Maddie & Logan: Care Bears, Mutant Militias, and Wolverine

[x-weaponx.livejournal.com]

Seeking some solitude but needing something to do with his hands, Logan heads to the Boathouse to retrieve some half finished wood carvings only to encounter a very chatty Madelyne Pryor. A discussion about mutant militias and military service ensues.


The Boathouse had been beautifully renovated over the past several years, providing a space where anyone could go and work with any number of mediums. A blacksmith's forge, a dark room, and large, open spaces that could be divided by sliding walls. Today those walls were retracted, and the room filled with the sounds emanating from a pair of speakers placed against a wall. The music was loud and upbeat, and while the bass may not have been loud enough to cause the walls and floor to rumble, it still could be heard (though somewhat muffled) downstairs.

Logan frowned as he walked up the path to the boathouse. He'd done some snooping around when he wandered the grounds and had been pleased to find an ample supply of carving wood stowed here. He preferred sittin' outside on the dock to do his carving than being cooped inside for the most part. The noise coming from the place was makin' his head hurt and he wasn't even inside yet. That'd teach him to leave his projects in here. Stepping inside made him wince but no gettin' around it. He was gonna have to go into that noise. As he climbed the stairs, a headache started to build.

The noise didn't seem to bother the redheaded girl who was currently lying on her stomach, head and bent legs bobbing and swinging side to side in time with the music, papers scattered all around her. So focused was Maddie on the colored pencil drawing before her that the presence of another person entering the room. Or perhaps it was that Logan's footsteps were drowned out by her work music. She continued with her sketching and studying, trading one color for another, then pausing and examining her work after coloring something in. It wasn't until she turned her attention to a clay egg, holding it aloft and twirling it around, that she noticed the man in the background.

"Oh shit," Maddie exclaimed as she searched around piles of paper, lifting some up, until the remote to the sound system was located and the music stopped with the push of a button. "Sorry about that," she continued sheepishly, pushing herself up into a seated position. "I didn't think anyone else was planning on coming here today."

Thank fuck the girl had turned off that racket. His headache was now rapidly fading and he shook his head to clear it faster. Any longer and he'd have been forced to do something drastic to get the girl's attention. He shrugged at her words. "One thing about this place you should always remember. Something unexpected is always gonna happen." He eyed the papers spread all around her. "Left some of my projects up here. I'm Logan by the way. Don't think you were around the last time I was," he said as he moved toward some of the cabinets tucked against the wall.

"Like getting kidnapped by a foreign country that labeled all of us as 'terrorists' for like no reason and we had to totally fight to escape and kill the country's totally batshit crazy President," the girl countered nonchalantly, stretching her arms above her head, leaning to one side, then the other. "Yeah. Shit happens here, but you know, compared to everything else, 'someone else wanting to work in the Boathouse' doesn't even rank on the list." Eyes narrowed, she followed the man's movements as he ventured further into the room. She recognized the name, and the person it belonged to, but only from afar.

"They also call you 'Wolverine'," Maddie commented, suddenly awake from her daze of thinking; she remembered something from the journals. He was also teaching Clint, but it was the name thing that her mind zeroed in on. "You don't look like a badger. Your eyes aren't beady enough," she tilted her head to the side. "I mean, the whole mutton chops thing, I can see why your nickname is animal related, but a type of badger?" Handshake of disappointment. More for whoever gave Logan that nickname and their total lack of imagination than at the man himself.

"You look more like a bear than a badger, you know. And I hear you can be all gruff and cranky and shit too." Her eyes narrowed and she gave him a once-over, confirming her initial thoughts on his appearance. With a knowing nod she continued, "Yeah. Bear after hibernation when they wander out all hungry and grumpy. Yeah," her face broke into a wide smile, "I'm gonna go with bear over badger. Oooh 'Care Bear' Perfect!"

"I'm gonna go with 'Care Bear' instead. Suits you better."

The girl could seriously chatter. It reminded him of the squirrels jawing at each other when they were communicating and also on the lookout for predators. He paid enough attention to get the gist of what she was saying. Genosha and pretending things were normal wasn't gonna cut it with her. He opened the cabinets right next to the side wall and pulled out two medium sized pieces of wood. They'd been whittled on some but he'd still been trying to figure out what exactly he wanted out of each piece.

At the talk of wolverines, Logan looked at her with an arched eyebrow. He wasn't sure he was gonna get a word in edgewise with the rate she was babbling and essentially talking to herself. He walked over to one of the more comfortable wooden chairs paired with an end table and settled into it then set one of the wood pieces on the end table. He knew what it was gonna be now. "I call Gibney the badger. It fits him more than me. They got plenty of wolverines up in Canada." Which is why Logan figured he had the codename. It was his best guess anyway.

