Title: Control 1/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

He pushed the empty beer bottle away from him and gestured to the barmaid for another. She smiled sexily at him and leaned over the bar when she brought him his fresh beer. He got a good view of her ample cleavage as she did so. That’s why she’d done it. He’d been here for two days and one night now. Last night, he had spent with her; she was good looking, around twenty-five, mousy brown hair and huge breasts that he had spent a great deal of time sucking and licking.

He smirked at her, knowing full well that he would probably be having her against the back wall of the bar in around twenty minutes time, her break. Then as she turned away, he frowned. Then sighed. He shouldn’t be here; he should be about four hundred miles closer to Westchester by now. Damn, he should be *in* Westchester by now. He had been going slowly on purpose, and he knew it. He was avoiding going home.

The school was his home now, there was no denying that, and he had a good life there: friends, people who cared. All the things that he was sure that he would never have, including playing superhero on the weekends. He taught phys-ed to all the younger brats, teaching them sports, games and fair play. The older ones he pushed to the limit, making sure that when the shit hit the fan, they knew how to play dirty and survive. He also taught the debate class, which Scott seemed to find hilarious, but Xavier pointed out no one likes an argument quite like the Wolverine.

During the winter, he took off to Canada, his classes were covered as they understood his need to roam around, fight, get drunk, fuck and get enough fresh air and free space for him to cope with the next term of the school year. Only this time, he was a week later getting back. It was January the 15th. He should have been back on the 8th for the beginning of the new term, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. ‘Ro and Scott had called him, and he had lied, saying the bike had problems and he had encountered more snow than normal. Scott said it was getting ridiculous, and he was going to pick him up in the Blackbird. Logan couldn’t talk him out of it. So here he was spending an extra day in a backwater town waiting for Scott. Funnily enough, he was in Laughlin.

He knew why he didn’t want to go back; he wasn’t stupid enough to try and kid himself. The reason? Marie. He shouldn’t be surprised that he had feelings for the girl. Even he had to admit that she was the hottest thing on the planet. Soft curves, sexy roll of her hips as she walked, huge dark eyes that, much to his annoyance, held more years that he could count, and a smile that could knock any man on his ass. Only thing was he had left it too late to do anything about it. By the time he had spent three years moping around after Jean and he finally got his head out of his ass and noticed, she had grown up into a confident, competent art teach and sexy young woman. She was completely in love with someone else, and he was suddenly her best friend.

They spent a lot of time together. She was his drinking partner, because thanks to his healing, she could drink most people under the table. He taught her to drive, fight, handle weapons and play pool. And she once introduced him to the joys of hash cakes. He smiled at that memory; most of the mansion would never forget that day. Especially Scott. He had been the one to find them lying in the middle of the mansion lawn laughing their asses off because Logan had spotted a cloud that he thought looked like a big pair of underpants.

He was her best friend, and he couldn’t actually pinpoint the moment he realised that their friendship had turned into something else. It was somewhere between Bobby cheating on her and a month or so later her stating to date Santo, a.k.a. Rockslide. The whole Bobby incident was also another legendary event at the mansion. Logan had been at a bar in town and was in the throws of taking a girl round the back alley for a little bit of fun, when he caught sight of Bobby’s car parked outside the bar across the street. Thinking that he was with Marie, he excused himself from the girl and went to find them for a drink. What he found was completely different: Bobby was sitting in a dark back booth, a blonde wriggling around with her hand down his pants and his tongue in her mouth.

After a moment of shock and swirling emotions, he had walked over, yanked Little Miss Peroxide off Bobby, and punched his lights out. He drove home, woke Marie, and explained what had happened. The whole team had woken up because of Marie’s crying and were gathered in the kitchen when Bobby came home. To Logan’s complete joy, she simply rose graceful from her chair, crossed the room, and smacked him hard across the face, telling him clearly to move his stuff out of her room. Logan had to resist the temptation to punch the air and shout ‘YES!’

Then she had started seeing Santo. Logan shook his head and took a long slug on his beer. He would never understand what they had seen in each other. Santo was six foot two, weighed about 480lbs, and looked like a bald WWF wrestler. His mutation worked virtually the same way that Pete’s did. He could turn it off and on whenever he wanted, and when his skin was ‘on’, he was made completely out of organic rock. He was extremely strong and durable. He could also detach and reattach his limbs to fire them as projectiles. The best thing for Marie was that his rock skin was completely immune to her mutation. Not that it mattered much these days, as she could control it now. Logan had to smile again; Rockslide may well be as tall as Logan and bigger than him and Pete put together, but he was a soft as a chocolate teapot.

Logan resisted the urge to chuckle at how much of a soft touch Rockslide was. The first time he had caught Marie’s eye was after a mission, one of Rockslide’s first. They had raided a lab and rescued a number of children, but for every one they found alive, there was two found dead. Back in the jet going home, Rockslide had started to blub about what they had seen and how unfair it was for those children to have died like that. Logan’s uniform was torn to shreds, Bobby was covered in bruises, Scott was bleeding profusely from a cut on his head, and Gambit had practically fried himself, but all the girls - Marie, ‘Ro, Jubes and Kitty - had fawned over Santo. Comforting him, getting him a glass of water and tissues. He didn’t even have a scratch on him. The boys had sat there stunned at what they were seeing.

That year-long relationship had gone sour and ended about a month ago. Marie had called Logan in a temper, saying that she hated men, present company excluded, and that she was going to try women for a change. After he had gagged on his beer, she had laughed on the other end of the phone and explained what had happened. She had eventually got sick of coping with Santo’s emotional breakdowns every few weeks or so. She said that she had simply had enough of every time they had an argument or something upset him, she was left with a huge pile of blubbering rock, and unfortunately her temper flared and she told him so. He promptly burst into tears, and she walked out, utterly frustrated and fed-up.

So that was the main reason he was avoiding going back. She was single again. Touchable, not that it would have made much difference if she weren’t. Available. It scared him to think that she was there and if he played his cards right, he could be with her. Scared him. The virtually indestructible Wolverine was scared of being with a perfect, beautiful girl. He shook his head and called to the barmaid. He tried to remember her name, but he couldn’t. It was Vicky or Nikki or something like that.

Now nursing a beer and a whiskey chaser, he didn’t feel any better. He checked his watch; Scott would be about 15 minutes to pick him up and then he would be home, home to Marie. Now it would be worse because he wouldn’t have any excuses not to pursue her. She had always been old enough, she had certainly always been together enough, and now she was single enough.

