the sobs as Charles’ dream dries splattered against the floor, and still drips from Logan’s hands, his claws, his teeth, his face, down his throat.

He spends a week and a day digging graves. He does not sleep. He does not eat. He does not stop. It is one of the rare times he is grateful for what he is. Even with his strength, it takes a while to get six feet deep. He finds sheets where he can, strips the beds that don’t have bloodstains and bullet holes. Sheets with race cars. Sheets with ducks. Dazzler sheets. Plain sheets. They all became shrouds to provide meagre protection from the dirt. Logan’s not a religious man. He’s never been on speaking terms with a god in the way Kurt had been. He doesn’t know if he has any right to ask for favours. But he thinks, as he tucks a stuffed sheep under Amy’s lifeless arm (freshly thirteen, a flier, her wings tattered and ripped through with bullet holes) that if anyone is out there, please, please be gentle with the kids. They’ll be scared. And not all of them will have a family that’s praying for them. Oh, fuck, the families-! How was he supposed to face them? How the hell could he look them in the eye and tell them their children - the children he’d sworn to protect - had been gunned down in the very school meant to keep them safe? How was he supposed to explain that their babies were gone? 

How was he supposed to handle the ones who didn’t care?

When Logan finally slept, it was among the graves. Resting his cheek against makeshift headstones. His dreams were restless, fitful nightmares that gave him only a few minutes of shut-eye at a time. It's not just the lab anymore. They're there, too. Reaching for him.  Crying for him. Asking him why. Why wasn’t he there? Why did he abandon them? Why didn’t he come back faster? 

Why did they die and he didn’t? 

He never had an answer. In his dreams, he ran. He would run until a frightened, spectral hand would grab at his shoulder, his arm, his ankle, and he would tumble to alertness. It would never be more than a moment since he closed his eyes. He would be awake for a while after. 

It’s sunrise when he jolts awake to a different noise. Something mechanical. The familiar click of a rifle cocking. Logan sat up from where he’d been resting against Storm’s marker. For a moment, his claws are out, adamantium gleaming wickedly in the low light of the morning. His teeth are bared. A snarl rips through his throat, furious and protective- and then dies when he spots a flash of navy through the leaves. That’s not the Reavers, and that’s not the MRD. 

That’s S.H.I.E.L.D. 

They’d never been a friend, but in this case, they were definitely the lesser of the countless evils. At least they were staying on the other side of the gate. They probably came to investigate - maybe after those officers failed to report back. Logan retracted his claws, sinking back down with a quiet growl held in his throat. Actually… If anyone could figure out how to put him down, it'd be Nick fucking Fury. Logan closed his eyes and rested his cheek back against Storm’s marker. He heard the shift of fabric, the clank of metal, the way the sniper steadied their breathing. Without opening his eyes, Logan nodded once. Silent permission, or perhaps a request, to take the shot. 

It never comes. 

Instead, Logan catches a muffled conversation interspersed with radio chatter. 

“You were right, sir,” the sniper says, “he’s still there.” 

“I figured as much.” Fury’s voice, quieter and muffled under electronic distortion. “What's he doing?”

“He’s just… sitting there.” The sniper replied.

“No moves to attack?” Fury asked.

“No, sir. He almost did, but I don't think he's going to do anything if we keep our distance.” Smart kid. 

“In which case, not worth the trouble. Fall back for now.”

“Yes, sir.” 

This was accompanied by the sniper - and his friends in the bush, who thought they'd been sneaky - retreating into vehicles parked at the bottom of the hill. Logan almost gave chase, fuck them for spying, fuck them for walking away, but shame kept him rooted to the spot. 

He was gone by nightfall.

He did not deserve to be among them, especially not when he was turning their final resting place into a spectacle. He was a coward who sought the coward’s way out, and they were heroes - he did not belong. He did not belong anywhere. Not quite weapon, not quite animal, so far from man, he wandered. He did not stop killing. He didn't want to. Not when the Reavers were still out there. Not when they took everything from him. 

