**17.30 GMT-6, 15 March 1996, Somewhere in Saskatchewan. CANADA.**
ROGUE
The journey to Saskatchewan was… an experience. A month-long experience, thanks to their navigator.
"I'm telling you, the map is lying!" Wade insisted, holding the crumpled paper as he stared intently at his own hands. He held them up, forming an 'L' with his left and right thumb and the index finger. "Okay, that's the 'L' for left... which means this one is... right. So we go... uhh... uhm, left! No, right!" He frantically switched his pointing finger, his face showing genuine confusion.
Logan's grip on the steering wheel was turning his knuckles white. "Kid, for the last time. Just remember your dominant hand. It's not that hard."
"That's the thing!" Wade exclaimed, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "I'm mixed-handed! I don't have a dominant hand! The 'L' and 'R' on my hands are in a constant state of civil war! My brain says 'sword hand' and 'gun hand,' and that's usually all of them!"
From the back of the camper, Marie sighed, sharing a long-suffering look with a silently-judgmental Ken. Laura just giggled, amused by her brother's flailing.
When they finally, finally found the overgrown dirt track and pushed through a wall of pine branches to see the structure.
"WAIT! THAT'S THE ROAD! Turn here please! Yeah, whatever the directions that are."
The cabin was a skeleton. One window was shattered, the porch sagged mournfully, and the roof was thick with moss and missing shingles. It stood as a monument to time and neglect.
Wade was the first to speak, his voice uncharacteristically small. "Well. This is not what I pictured at all."
Logan forced the creaking door open, the scent of damp wood, rot, and old memories assaulting his senses. The inside was worse–animal droppings, a layer of grime, and furniture chewed by pests. But amidst the decay, fragments of a life remained.
Ken, with his sharp eyes, found a water-stained teddy bear under the remains of a cot. Laura immediately latched onto a surprisingly intact, if not dusty, unicorn plushie with a sparkly horn.
"Hey! That's my–ah, whatever… I'll buy another."
Rogue drifted towards the fireplace where a katana displayed with a bunch of frames, her gloved fingers brushing the soot from a frame. It was a photograph. In it, Logan had his arm around a laughing Marie, her white streak vibrant against her auburn hair. Pressed between them was a toddler with messy dark hair and brilliant green eyes, grinning a gap-toothed grin.
Wade.
"We… we look so happy," Marie whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
Wade peered over her shoulder and whooped. "Yeah! See! Not a test tube baby! No offense to you two," he added quickly, glancing at Ken and Laura, who simply shrugged, too engrossed in their new toys to care.
Logan spotted a half-burned lockbox in the corner, its lid pried open long ago. He knelt, brushing away charred wood splinters to find a stack of journals inside. The pages were brittle and stained, but some writing remained legible.
"Hehe, diaries," Wade snickered from across the room.
Logan shot him a warning glare.
"Owh, so sensitive..." Wade muttered, but turned his attention elsewhere.
A moment later, Wade's voice piped up again from a closet. "Whoa, check this out!" He emerged holding two sets of worn metal dog tags and a pair of professional-looking identification badges. "Gun for Hire, Wolverine and Rogue," he read aloud, his eyes wide. "COOOOL! Well, I guess we know your occupation now." He tossed the tags and badges to his parents.
Logan caught his, the metal cool and familiar in his palm. Marie stared at hers, a flicker of something–recognition, unease–in her eyes.
Wade, now on his hands and knees, was tapping the floorboards. "Aha! Secret compartment! Bingo!" He pried up a loose plank to reveal a hidden cache. Inside was a stack of cash, a few handguns, and boxes of ammo. "Ohh, My sweet, sweet little baby! Come to papa!" he coo-ned, cradling a pistol.
Beneath the weapons, they found more. Their old suits, preserved in a sealed trunk. Logan's was a brown and tan suit with a cowl and costume . Marie's was a green and yellow from the animated series, complete with the white-collared top.
"Classic John Byrne suit," Wade said, "First time you used it in Uncanny X-Men #139. I think you also fought the Hulk with this one. I am gonna call it foreshadowing but you all already know from the title anyway, Ups! Spoiler!"
