◉◉◉◉◉
"Logan!"
Leo's shout tore across the ruins as adamantium claws already retracted were forced back out of Logan's fists, inch by inch, under an invisible grip.
Beads of blood rose through his skin like sweat turning to rubies. Leo could do nothing but watch, fury and fear knotting in his chest.
"Erik, stop," Professor X said, voice tight. "You'll kill him."
Magneto's reply was cool, contempt threaded through it. "Still so gentle, Charles. I'm teaching this beast a lesson for killing a fellow mutant. He won't die."
A softer voice sounded inside Leo's skull, calm and unhurried: (Hello, my friend. I'm Professor Charles Xavier call me Charles.)
"Professor X?" Leo answered silently. "Remy mentioned you said you're a powerful Class Four. Help Logan! The one we 'killed' wasn't a mutant at all. His powers were stitched together by Stryker's experiments."
I want to, Xavier sent, regretting the words, but Erik's helmet blocks my telepathy.
"Helmet? I might be able to handle that," Leo thought, eyes sharpening.
Not far away, unnoticed in the chaos, Stryker screwed a suppressor onto a pistol loaded with custom rounds. If he couldn't control his weapon, he'd erase the evidence. In his ledger, failed assets became targets.
Leo focused, praying Magneto hadn't wrapped himself in a magnetic cocoon.
He reached with his power and snatched. The dark metal helmet winked off Erik's head then winked back into existence in Charles's waiting hands.
Xavier blinked, surprised, then smiled faintly and lifted his gaze. With Erik's mind no longer shielded, Charles's will poured outward like a tide and seized him.
Magneto froze mid-gesture, eyes narrowing as the telepathic net tightened.
The magnetic hold strangling Leo's power fell away; Wolverine dropped like a felled statue. Leo flashed to Logan, catching him under the arm as the feral mutant sagged, blood slick across his torso.
"Didn't expect your trick to reach that far," Magneto said, voice steady even as his body stayed still under Xavier's restraint. His eyes, though, held a glint of an honest appraisal. "Impressive."
"Thanks," Logan rasped, shoving weakly at Leo's shoulder and forcing himself upright. Pain carved lines across his face, but stubbornness held him together.
Leo's own face went cold. He took a step toward Erik then found himself rooted in place, muscles gone to stone.
(Don't)Charles murmured in his mind. (Erik's wrong, but vengeance won't help. Please let this go.)
Leo's laugh was humorless. "So forgiveness is mandatory when the powerful ask for it?" he said aloud, voice low and edged. "Feels less like mercy and more like 'you don't have the strength to choose otherwise.'"
Xavier's expression flickered with guilt, but his mental grip didn't ease.
A whisper stitched the air. No one saw the muzzle flash.
The round entered at the base of Logan's skull. It chewed forward with a dull, merciless thunk. For a heartbeat, mirrored metal gleamed inside torn flesh.
Logan's legs failed. He toppled.
All three men stared, stunned, as the body hit the ground. Xavier's control slipped. Leo broke free and dropped to his knees beside his friend, fingers hovering, unwilling to touch what he feared he'd find.
No breath. No rise of chest. The wound deep, almost through didn't close.
A chill poured through Leo. He lifted his head, eyes sweeping the shattered landscape. Power flashed blink-step, blink-step as he scanned for the shooter with mounting fury.
Xavier had already found him. Stryker stood in the shadow of a buckled wall, pinned in place by a mind like iron wrapped in velvet.
The colonel's voice howled inside his own skull, defiant and venomous.
Well, Charles? Will you kill me? Did Jason kill his mother?
Xavier's jaw clenched. I'm sorry for Jason. Truly. But you shouldn't have pulled that trigger.
And yet, Stryker thought back, a thin smile on his face, here we are.
On the ground, the "corpse" moved.
Xavier's attention jerked back. Logan drew a ragged breath and pushed himself up, eyes glassy, pupil focus skating.
After two long, disorienting heartbeats, he staggered to his feet.
"Who am I?" he demanded, scanning the faces of two middle-aged men locked in a stand-off, a younger man crouched in blood, everything burning and strange.
"You're Logan," Charles said gently, seizing on the name he'd plucked from Leo's thoughts. "Don't you remember?"
"Is that my name?" Logan frowned, confused surprise crumpling his brow. The distant wail of sirens bled into the night. "I don't remember anything."
He turned and began to jog toward the sound toward anywhere that wasn't here.
"Where are you going?" Xavier asked in his mind, trying for a tether.
"No idea," Logan shot back. "But I'm not sticking around with the two guys who look like bickering lovers."
Charles almost bit his tongue. 'Lovers? Erik and I—' He cut the thought off, cheeks coloring despite himself.
Sirens grew louder. Xavier released his hold on Magneto; neither of them moved to stop Logan. During the brief moment Charles had him, he'd dumped the truth into Erik's mind Deadpool's origin, Stryker's butchery, the context Erik hadn't had.
Erik retrieved his helmet with a flick of his fingers. He looked to the collapsing structure, then back to Charles.
"We should go," he said. "Human police are coming. I've no interest in collecting crimes that aren't mine even if I don't mind them."
Metal thrummed. The two old friends, complicated and unbroken, lifted into the air and slid away across the moonlit sky.
Stryker, released the instant Logan rose, slipped into the darkness. He paused beside a fallen woman Kayla, pale from blood loss, barely breathing.
Calculation crossed his eyes; his mouth curved into a cold smile. He hoisted her under the arms and vanished into the maze of wreckage. Tools, even broken ones, could still be used.
Deep in the ruins, something impossible happened.
Deadpool's headless body reached for its severed partner. Fingers found hair. Flesh met flesh. The stump flexed. Meat knit with a wet, whispering sound until a face blank where a mouth should be stared up at the night again. Madness flickered in the eyes. The creature blurred and was gone.
Leo blink-stepped through the ruins, again and again and again, rage burning through the growing tremor in his limbs. He wanted the shooter. He wanted a target to hold responsible for the stillness that had gripped his friend's body.
He didn't know that a very friend was already on his feet, memories scorched clean, sprinting toward a future that didn't have a name.
Exhaustion finally clawed Leo down. He blinked one last time back to where Logan had fallen.
The ground was empty. Nobody. No blood. Just a scar of disturbed dust and the echo of sirens sliding past the island.
Confusion cracked through the anger. He straightened slowly, breath fogging faintly in the cooling air.
A silhouette stepped into the light.
Emma Frost glittered where the sun caught facets that came and went along her skin, beauty edged in unbreakable geometry. For a heartbeat, she looked less like a woman than a lighthouse.
"Emma…"
◉◉◉◉◉
Support with 100 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
◉◉◉◉◉
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!