He'd started whittling while the girl kept prattling on, but then lifted his head to pin her with a look. "No way in hell, kid. You call me Logan or Wolverine. Nothing else."

That look was mirrored back at him through the bright green eyes of the girl sitting cross-legged on the floor, her steeled gaze meeting his, direct and unflinching. Her look however, was impassive and thoroughly unimpressed. Having dolled out many similar pointed looks over the years, Maddie wasn't intimidated. There was enough space between, she had determined, that if he were to try something she would have adequate time to fire off a blast of psionic energy to provide her enough of a head start that her telepathic cries for help would yield a response from someone inside the mansion before Logan reached her.

Not that she thought he would attack her. Even while she had been talking, the redhead had continued to watch the newcomer (or returner, given that he had lived at the mansion before), the way he carried himself, his walk, how he concentrated on the wood black, trying to gain some sort of grasp on who this man was for herself. A man could be measured by what he didn't say more often than what he did. He may have been annoyed at the new nickname, but he was too in control of himself to lash out at a teenage girl for naming him after a children's cartoon. Logan was a teacher, he had to be used to dealing with teenagers and their strange behavior.

Just in case, though, Maddie was going to change the topic. "You were in Canada's mutant fighting team force thing, weren't you? Your walk," she began to explain the seemingly random comment. "You look like you've been through some sort of military training."

He wasn't sure what to make of the girl. Her scent gave him no clues with it's mix of wariness and curiosity. He kept half an eye on her as he started carving the wood block again. There was no telling what she'd heard about him. Far as he could tell, he hadn't done anything threatening to sway her opinion one way or the other. Push back for the nonsensical names she gave people was only to be expected.

Logan paused for a moment to give the girl a look. "Gar's been fillin' your heads full of history, huh? To answer your question, yeah I was. It was a good program when politics weren't muckin' things up."

"Nah. Like I said," she pulled her knees to her chest and continued to look at him with large, innocent eyes. "The way you carry yourself and stuff, you've had some sort of military type training. And you said you're from Canada. Canada had that mutant team thing. I mean, it's not hard to put two and two together and come up with that." It was kinda a "no duh" answer. Well, Maddie supposed it could have been something much more complicated, but it was the simplest of explanations that often were closest to the truth.

"I was curious, is all."

Well, he couldn't ever fault the kids that ended up at the mansion for being dumb. "That's one way of puttin' it. It's one of the better countries to be in if you're a mutant. Look at you like you're a person instead of just some thing that can do stuff for 'em." His hands moved sure and steady, slowly swiping out the beginnings of an animal face and body. Between Gar and, he would bet, the pretty good body of info about the Flight Program out on the Internet she could've had her questions answered before now. "What's got you curious about it? I would think if you'd had questions you'd've gone to Gar long before I showed back up here."

Maddie shrugged and continued to watch the man work. "It's just cool, to meet someone else who was in the closest thing to the armed forces mutants could be in. My dad's Army," she began to explain. "I grew up knowing I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Well, kinda. Marines, not Army, and as a pilot. But, you know."

The Flight program and Heather and Mac had been good to him. He probably owed much of his sanity and all of his humanity to them in some way or another. But even before that, what with Weapon X, it felt like he'd been military for a long while. It just felt natural down to his bones in a way nothing else did. It'd also explain the varied and dated information he knew. Looking at her, she could've probably passed for normal within the ranks, but with the testing and her records leading back to Xavier's, it would never happen now. Logan grinned. "Bet he wasn't too happy about that decision." He shrugged. "Honestly not too much to tell. Good and bad parts to the job like everythin' else."

"I wanted to help people." It may have sounded juvenile, idealistic, and simplistic, but that was what it all boiled down to. "Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Panama... You don't need me to list all conflict areas where some sort of intervention by military force was necessary. I mean, you're old enough to know better than me." She smiled knowingly; hell, he very well may have been part of some of those conflicts. This dude definitely had the look of someone who had been on the front lines, possibly even Special Forces.

"You can be gay and in the military, and now they are going to allow women in combat positions, but be X-Gene positive and that automatically means that you're no longer a person but a 'thing' that is weaponized. Whatever." She swept the topic away with the wave of her hand. "There's always Professor Xavier's Privately Funded Mutant Militia, I guess."

Chuck would never let it get to that, but there were plenty out there that already thought that was the point of the school. Fear made a lot of people stupid. There was no telling how much shit had been thrown at the school as a result. The world was fucked up enough without people turning on each other just 'cause they were different. "Helpin' people out is a good thing to want. It's how people react to that that's the issue most of the time." And who the hell knew, maybe he had been dispatched to all those conflicts. Damn the program for leaving him no clues about if he had or not.

