Claws Out (Marvel x MHA fanfiction)

Chapter 24 - The Ship of Theseus

Night had quickly fallen. For the first half of the drive back to X-manor, a veil of silence was cast around the two Howlett's. Logan seemed content with the quiet, though, as he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel along with the music emanating from the radio.

Y/n watched the stars as they drove— gleaming and twinkling and oh so bright. It's such a shame, the girl thought to herself, that I missed out on this for so long. It's even worse, I think, that the slightest privilege of seeing it would've made me that much more docile.

But not even something as beautiful as the stars could take her full attention away from the myriad of lingering thoughts inside her mind. Her dinner with Bakugou, the new suit, the interaction she'd had with the little kids, Logan all but abandoning her for the day— it was all swirling in her head.

"Who were you meeting?" Y/n tried to keep her voice pleasant, as if she was asking for his sake more than her own.

"Someone." The lack of an answer in his response told the girl everything. Whoever it was, Logan wasn't wanting to talk about it. At least not with her.

"You were gone for a long while... were you doing X-men things?" It was one of her worst traits, Y/n had been told. Her drive to know everything going on around her. When it came to her training in the lab, the scientists loved how thorough it made her. When it came to every other aspect, they resented how stubborn it made her.

"No."

The girl let out a small sigh and leaned her head against her palm while resting her face against the cool window. She stared at the stars, trying to pick out different shapes in invisible star lines. Hitoshi had told her about constellations and Mina had gone on her fair amount of tangents about the zodiac signs. Y/n often wondered about her own, wondered which sign she had been born under and how that might've cosmically altered her chemistry.

Sometimes she'd watch the stars at night from the small bedside window in her room, just staring at the sight with an empty mind. Sometimes she'd close her eyes and speculate what exactly it would take for her to become a shimmering star in the sky.

Her phone buzzed from inside her pocket, but she ignored it. The buzzing continued, Y/n knew it was most likely just the groupchat she was a part of. Was most likely her friends all making plans together and talking about what'd they'd do when they were finally back from their respective internships. She paid it no mind.

Logan on the other hand, seemed increasingly distracted by the noise. "Who's texting you?"

"Someone." The girl muttered, she didn't try to maintain that pleasantness from before as an exhausted tone infiltrated her voice. If he wouldn't throw her a bone, then she wouldn't go through the trouble of ripping apart her skin to offer one.

She could practically hear the older man roll his eyes, "Well are you going to answer them? Or at least look at it?"

"No." The phone buzzed again, as if it had perfect awareness and comedic timing, just to drive the point home.

Logan turned the music down with a heavy exhale, "Yeah, alright I get it. You think I'm some huge asshole, right? Big bad Wolverine won't talk to you and it makes you upset, right?"

Y/n didn't respond, she only stared out the window trying to see if she could make out the Ursa Major like Hitoshi had shown her.

"Well I don't have any sort of obligations—" Logan's words faded into mindless background garble.

Y/n Howlett was tired. X-23 was tired. In the very depths of her soul and root of her being, she was tired. That's all she's ever been. There were small glimpses of relief– her moments with X-22, her time with her new family, the seconds that added up with her friends– but it never lasted, she always came right back to the exhaustion that was stamped into her mind.