(1921, Kansas Federal Reserve Bank)
The cops have shown up and Six-Fingered Soapy finds himself trapped within the bank’s vault. Understandably nervous, he jokes with them, asking who’d like to go for a sarsaparilla with him. He’s buying. The lead mustachioed cop replies by informing him that he’s one of the scumbag grifters who’ve been chiseling the good people of this city with his fakeloo and his flimflam. He calls Soapy a scumbag and tells him he’s under arrest.
Soapy asks if they can come to some sort of arrangement, but the cop tells his boys that it looks like Soapy’s making a break for it. Soapy doesn’t understand until it’s too late. There is no intention to arrest him at all. The cops open fire, putting several bullets into Soapy who has little or no chance of survival.
Outside, Logan is with One-Eyed Ande and they hear the gunshots ring out. Ande realizes that it’s a set-up. They’ve got to get outta there. Logan heads inside and Ande asks where the hell he’s going. “After that bitch,” comes the response. “You’re crazy,” adds Ande, as Logan makes his way inside the bank. When he reaches the main banking area, he sees Pete the Pygmy and Big Pearl taking gunfire. Pete the Pygmy is wounded and falls to the floor, but Big Pearl tells him to snap out of it. They have to take it to these scumbums. When he fails to reply, she takes matters into her own hands. Standing up, she screams and starts to blast away with a pistol in one hand and a machine gun in the other. Bullets dart in both directions. As Logan watches the action, the cops who just murdered Soapy appear behind him. “Hey there fella,” their boss says. “Welcome to the party.”
(the present, the Syrian Desert, Iraq)
It’s fairly dark, and Wolverine is on his stomach, sneaking around underneath army trucks. He sees the words ‘Come and get me Logan’ painted on to the side of a personnel carrier. He’s coming as fast as he can under the circumstances. Unseen by Logan, Mystique aims her night sight at him and fires her rifle. A bullet strikes him in the shoulder. Logan grunts with pain, before rolling over to try and reach safety. Several bullets strike the dirt behind him as he reaches cover. As he steadies himself, he looks up to see a Claymore Mine. The words ‘Front towards enemy’ are clearly seen by Logan a moment before the bomb explodes in his face.
Nearby, Mystique smiles to herself. She wants Wolverine to bleed if he wants her so badly. She loads up a rocket-propelled grenade onto her gun and fires. Another explosion rocks Wolverine, and Mystique wastes no time in pulling the pin from a grenade and tossing that towards him, too. Despite the searing heat and the concussive effects of the artillery, Wolverine tears his way towards her position; his clothes ripped to shreds and his skin starting to bleed. More shots ring out as he emerges from the smoke and flames, but they fail to stop him as he lunges for Mystique.
Wolverine slashes with his claws and tears the rifle apart. Mystique swings the remaining part of the weapon and whacks him in the jaw with it. It doesn’t do much damage, and Wolverine slashes her across the stomach. Logan taunts her, asking if she isn’t going to do the bit where she changes into all his old girlfriends to try and throw him off. “No, Logan…” she snarls, “I’m just gonna kill you.”
Mystique plunges a knife into Wolverine’s ribs and he slashes her back in retaliation. The dagger is slashed across his throat, but Logan bites Mystique’s arm before she has time to get it clear. The dagger connects again before the claws slices through Mystique’s left arm. Dagger and claws drip red with blood, as the viciousness ceases for a moment.
Wolverine orders her to get up so they can finish this. Mystique, still naked, replies that she fully intends to. Does he think she’s never killed anyone with a healing factor? First, though, she thinks he ought to admit to himself what this is really all about. Logan tells her that she knows damn well what it’s all about. Mystique asks if he wants revenge for her betraying the X-Men for what… the fourth or fifth time. Is that it? He came all this way to kill her over that? She answers the question herself. “No. You came here to find out why?
She continues to theorize that he came to Iraq to find out why she never embraced their friendship; why she’s never settled down and become a reservation Indian like him. The way she sees it, the X-Men offered him his one last shot at redemption, and he seized it. She’s never failed to spit it back in their faces. That must eat at him in a way he can’t even acknowledge.