He would be back to looking at her and thinking dirty thoughts about having her pale, toned legs wrapped around him, and her delicate glove-less hands buried in his hair. On second thought, if he was honest in his dreams or fantasies, she always had gloves on, usually nothing else. Just a simple pair of short black leather gloves and miles of pale deadly skin.

He couldn’t help thinking about her like that. He was an extremely sexual person, and if he didn’t have sex or jerk off at least twice in one day, it affected his whole attitude. Marie had picked up on it once; she had gotten fed up with his testy behaviour and had practically pushed him out the door to go and get laid before he disembowelled one of the students.

Little did she know that she was the one he would truly like to be buried to the hilt in, and that every time he did get laid it was the memory of her scent that got him off. And it was, every, single, time. He would bury his nose in a woman’s hair and cum like a freight train.

He couldn’t even pinpoint what the hell he was scared of. He hated it when he was home, and he had to watch her get kissed or touched intimately by Bobby and then Santo, or he accidentally heard her having sex with one of them, which had happened on two occasions. Both times, he had ended up dead drunk and passed out in ‘Ro’s greenhouse.

So now, when he didn’t have to suffer that, he didn’t want to go back. Like it was easier knowing that she had someone. Easier knowing that he simply *couldn’t* have her rather than her not wanting him. And there it was. Rejection. He was scared that she would reject him, that in the end it wouldn’t be any of his downfalls or shortcomings - and he had enough of them. It would simply be that she didn’t want him.

When she was a kid, the ‘kid’, he knew she felt for him. That she would look at him with hope and openness in her eyes, ready to give him anything whenever he desired to ask for it. But now he also knew that it was just because he had been the one to save her life. Even she had admitted that one drunken night that they’d had.

He slid his fourth empty bottle away from him and downed his chaser. He felt more depressed than he had a couple of hours ago. Yes, he had finally come to realise what his big problem with going home was. Only thing was, it didn’t make him feel any better about going home; it made it worse.

The bar door opened and shut again. The cool breeze that swept in briefly brought a familiar scent to Logan’s nostrils, and he smiled as he threw a couple of bills on the bar. The sound of expensive leather shoes on the hardwood floor made him turn. Hank shook his hand with a brilliant smile. He was wearing a full trench coat and hat to cover his appearance.

“So, finally ready to come home?”

He chuckled at his friend’s easy manner with him. “Yeah. Let’s blow this joint!” He winked at the barmaid on the way out the door. She huffed and crossed her arms in front of her ample chest, obviously annoyed that he hadn’t given her a parting ‘gift’.

Once he had the bike and his duffel loaded onto the jet, he strapped in next to Hank, and he took off easily. The jet’s stealth made it impossible for local authorities to even know they were there in the first place. The ride home was filled with idle chit-chat about school schedules and danger room sessions. Hank told Logan that the last week Pete had covered his phys-ed classes and Scott had covered his danger rooms sessions. Debate-101 didn’t start for another week yet.

Scott had apparently asked Hank to pick him up instead, because he needed to chaperone some kids somewhere. He listened to Hank, nodded and agreed in the right places, but Hank could tell Logan wasn’t really paying that much attention. And he also noticed that the closer to the mansion they got, the more jittery Logan got.

When they landed, he went to get off the Bird, and Hank held onto his arm to stop him. “There was nothing wrong with the motorcycle or the weather, was there?”

Logan sighed and rubbed his hand over his face tiredly. “No.” He sat back in his sat with a defeated thump. “I’m just tired, Hank.”

“Tired? Logan please don’t insult my intelligence. This is much more than just being tired. Something is seriously bothering you, and it has something to do with being at home.” He seemed to think for a moment then leaned forward and put his hand on Logan’s arm. “Did you go to Alkali Lake again?”

He smiled at Hank’s concern. “No, stopped doing that a long time ago. I just… I don’t know. I’m just frustrated.”

He sat up straight again. “Frustrated… with what?”

Logan stared at Hank’s face for a beat or two, trying to decide whether to tell him the truth or not. “Fuck it.” He stood up and paced around the front of the jet while he spoke to him quickly. “Have you ever been so close to something you want, and then be scared that if you take the risk to get it, that thing isn’t going to want you?”

Smiling a knowing smile, Hank moved his seat round to face him. “I’m assuming that the ‘thing’ you’re are referring to is a woman?” Logan nodded grimly. “Well, yes, I have felt like that. And to my shame, I’ve never acted on it. So I know your ‘frustration’, how that feels.” He dropped his head.

“Who?” Logan sat down with him again.

“Between us?”

Logan smiled and nodded. “You have my word.”

“The lovely Miss Kitty Pryde.”

Logan snorted. “You’re kidding?” How long for god’s sake?”

“A long long time. I’ve always been too afraid that she’ll turn me down, say she couldn’t or wouldn’t want to be with me. So I’ve never said anything, just …let it go. Now of course she’s is engaged to Robert.” He sighed and smiled. “So… who?”

“Uh…” Logan rubbed the back of his neck, trying to squirm out of it.

“Come on!”

“Rogue.”

Hank laughed. “Well, that wasn’t predictable at all!”

“What do ya mean?”

“Come now, Logan, a blind man could see how you feel about her. You’re always with her, you’re partners on missions, drinking buddies, and well you’re… connected somehow. Two parts to the puzzle. Not to mention the fact that your friendship is the only relationship either of you seem capable of holding onto. That has to count for something.”

He got up again, put his jacket on, and then turned back to his friend. “So what do I do?”

“I don’t think I’m the best person to give advice. I’ve sat on my hands for the past, God, years!”

He really felt for Hank; Logan had felt like this for the past year or so. He knew how holding onto those kinds of feelings could make you sad. “How about we both do something about it?”

“Logan, I couldn’t.” Shock and fear was mingling into his scent. “It could ruin everything that I hold dear. I couldn’t do that. I would rather be her friend than …than nothing!”

“I know, me too, but I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep lying to myself about I feel and running away.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I’ve spent half a lifetime running from anything and everything, determined to stay alone, searching for a load of stuff that has mostly turned out to be awful. Then I spent nearly three years running from my own damn grief. I’m sick of running, Hank. I don’t ever want to feel like I did earlier, sitting in that downtrodden shithole of a bar, absolutely dreading seeing someone who I…” He stopped and stared at Hank, his mouth hanging open.

“Say it.”