The final stack of papers behind the suits was the most profound: a birth certificate for James Wade Howlett. Their own identification cards, both American and Canadian, and surprisingly, Japanese and Australian. A few medical records for Wade. And on top, a slightly faded wedding certificate.
James Logan Howlett and Anne Marie Howlett nee Wilson
So that's their full name…
They sat in the dusty main room of the ruined cabin, surrounded by the ghosts of their past selves. They had been a family. They had been… happy.
"I guess… I guess we could go to merc' dispatch center and find out more about yourself," Wade suggested tentatively, breaking the heavy silence. "Y'know. For closure… and the pay is better than scamming people at the fight ring because of our advantages…"
Logan looked at Marie. The life of a mercenary was a bloody, brutal one. Was that what they wanted for their children? For themselves, all over again? But the pull of their forgotten history was a physical ache, like a siren song promising answers to the voids in their souls.
"Don't worry about us!" Wade said, trying to convince them. "And having more firepower around is better if they come looking for us! Or you could just bring us on the missions!"
Marie met his gaze, her own full of the same conflict. "Let's… let us think about it first, sugar," she said softly. "We're home now. Well, what's left of it anyway. But for now, that's enough. We could redecorate."
They cleaned out a corner of the least-damaged room and bedded down for the night, the weight of their rediscovered history hanging over them.
Logan was the first to wake, his senses screaming a split second before the sound hit.
It started as a deep, subterranean rumble that shook the very foundations of the cabin. Then it grew, into a world-shattering roar of pure, undiluted power that tore through the morning silence.
He was on his feet, claws out, before his eyes were fully open.
From the pile of blankets, Wade shot upright, his face a mixture of terror and utter, gleeful recognition.
"OH MY GAWD!" he shrieked, pointing a trembling finger towards the window. "IT'S THE FUCKING HULK!!!!"
WADE
Logan was already a blur by the time Wade shouted, claws out, meeting the giant head-on with a roar of his own. It was like a cat attacking a bulldozer.
"Fuck, what the hell is that?"
"Kids, stay back!" Marie yelled at the three children.
"Ken, Lau, flank him!" Wade shouted, ignoring his mother's command. He drew the pistol from the hidden cache.
"Eat lead, you jolly green giant!"
He emptied the clip into the Hulk's broad back. The bullets pinged off him like popcorn. The Hulk didn't even flinch.
"Yeah, should've seen that coming…"
"TINY HUMANS ANNOY HULK!"
He backhanded Logan, sending his father flying through the woods.
"Okay, plan B!" Wade snarled, yanking a grenade from his belt.
As the Hulk leaned forward to roar again, Wade used a shattered timber as a launchpad, propelling himself straight at the giant's face.
He jammed the grenade into the open maw, using his own body weight to force the massive jaw shut for a critical second.
"Hey! Greenpeace! Open wide! Chu chu! Coming through!"
He pushed off the Hulk's chest, landing in a roll just as a muffled THUMP sounded from inside the Hulk's head.
The giant staggered half a step, a puff of grey smoke curling from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth.
He blinked, shook his massive head like a dog shaking off water, and then his green eyes locked on Wade, burning with a new, even more intense fury.
The grenade hadn't even bruised him. It had just made him angrier.
"HULK... ANGRY! TALKING BOY HURT HULK!"
"Okay, that is a bad idea," Wade muttered. "Really, really bad idea! YOINK!"
"Wade! Get back!"
Logan was back, a snarl on his face, slashing at the Hulk's legs. Marie was in the air, a green and yellow streak, using her flight to dive-bomb and rake her claws across his shoulders. It was like trying to carve a mountain.
Wade drew his katanas. "Fine! The classics it is!" He charged, leaping onto the Hulk's back and driving both blades deep into the dense muscle.
They stuck. He planted his feet and pulled. "Come on, you overgrown weed, let go!" He grunted, straining.
The Hulk reached back, grabbed Wade like he was just a troublesome bug, and threw him with his katanas out.