Mystique adds that she’s used the X-Men when she’s needed to, but they’ve never been a family to her. As much as Logan wants it to be true, they’ll never be his family either. People like them don’t put down roots and play nice. She betrays the X-Men because it’s in her nature to do so. One day, whether he wishes to admit it or not, he will do the same damn thing. He’ll turn his back on them because that’s who he is. Logan becomes increasingly angry with her. She surreptitiously reaches into a fold in the skin on her back and pulls out a pistol. She tells him not to act so offended. After all, they both know he’s done it before.
Wolverine finally snaps and launches himself at her, claws out. As he plunges his claws through her torso, gouging her flesh out the other side of her body, she shoots him in the face with the pistol. Wolverine goes down hard, and Mystique drops to the floor after vomiting over Logan’s face.
(1921, Kansas)
Logan faces the cops, but he needn’t be afraid. He’s on their side. The boss tells his men to stand down. Their fun’s over. Logan informs them that Raven got away, but the guy tells him to buzz off. He’s done his part. Logan reminds him that she was their leader and they let her escape. He replies that they still have a pretty good haul for one night. The bodies of Mystique’s crew are being hauled away by the cops as he then tells Logan that when Raven comes around to kill him for selling her out, he can give them a jingle and they’ll try and swing by. For now, he can vamoose, while he’s still feeling benevolent.
Before Logan departs, the cop pries a wad of cash from the dead hand of one of Mystique’s crew and offers it to Logan. Without a word, but with a look that implies that this wasn’t how it was meant to go down, he takes the cash and disappears into the night.
(later)
A train makes its way through a snow-covered landscape. Logan runs after it and leaps on board, hiding away in one of the seemingly empty carriages. He senses someone behind him and turns to see Mystique standing there. “Leaving Kansas so soon?” she asks. She asks him to ease up. She’s not looking for trouble. He can believe it or not, but she isn’t even angry with him. He made a smart play by selling them out and she can’t fault him for that. It’s a shame everybody else had to die, but they’re all adults there, right?
Logan replies that he wouldn’t have had to sell nobody out if she’s been paying off the cops like she was supposed to be doing. It’s just one of her many lies, like when she met him in Mexico. That wasn’t just an accident. She’s been playing him the entire time. “Oh, have I?” she replies with a glint in her fiery eyes. Logan grimaces at her. All her talk about family and settling down, and about how this heist was gonna buy them freedom… that was the biggest lie of all. She would have sold him out too. He just beat her to the punch, that’s all. “Maybe so,” replies Raven, “But I guess we’ll never know for sure.”
She adds that it’s a small world for people like them. She doesn’t know about him, but she plans on living a long time. Their paths are bound to cross again at some point, and she hopes this won’t be a problem between them. She’s willing to let bygones be bygones. What does he say? Logan turns and looks out of the carriage. “Fine,” he replies, “But I’m not sleeping in the same…” His sentence is cut short as Mystique kicks him hard in the back, sending Logan toppling from the train to land unceremoniously in the snow beyond.
(present, Iraq)
Logan begins to stir. He asks himself what it’s like being braindead. No one’s ever asked him that, but if they did, he sure could give them an answer. It ain’t like nothing. No thoughts, no dreams, no senses, no nothing. Right before Mystique’s bullet blasted up through his face and shattered against the inside of his skull (and damned if he won’t be sneezing the shrapnel out for weeks), he had just one single solitary thought on his mind. Once his noggin finally knits itself back together, he will kill Mystique.
(soon)
Logan follows Mystique’s trail of blood into the desert. She is in serious trouble and bleeding badly from her wounds. Logan has her pistol and when he reaches her, he tells her this is goodbye. She looks up at him and calls him a hypocrite. Who is he to judge? Logan replies that he’s not like her. He wants her to die knowing that. He admits he’s made a few mistakes, and a lot of those involved somebody dying that shouldn’t have. But, he adds, he spends every moment of every day now trying to make up for those mistakes. She’s just kept on making the same ones. Mystique tells him to go to hell.
Logan then drops the pistol beside her and she asks what that’s for. Logan replies that he’s gonna leave now and walk to the nearest payphone. He’ll call his friends and they will come and get him. She… she is gonna lie there by herself and die. None of her friends and none of her children will come to save her. No one. While she’s crawling around out there, slowly bleeding out, she will just think about who she is and what she’s done with her life. She’ll figure out what the pistol’s for.
He turns to leave and Mystique damns him as she coughs up some blood. “I’ll see you in hell, Logan!” she cries. “You hear me, you bastard!” Logan keeps on walking.
