[A/N]: Here's your bonus weekly chapter! Looking forward to hearing what you think!
Twenty minutes later, Logan was seated in Hank's laboratory in a specially reinforced medical chair. The observation deck above was packed with worried faces. X-Men, the SHIELD director and his left hand, and one very nervous Captain America, all watching through reinforced glass.
Hank wheeled a cart of surgical instruments forward. "Now, the procedure will require careful—"
"I don't need them," Jay said, rolling up his sleeves. "Logan, pop your claws."
Logan's voice carried a hint of uncertainty for the first time. "You sure about this, bub?"
"Trust me. I'm 'The Doctor' after all."
Logan's claws slid out with their characteristic snikt, the sound echoing in the sterile laboratory.
Jay reached out and touched the gleaming adamantium.
The change hit him different this time. Where diamond had been cold and crystalline, adamantium was heat. Molten metal flowing through his veins. His bones felt like they were melting and reforming, heavier than lead but somehow still flexible.
From the observation deck, gasps echoed through the reinforced glass. Coulson's face went pale. "Is he supposed to look like that?"
"Mein Gott," Kurt whispered, his tail wrapped tight around his waist. "His entire body is changing like Colossus, did he take your power?"
The weight was incredible. His arm dropped a few inches before his muscles adjusted, and when he flexed his fingers, he could feel the density in every movement. This metal was unbreakable.
But then Jay concentrated on his Adaptation perk, remembering Kevin's limb-shaping from Ben 10, how he could precisely mold absorbed materials into exactly what he needed.
His index finger elongated and narrowed into a precision drill bit, while his middle finger flattened into a delicate extraction tool. Years of medical training and nursing experience guided the transformation. He knew exactly what instruments he needed for this kind of procedure. The adamantium responded to his will, forming the perfect surgical implements.
Then came his medical knowledge. Angles of approach, drilling speed, and how to extract foreign objects from brain tissue without causing trauma. His nursing experience had taught him these procedures theoretically by watching other surgeons perform it, and now he had the tools to perform them.
Jay examined his transformed fingers with professional satisfaction. "There we go. That should do it."
He looked up at the observation deck where terrified faces stared down at him. "Everyone might want to look away."
He began to drill.
Logan's agonized screams filled the basement laboratory as Jay worked with surgical precision. In the observation deck, Steve gripped the railing until his knuckles went white. This was his fault. His desperate need for connection had put Logan through this agony.
"Jesus Christ," Coulson breathed, his usual professional composure cracking. He'd seen plenty of field medicine, but nothing like this.
Kurt teleported to the far corner of the observation deck, his blue skin tinged green. "I cannot watch. This is..." He made the sign of the cross.
"Logan's vitals are spiking," Hank reported from his monitoring station, though his voice was shaky. "Heart rate through the roof, but his healing factor is keeping him stable."
Medical training took over completely. Angle of entry, pressure distribution, avoiding major blood vessels. The adamantium drill spun with inhuman precision.
Blood splattered across Jay's makeshift surgical attire. The drill generated sparks and heat, filling the air with the acrid smell of burning metal and tissue.
Jean doubled over, one hand pressed to her temple. "I can't block out his pain. It's too much." Scott immediately moved to support her.
"Jean!" Scott's voice was sharp with worry. "Get out of his head."
"I'm trying, but Logan's mind... it's like a hurricane of agony and memories trying to break free."
In the observation deck, several X-Men looked away. Jean covered her mouth, psychic empathy making her feel echoes of Logan's pain. Coulson went pale, one hand pressed against the glass. Even Fury's iron composure cracked slightly.
Ororo's hands sparked with electricity, her emotional control slipping. "This is barbaric. There has to be another way."
But Jay never wavered. This was surgery, not torture. Every movement had to be calculated and precise.
The drilling seemed to take forever. Logan's healing factor kept trying to close the wound around the drill bit, forcing Jay to work faster. Smoke rose from the friction. The smell of burning bone and flesh filled the air.
"Oh God," Coulson whispered as more smoke filled the chamber. "Is that..."
"His skull," Hank confirmed grimly. "The adamantium is heating up from the friction. Logan's essentially being cooked from the inside."
Scott's hands clenched at his sides. "This is insane. We're watching a man be tortured and calling it medicine."
Finally, with a sickening pop that echoed through the sterile chamber, he extracted the bullet.
A collective exhale went up from the observation deck.
"It's over," Jean whispered, finally able to pull back from Logan's mind. "The pain is... it's lessening."
