Part 1
by Dyce
Author's Note: This is for all the people who sent me feedback. :) There were lots of them - far too many to list here, people'd get bored - and I appreciate each and every one of the things they wrote me.
I didn't reply individually to each and every one. I figured they'd prefer I wrote this, instead. ^-^
Logan opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling. The pink light of dawn was just coming through the windows, which meant he'd slept a little late, but not so much that it mattered. He didn't move yet, since it was a nippy morning and once he started he was going to have to keep moving fairly fast. Instead he gazed at the ceiling, blankets snuggled around his ears, and thought about the day ahead. Breakfast first. He and Creed had agreed that the kids could learn to get by on short rations later. They had to get fed up good first, especially while they were still layering on muscle. It was better to go into a no-food situation in the peak of condition than it was to go in prepared by always being hungry anyway.
None of that sissy sugary crap for breakfast, though. Porridge full of dried fruit, with eggs and bacon. That was a good, solid breakfast, and stuffing it into the kids every morning for the last eight weeks was showing some good results. Clarice had always been a bit on the skinny side, and Jonny and Kyle... he didn't know how they'd joined up, but they had... were downright scrawny at first. Lots of exercise and good food was fixing that, and he was pleased about that. He liked seeing the kids getting some flesh on their bones. It made him feel like he was doing a good job, taking care of them right.
They were good kids. Well, except Geordi, he was a pain in the ass. But he couldn't help it. Once the hormones settled down and he worked through the residue of sixteen years of resentment, he'd be okay. Even Creed was almost patient with him. Logan figured he knew how it felt to be a tiny fragment of consciousness on a wild ride of testosterone and over-sensitive instincts and a lot of generalized resentment. He hadn't ripped the kid even one new orifice, and there were times when Logan wouldn't have blamed him at all.
Okay. Time to start the day. Logan kicked off the blankets, wincing a little - it was definitely getting colder in the mornings - and made his customary start to the day, which was dousing his head in icy water and yelling "OUTTA BED!" at the top of his lungs.
He heard the grumbles and the mutters as six pairs of rapidly toughening little feet hit the floor, and grinned, heading for the kitchen.
Creed was presumably already up, since there was fresh coffee in the pot. There was no electricity in their little hut... it was usually rented out for wilderness retreats by students, or so Logan understood, which was why there were two 'teacher' rooms, and a couple of bigger ones with bunks... but it belonged to Creed, and he wasn't a big fan of electricity. He liked woodstoves and candles just fine.
Logan liked them too. The coffee-pot sat on the back of the stove all day, and the stove kept the rest of the house reasonably warm, as long as all the inside doors were left open, and the outside doors kept shut. It was still dim here at the back of the house, but the oil-lamp in the middle of the table was lit. Logan turned it up a bit, and poured himself some coffee.
Marie stumbled into the kitchen, still yawning, her hair ruffled around her face and a bulky sweater pulled over her pyjamas. "Gimme that," she said, pointing to the cup with an adorably mulish pout on her face.
"Get yer own," he grunted, but he smiled fondly at her. It was a lot easier to get attached to Marie, who was cute and liked him, than it was to get attached to Geordi, who wasn't and didn't.
"Can't. It's too hard." Marie wasn't a morning person.
Annie was, and she bounced into the kitchen with a cheery beam. "Hi, guys!"
"Ge' me some coffee?" Marie asked hopefully.
"Sure." Annie slopped some coffee into a mug, and handed it to Marie. She didn't bother asking if she could have any - the unvarying 'No' had eventually gotten to her. Instead, she poured herself some milk, which they got fresh every day from a farm not too far down the road. "Is Dad outside?"
"I guess." Logan shrugged. "Only just woke up. Coffee was on, though."
Annie nodded. Creed had a tendency to take a swing around the edge of the property - checking the perimeter, he called it - when he woke up in the morning. Sometimes he'd bring back a fresh rabbit or two. He was the only person Logan had ever met more wary than he was... still, he was the one Magneto might come after. That'd probably freak Logan out, too.
* * *
"Xavier School for the Gifted, Ororo Monroe speaking."
Creed grinned. "Yer least favourite person," he growled.
"Oh." The distaste in her voice spoke volumes. "Where's Logan? He's the one who usually calls in."
"Left him watchin' the cubs." Sabretooth picked idly at the tattered phonebook that graced the phonebox, leaving furrows in the paper. "Just lettin' you know that Magneto ain't got us yet."
"Wonderful." The woman sounded pissed that he was still alive. He respected that. He'd want to see him dead, too. "Are the children all right?"
"Fine." They were eating, they were sleeping, they were finally putting on some muscle. "You keep yourself nice, sweetcheeks, huh?"
"Drop dead," she snarled, hanging up the phone. Creed laughed. He was starting to like her.