Over forty graves had been dug, and they celebrated. Thirty children would never grow old and they cheered. His family lay dead and rotting in the dirt and they called it a fucking blessing. 

The angel of death flew swift on adamantium wings, and this time there was no mark that would turn his eye away. Reavers, MRD, the mutant hunters, all of them, anyone who stood in his way, he stopped caring, he stopped counting, they all fell, all added to the red on his hands, his claws, his teeth, his face, down his throat. Fuck them. If good people like Charles, and Hank, and Storm, and Scott, and Jean, innocent people like Kurt, and Kitty, and Jubilee, and Bobby, healing people like Rogue, and Remy, and Piotr, and Warren, if they deserved to die, then these pieces of filth deserved to be butchered. And he was good at that. 

Some even said he was the best. 

He’s not entirely sure how many bodies he adds to his ledger. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t stop him from feeling empty. It doesn’t stop him from spending his dreams running. Nothing stops until he hears the broadcast. It’s a coincidence he’s there. He was just passing through, and this was the first diner he’d seen in a long time. He’d eaten almost nothing but raw meat and gas station food for the past three weeks - he wanted a burger, a real cup of coffee, God, please, some booze, just- Fuck, just something, and getting to sit down out of the weather wouldn’t do him any harm, either. The sign blinked bright and neon, a beacon in the rain: ‘Gas & Grub Grill’. It looked right out of a magazine, checker-board panelling, red metal roof, and all. Real stereotype shit. 

Logan had grunted, stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and stepped inside. It was just as all-American on the inside as it was on the out. Go figure. Logan found a booth far in the back, away from everyone else. He kept his head down and avoided eye contact, especially with the waitress. He doesn't need to be noticed, he just needs food. He places his order - coffee and keep it coming, two burgers, three fries. Greasy, hot, real food. Fuck, it had been too long. The coffee comes first. The cup is heavy, and old, and stained, a worn picture of a grinning cartoon trout with ‘Wishin’ I Was Fishin’’ in a looping font plastered on the side. Logan would wager it was about as old as the waitress. He wonders if she's seen a doctor about her arrhythmia. Her name tag said ‘Angela’, but the only other patrons - a couple of truckers - called her ‘Ange’. Must be regulars. 

“Your food’ll be ready in a moment, hon.” Ange says. She has a Boston accent and smells like filtered cigarettes, coffee, grease, salt, marigolds, dog, gasoline, hairspray, spearmint, old vinyl, floor cleaner, and movie theatre butter popcorn. Logan mumbles a thanks and cradles the mug between his hands. It’s nice to feel something warm and solid again. (Something that wasn’t slick and bloody. Something that wasn’t pulsing slower and slower in his grasp. Something he hadn’t destroyed.) He inhales the scent. It’s on the cheaper side, but freshly ground, just like the menu advertised. Better than anything he’d had since the mansion. … Lombardi would still have a fit about it. It brings an exhausted, pained smile to his face - ol’ Chef would tear his hair out if he saw what Logan had been eating lately. The arguments about how to cook a steak would be nothing compared to that. Fuck, Logan missed him. Missed all of them. Being away from home felt a lot colder when there was no home to be away from.

Logan has only taken about two and a half sips when the small TV broadcasts the next news story. Logan’s half-listening until he hears the word ‘mutant’, and then he looks up. Furrows his brow and leans in his seat to get a better view of the screen. There was a photograph of a young boy, late teens at the oldest. Looked like a school picture - smiling and wearing a dress shirt against a generic blue background. A graphic at the bottom said his name was Joshua Foley. The anchor gave a quick run-down of who ‘Joshua’ was - talked about him being a good student, a loving son, involved with his church… The  image cut to a video of the same kid sitting in a chair, red-eyed and miserable, staring at nothing in the way soldiers did, as the anchor declared him also a victim of the mutant massacre. 

The what-? 

Logan blinked. He stopped noticing the coffee in his hands. The rest of the diner faded away. The screen changed again. … That was the Institute - or at least what was left of it. The ruined husk of his home, crawling with fucking cops. What was-...? 