“Someone I love.” He put his hands on his hips. “Fuck, I love her. Fuck!”

“Guess I’m kind of tired of being alone as well.” They both laughed. “She is seeing someone else though, and I couldn’t spoil things for her.”

Logan smiled knowingly. “Hank, listen, Bobby is not the faithful type he’s proved that before. It’s just a matter of time before he does it again. I say test the water with Kitty, flirt a little, don’t look at me like that, I know you can.”

“I don’t know. It’s just such a …a risk.”

“I’ll take it if you will?”

“I need to think about this a little more. I can’t just jump into things.”

“’Kay, come on. Let’s get in and get a late lunch.”

In the end, he decided to skip lunch. He dumped his bag in his room and went to make sure the bike was parked up in the garage. As he was walking back into the main doors, Marie was flying out.

She saw him and launched into a hug, his nose instantly in her hair, breathing her in like she was air. “Hey!”

“So you miss me, kid?” He reluctantly let her go.

She smiled and turned her head to the side slightly, as if having to think about her answer. “Nah, not really!” It was an age-old script that they both had; it reminded them of how their friendship started.

They laughed, and she swatted him on the arm. “It took you long enough to get home. ‘Ro and Scotty boy have been spitting bullets with your name on!”

“Gotta keep them on their toes. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

She shivered a little and did up the zip of her coat. He noticed and suppressed a growl at the way the zip rose and bunched her breasts together as it did. “Library in town. The school internet connections are down, and I need to download a load of Monet stuff for a class tomorrow.”

Logan looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. What time do they close, for heaven’s sake?”

“The main library stays open until midnight, so I probably won’t be back till then. So how about you, what you been up to?”

“Same old, same old. Stayed in the cabin most of this time, but got a few drinks and the odd fight on the way back.”

“And the odd woman, no doubt.”

He smirked. “Maybe. You know me.” He was right. She did know him, but she didn’t know how he felt, and eventually he had to start letting her know.

“Yeah, sugar, I do.”

“What about you? You ok with the Santo thing?”

She smiled and nodded. “O-God, I am so over it! I didn’t realise just how much the guy pissed me off. I mean, be a man for God’s sake! Hey, listen, how ‘bout tomorrow we get some beers in and have ourselves a ‘Welcome home, Logan’ party?”

He chuckled. “Sounds good, darlin’.” He hugged her again, and she ran off to her VW, then waved at him as she pulled out of the main gate. He watched her go and then went to his room for a hot shower and bed. He knew he wouldn’t sleep until he heard her car pull back into the garage, but he didn’t mind. That tight hug had given him plenty of things to think about.

Rogue parked her car in the main parking lot of the library and got out, locking the car and putting the keys in her jacket. She never had a chance to step away from the car, cry out, or even struggle. The blow to the back of her head was hard, fast and accurate. She slumped against her car and then slid to the ground.

“Johnny really, anyone would think you enjoyed that.” Mystique laughed as Pyro dropped the baseball bat to the floor and smirked dangerously at her.

“Who me?” They both laughed as they picked up Marie and loaded her into the back of a dark blue van, speeding out of the library parking lot and into the cold night.

*************END OF PART ONE

Title: Control 2/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Opening her eyes, she could see something shiney. She closed her eyes again and then opened them, trying to focus. It was the ceiling, a metal ceiling. She lifted her head forward and realised that she was tied in a sitting position on a metal chair, her hands cuffed tightly behind the back of it and her ankles cuffed to the legs. She tugged at them a little and knew she couldn’t get out of it.

She looked around the room. It was a small box room; no other furniture, windows or anything. Only she and the chair. Strip lights running along the edges of the room lit the room brightly. She tried to get her hands or legs free again, but it was no use. The cuffs were extremely tight. Thinking as quickly as she could, she tried to think about who would want her, who would grab her like this, and she hated the fact that she could only think of one person who had ever wanted to kidnap her.

She couldn’t see the door—it was behind her—but she heard it click open and then close again. A man’s footsteps echoed in the room as he walked around in front of her. Her heart rate picked up, and panic was close to gripping her completely as she looked at him. “How nice to see you again, my dear. Well, I trust?” Magneto smiled at her, his hands clasped behind his back in a very formal stance.

“Just peachy, thanks! Yourself?” Her voice was strong, and she was glad that her fear didn’t make her sound weak and girlie.

“Oh I’m well enough for an old man.” He gestured to someone behind her. Mystique, Pyro, and a blonde woman she had never seen before walked into the room and stood behind Magneto. “Now, we don’t have much time, I’m afraid, so I’m going to have to get right to business. You’re going to do a little job for me. I would ask Mystique to do it for me, but I’d wager that her presence at the Mansion wouldn’t be as acceptable as yours.” He chuckled softly.

“Why me, huh? Why is it always fucking me?” She struggled against the cuffs again.

“Well, you always seem to meet my criteria, and I couldn’t very well ask Wolverine, now could I?”

She stared at him with disgust. He smiled and held out his hand to the left. Marie watched as Mystique opened a small wooden box and took out a wrapped needle and a vial of liquid. “What the hell is that?” This time her voice was a little shaky, and she cursed herself for it.

She noticed Pyro watching her with hate in his eyes. She looked him up and down. He hadn’t change too much in the last three years since he had left them at Alkali Lake. A little taller, a little leaner, and most definitely a whole lot more dangerous. She could see it simply in the way that he stood there, eyeing her.

Magneto drew all the liquid into the needle and approached Marie. “This will hurt.” The blond woman came to Marie’s right and held her head to one side while Magneto pushed the needle all the way into her neck and injected the liquid. Marie screamed at the pain of the needle and then again at the burning sensation of the solution. “Come, come, my dear, pain is but a means to an end.”

She was breathing heavily and felt dizzy and sick. “What the… hell… was that?”

“It’s called ketamine. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.”

She was. “That’s a date-rape drug? Why would you use that on me?” She was finding it hard to focus on him in front of her. She felt drunk and sick.

“Well, you see, my dear, I have discovered that this drug also has wonderful uses in the mutant world. For example, your mutation is controlled by a ‘switch’ in your mind.” He got close to her face. “This drug makes that switch completely useless for a little while, and I can make you absorb anyone or anything I like.”

Her eyes went wide as she realised what he was going to do. “NO!” She was so weak and could barely even shout at him.

“Oh, don’t fret, my dear, it will soon be over, and then so will Charles’s precious X-Men!” He turned to the blond woman behind him. “There is no coming back from this, my dear. You will be completely absorbed.”