He'd come to town for a reason, though. There were things Logan shied away from doing. He'd already taken care of one of them - there was a small arsenal of firearms in the back of the jeep, and a roll of cheap paper. He'd get Annie to draw the people-shapes on it.
He'd picked up other things, too... drugs and poisons, mostly. He needed to teach the kids how to identify them... and how to use them. Well, Annie and Clarice, mostly, but he'd show the others too. He'd have to go someplace bigger for the rarer and more expensive things, but he could work with basic stuff for now.
He headed for the post office, and casually terrified the postal workers until they coughed up the package he'd been waiting on. More of a crate, really. Anyone opening it would have seen a clutter of toys and books suitable for various ages... and the toys and books would go to the kids. The money, assorted small gadgets, and supply of blowfish toxin hidden inside them were just useful extras.
He was in a good humour when he got back to the cabin to find Logan already running the kids through the morning workout. Annie was teaching Kyle and Jonny some more bits and pieces of various martial arts disciplines, while Logan had the other three throwing knives at a tree. The tree was holding up fairly well, which meant Geordi and Marie still hadn't gotten the knack. Clarice was had been doing okay yesterday, but she still wasn't strong enough to get the knife into wood. "Hi!" she squeaked now, running over to him. She looked kinda cute all grubby, in baggy overalls and bare feet. "Did you bring anything good?"
"Some fun stuff." He ruffled her hair amiably, nearly knocking her over - he had to start remembering how easy she tipped over - and roared. By now everyone had learned that meant 'pay attention', so they stopped what they were doing and wandered over.
He'd fished some of the goodies out of the crate, and now he held up a small leather pouch on a long cord. "Here." He tossed it to Annie. "Wear that."
She weighed it experimentally in one small hand. "What's in it?"
"Money, a blade about as long as your finger, and a lighter," Creed grunted, fishing more of the pouches out of the crate. "Wear it even to sleep, understand?" He tossed the other bags to the other kids, and was pleased to note that none of the catches were dropped or fumbled.
"Why?" Geordi asked, looking suspicious.
"So if we gotta clear out in a hurry, we won't be broke an' defenseless," Marie told him, rolling her eyes a little. "It's a good idea." She put hers around her neck, and gave him a lopsided little smile. "Thanks."
"Forget it." He still felt a little bad about letting Magneto shove her in that machine. "When yer better trained, I'm takin' you all on a drive an' throwing you out of the car with whatever you've got on you. I won't be givin' you any warning, so never take that pouch off, understand?"
They all nodded. Logan was giving him a surprised, rather approving look. "It's a good idea," he agreed.
Creed snorted, and tossed him an empty pouch. "You can fill your own."
"Wouldn't have it any other way," Logan grinned toothily.
Creed grinned just as toothily. "Good." He pulled open the back door and hoisted the bundle of assorted firearms onto his shoulder. "Go back to kicking and tossing, kiddies. You're starting guns tomorrow."
* * *
"Okay, this is getting weird." Geordi pulled his knees up under his chin. They were having their quiet conference in the girl's room, and while Jonny and Kyle had both been permitted to stick as much of themselves as fitted under Annie's comforter, neither Clarice nor Marie had chosen to lend him more than a pillow to sit on. "Why are they teaching us all this stuff? And why *guns*?"
"I guess they're trying to take care of us," Annie shrugged, curled up in a small blonde ball between the other two guys. "They want us to be able to take care of ourselves, and this is the only kind of training they know."
Geordi frowned at her. "And what kind of training *is* it?" he asked, trying to keep a handle on his temper... less because he didn't want to offend anyone, and more because he was sick of Annie sanctimoniously telling everyone that they had to be nice to him because the testosterone was going to his head and he'd calm down in a few years.
"Mercenary. Commando. You know, like in Mission Impossible?" Annie opened her yellow eyes guilelessly wide. "We're learning a profession." There was a long silence. Everyone stared at her. "What?" she said a bit plaintively. "I liked that movie!"
"Me too, but..." Marie scrunched up her pretty nose and gave her friend a puzzled look. "But why would they teach us to be mercenaries?"
"Because it's all they KNOW," Annie said with exaggerated patience. "Weren't you LISTENING?"
"Yeah, but..." Marie shook her head in bewilderment. "What if we don't *want* to be mercenaries?"
Annie shrugged. "Hand to hand fighting, sharpshooting, lockpicking, and a knowledge of Useful Poisons are skills that never stop being useful," she said brightly. "Trust me, these are skills worth acquiring."
"You said that about fishing with our feet, too," Clarice pointed out from her nest of blankets.
"And if you're ever lost in the wilderness without arms you'll THANK me for that," Annie retorted.
Most of the others snickered. "We'll keep that in mind," Marie agreed, trying to keep her face straight.
