"That’s 19, last question."
"Ok, it’s a person, a guy, dark haired, kinda short, amnesiac, fast healing/possibly immortal, older than 200 years, uses bladed weapons, knows lots of martial arts, and fights against people trying to take over and/or destroy the world."
"Yep."
"Is it Wolverine?"
"What? No, it was Van Helsing."
"…"
"…"
(dawning realisation)
"No way…"
"Mr Logan?"
"Yeh, Tallwater?"
"Remember how you had me researching… you?"
"Yeh…" He put the cap back on his beer. This sounded like it was going to be an interesting one.
"Well… I ran your turnaround through facial recognition and… um…" Sara fidgeted nervously with a manilla folder. "I think you’re even older than you think you are…"
"Yeh?"
She edged closer and bought out a print-out. "This is a contemporary portrait of a vampire-hunter known as Van Helsing."
The resemblance was downright uncanny.
"And this is the only known portrait of a man going by the name of Jean Valjean."
Okay. That was officially scary.
"There’s more of you, all through history. You age, sometimes? But -um- there’s… some evidence of a cyclical nature to your mutation? You… sort of… regenerate… In retrospect, I’m guessing you might be glad that they didn’t put you in mausoleums or whatnot. They’re rather harder to escape. And the trauma of escaping graves no doubt did disturbing things to your memory."
Exasperation. And it took her two whole minutes. She was getting better. "What are you trying to tell me, Tallwater?"
She grinned. "Yer a Time Lord, Logan. Well. Sort of. You don’t have two hearts or a TARDIS, but I’m sure with a little time and engineering…"
"Tallwater," he warned.
"Hm?"
"Stop."
She sighed and deflated a little. "Sometimes, you are no fun."
"Make that all the time, darlin’."