“I understand. It’s for the cause after all.” She looked at Marie, her gaze sweeping over her with disdain. “It won’t be all that bad. She has a decent figure. I can live with it.”

“You have your orders. Kill them all with an immediate attack and no mistakes. Take as many mutations as you think you can handle. I will trust you to carry it all out with your usual efficiency.”

Magneto stepped back with Pyro and Mystique. The blonde got close to Marie and knelt in front of her. She yanked up the hem of Marie’s trouser leg and grasped her ankle roughly. Marie tried to yank her foot away but couldn’t. She panicked as the full force of her mutation opened up. She had no control, she couldn’t stop it, and she couldn’t even slow it down. The woman poured into her as Marie screamed and convulsed in the chair.

Her name was Carol, Carol Danvers, and she was an evil nasty person. Marie could feel all of her thoughts and see her memories. She used to be a good woman, using her abilities to help where she could, until she had been captured by a secret military organisation and was raped and tortured to the edge of insanity. Driven mad and filled to the brim with hatred for humans.

She was a murderer, and Marie’s mind filled with images of her killing, as well as vivid images of her being tortured, raped and then having sex with anyone she could, men or women, just to take the pain away. Carol wanted to be the strongest, she wanted to be the ultimate, and she thought taking Marie’s body over and using it to gain an unlimited amount of power was the way to her goal.

She was already swearing at Marie and trying to force her to the back of her own mind. Marie tried to shield her own memories and feeling from Carol’s presence, but she was too strong. Now Marie knew everything about Carol and the other way round. There was no escaping her. Carol’s body collapsed and twitched on the floor, but Mystique moved forward and made sure that Carol’s hand was still touching Marie’s ankle. Soon her body stopped twitching and turned grey as every cell of life in her body was sucked into Marie. As Carol began to laugh evilly inside her mind, Marie lost consciousness.

A dark blue van pulled into the parking lot next to the main library entrance. Marie D’Ancanto stepped out of the back and smiled sweetly at Pyro.

“Make ‘em suffer, Carol.”

“Sure thing, sugar!” came the sickly sweet southern reply, and she laughed as she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before he closed the van door and sped off.

She smirked and swung her hips across the parking lot to the yellow VW bug in the corner. The key in her pocket opened the car, but before she got in, she looked at her reflection in the window. She turned and looked at her back, then lifted her hair to see her neck and shoulder. “Not bad, I suppose.” She got in and started the engine.

Twenty minutes past midnight, Logan heard her car pull into the gate and through into the garage. He watched from his window and noticed the way her hips swung. He smiled and then chuckled. She was singing to herself, and then she twirled around in the middle of the path before skipping the rest of the way into the mansion. He chuckled again, turned off his light and tv, and got into bed. She was home safe and apparently happy, so he went to sleep.

After his shower, Logan strode purposefully down the main stairs. He passed Scott who was on the way up. “Morning, Logan, good to be back?”

“Yeah. It kinda is.”

Scott stopped dead and waited for the wisecrack or the dig at him, but it never came. “Good.”

The professor was at the bottom of the stairs and greeted Logan with a smile. Then he looked past Scott and smiled at Marie (Carol) who was behind him. “Good morning, Rogue. Sleep well I trust?”

“Always, sir.” She smiled and looked at Scott who was on the step just below her. “Hi, Scott.”

“Hi, Rogue, you ok?” Scott frowned slightly at the strange way Rogue was smiling at him. There was something different about her, maybe her eyes?

Logan turned to the Professor to ask him about the days’ schedule. He wanted some time to run into town later for some new workout mats and a small gift for Marie. He watched the Professor’s smile fade as he watched Rogue and Scott, then his eyebrows drew together. When his eyes widened and he shouted, Logan was taken completely by surprise. “SCOTT!”

Before anyone could react, Carol brought a small knife from behind her back and stabbed him in the stomach. Before he could fall or double over, she pushed him. If it had been a normal person pushing him, he would have simply fallen down the stairs, but instead he flew directly backwards. He knocked into the Professor at the bottom, driving him and his chair into the back wall. Both were knocked unconscious.

Rogue jumped down the full light of stairs and landed at the bottom in front of Logan, who was too stunned to move. She giggled and innocently put her hand in front of her mouth. “Ooops!”

“Marie?” Blue, her eyes were blue, Logan knew that Marie’s eyes were beautiful chocolate brown, not blue!

She tilted her head to one side and smiled at him. “I’m sorry. Marie’s not here right now, but if you’d like to leave your name and number after the tone, she’ll get back to you! BEEP!” She laughed as she took off from the ground and flew at him, swinging a punch as she went. He couldn’t block it and flew the full length of the main corridor, smashing into the door to Xavier’s office and landing unconscious on the floor. “Indestructible, my ass!”

She turned around as Storm, Jubilee, Rockslide, and Bobby came running down the corridor. Evidently the Professor had just been able to raise the alert to all the team just before he hit his head.

“Rogue, what the hell?” Storm went to Xavier’s side, and Jubilee started seeing to Scott, taking off her cloth belt to stop the bleeding from his stomach.

She tapped the side of her head. “On vacation.”

Bobby instantly iced up and approached her. “Whoever the hell you are, get out of my friend!”

Logan got up off the floor and stumbled to the doorframe of the office just in time to see his Marie dodge a punch from Bobby, grab his arm, twist it and snap the bone like a twig. Logan slid to his knees. She had completely knocked the wind out of him and damaged more than a few internal organs; he couldn’t get up. She pushed Bobby to the side as Rockslide grabbed her from behind. His huge rocky arms engulfed her. She whined at him. “Santo, you’re hurting me!” Being the soft touch he was, he instantly let go, and she smiled as she turned and punched him in the stomach. He flew up to the ceiling with the force of it and then crashed down to the floor, knocked out cold, plaster falling around him.

Gambit and Kitty ran from the far corridor and came up behind her. Kitty saw what was happening, and she turned and ran for the elevator down to Hank’s lab. Gambit threw a card at Carol, but she caught it easily and tossed it back at him hard. It exploded in his shoulder and took him to the ground. He shouted as he landed, rolling in pain.

Storm stood in front of Carol her. “Time to end this.” She spread her arms out wide, and her eyes went pure white as she summoned a thunderstorm in the hallway. The wind howled, and the lightning rattled off the walls of the hallway, making the delicate side tables fall over and the paintings struggle against their fittings. A bolt struck Carol squarely in the chest, but all she did was give a fake shudder and laugh.

