Summary: This story is going to be slightly AU and so probably slightly OOC in that I'm making their brotherly relationship minutely less messed up than it actually is by making Victor a bit less evil - which you will see more in the following chapters, since this chapter is placed in 1842 only a few weeks after they ran away from Howlett manner, and so they're both still kids.

Rated T for blood, and for swearing in later chapters. (There will be three more chapters after this one.)

Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Chapter One: Don't Ya Ever Do That Again, Ya Hear Me?

It was morning, and the dew was sweet and cold on Victor's tongue as he lapped it off the fir needles on the sapling beside him. He was crouched down at the edge of a meadow, gaze fixed on the expanse of tall green grass that was sprinkled with tiny white, violet, and yellow flowers. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air.

There—the scent of infrared blood and rabbit fur, hidden among the scents of growing grass and rotting leaves.

Tilting his shadowed face upwind, he sniffed again, blue eyes scanning the meadow for any sign of movement, his muscles coiling tighter in his crouch, so tense his body was vibrating minutely, like a racecar at the starting line before the gunshot goes off.

There was a soft rustle of grass in the middle of the meadow, the tips of two brown ears just barely visible above the verdant blades.

The primeval instincts in his head fired and he was off like a shot, bounding across the meadow on all fours, using the claws on his fingers and toes to dig into the dark soil as he propelled himself forward, the dew cold and wet on his bare hands and feet and soaking through his ratty clothes.

Away the hare darted, zig-zagging through the grass with the predator right on its tail, gaining, gaining, gaining...

A noise. Reaching Victor's ears it halted him immediately, skidding in the soft earth.

It wasn't a scream, but a pained gasp; a whimper.

Jimmy.

Victor was racing back through the trees towards the clearing where he'd left his little brother even before the heavy scent of blood reached his nostrils.

Sticks and branches whipped stinging across his face, pinecones pierced the flesh of his arches and palms, trees gained scars that would later ooze slow sap from where he launched himself off their trunks, birds startled in fear and burst from the treetops like popcorn.

The scent of blood grew stronger. The sound of anguished breaths grew louder.

No no no no no no—

He reached the clearing with dirt and dried blood smeared across his skin and clothes, his dark hair flurried and wild about his face, crazed blue eyes darting first around the clearing for danger. Finding none, they fell to his little brother.

"Jimmy?!" Victor cried, rushing over to where the smaller boy was curled in on himself in the middle of clearing, his head bowed, chestnut hair fallen limp over his face and obscuring the tears that streamed down his cheeks from his clenched-shut eyes and fell from the tip of his nose to the earth and leaves between his knees.

"Jimmy what are you doing?!" Victor cried, as he realized the younger boy was curled around his own fists, the tips of six bone claws sticking out of his back, blood dripping thickly from the wounds, slick and dark as it soaked his shirt, his pants, flowed over the skin of his trembling, clenched hands.

With a fearful, furious tenderness, Victor took Jimmy's shoulders with his left hand, straightening the boy up even as he simultaneously took hold of Jimmy's wrists with his right hand and pulled them away from Jimmy's stomach, claws slipping out dripping with glistening sanguine blood.

As soon as the claws were extracted from the boy's body, the wounds began to heal before Victor's very eyes, closing up without a trace, leaving not so much as a scar.

The bone claws slid back into Jimmy's arms with the softest sounds of flesh tearing and then healing again.

Victor's hands were covered in Jimmy's blood as he took his brother's face in his hands, forcing the younger boy to look at him.

"Why the hell did ya go an' stabbin' yerself fer?!" Victor demanded harshly, voice laced with dismay.

Meeting his older brother's gaze with watery, red-rimmed hazel eyes, Jimmy sniffed. "I... I jus' wanted to know h-how... how much it h-hurt..." he mumbled. "To be stabbed... if-if I'm gonna be stabbin' people... I wanna know..." he couldn't meet his brother's eyes any longer and his own dropped to examine with sudden interest the brown and crimson-stained leaves they were both kneeling on, the musty scent of mildew still distinguishable beneath the metallic scent of his own blood.

That blue gaze was so intense, burning with an icy fervor that was enough to send chills down even a grown man's back. But that wasn't what made Jimmy look away—it was the painful amount of raw, exposed vulnerability there, pooling like blood in the shadowed depths of those cobalt orbs.

Because Jimmy realized, suddenly, that however much he'd just injured himself, he'd hurt Victor far more.

"Look at me," Victor ordered, clawed fingers coming under Jimmy's chin and forcing the younger boy's head up. "Listen to me."

Jimmy looked up, the flow of tears that had mitigated with the closing of his wounds starting up with a new, tempestuous magnitude.

The older boy growled. "Listen to me, Jimmy. Don' you ever, ever, hurt yerself like that again, d'ya hear me? There's enough people out there that will try to hurt ya. You don't gotta go hurtin' yerself too. Are ya listenin' to me?"

Jimmy nodded weakly, sniffling. The tears kept coming.

"Stop cryin'" Victor ordered, grip tightening on his little brother's bony shoulders; they were both so skinny, tattered and wild-eyed from the weeks they'd already spent on the run through the Canadian wilderness. And Victor knew that they'd be spending most of their lives running.

"You've gotta be strong little brother," he told Jimmy, equal parts severe and desperate, with a faint undertone of beseeching that made Jimmy cry all the harder. "Remember what I told ya? You've got to be strong an' hard so that nothin' can touch ya—so that nothin' can touch us. The world ain't a nice place, Jimmy. But you don' deserve that kinda pain. So don' you ever put yerself through that again, or I'll whip your pathetic little ass myself, ya got it?"

In answer, Jimmy threw his arms around his older brother's emaciated frame, burying his face in Victor's shoulder.

He could feel Victor's body heat beneath his worn clothing, could hear the older boy's near-silent breathing, feel his heart pounding away in his chest, fluttering like a panicked bird.

But oh, Victor was so, so warm... and Jimmy felt so cold, shivering in his blood-soaked clothes.

"Aww Jimmy!" Victor said in surprise, even as he embraced the younger boy back. "Yer gettin' yer blood and yer snot all over me!"

"'M Sorry," Jimmy whimpered into his brother's grimy, sweaty shirt. He clutched the older boy tighter. "I'm sorry!"

Victor paused uncertainly, before hesitantly beginning to rub circles into Jimmy's back, in a way he hoped was comforting. How was he supposed to deal with this?

He certainly wasn't going to treat Jimmy that way Thomas Logan—his father, if you could even call him that—treated him whenever he had cried.

The memories of pain and fear were still freshing in his mind: the memories of the belt lashing against his back, memories of the shattered glass of beer bottles in his skin, memories of being chained in the dark, blood filling his mouth and dripping from the tips of his fingers.

His little brother shuddered, sobbing against him, and as Victor was snapped out of the past and back to the present, he was overwhelmed with the desire to be able to make all of this—the running, the starving, the pain—to make it all go away. To make it all okay.

But he knew it never would be. They were different from everyone else. He wanted to be able to tell his little brother that it was going to be alright. But he couldn't.

"Yer too soft, runt," Victor said finally, with a slight snarl as Jimmy continued sniveling. "Man up already! Cryin' ain't gonna do nothin' fer you 'cept make ya look weak, you pampered li'l snob."

He waited as Jimmy made a herculean effort to slow his sobs, before he pulled away, saying, "C'mon, let's go to the river an' get washed up before the blood dries."

Jimmy nodded mutely as he followed his older brother out of the clearing and through the woods, shafts of sunlight sifting down through the leaves above them and shattering the shadows they slunk through.

So, that's the first chapter of my first Wolverine fic! What d'ya think?