“Logan!” Jubilee turned and yelled his name, smoothing her hands down the backs of her legs as she looked for him, feeling the frayed edge of her denim cutoffs give way to smooth tanned skin just below the curves of her ass. She grinned; Logan would kill her if she went anywhere but the house in shorts this indecent. “Where’s the boxes for the kitchen?”

“They’re behind the ones for the dining room,” a deep male voice called back to her. “In the front hall, kiddo!”

“Don’t *call* me that, old man!” Jubilee walked through the halls of their new house, looking for the cardboard boxes that contained their kitchen things, hearing Logan’s chuckle follow her footsteps. This house picked up sounds like an amplifier, beautiful lace filigree style fencing out the front and ironwork decorating the front of the house. After all, what was the point of moving to New Orleans if one was just going to buy a house that would fit in well anywhere? She had dug in her heels until they found one with *style*. This one had New Orleans vintage charm coming out the wazoo, and it was in a nice neighbourhood. Perfect. Big enough for the two of them, in reasonable shape and it had a garage for Logan to work on his bike. Just a little house, and it was their’s.

She wondered absently where she might have been living if Logan hadn’t adopted her, him and his wife Mariko. The Japanese woman had died of breast cancer a few years before, and they both still missed her dearly. She had been gentle and kind with a quiet stubbornness running through her that a lot of people missed behind her cool exterior, and Logan had loved her with all his heart. It had nearly broken him when she died, but here they were, starting again. Moving from New York and all its memories to a place where the people had unusual accents and everything looked so different. He’d bought out a mechanics and vehicle dealership, moving firmly from the world of police business into commerce.

He’d had a difficult time getting compassionate leave when Mariko lay dying in a hospital bed and Jubilee was trying to run a house, keep it clean and the two of them fed and cope with high school as well, and finally had quietly and firmly turned in his badge. He’d had the twenty years he needed to retire and get a pension, even if he didn’t look that old to people who didn’t know him. Grey hadn’t yet begun to streak through his black hair, which always lay in the most unusual fashion. Two wings swept back from a widow’s peak, curling in slightly at the tips and making him look like he had the wild furred ears of a wolf hidden below the wiry hair. His canines were a lot longer then usual, giving him a fangy looking smile. He was short and stocky, a Canadian mountains man born and bred.

His fellow officers had given him the nickname of ‘Wolverine’ during his first years on the force, and that had stuck throughout his career. He always went for the kill and hung on like grim death until the case was solved and he had his crook behind bars. Wolverines were known to kill caribou, if they got the drop on the larger animals from an overhanging tree branch, and Logan had brought down bigger criminals then most people would have thought a single cop would have been able to do. Jubilee’s brief spate of mallrat theft had not gone down well at all, and the new start was a way, in his mind, to help break her of the habit. He hadn’t raised his little darlin’ to be a thief, and she wouldn’t be.

“Firecracker, you found those boxes yet?”

“Yeah, I have. Whoof!” She bent at the knees as she squatted to pick up one of the boxes, balancing it against her chest and for the first time blessing her Asian ancestry that meant she had small boobs. Otherwise it could have been painful, leaning that box against her chest and squashing her tits. “What did ya put in this, bricks? Ok, here I go.” She staggered through to the small kitchen, dodging past boxes on her way. They’d probably end up throwing a bunch of stuff away, she mused to herself. They were set up for more then one person – still. She smiled as she saw that Logan had already set up Mariko’s hand painted calligraphy scrolls on the blank walls, each one a minor work of art in a tradition rapidly growing lost in time. It wouldn’t be quite home if they didn’t carry the reminders of a life well lived and well loved with them, even if she was gone. Putting the box down on the wooden table that had come with the house, she started to unpack it.

“We’ll get take out for supper, ok?”

“Yeah, that’s fine! Can we get like, Thai or something?” Jubilee called back, opening the cupboards and grimacing at the state they were in on the inside. This place was supposed to have been *cleaned* before they moved in. “Logan, call the agent and tell them we’re not paying for the cleaning, because they didn’t do it! You got the Polaroid? I’ll take pictures of this before I clean it up.”

She put a hand up as he walked into the kitchen with her, placing the instant camera in her hand. “I’ve already started. Maybe they skimmed over the top, but they didn’t even vacuum the floors. We won’t be paying, don’t worry.” Jubilee snapped photos of the dirty cupboards, making sure to get the dead roach in the back in focus. “God *damn*, they did a shitty job.”

“Tell me ‘bout it. Grab me a wet cloth and I’ll wipe this out before I put our stuff in there. Ew.” Together, the two of them cleaned the kitchen then started to move all their appliances, plates and cutlery in. It took them most of the day, and then they moved onto the bedrooms. At least enough so they could sleep in them that night. Sitting around the table later, eating Thai out of cardboard cartons and teasing each other with the ease of long familiarity, Jubilee felt content. There was a place missing from their circle, but she felt that Mariko would have approved of them moving on. Remembering and not forgetting, but not grieving forever either. Everything had a time, even mourning. And it was time for them both to live again. “Tomorrow, we’ll look at the schools.”