"Good." Annie nibbled absently on a frayed claw. "Anyway, the faster we learn, the faster we'll be able to go on jobs and stuff."
There was another long silence. "Jobs?" Kyle asked cautiously.
"You know, jobs. Stealing stuff, guarding stuff, the odd assassination..."
"Assassination?" Geordi did not squeak. Not because he didn't *want* to squeak, it was just that his voice didn't go up that high any more.
"Sure." She gave him that slow, toothy grin, the one that made her eyes seem to glow. "I'll do those, if you're too chicken."
* * *
Training picked up after that. The two men stopped running the teenagers to exhaustion every day and started them on other things. Annie got the position of assistant instructor, since her training in the Facility where she'd grown up had been fairly extensive. The other five soon found their heads being stuffed with a dizzying array of information. They all had to have driving lessons, especially the kind that involved going very fast on slippery roads. They all had to learn some basic lock-picking skills. They had to lean how to use various kinds of weapons, and how to disable them as well. They had to learn how to identify various sorts of poisons, and how to counteract them. They were still getting extensive physical stuff, and a lot of survival-in-the-wilderness training.
And Geordi started noticing something else, that he was fairly sure the others weren't picking up on. The focus of all their training was on necessity. They were being taught how to disable any number of opponents with their bare hands, but also how to kill them... in case it was necessary. How to shoot to wound, incapacitate with small doses of drugs or poison, hit someone in just the right spot to render them unconscious without doing permanent harm... but every lesson carried over into fatality, just in case it was necessary.
And it worked better than it would have if the focus had been on killing. If it had, most of them would have balked early on. But it wasn't - instead, the killing was slipped in as a last resort, as a 'just in case', on the tail of more civilised and palatable alternatives. They all knew, trainers and trainees alike, that sometimes last resorts were necessary - after the nightmarish events of his kidnapping and immurement in the facility, even Geordi found himself accepting it. But after a while he realized that they were all being fed the idea that sometimes killing *was* necessary, that sometimes it *was* unavoidable... and that under those circumstances, they should just go ahead and do it, without worrying.
They were being taught to think of killing as unpleasant but entirely viable option... just in case, of course.
It freaked him out enough, when he finally realized it, that he bailed on morning training for the first time ever and went and hid up one of the tallest trees he could find. Not that they wouldn't be able to find him, of course, but an unofficial convention had settled in among them that someone up a tree was someone who wanted to be left alone.
He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to go home to his family, in Canada where he fitted in, where he knew where he stood. But he couldn't go back... both Professor Xavier and his newly-discovered father had warned him of how much danger he might pose to his family. Xavier had been tactful. Logan hadn't. He couldn't put them at risk like that, and he couldn't stay at the school because apparently that was compromised too and he was STUCK here unless he wanted to strike out on his own, and he didn't want to do that, was ashamed of his fear of being alone and defenseless...
It didn't surprise him that Sabretooth was the one who came looking for him. His father tended to get all tangled up in guilt and confusion when he tried to communicate with Geordi, and they all knew he didn't pay much attention to the other, younger adolescents. He did, however, have a healthy respect for Creed, who had a tendency to smack him around the ears if he didn't behave. There was something about a casual cuff that left you deaf in one ear and your eyes fuzzy for a few minutes that made you talk more politely next time. "Go away," he said anyway, since he was currently twenty feet above any potential ear-cuffing.
"Not unless you've got a damn good reason for skippin' out on a healthy eight mile run uphill," Creed said calmly. "Get yer ass down here, or I'll come up and throw you down."
Reluctantly, Geordi climbed down, to a mere five feet or so above the ground. "What?"
Creed leaned back against another tree, looking up at him. It was a mark of the man's supreme self-confidence that he could have a conversation with someone much higher than he was without seeming to feel anything but completely in charge. "What's crawled up your ass?" he asked bluntly. "I can see ya twitching from here."
"You're training us to be killers, aren't you?" Geordi said bluntly.
Creed actually looked a little surprised, bushy eyebrows twitching and unreadable black eyes widening a little. "Yeah. You're just figuring this out now?"
Geordi gritted his teeth. He wanted to yell and kick and make the man see how fucked up this all was... but there was no point. Creed was a killer, he always had been. From his perspective, he was probably being a good, responsible parent, teaching his girls how to take care of themselves in the most efficient way possible. "Why?" he gritted out. "Why the sudden need to turn us all into efficient little murderers as fast as possible?"
"Because someone has to," Sabretooth said grimly. "Listen, kid, you've got a healing factor. That makes you prize property for any one of a hundred private organizations, pseudo-military groups, or renegade government units. If you don't learn to defend yerself NOW, you'll wind up like your old man. Head screwed to kingdom come, body fucked with, and about enough sanity left to keep you makin' sentences. That what you want?"