“Oooh tickles! That all you got?”

Logan stood again as Kitty ran back into the hallway. She threw a tranq gun at him. He caught it easily, surprising himself. She also had a metal suppressant collar that Hank had kept for some research reason. She phased through Carol’s back and ran in front of her. Then she ran round to Carol’s side. Carol’s arm came out and grabbed Kitty by the neck. “Gotta be quicker than that, little girl!”

“No, I don’t!” Kitty clipped the collar around Carol’s neck quickly, and the signal light on it went from red to green. Carol stumbled back a little and tried to pull it off, but without the extra strength, she couldn’t do it.

“Get it off, you bitch.. ahh!” Logan’s tranq dart hit her in the arm, dizziness took hold of her, and she passed out.

Over the next few hours, Hank and Kitty worked tirelessly to help everyone who had been injured in Carol’s attack. Scott’s wound had luckily missed any major internal organs or arteries, so after receiving minimal surgery and a generous amount of pain relief, he was sleeping peacefully in the med lab. Hank re-set Bobby’s arm; Carol had broken it in two places just below the elbow. Remy’s burnt shoulder wasn’t too serious and was treated easily. Rockslide needed strapping for three broken ribs, and the Professor simply asked for some migraine relief. Logan’s healing factor took care of any injuries that he sustained, but it didn’t take away the feeling of being completely unable to help Marie.

Logan watched as Hank finished dealing with Rockslide. The big man got up off the exam bed and stomped out the door to the elevator to the upper levels, stomped off to cry in peace. Logan ignored him and turned to Xavier as he went out the med lab door, crossed the round metallic hallway and punched in the code for the small holding room. Logan followed him and stopped him. “What are you going to do?” He watched as the door slid open to reveal a rectangular room with two small cells at the bottom. The professor had had them installed to hold mutants such as Sabretooth or Mystique before they were handed over to the proper authorities.



“I’m going to try and talk to her, Logan. I want to know what the hell is going on and who on earth that woman is. This has to end. She can’t keep a permanent hold of Rogue’s mind. She has to weaken eventually, and then I hopefully will have a chance to eradicate her from Rogue completely.”

“I’m coming in there with you.”

“Good idea.” Xavier wheeled forward into the room. While Carol was unconscious, Logan had handcuffed her hands behind her and laid her gently on the small cot in the cell. Hank had taken a blood sample to see if it brought them any answers, and had quickly examined her. Logan had gently brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face and smiled at her sleeping form, he never noticed her sleeping before and the sudden feeling that it seemed right made him forget about the situation, but the suppressant collar’s green light had blinked at him, annoyingly reminding him.

They went into the cell. Carol was sitting on the floor against the back wall, rocking back and forth singing. “How much is that doggy in the window, the one with the mutant-y tail? How much is that doggy in the window? I do hope the bitch is for sale.”

“Cute, what do you do for an encore?” Logan practically growled his words at her.

“How about rip your insides out and wrap them around your throat.” Logan couldn’t help it; he gave a bitter laugh. It sounded almost funny hearing something so vile come out of Marie’s mouth.

Xavier cleared his throat. “Would you like to tell me who you are?”

She stood up and walked forward to the bars. The left leg of her jeans was soaked in Scott’s blood, Logan could smell it, and it made him want to be sick. Marie was Scott’s friend, and when she found out what had happened, she would hate herself for it.

“How about we play a game instead? You ask the questions, and I’ll answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. You never know, old man. You might actually ask the right questions.”

Logan stood behind the Professor’s wheelchair, his arms crossed sternly over his chest, a hard scowl on his face.

“Did you intentionally invade Rogue’s mind with a view to infiltrating the X-Men?”

“Oh, what a good question.” She cocked her head to the side as if she was thinking hard. “Mmm, yes.”

“Did you plan on attempting to destroy us?”

“Again, yes.”

“Did you touch Rogue or is this some kind of mind control?”

“That’s not a ‘yes’/‘no’ question, but what the hell. Touch.”

“Did you plan this on your own or did you have assistance?” Logan shook his head again. He couldn’t believe that Xavier was humouring the bitch.

“Well, I had assistance, but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever tell you who. And I don’t mean to presume anything, but I doubt the big guy behind you would willingly torture his little Marie just to find out.”

Logan took a step forward to the side of Xavier. “How do you know her real name?”

“Oh I know everything, Logan. You see, it wasn’t just a quick touch. We went all the way, baby! My poor old body is now nothing more than a grey, dried-up husk! Now everything she’s ever thought, ever experienced, I know. Her secrets, desires,… her sins! The lies she’s told, mostly to you, funnily enough. She lies to you nearly everyday, and you never notice. What kind of person does that make you?”

The purely evil smile on her lips worried Logan more than her words. His senses told him that she wasn’t lying, but he still refused to believe it. Marie would never lie to him, would she?

“Awww, poor Logan, not sure what to believe, are you? Would she lie to you? What could sweet innocent little Marie lie to you about? The possibilities are endless, aren’t they? I guess that’s what makes this so much fun.”

“I know her, know her better than anyone.”

“Really. So in that case then you know that she saw you kiss Jean the night before she died. Guess she never told you that, huh? Also I bet she never told you that whenever she fucked her little ice cube she’d be thinking of you, and a few times she actually had to bite down on something to stop herself from screaming your name. Not with Santo though… mmm… funny that. Maybe it’s the size of him, maybe it plays to her big handsome protector issues. Personally, I’d love to say that she just got over you, but she just resigned herself to the fact that she would love you, and you would fuck everyone else. I bet watching you fuck your way across the bars of New York has helped with that.”

“You lying psychotic bitch!” She wasn’t lying. He could tell, and it actually scared him to think all that time she had wanted him and he had just done nothing about it. Now it could be too late.

“Psychotic bitch? Oh, what is it they say about casting the first stone? But hey, who cares? It’s all your fault she felt like that, anyway. You put the idea in her darling little head. Literally.” He looked slightly confused, and she rolled her eyes at him. “Duh! Liberty Island. She sucked the life out of you, and she got everything, sunshine, your whole world, including that nasty little thought you had when you first saw her in that bar. You know the one I mean: on the bar, pale skin, wide eyes, and equally wide legs for all to see and for you to touch! Mmm, you bad, bad boy! There’s other stuff, too. Wanna hear?”

