Starter for @snkts
Laura w/ Logan
Ducked beneath the thick brush, she chewed on her knuckles. At the crux of the knobby bone and into the valley of the ragged, torn skin, her teeth scraped and gnawed, pinching and pulling. Then biting at the soft flesh of her fingers to leave indents in the tendons. Thorns and brambles pulled at the fabric of her jacket, drawing thin lines in the leather. She smelled of sweat and dust, exhaustion lingering on her own scent she'd chewed on pine needles and waded through the rivers on her way into the wilderness. Laura smelled like the forest now, blended into the landscape of cedar and pine. She lurked in the shadows of trees and tangled bushes, carrying her boots pinched in her left hand to soften her footfalls on the leaf litter. The scent of smoke, burning wood fire, had led her through the woods to the knoll where now crouched and spotted flickering embers between the foliage.
Night was falling like a heavy blanket. Cicada and cricket song mingled with the crying of the frogs of the creek. A rhythmic melody that echoed with the tense breath in her throat and the growing anticipation flooding her heated veins. He had set up a camp in a clearing, just beyond the treeline, where the ground was flat. She watched him cook and eat dinner, a deer he had caught in these woods; and smoke a cigar, leaned against the base of a tree. Laura waited. Waited for the sun to drip below the horizon and the air to cool. Waited for the fire to fade and for him, his broad shoulders a silhouette in the darkness, to lay down by the bed of coals. And still, she waited, a patient, still predator. Even as the muscles in her legs cramped and stiffened, and then went ignored. The pain didn't hurt her. Laura dismissed pain. Pain inhibited survival.
Laura first learned of The Wolverine in the facility although, for most of her life, he was simply called: Weapon X. Weapon X was her template, her measuring stick, to which all her accomplishments and failures were compared. If Laura did well on a test, they remarked she preformed 2.8 seconds faster than Weapon X had and speculated as to why. If Laura failed in a training exam, they worried her combat skills would not compare to Weapon X. Later, she heard the scientists call him "Wolverine." They talked about his DNA, his accomplishments, his activities. The Wolverine, the name had stuck to the top of Laura's mouth like tar and dry spit, and she chewed on it at night while laying her dismal cell. The Wolverine was real and original, she was fake and a clone. A pale imitation and a necessary leap in progress all at once. Everything in her life was justified by him: the experiments, the training, and the torture. All to make her into Weapon X. The Wolverine endured and survived the Adamantium Bonding Process, and so did Laura. Laura imagined him often. What he was like. What he looked like.
Hatred ate her inside-out and burned her life. It felt like fire or a hot coal smoldering in her rib cage. Tasted like smoke seeping between the cracks of her lips and tasting of acrid, ash, burning her nose and throat. Hatred felt like the molten metal they injected into her bones and the ice cold, astringent water that flooded her lungs when she opened her mouth to scream. It was a festering wound which rotted her in the following months from something else than what she was. It was like they threw her into the tank and she was one thing, and she emerged from the waters something else. Something rancid and horrible, that ripped open the walls of the facility, cut open the chests of the guards that shot her, and killed, and killed, and killed, until all she tasted was iron and blood, and not the smoke anymore. For the first time in her life, Laura emerged from the abyssal darkness of the facility alone to wander the dry lands of the desert expanse under a furious sun. She had nothing to drink and nothing to eat. Hatred, anger, something nasty and satisfying, that bit like the rabid wolf dogs used to, kept her alive. Put its teeth in her and did not let go, and when the pain wasn't enough she chewed her hands raw and few new places to wet her claws.
Laura did what she had been trained to do: she hunted, and she'd been hunting for weeks now. She picked-up the trail in the SHIELD Headquarters in Arlington, Texas. There, on a flickering LED screen she learned more about her template than she had in her entire life: his height, his hair color, his face, his name, and his affiliation with a mutant terrorist group called the X-Men. (She sat, dirty and disheveled, in a public library and researched the X-Men. Found news articles and public forums, learned their names, their powers, their histories. And she lingered, on pictures of The Wolverine). From Texas, Laura traveled hundreds of miles to Westchester, New York, fending off Hydra and SHIELD's attempts to recover her. In New York, she arrived at the Institute, a type of school or training ground for mutants. There, for the first time in her life, she saw him.
The Institute was hosted in a beautiful mansion, on green, verdant garden grounds. Inside the iron-wrought fence lived a student population of about twenty teenagers, along with fifteen faculty and staff, and a handful of others who taught or worked in some capacity. Laura mentally catalogued faces, names, powers, schedules, as she spent the next two weeks observing the Institute and its activities from every angle. Among them was The Wolverine, who functioned as some sort of teacher or trainer. She observed him put the students through obstacle courses and drills in the morning; play basketball in the afternoon; and even sit under a gazebo and smoke in the evening. His life seemed easy and the life of the students, even easier. They ate meals together in a big dining room, and Laura raided their trash, so she imagined the food tasted even better hot and fresh.
The longer she watched, however, the more that fire smoldered and sparked inside of her. Every day was a reminder of what she didn't have, couldn't have, because of what she was. Because of what he had taken away from her. Laura was patient, however, and strategic. She recognized that the numbers weren't in her favor, that the 'X-Men' could overpower her and prevent her from completing her mission. So, she waited until he left the Institute, alone. She had followed him into the wilderness and now his pulse slowed. His breathing evened.
The Wolverine had not moved in several minutes. He was asleep.
Laura yanked on her boots, pulling the buckles taut to secure them around her ankle and calf. She slipped between the trees, light footed and yet swift, circling his camp to come to the treeline of the clearing. Laura paused, assessing the situation. The fire burned down to coals, leaving gentle amber light in the wake of the flickering heat. On a metal spider sat a pot that smelled of deer meat and vegetables, and on the stones was a plate of dry bread. As if he had left them out for someone else. Her eyes moved across the camp. The Wolverine slept on the ground, his arm tucked behind his head, and hat pulled low over his eyes.
It was the closest Laura had been to him besides that time he almost caught her in the boat house. He smelled like her but he didn't look like her. He was bigger and his hair was black, and short. She crept closer, knelt close to the ground and rolling her foot from heel-to-toe to muffle her foot steps. Laura breathed thinly through her nose, suppressing her pulse and respiration. His hearing would be as sensitive as hers: the slightest noise could waken him but Laura wanted The Wolverine awake. She wanted him to see her before she killed him. She wanted him to know it was her and to have to look her in the eyes and see everything he had done. Know that he was going to choke on his own blood because of her. She wanted to feel his blood on her knuckles and hear his chest rattle with death.
At his side, she stopped. Laura could hear the thunder of his heart beating against his ribs and she watched the slow, rise, fall of his diaphragm. Her hands flexed at her sides, claws slipping from the sheath of her forearms to cut through the ragged skin of her knuckles. She dropped to her knees beside him and aimed to drive her claws into his chest.