He pinwheeled through the air before cratering into a pine tree fifty feet away.
Wade's spine snapped back into place with a sickening crunch.
Craaaacckk!
"Arrgh!"
/Ow. That's did not sound good… at all./
(At least the view is nice from over here!)
He saw the rest of his family getting their turn. Ken saw the campfire they'd built that morning. He ran his hand through the flames, and his mohawk erupted into a fiery crest, his claws glowing like hot pokers.
Wade didn't even know he could do that.
(That's so coooool!!!)
/How the hell, he can do that?/
Ken launched himself at the Hulk, screeching, slashing lines of fire across the Hulk's chest.
The big guy actually grunted in surprise, swatting Ken away into a snowbank, which instantly turned to steam.
Laura, trying to help, focused her big eyes on the Hulk. They glowed an eerie, solid white.
Nothing happened. She looked confused for a second like waiting for something to happen before the Hulk's shockwave from a stomp sent her tumbling.
"HULK SMASH PESTS!"
(Welp! We're getting our asses kicked, nice knowing you all.)
/No! Look! They were starting to wear him down./
The turning point came when Logan finally managed a clear shot at the Hulk's head. He put everything he had into one last, brutal lunge.
The Hulk staggered, his eyes lost focus, and the immense green form trembled, then began to shrink.
Where the monster had stood, a naked, shivering man now lay curled in the snow, unconscious and gasping.
Wade was the first to break the uncomfortable silence.
"Wow, so we got Ruffalo as our Hulk, I thought we got Norton-flavoured ones or Bana… I guess the most popular ones won! Haah… hah,"
/I always like Bana as the Hulk, he was scarier!/
(I like Ruffalo until at least the Prof. Hulk stuff.)
"Wade,"
"Yes Papa?"
"Shut up…"
"Never Papa,"
They all lay there, battered, healing, and surrounded by the wreckage of their battle.
"Well," Wade said, breaking the silence. "That was a hell of a housewarming."
Bruce Banner jolted awake, looking at the destruction and then at them. His eyes widened in pure terror when he saw the children.
"Oh my god... children... I... I could have… How–"
"Don't worry about it, doc!" Wade said, suddenly getting up. "We're pretty durable children anyway." To demonstrate, he popped out his middle claw that instantly stabbed Ken in the head. The claw went straight through his brother's skull.
Ken's eyes crossed slightly, then narrowed. "You stab me!" he snarled, and in a flash, his own flame claws were embedded in Wade's forehead.
"OW! It was a demonstration of our superior healing, you little pyro! I am on fire now!" Wade retorted, tackling him.
"Do it yourself, idiot!" Ken shot back.
They fell into a snarling, wrestling heap, claws still stuck in each other's heads–a bizarre, grisly, but ultimately harmless sibling brawl. Well, for them anyway, anyone without their healing factor would be dead already. They'd grown closer over the last month, and this was just their language of love.
"ENOUGH!" Logan roared, stomping over. He grabbed each by the collar and yanked, pulling them apart with a sickening shluck as the claws disengaged. Both boys' wounds immediately began to steam and heal, leaving unblemished skin behind.
Marie, meanwhile, knelt nearby, giving Bruce an apologetic look that did little to ease the man's shell-shocked expression. He looked from the fully healed boys to the feral-looking Logan, his face a perfect picture of a man torn between horror, relief, and intense scientific curiosity.
"It's... they'll be fine, don't mind them," Marie said, pinching her nose bridge. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she focused on Bruce. "Now, who are you, and what are you doing near our cabin?"
"Banner," he stammered, his voice hoarse. "Bruce Banner." He swallowed hard, his eyes darting towards the woods as if expecting something to emerge at any second. "I was... I was just trying to stay hidden. I thought there was no one here. I didn't mean for any of this to happen." The words tumbled out, laced with a familiar, bone-deep fear of his own existence.
"When I lose control... he comes out. I'm so sorry. So sorry about your home."
"Nah, It's okay, we are in the process of moving out anyway…"
"Wade…"
"Okay, okay! I'm shutting up! Geez!"