Logan shrugged. "The world ain't perfect and someday having the X-gene won't be the issue it is today." But that stuff took time and maybe he'd be around for it, but for the kid, by the time that happened, it wouldn't matter anymore. "Not sure Chuck would be much of a fan of that. He's got enough people looking at the school with that idea already." He hoped the kid wasn't going around and spouting that line where non-mutants could hear. The last thing they needed was more trouble to be stirred up.

Maddie rolled her eyes and sighed in a very pointed and dramatic fashion and picked up her faux egg once more, tossing it up and catching it with practiced ease. The rote action calmed her down; she could practically hear him thinking that she was some dumb, loudmouth kid even without her powers. She hated that. She may not have been as smart as Sue or Clint or all the others, but she wasn't stupid. And it was clear from Logan's reaction that he had totally missed her meaning anyways. "If it acts like a duck," she stated calmly, eyes glued to the flying egg. "Call it a duck. The X-Men are the closest thing to what I wanted to do before I found out about my status. Secrecy only makes it more worthwhile."

"You do it, not to brag about so you can look like a Big Damn Hero, but because it is what needs to be done."

"No arguin' with you there. Recognition isn't all what it's cracked up to be." Logan remembered all the shit that'd gone into the Weapon X program for the "glory" of doing something right and look how that had ended up. A bunch of fuckers messing with mutants for their own twisted ends. At least the kid didn't seem as head in the clouds idealistic as she'd initially come off. He could respect that belief tempered with a good hard knowledge of the real world. But she didn't seem like she was one for secrecy. "Aimin' to join the X-Men team then?"

"Well..." the egg froze in midair and Maddie's pensive gaze rose to look at Logan. "Yeah." It wasn't something she had really discussed with others, or even spent much time thinking about. She didn't have to think about the decision; ever since the complete 180 her life had taken, joining the X-Men just made sense.

"I mean, I have another year until I'm seventeen," the teen continued. "And get my parents to sign on. It's one thing to join the Marines, he could probably finagle information to confirm my safety if I have to drop off the radar for a bit, but a secret mutant quasi-paramilitary team with more enemies than you can shake a stick at, with who knows what kind of powers being used offensively, where he'd be completely in the dark? Harder sell."

"But if those guys, and ladies, want to target mutants anyways, well I'm not gonna be sittin' on my thumb, waiting for the inevitable day when I end up among those being targeted and am forced to act." Pause. Well, that had already happened once actually in Genosha. "Again."

Logan watched the egg float and obviously the girl was telekinetic. Probably telepathic too with the way those mutations ran together. He'd seen enough of it just among the mansion residents and outside too. He chuckled. "Yeah, gonna be a tough sell with your folks. They take you being a mutant okay?" Kid seemed far too well adjusted for them not to and sounded like she was even still talking to them on a pretty regular basis.

He nodded at her words. He might end up liking her more than he thought he would in the beginning. "You got it right there. If those that can don't do something and instead leave it to others, who's to say things won't end up shit anyway?" Logan grimaced at the mention of Genosha. That fucking place was just like a disease that wouldn't go away. He turned the half carved wood block over in his hands and dug some wood dust out of one of the deeper lines.

"From what you're saying, you won't be caught unaware ever again. Keep that fight in you, kid. Sometimes it's the best thing you've got goin' for ya."

Maddie smiled impishly and snorted. "Nah. My parents are totally cool with me being a mutant. They made me this way. The return and warranty periods are all up, so they're stuck with me like it or not." She may have taken it for granted that her mutant status was instantly accepted, even though she knew she shouldn't; she couldn't even imagine it being any other way.

"And they hardly raised me to just sit back and let shit happen," she continued with a shrug. "I have another year to talk them into signing my permission slip to go on field trips with the X-Men, they'll come around. As long as I agree to graduate high school."

Several moments of silence passed as Maddie watched Logan work on his log. Chin propped up by her fists, she leaned in, making a study of the older man. "You know. You're not as gruff and scary as everyone has made you out to be. I know you got a reputation to uphold and all, trust me I do too, so I won't go spreading this insight around. But you are totally more Care Bear than Wolverine."

She was definitely one of the luckier ones when it came to the parent department. It probably explained her over the top personality. "Good on 'em. We need more people like 'em out in the world." The more he was hearing about her parents the more he thinks he might like them and their kid. Though the jury was probably still out on that last thing. He managed to etch a couple more lines into the wood when her words had him pause to look at her. Yeah, the jury was definitely still out. He arched an eyebrow at her. "If you say so, kid, but I'm holdin' you to not spreadin' it around. You keep to that and if you need it, I'll help ya convince your parents to say yes to the X-Men stuff."

It was Maddie's turn to arch an eyebrow. Yeah, he definitely wasn't as fear-inducing as the stories made him sound. "I'll refrain from hugging you around your midsection, Care Bear, but thanks."