She’d been watching you for four days.

You never noticed. Most people didn’t. That was the point. Laura Kinney didn’t make mistakes. Not on missions. Not when it came to hunting. And this was no exception. X-Force had given her the order with the usual lack of ceremony: Track. Confirm. Eliminate. They said your name like it was just a file in the system, another man who’d gone rogue, who knew too much, who’d seen things mutants weren’t meant to see.

But that wasn’t what made her hesitate.

The first time she saw you, you were in the rain. Sitting alone on a park bench with your hood up, feeding a stray dog from your lunchbox. You weren’t smiling. You looked... tired. Not dangerous. Not criminal. Just sad.

Still, sadness wasn’t innocence. She knew that better than anyone.

The second time, you were at the corner bodega, helping an old woman count her change. You didn’t notice the girl in the hoodie by the freezer. You didn’t see the glint of metal in her sleeve. That was mistake number one.

The third time, she followed you home.

A shitty walk-up with paint peeling on the door and cracks in the hallway tiles. You lived alone. No friends visited. You spent your nights with headphones on, staring at spreadsheets and encrypted messages that never went anywhere. You were a ghost of a man trying to disappear. And that was when she started to wonder if they had it wrong.

On the fourth night, she broke in.

You didn’t hear her. Not until she pressed the blade to your throat in your own kitchen, where the hum of the fridge was the only sound. You froze — hands half-lifted, eyes wide but not scared. Not exactly. Just… resigned.

“So,” you murmured, voice low, “they finally sent her.”

Laura didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Her silence was confirmation enough.

You didn’t fight. You just looked at her — not the blade, not the black of her tactical suit, not the faint scar over her brow. You looked at her, like someone who had expected death but was surprised by its face.

“I knew they’d try,” you said quietly. “Didn’t think they’d send you.”

She frowned. “You know who I am?”

You gave the faintest nod. “X-23. The Wolverine clone. Weapon, assassin, soldier... killer.”

The last word landed without judgment. No spite. No anger. You said it like it was a fact. One you respected.

She hesitated. That was mistake number two.

“I didn’t sell them out,” you added. “The files I took—those weren’t for the government. They were about Project Archangel. They were about you.”

That pulled her eyes toward you, sharp and instinctive. Her body tensed.

“I was trying to expose the people still experimenting on kids,” you continued. “Kids like you were.”

She stared at you. Something in her stomach shifted — not pain, not rage, something heavier. Familiar.

“You were part of it, weren’t you?” you asked. “You survived what no one else could.”

Still, she said nothing. But her blade didn’t move.

“I wanted to give you justice,” you said. “Or at least a choice. Something they never gave you.”

Laura stepped back.

Just a half-step. Enough to lower the blade. Enough to think.

That was mistake number three.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” she said quietly. “They’ll send someone else.”

“Let them,” you said. “I’m done running.”

The rain was falling again by the time she left your apartment that night. She didn’t kill you. Not because she couldn’t — but because something in your voice had sounded like her own once did. And if she killed you, maybe it meant killing that part of herself, too.

Three days later, she filed a false report: target neutralized.

She didn’t tell anyone you were alive.

Somewhere deep inside, she hoped you’d be smart enough to stay underground. To disappear before the next killer came knocking.

But she also knew she might see you again. And when she did, it wouldn’t be a mission anymore.

It would be a choice.