Kurt teleported back, his face still pale but curious. "Did it work? Are his memories...?"
Logan's healing factor immediately began closing the wound, but a small hole in his adamantium skull remained. Evidence of what they'd just done.
The lab looked like a war zone. Equipment had been damaged by Logan's thrashing. Blood splattered the walls and medical instruments. Smoke filled the air, mixing the smell of burning electronics with something much worse. What used to be the mansion's pristine medical facility now looked like the aftermath of a battlefield surgery.
"Dear lord," Hank whispered, surveying the destruction through the glass. "It'll take weeks to clean this up. The smell alone..."
Fury stepped back from the window. "I've seen field hospitals in Afghanistan that looked cleaner than this."
Jay held up the bloody bullet, his adamantium form still steaming from friction heat. He flashed a thumbs up at the observation deck, grinning through the reinforced glass.
The sight would give several X-Men nightmares. A metallic figure covered in blood and smoke, holding up a bullet like some kind of trophy in what looked like hell's operating room.
Ororo covered her nose with her sleeve. "The smell is getting through the ventilation system."
"I'm going to be sick," Jean whispered, leaning heavily on Scott.
But Logan wasn't paying attention to the carnage anymore. His eyes were changing. Pupils dilating and contracting as memories crashed back into his consciousness like a broken dam.
Everyone in the observation deck fell silent, watching Logan's face transform.
"Something's happening," Jean said, her telepathic abilities picking up the change immediately. "His mind... it's like watching a puzzle piece itself back together."
Steve pressed his face to the glass. "James? Can you hear me?"
It started as a flicker. Confusion giving way to recognition. A name surfaced from nowhere: Sarah. Then another: John. Faces began forming in his mind, voices calling from across decades of stolen time.
The memories didn't come gently. They hit him like a freight train, each one carrying the weight of suppressed emotion. His childhood in the Canadian wilderness. The first time his claws emerged. Military service. Betrayal. Pain. Loss. Love found and lost again.
Logan's breathing became ragged as sixty years of stolen life flooded back. His hands shook as phantom pains from long-healed wounds made his nervous system fire randomly. Every person he'd killed. Every friend who'd died. Every woman he'd loved and lost.
His face cycled through a dozen emotions. Confusion, recognition, joy, grief, and finally... white-hot rage at all the stolen years.
Then he looked up and saw Steve through the observation window.
Recognition hit him like lightning. Not just the face, but the memory of friendship. Of shared foxholes and terrible coffee and watching each other's backs when the world was trying to kill them both.
Logan's voice started as a whisper, thick with decades of suppressed emotion. "Steve." Then louder, a roar that shook the blood-splattered walls and carried seventy years of brotherhood: "STEVE!"
Logan launched himself from the chair, still bleeding, his healing factor working overtime. He tore apart the observation deck glass with his claws and caught Steve in a bear hug that would have cracked normal ribs, both men trembling with the weight of recovered connection.
Steve's voice broke with relief and grief and joy all tangled together. "James. God, I missed you. I miss everyone."
Logan pulled back but kept his hands on Steve's shoulders, studying his friend's face like he was memorizing it. "It's Logan now. Been Logan for a long time. But yeah..." His voice grew thick with emotion. "Yeah, I remember. The Commandos. The war. All of it."
But then the weight of all those recovered memories hit him again. Logan's face crumpled as he remembered not just Steve, but everyone else they'd lost. Bucky's fall. Dum Dum's funeral. The way Jim Morita had died calling for his mother.
Steve saw the pain in his old friend's eyes and pulled him close again. "I know. I know it hurts. But you're not alone anymore."
Logan's voice was muffled against Steve's shoulder. "Feels like I buried them all twice now. Once when they died, and again when I forgot."
The observation deck had gone completely silent. Even the X-Men who'd known Logan for years had never seen him this vulnerable, this human. This was a man rediscovering not just his past, but his capacity for grief.
Jay watched the reunion from the laboratory floor, still in adamantium form and covered in blood. The weight of what he'd just done—giving these two soldiers back their shared past.
His voice was peppier than usual when he spoke. "Well. Anyone else need brain surgery? I'm on a roll here."
The horrified silence from the observation deck was answer enough, but it was broken by something unexpected. Logan's laughter, rough and broken but heaty.
[A/N]: I write across multiple fandoms. Support my writing and get early access to 45+ chapters, exclusive content, and bonus material at my P@treon - Max_Striker.