“We’re taking you now to Westchester, New York,” the anchor was saying, “to the site where the horrible tragedy took place.” Logan grit his teeth. Oh, sure. Now they care. Now they're talking about it. Now that everyone's gone and the damage has been done. … But who's the kid? He wasn't a student. Logan would have known if he was. He knew all of the students, and he’d never seen that face before in his life- Had he? He narrowed his eyes. 

“... It was then that Reverend William Stryker received the call about his followers.” 

Who? 

“Oh, it was simply awful.” A skinny, older man performed for the camera. He had his hair parted in the middle, and he wore a priest’s robes, but Kurt would've said he was no man of God. Just looking at him made Logan feel greasy. “We’d come on a mission of peace, you see. Peace and fraternity. Wanted to bring God to ‘em, see if we couldn't show ‘em a better way.” Reverend Stryker hung his head in remorse. Logan felt a growl building in his throat. 

Peace? Those bastards came dressed in tactical assault gear with nullifiers, and they said they wanted PEACE? 

“Oh, we tried, Susan, but they wouldn't listen. Attacked my flock on sight, they did. It was awful. From what I heard, my poor children had no choice but to defend themselves. We thank the Lord that Joshua here was able to escape-” 

“That’s BULLSHIT!” Logan snapped. His voice echoed around the diner and brought everything except the TV, the lights, and the world outside to a stunned silence. It took him a second to notice. It took him another second to notice the eyes on him. Another still to notice the shattered mug and the coffee that seared his skin. The ceramic that sliced his palm. The scent of fear that filled the diner at not just his outburst, but the caved-in side of the metal table he’d hit. 

He had to get out of here. 

He had to run. Where? It didn't matter. Just not here. Anywhere but here. It's a reflex to slap some money down on what remains of the table. He doesn't have much, but- fuck. Maybe it'd cover the mug. He leaves without looking back. 

His bike is still in the parking lot. Right where he left it. Too far away. Every step was a mile. He reaches it, mounts, cuts on the engine. It roars to life, deafeningly loud. Too loud. 

The diner vanishes behind him in a cloud of dust. He didn’t look back. 

But it doesn’t matter how far or how fast he rides, because that story keeps following him. The X-Men lured the Reavers. It was a trap. The X-Men fired the first shot. The Reavers were just defending themselves. The X-Men killed them in cold blood because that's what they did - that's what all mutants did. But that wasn't true. It wasn't their fault. They’d just been defending themselves, their home, their children (doing what he couldn't). They just wanted to be left alone. And when things did shift, it- It wasn’t them. It was his fault. They hadn’t done anything, it was all him-! Sure, his name came up more and more often. But not in the way it should. Acted on Xavier’s orders, they were saying. Laid in wait and cut them down like lambs to the slaughter. 

And then like all stories, it morphed and grew over time. The X-Men weren’t heroes anymore. They weren’t even activists. They were the monsters under the bed and in the closet. The reason mutants should be rounded up and killed. His fault. It was all his fault. His family were being called murderers and demons and it was his fault. Murals and monuments were being defaced and it was all because of him. Books were burned because they were written by mutants - by X-Men. The Institute showed up more and more often on the news. He got to see its ruin played out on the global stage. The remaining walls spray painted. The once beautiful gardens trash-littered and trampled by news crews. And the graves he had dug one after another turned into photo ops, dug up, burned, destroyed, or worse. And he could do nothing about it. Because he was too much of a coward to face them after dragging their names through the mud. Because he had no fucking right to go back to their resting place when he was the reason that rest was not peaceful. Not when it was all his fault. Not when he’d done this to them. Not when he… When he… 

Oh, God. 

What did he do? 

What the fuck did he do? 

Oh, god, what did he do… 

It turns out if he exhausts his healing factor enough, he can feel the alcohol. And if he can feel enough of the alcohol, there’s no room to feel anything else. Sure, it takes a lot, but it gives him quiet. A moment when the screams stop. When his hands aren’t shaking so bad. When he can just black out. Even if it means he wakes up on the ground outside most of the time. 