Logan was about to swear at her when the main door slid open, and Hank walked in. He didn’t look at Carol, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Charles, I have the results from her blood tests. There are small traces of ketamine in her system. I would surmise that it was used to render the control over Rogue’s mutation useless. If someone had used this on her, then she wouldn’t have been able to stop her mutation from hurting them.”

“Wow! Ten points for the Doc! WOO HOO!” She turned around and lightly skipped to the back of the cell again. “Hey, have any of you ever noticed that Hank rhymes with Spank, or Tank? hahahah or WANK!” She leaned against the wall in a fit of twisted giggles, and then she started to howl with laughter.

Xavier sighed. “Thank you, Dr. McCoy.” Hank gave a curt nod and left the room.

“He’s just a big teddy bear, isn’t he? So Xavier, bottom line, you’re not getting the little girlie back. She’s nicely tucked away in the back of her own private cinema, watching re-runs of her life, and stuffing herself full of popcorn and cola. And that’s another good thing about knowing all this wonderful stuff about her,” she smiled at him. “You can’t read her mind.”

“You’re right. I have always found it difficult to read her, but there have been times when she has relaxed and been willing to allow me to try. Those times were extremely productive in helping her control her mutation.”

“Whatever, like I said, girlie’s not coming back, and you’re going to take this collar off and let me go.”

Logan huffed at her. “You gotta be outta yer mind if you think we are letting you out of here in Rogue!”

“Out of my mind? Well, my body is somewhere else, dead, but somewhere else, so technically, yes, I am out of my mind. But I’m assuming that you mean mad, crazy, goo goo ga ga, click click, burr burr, buzz buzz, fuckbitchwankshitpiss, bang bang, WHOO HOOO kind of out of my mind and well, yeah.” She looked at him completely straight-faced, and he was amazed that nobody had sectioned her by now.

“I think it would be wise if…” Xavier stopped mid-sentence as Marie’s face cleared, became more defined somehow, and her eyes clouded into brown. She looked at herself and around her as if she had no idea where she was.

“Marie?” “Rogue?” Logan and the Professor saw her change at the same moment.

Her voice was so quiet that it was barely above a whisper. “Wha… I don’t understand.” Logan moved to the front of the gate and began to use the keycode to open it. “LOGAN, NO!” He let go of the keypad and raised his hands as her eyes changed back to blue again. She rolled her eyes and struggled against the cuffs. “YOU STUPID LITTLE BITCH!” She opened her mouth wide and roared. Then she ran as full and as hard as she could straight into the bars of the front of the cell.

Logan and Xavier flinched as she hit it, then she fell to the ground unconscious, blood pouring from her mouth and nose. Logan shouted for Hank as he opened the cell and took the pillow off the cot to cradle her head.

********************END OF PART TWO

Title: Control 3/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!


**********************

A month later and the routine hadn’t changed much. Logan would go down and give her her breakfast. She refused to eat at lunchtime, but he went back with her dinner. He had even taken the cuffs off a couple of times, but she had tried to hurt him or herself so he didn’t do that anymore. But he did cuff her hands in front of her so she could at least eat, use the toilet, and wash herself without anyone’s assistance.

The Professor saw her once a day to try and penetrate her mind to flush Rogue out, but he couldn’t. They had tried several methods, including drugging her and trying while she was unconscious, but it had failed. Xavier caught the briefest of glimpses of Rogue but couldn’t get through, couldn’t help her, and in the end, it only served to weaken him.

They hadn’t been able to find out anything about who she was. Carol was excellent at avoiding the question, and of course she had been right: none of them were willing to hurt Rogue to get it out of her. None of the others could face her. Scott had tried, but when she started to laugh at him, he couldn’t take it. He said he just needed to know it wasn’t Rogue who had stabbed him.

Logan put in the code for the outer door and walked in, going straight to the door of Carol’s cell. He opened it and placed some fresh clothes on the small table along with a couple of books. The books were Kitty’s idea; she figured that maybe one of Rogue’s books would bring her out a little.

“Heya, hot stuff, come to fuck me today?” It was her usual greeting. She was lounging on the cot with her arms above her head. She smiled and opened her legs, then put her cuffed hands between her thighs against her jeans and began to rub herself. “Ooh Logan, please fuck me!” Then she started to laugh when he simply walked out and closed her cell door behind him. “Oh come on, big man. That’s what you been dying to come out of this mouth FOR YEARS! ADMIT IT, YOU ASSHOLE! YOU WANT HER! YOU WANT TO FUCK HER UNTIL SHE’S SCREAMING YOUR NAME AND BEGGING FOR MORE! SHE’S NOT COMING BACK, SHE’S NEVER COMING BACK!”

He turned and was back in her cell in a second. Her scent spiked with fear for the briefest of moments just before his fist connected hard with the left side of her face. She fell against the wall harshly. Logan grabbed her shirt and hauled her up and against the wall, his face inches from hers and his fist raised with the threat of hitting her again.

“Finally, finally some emotion, some passion, some anger from this walking mountain of metal. Finally after a month I can get a reaction out of you!” She pressed herself into him. “Isn’t this what you want? Her? You sick fucking bastard, she’s looks like jailbait. Your healing saw to that. She’d have to be thirty before she looks twenty. Everything is your fault, everything in this girl’s life is your fuckin’ fault!”

“You want a reaction, I’ll give you one!” He grabbed her hair and kissed her brutally, his mouth crashing down her hers, making her moan against him. She leant into the kiss as he roughly forced his tongue into her mouth. He could taste her blood coming from her lip, and he sucked hungrily on it.

Her cuffed hands splayed onto his chest but didn’t push him away. He lifted her hands above her head. There was a clothes hook just above her so he hooked the cuffs over that. Then he moved his lips roughly down her jaw to her neck, nipping at her sharply. He pushed her top up and sucked on her nipple through her bra. Then his hands began undoing her jeans, while he bit her neck again.

Sick pieces of memory began to flash in her mind. She remembered the men with loud voices and big guns. Shouting, hitting, cursing at her. Falling to the floor and feeling their suffocating weight on top of her. She’d cried out, but it had never stopped them, not once had her crying stopped them. They'd used a suppression collar as well. They'd abused her and used her, and she’d gagged as they ejaculated in her face.

Suddenly she had fear rolling off her as she struggled against Logan. “No! No, no, no, no, NO!”