"No!" Geordi kicked the trunk of the tree furiously. "I don't want any part of this!"
A huge hand came up and yanked him down out of the tree, bringing him down hard on his feet and yanking him in close. Geordi was already six foot two, and might get taller. Creed made him feel short. "You don't get that, kid," the older man gritted out. "You can't not get involved. You're a prize, a big juicy bone that's gonna get fought over by every scavenger on this planet until the day you fucking *die*. Your only choice is to come in on yer own terms, trained and prepared enough that nobody can screw with you too bad, or get dragged in untrained, unprepared, and get yerself so broken that you never put yerself back together. Do you understand me? There is no 'not involved' option here."
"But-"
"No buts." Geordi was pushed away, to stumble back against his tree. Creed folded his arms and gave him what might almost have been a sympathetic look. "It's fucked up, kid, I know that. If I could think of a different way, you think I wouldn't take it f'r Annie and Clarice? But there just ain't any other options. You can be a predator, or you can be prey. It's just the way this shit works."
Geordi shook his head, growling unhappily. Then he realized what he was doing, and blinked. Creed, Logan, Kyle and Annie all did that, made little growls and purrs and other noises, usually without even noticing they were doing it. He hadn't noticed himself. He was getting more like them. The idea scared him, but at the same time he kinda liked it. It made him feel like he belonged. Like he fitted in. Knowing black eyes told him the growl... and his reaction to it... had been noted. How could someone so apparently thick notice every tiny thing? "I'm not committing to anything," Geordi said after a long moment. "But I'll stay. And train. Annie says it's an okay way to make a living."
"There's worse," Creed agreed. "You won't starve."
Geordi nodded. "I'll be back for lunch," he said, not quite able to back down enough to be hauled back like a naughty child. "Just gonna... you know, beat up some trees and stuff."
Creed nodded and slipped away, blending into the forest so totally that even in worn jeans and a red and blue flannel shirt, he vanished within seconds.
* * *
That night, Logan was sitting on the big lump of hardwood that served as a chopping block for firewood, smoking and staring up at the stars. "They all asleep?" he asked, as a big shadow slipped out of the back door.
"Mostly." Creed made himself comfortable on the round concrete edge of the septic tank. He hadn't bothered to hide it below ground. "The brat's takin' his revelation hard."
Logan sighed, taking the cigar out of his mouth and fiddling with it. "Maybe we ain't taking the best approach," he said a little regretfully. "Xavier's way-"
"Don't work. You know that." Creed was a vague outline in the starlight, but Logan could hear the dismissive sneer in his voice. "If we don't teach 'em what they need now, they're gonna wind up like you... or worse."
"Yeah." Logan didn't know what, if anything, Creed knew about the Weapon X program. He'd mentioned once that at some point he'd had tags like Logan's, but had lost them. That was it. He got a look in his eyes when it was mentioned, though, that suggested that whatever he remembered, it wasn't a pleasant memory. "Feels wrong, though. To keep 'em from getting made like us, we're making them like us ourselves?"
Creed shrugged massive shoulders, his head tilting back to gaze up at the stars. "Better us," he rumbled. "Better teachin 'em now, without screwing with their heads too much, than having it forced on 'em later."
"I guess." Logan snorted, mouth quirking in resignation. "Guess we're stuck with each other for a while."
There was a long pause. The silhouetted shoulders slumped a little. "Yeah," Creed said grudgingly. "It'd be worse'n stupid to split up now." Neither of them would leave the cubs they'd either sired or adopted. And separating while they were lumbered with half-trained cubs was tantamount to suicide. "Heard from Mags."
"What does he want?" Logan inquired with a certain hostile interest.
"Me, back at work." Creed shrugged. "Told him no. Not a word the man likes to hear."
"I'll bet." Logan puffed on his cigar for a minute. "So. We're stuck with each other for a bit longer." It was weird. He still hated Creed, but it had a kind of mechanical feel to it. He was having less and less trouble shoving it aside to work with the man... although admittedly they didn't work together all that closely. More a matter of organising the day's schedule then taking the kids out in opposite directions. Creed had his faults, but he was a pro, and he was treating this like a job.
"Don't let the brat get to ya," Creed said surprisingly, after a long silence.
"Huh?" Logan blinked.
"The brat." Creed stood up and stretched luxuriously. "Don't feel guilty over getting his pure little self all messed up with nasty old violence. It's gonna happen no matter what you do. Best you can hope for is to ease him into it gentle-like."
Such relative kindness and sensitivity was completely unlike Creed, and Logan said so. Creed snorted. "Don't get me wrong. I don't like you, and the brat pisses me off on a daily basis." He shrugged again and turned to enter the house. "There's just some things I wouldn't wish on anyone."
