Title: His Last Thoughts
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: X-Men
Character/Pairing: Wolverine, RoLo (Ororo/Logan)
Rating: PG-13/T
Challenge/Prompt: fan_flashworks 193: Fast or Slow
Warning(s): Cannon Character Death, Spoilers
Word Count: 1,627
Date Written: 6 June 2017
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to Marvel Comics and Disney, not the author, and are used without permission.





All his life, he's been either too fast or too slow, but now, as the adamantium melds to his bones, Logan finds himself completely unable to move. He can't move a muscle, and soon he's not even going to be able to twitch his eye. He's in too deep this time. His first instinct, once he realizes he can't fight his way out, is to reach out for a telepath, but there's no one available to hear his screams.

Jean and Charles are both long gone. He buried both of them what feels now like so very long ago, although Charles was only a couple of years back. Rachel probably the closest to being the most powerful telepath he knows now that they're gone, but she's too far. They're all too far. He'd be happy even to hear damn Emma Frost's voice in his head now, but no one's coming.

No one's coming, and he's going to die here. He's spent his entire life on the go, always fast to fight and kick ass, eventually learning to sometimes ask questions first, but he's been too slow to spend quality time anywhere or with anything. He'd hoped by the time he'd reach this point, where he knows this is the battle he's not going to make it out of, he'd have spent the time he always means to spend with Jubilee, with Kitty, with Ororo . . . But he still hasn't.

He smirks at himself as he feels the adamantium spreading higher. He can't say he didn't have a chance. He had plenty of chances to walk away from this fight just as he had plenty of chances to spend the time the ones he loves deserved to have with him. He could have done it. He should have done it. But he didn't, and now he can't. Now it's too late.

For a moment, Logan closes his eyes not against the pain in his body as the adamantium takes over but in his heart. There's so much he should have done. He always wanted to be able to go out without any regrets, but he'd never believed he would. He just hadn't thought there'd be so many.

He'll never even get to see them again. These are his last moments, and he's spending them alone. Creed always warned him he'd die alone, and that his heroics would be the end of him. Damn it if the bastard wasn't right!

He hears the wind whistling somewhere he can't see, and again his mind turns to Ororo. He should have made a proper lady out of her. He always swore he would if she gave him the chance. He saw what T'Challa did to her, how unhappy she was in that marriage. He wanted to make her happy, and for a while, he did, he supposes, but he never got to slide the ring that's still in the pouch underneath his shirt, now underneath the adamantium, onto her finger. He would have made her happy, but he still would have made her sad eventually. He's never been able to settle down.

That's why he wasn't there for Jubilee when Angelo or Everett were killed. It's why he wasn't there when she lost her powers, not because he wasn't proud of her or didn't still consider her one of his, one of theirs. Bishop was right, he realizes with a sickening twist to his gut: Jubilee will be the last of them. He might have stood a chance of being there with her longer than the others if not for what's happening this very damn moment, but being that she's a Vampire now, she will outlive all the rest. Still, rather she's a Vampire, mutant, or human, she'll always be an X-Man, and she'll always be his girl. He wishes now, with all his heart, that he would've told her that.

At least he was there for her during the change, and with Shogo, and when Bastion kidnapped her, but it's little consolation now. It was never enough. It never could have been enough. He'd told himself at one time that he had to give her room to grow. That was the only way he'd been able to let her go to be with Generation X, just like with Kitty when he'd allowed her to stay on the other side of the freaking world with Excalibur, but now he wishes he had all that time back. But he's never been one who got wishes granted.

Still, he thinks, as the adamantium burns its way up his neck, if he could have one last wish, it wouldn't be a final cigar or a steak dinner, the final requests of a dying prisoner. Those things don't matter not now, not in the long run. He'd ask for just one more day, one more hour, even just one more minute with those he loves. He'd ask to let them know he loves them.

And as the adamantium continues its way up his neck and he starts to cry, it's not for himself he cries. Logan's never been one to cry for himself. No, every tear he sheds is for some one else. From Hisako to Jubilee, from Sam to Kitty, he thinks of each of the children who have looked up at him and who he has come to care for as deeply as if they'd been his. Laura even crosses his mind. He'd once said they had little in common, but that was a lie. The truth was, they had too much in common. She was so like him that it scared him for her, and for Jubilee who he knew had been falling in love with her at one point. He's always wanted nothing but happiness and safety for his children, but Jubie can never be safe while being close to the daughter made from his genes. Still, he hopes they find each other again; maybe, if nothing else, they can console one another and share memories of him.

He'd snort if his throat wasn't incased in the adamantium that is now almost all over his body, stealing the very right to be able to move his own body from him. This isn't the worst scrap he's been in, but somebody has always come to help him before. But no one's coming now. No one knows where he is. No one's close enough even if they could figure out where he is and what's happening. Soon, he's going to take his last breath. His whole body feels like it's on fire, and although he's lived through literally having his flesh flayed from his body before, Logan knows he's not gonna live through this one. These are his last thoughts, his last memories, his last breaths.

He's wanted to die so many times before -- when he lost Silver Fox, after he escaped the Weapon X project, when he lost Mariko, when he lost Jean . . . He figures he would die now when he's finally ready to live, when he finally has so few reasons left to be "all broody", as his girls would say. He's wanted to join every one of the women he's loved and lost before. He wonders if Ororo will want to join him. He wonders if she'll find the receipt in his desk at the school she helped him be brave enough to create. He hopes she does find the proof so she'll know how much he loved her, and that he had planned on giving himself to her forever, but he hopes his death doesn't make her want to die again.

His Ororo is so beautiful when she's happy and so full of life. The whole freaking world needs her, not just the X-Men or those she considers to be her people. Everybody needs her. She is the Goddess incarnate after all, the very embodiment of the Mother Earth she loves and cherishes so greatly. Everybody needs to see her, needs to experience what it's like to be in her presence. People need to learn to believe again. It's the only way the Earth can be saved, and she of all people, the living Goddess, is the perfect one to teach them. He hopes the world doesn't miss out on such a wonderful, remarkable being as she is because he wasn't man enough to walk away from a battle he couldn't win and stay with her.

That, Logan decides, is his greatest regret. He regrets that he won't be there for his women after today. He regrets he won't get to see Kitty finally marry or Jubilee learn to be happy regardless of whatever genes or blood happens to be rushing through her at the time. Most of all, he regrets that he'll never know what it's like to be married to the greatest, most beautiful, kindest, most graceful, and most passionate woman he's ever known. He regrets that he'll never actually get to tell them how he truly feels. They know perhaps. He thinks they do. He hopes they do. But if he had one last wish, he'd tell them himself and then try his best to go proudly to the grave.

But he can't tell them. He'd roar it out at the tops of his lungs now, but his mouth is already covered and sealed shut. Only his mind is still able to move, still able to think. He feels another presence touch his. His eyes close just in time as the adamantium spreads over the backs of his eyelids. Tell them, he pleads to whoever that presence may be. He doesn't have time to identify them. He barely has time for one last thought. Tell them I always loved them.

The End