At least he sleeps. 

In the rare moments of clarity forced on him, Logan has questions. Namely, who the fuck was Joshua Foley? Ever since the attack, the kid’s face had been plastered everywhere. Billboards, signs, the news, even magazines. The literal poster boy of the American dream and how a handful of muties could tear it all down. The sole survivor of Wolverine’s wrath. 

And that's what didn't make sense. 

That kid should not have survived. Nobody walked out of that mansion other than him. He knew that for a fact. No one was walking away from that. And the story made no sense, either. Hid under bodies? Sure, that would definitely work - if Logan was a normal human. But he wasn’t. Logan would’ve heard something - a heartbeat or breathing, at least. He would’ve smelled the fresh fear among the more stale scents. 

There had been none of that. There had been nothing. There had been nobody. So who the fuck-? 

Something had been done to the kid. That much was obvious - you couldn’t fake the look in his eyes on news shows. And something told Logan it wasn’t… Completely a lie. Foley looked familiar, and not just because his face was everywhere. There was something… 

Fuck, he didn't know. It bothered him. And it kept bothering him until one fateful night in a bar. 

Logan’s about four or five in when the kid approaches him. If Piotr was around, and if he still drank, he would have called it baby numbers. (Logan was surprised he hadn't been kicked out yet - barkeep must be having a slow night.) He’d just stepped out for a smoke, leaning heavily on the wall of the establishment as he sheltered his lighter with his hand and tried to spark a flame. He hears the footsteps. Scents the air before he looks up. 

And something

Clicks. 

That particular brand of fear, but it’s different - even more sour, weighed down with misery and the stench of the open road. There’s a growl building in his throat when his head snaps up. And even though he knows what he’s going to see, it still makes the world tilt more than the booze he’d been downing. It’s the kid. 

That’s Joshua Foley. 

He looks different up close. Even smaller than when he was hunched behind his parents or that goddamn asshole, Stryker. No school picture alongside him, like there was on all the Muties Must Die posters plastered on every available surface. Just the kid. The kid who’d spurred everyone on in desecrating his family’s graves. 

This fucking kid. 

Logan’s rage has never been gentle. It has never been quiet. It has never been known to fade away. It is boiling over now. Both the cigar and lighter fall from his hands. His claws are out before they hit the snow. 

The fucking Reavers had taken everything from him - and now their golden boy was here. 

Why? 

To try and finish the job? Well, good fucking luck with that. Much as Logan wanted to join his family, he wasn't giving this son of a bitch the satisfaction. (It wouldn't stick anyhow.) 

“Wait wait wait-!” The kid shrieks, and for some reason, Logan stops. Close enough that his ragged breaths ruffle the kid’s hair, but he stops. Teeth bared in a snarl and eyes blazing. 

He stops and he listens. Listens to the promise that sounds too good to be true. Bring them… Back? Could he actually…? 

No.

No, it wasn’t possible. But he remembered now, at least in part, the feeling of his claws sliding through Joshua’s stomach, and here he was- 

Logan draws back. And it’s then that his surroundings come rushing back, and he tilts his head-

Footsteps. Voices. 

People, fast approaching. No time, make a choice.

He could get them back.

He could get them all back.

He could hold his family in his arms again.

He could tell them he was sorry.

(They wouldn’t forgive him - he didn’t deserve it, but they’d be alive again.)

Unless it’s a lie. A lie, and he’s helping their murderer, their slanderer. But if it’s not-

(If there’s even the slightest possibility-)

“Fine!” He snarls, grabbing Joshua by the shoulder. “Fucking fine! But I swear on whatever fucked up God you believe in, if you’re lying-” The voices are getting closer. Logan growls his frustration and glances over his shoulder. 

“Shit- C’mon, kid. This way!” And he puts boots to pavement, making his way to the cheap truck he’d managed to sign off on.

If it was for his family…

He had to try.