He put his hand over her mouth and yanked her hair backwards. “Everyone has a stopping point, darlin’. Guess I just found yours. Watch your mouth when it comes to my girl or next time…” He shook her head in his hands, and her eyes were wide with fear and a single tear slipped from her left eye, but even under all the fear he could still smell the hint of her arousal. “I won’t stop, and you won’t be able to stop me. Right now, darlin’, you’re weak, you’re nothin’!” He let her go and stomped out of the cell and out of the room into the main corridor.

She slowly reached up and unhooked her hands, then slid to the floor shaking. She rubbed her hands against her temples, trying to ignore the mixture of voices in her head. They were laughing and telling her how Logan *would* do it. Marie’s inner Logan agreed, profusely. Even Magneto seemed to be against her. “Shut up shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut shut up shut…” She rocked on her heels chanting over and over.

Logan slammed his bedroom door and tore off his shirt. He didn’t bother putting it in his hamper, simply threw it in the bathtub. He started his shower, took off his shoes and socks, and stood under it, his bare feet squelching into his shirt. He slipped his jeans down his legs and stood on them as well. As much as he had always wanted to smell of Marie’s arousal and sex, he had to wash it off. He couldn’t cope with the scent of her in heat. It wasn’t really her. It wasn’t his Marie. It was a sick twisted bitch who had hurt the woman he loved.

Once he was clean, he put on fresh clothes and sat on his windowsill, blowing cigar smoke out of the open window. He knew that she wasn’t Marie, but he couldn’t shake the fact that he had hit her, he had just hit Marie, then if that wasn’t bad enough, he had threatened to rape her. He had shocked himself. He never expected to actually hit and scare a woman like that. It wasn’t what he was about. Sure he liked the male dominance and control that got him hot, but he normally didn’t like fear mixed in with sex. It made it bitter somehow. He also didn’t normally like the way it made him feel, but this situation for some reason pushed his buttons and made him incredibly wound up and horny. She looked, felt, and smelt like Marie, and he wanted her so much. But she had never been afraid of him, never had fear bittering her scent.

He got off the sill and reached under his bed for his bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Sitting back on the sill, he broke the seal and took a long swig and sighed. How was he supposed to get through this? How was he supposed to get through to Marie? He just didn’t know, couldn’t think how he could bring this to an end without giving in to his desire and fucking her. Especially seeing as this mystery woman had obviously been abused. No matter what the reasons or circumstance, he knew he would never be able to force her. It would always be an empty threat, but she didn’t know that, and it suited him for now, or at least he hoped that it would suit him for now.

The next day when he took her breakfast, he put it on the table and turned to leave, not even sparing her a glance. “What’s this, guilt? Pushed your morals a little too far, did you?” She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but somewhere in her life her common sense had been left behind along with the best part her sanity.

He turned and slowly stalked into the cell. She scrambled to her feet and flattened herself against the wall, her breathing heavy with fear already. He grabbed her and turned her roughly round, slamming her into the wall. Fisting the majority of her hair and holding her tightly against the wall with his sheer size, he put his mouth close to her ear. “You are gonna have to learn to keep your mouth shut.”

Inhaling her scent, he could tell that this time, filtering through the initial fear, there was arousal. Heat. She craved his touch, wanted him, wanted the brutality, the roughness. He snaked his tongue out and licked the curve of her ear, then led it down the hot trail of her neck to her shoulder, his nose pushing her t-shirt out of the way as he went.

He closed his eyes at the taste of her. Syrup, she tasted like sticky sweet syrup. A thick rich taste that he wanted to savour and devour. But it wasn’t Marie. He snapped his eyes open and pushed himself away from her, ignoring her roaring heartbeat and quick breathing, not to mention her sex-drenched scent. He closed the cell door as he left and walked back to his room for another shower to wash her off him. It wasn’t Marie. He had to keep saying it, or he would give into whatever was inside of him, whatever she had woken up, brought to life and which every time he got near her was nudging at him to just have her, mark her, make her his. But it wasn’t Marie.

Four days later, Hank came to see him. He was lifting weights in the gym. Logan had asked Hank to see to her for a while, as he needed a break. Hank had said that he was pleased to help and assured Logan that he understood and would make sure he was kept informed of any developments with her.

Logan watched him walk into the gym and over to the weight machine. Hank held a smile on his lips, but it faltered when he reached Logan’s side. “I think that you need to go and see Rogue.”

“Why?” He set the weights down with a clank and picked up his towel.

“She, or whoever the occupant is, has hurt herself during the night. She’s scratched at her neck rather badly, obviously an attempt to take the collar off or an attempt to get us to take the collar off and allow you to heal Marie’s physical body, but nonetheless she is in need of some attention.”

“So can’t you do it?” He tried to sound uninterested, but in reality, he was simply looking for an excuse to go back down there.

“She has refused and lashed out rather vigorously at me. She said she wanted you to do it and no one else.”

“Fucking hell! Fine, I’ll fall for it. Let me get showered, and I’ll come down. Did you tell Xavier?”

“Yes, he has been informed. He said that he intended on trying to speak to her again this evening.” Logan picked up his water bottle and t-shirt and stomped out of the gym. Hank tried a weak ‘thank you’ as Logan walked past, but it never really came out.

After a quick shower and a change of clothes, he walked into the med lab. “Ah Logan, good. I have some antiseptic wipes and soft Band-Aid’s. I am most grateful. She kicked me in a rather private area when I attempted to help her, and I must say it knocked the wind out of me rather.”

Logan smiled. “Don’t worry, Hank. I’ll sort her out.”

Hank put away a clipboard and picked up his glasses and coffee mug. “I’ll be heading back up top. I’m making some coffee. Would you like me to make a full pot and leave you some?”

Logan smiled again. Hank really was a nice guy. “Yeah, thanks.” Hank turned to leave. “Hey, Doc, uh… sorry I was a grouch before, this has kinda got me …uh…”

“Out of sorts?” Hank offered with a smile.

Logan chuckled at that. “Yeah, out of sorts. Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome, my dear friend, and there is no need to apologise for said grouchiness. We all have days. And this situation is very unsettling. Rogue has become a very good friend, and I feel rather helpless. So I can only wonder as to how you feel, considering your feelings for her. This must be extremely difficult.”

“Yeah.” Logan leaned against the exam table and sighed. “I don’t know, Hank. I look at her, and it’s M… Rogue, and then she opens her mouth and spits pure venom, and I’m confused. I get close to her, and I can smell her, and I… I see Rogue. I smell Rogue, and there’s something deep that makes me want to ignore the fact that it’s not Rogue.”