“See which one’s alright for ya.” Logan picked at the food in his carton with a pair of chopsticks held carefully in his thick fingers. “I don’t want to see a repeat of last year, y’hear me?”

“Alright, geez. Lift one crummy little bracelet...”

“It was more then that, and we both know it.” He pointed the chopsticks at her. “No stealing. You think Mariko would like it?”

Jubilee fidgeted, glaring at her food and keeping her eyes down. “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is you taking money out of people’s hands when they’ve worked for it. You want things beside what I give ya, you get a job.” He conveyed more food to his mouth, relishing the bite of the chilli in the seasoning and swallowed. “I think there was a few signs up around the restaurant we went to tonight. I’ll help you get a brag sheet together, once we’re settled in and everything’s packed away right.”

“Yeah, ok. Ugh. I refuse to work in a burger place though. Nasty with a capital N. You remember Clarice? She used to work at a Micky D’s, and maaaan...that poor girl. Oil burns up to her elbows and her hair always smelt of grease. Yick.” Jubilee poked out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Logan chuckled.

“Ok, no burger places. What about a grocery store?”

“I think I’ll see if there’s any paper routes open. I can take that on my blades, and you know it won’t take long for me to learn my way around. You can take the street rat off the streets, but you...”

“Can’t take the street smarts out of the street rat,” Logan finished for her. They ate in silence for a bit longer. “You ever thought about what you’ll do when you finish high school?”

Jubilee poked at the noodles in front of her with her chopsticks. “I dunno. Maybe I’ll go into the force, like you did.” She looked up at him to see what he thought about that idea. “I want to *help* people, Wolvie.”

“You’re smart and your grades are good – get into law,” Logan offered. “You’ll be able to help a lot more people that way.”

“Maybe social work? A lot of the social workers I had...before...they had no idea where I was coming from. There’s something about being homeless that can’t be explained, it can only be experienced. I don’t think I’d mind that,” Jubilee finished slowly. “I got a few years to figure it out yet.”

Logan reached over to touch the back of her hands, and she looked up at him, blue eyes shining in the flickering light from the bulb above their heads. “Whatever you do, I know you’ll make me proud, darlin’. And you’ll make Mariko proud as well.”

“I miss her,” Jubilee said quietly.

“So do I, Sparky, so do I.” They finished their dinner, talking about what else needed to be done in the house tomorrow. “I’ll need to go take a look at the shop soon as well.”

“You go off and do that tomorrow. I can meet the other truck when they come,” Jubilee said, before she slurped the last few noodles of her dinner into her mouth. “Mmm, I say we go back to that Thai place. That was gooooood.”

“You think you’ll be alright to do that?”

“Sure I will.” Jubilee grinned at him, then licked sauce off her lips. “You need to get that business settled, and I can cope with the movers. I’ll finish our bedrooms and get started on the living room, and get our computer set up.”

“Our computer? Seems like it’s *your* computer,” Logan chided her.

“Yeah, well. I like tech; you don’t so much. I have a cyberlife, and I need to get back to it before everyone thinks I’ve died. My inbox is going to be overflowing as is.” She got up, grabbing Logan’s empty carton along with her own to put them in the bin. “We getting broadband?”

“I think I can swing it.”

“Whoohoo!” She did a minor victory dance on the tiles. “Uh huh, uh huh, who’s gonna get shiny new broadband? Oh, I am, I am! Whoo!”

Logan laughed out loud as she danced around the kitchen, hands above her head. “Go to bed, Jubilee. We got a long day tomorrow.”

“Sure as shootin’, we do. I’m a-going, old man.”

“G’night, brat.”

“Night, Logan.”

Jubilee skipped her way off to bed, and Logan rested his head on his hands for a moment, staring at the photograph of his dead wife that he had hung on the wall almost as soon as they moved in. A faint smile curved her lips, and she looked beautifully serene, ageless wisdom in her dark eyes. “You think I did the right thing by her, bring her all the way out here, Mariko? I hope I did.” Slowly, he got up from the table and crossed to stand in front of the photograph, studying the face of the woman he loved. He could still remember the way her hair had looked spread out across his pillow in the morning, the way she smelt with and without perfume, and he remembered the way cancer had aged her so quickly, turning what should have been a long and graceful descent into old age with him by her side into a short sharp ride of pain and death. “God, I miss ya, darlin’. You keep waiting for me and make sure they don’t close Heaven’s gates on me, ok?” She wouldn’t have gone anywhere else; she was too intrinsically good. He knew he wasn’t. He was a brawler and a fighter, even if he’d mostly done the fighting on the side of the law. But for her sake, and for Jubilee’s, he tried hard to be a good man.

And everyday, waking up without her got a little harder.

He sighed, and turned away to walk heavily to bed. Tomorrow was another day, and he’d need to be rested for it.

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