Hank sat back down on his desk chair, a concerned expression on his face. “What do you mean, something deep?”

Logan hung his head a little. “Like something I’ve forgotten, like I’ve known it before, age old, like I’ve felt it, experienced it before or something really *base* and needy. No, it’s more than need…” He got up and began to pace restlessly. “I don’t need it, I *want* it, like I just have to have it or I’m gonna explode!”

“And this, feeling, it’s making you react as if she were Rogue?”

“Yeah. I know it’s not, but I want it to be Rogue so badly it doesn’t register. I want the control, the fear, and the surrender of her. I like it, but I don’t think I should like it. In fact, I know fucking well shouldn’t like it! I never have done before. The idea of hurting a woman or taking something that isn’t offered willingly just doesn’t do it for me. Well, I say ‘not offered’…the way she smells when I get near her, she’s offering, but she’s not. It’s… complicated.”

“But this personality is receptacle to this - this kind of sexual/violence ‘game’, and that makes you feel differently?”

“Yeah.”

“Logan, the subject of right and wrong is extremely different for each individual person. Everyone’s moral boundaries are set closer or wider apart and only they can answer to them. Sex comes in as many shapes, sizes, and colours as peoples do, and you’re the last person I have to point that out to. Many people also find that violence and sex go hand in hand, but there is a limit, a *very* fine line where it crosses from violence and sex to simply just violence. All I will say is that you must remind yourself that anything you do with this woman, Rogue’s conscious is there beneath the surface. This *is* Rogue, your friend, the woman you *love* Logan and you can’t ever forget that.”

Logan sighed heavily as Hank got up and went to leave. “Yeah, I know.”

“Don’t dwell on the matter too much. Trust your instincts. You’ll know if what she is… ‘giving off’, shall we say, is a ruse or her true emotions. Personally, I would definitely *not* recommend that you allow anything to happen between you and this woman, but you have to be your own judge, jury, *and* executioner.” He patted Logan on the shoulder and left with a wave of his hand, whistling as he called the elevator up to the main house.

Logan was glad that Hank had decided not to stay on the lower levels. He didn’t want him to hear any shouting, or anything else that might happen. Logan shook himself. He wasn’t going to let anything else happen. It was Marie, ultimately it was Marie, and he shouldn’t use her. But he just couldn’t deny getting horny about having that much control over the woman. He knew he needed to see to Marie’s body and ignore anything the woman in her head said. He needed to ignore how his own body felt as well.

Picking up the wipes and Band-Aid’s, he crossed the hall and opened the cell room. The scent of blood hit him. Then he walked forward and opened up the cell itself. He leaned on the frame and looked at her. She was sitting on the floor with her back straight and flat against the wall. Her fingernails were red with her own blood. By the looks of it, she had scratched big welts in her neck, just above the collar, and it had dripped down her front.

She looked up at him, her eyes red and swollen as if she had been crying, and he was slightly taken aback when she turned her head away from him with what looked like shame. He thought for a moment that it was all an act, all a ruse to get him to trust her, and then she would try to escape or get the collar off. But there was something about the look she gave him, and her scent was full of shame, disappointment and self-hatred. He knew it wasn’t an act; she was truly miserable.

He sighed and went to pick up a clean t-shirt that was on the bed. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, and he knelt across them. First he got the key to the handcuffs out of his back pocket and undid them. She instantly rubbed her wrists but made no move to get away. He put the cuffs in his pocket along with the keys.

He put the wipes, t-shirt ,and Band-Aid’s on the floor next to them. “Take your shirt off.” She met his eyes as she did as he asked. He could tell she was trying to size him up, figure out his intention, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to so easily. He noticed again that even though she did as he asked and made no attempt to attack him or stop him, her scent held a hint of fear and arousal as she sat beneath him in her bra.

He cleaned up her fingers and nails first. Then she didn’t move as he gently pushed her hair back over her shoulders out of the way off her neck. He picked up the wipes and began to clean the scratches on her neck. He swept the wipe up one of the cuts; she hissed and grabbed his wrist, meeting his eyes again. They intensely starred at each other. “It stings,” she whispered, and he nodded as she let go of his wrist.

Logan slipped his hand into the back of her hair and pulled her head to one side for better access. He leaned close to her as he cleaned around the base of her neck and her collarbone. As he did he caught the top of one of the cuts; it began to bleed a little. Helped by the wetness of the wipes, the trickle of blood flowed down her neck and provocatively into the curve of her breast.

He followed it with his eyes. As he watched, he heard her heartbeat speed up and her breathing get heavy. He cleaned the trickle slowly and carried on cleaning and soothing the welts on her skin. By the time he put the last Band-Aid on her, both of them were breathing heavy, and his erection was pressed into her stomach.

She held his intense gaze as he looked at her. She swallowed the lump in her throat and licked her dry lips. His eyes flicked quickly to her lips as her tongue darted out to wet them and then back to her eyes. He kept repeating the same sentence over in his head. ~It’s not Marie. It’s not Marie.~

“The other day…” her voice was barely a whisper. “Would you have?”

“You’re in the body of a woman that I’ve wanted for a long time, so, yeah. I would.” He felt her small fingers grip on the tops his thighs.

“That’s what they keep telling me.” He frowned, and she noticed. “The voices. They’re in no doubt as to what you’d do to me if you wanted.”

“You got Marie’s voices?” She nodded, and her eyes filled with tears, turning the bright blue a murky grey colour.

“They don’t shut up. They chant or curse or pick at me. Even Eric. There’s no end to them. I didn’t know, I didn’t about them!” Her breaths came quickly as the tears began to fall down her face. “I… I wouldn’t have… if I’d known!”

He stood up and ran his hand over his face and through his hair. He walked out of the cell, throwing away the Band-Aid wrappers in the bin as he did. “Don’t hurt yourself again. I don’t like it.” He had to get away from the sound of her tears. He couldn’t stand them. Even more than that, he couldn’t stand the fact that he actually felt something for this woman. He wasn’t sure what. Maybe it was just pity. He didn’t know.

“Carol!” He turned when she spoke. “My name’s Carol.” He walked from the room, and the door hissed shut on her.

****************END OF PART THREE

Title: Control 4/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

They’d been sitting in Xavier’s office for the past two hours, trying to reach some kind of conclusion to the situation. It had been two days since she had told Logan her name was Carol. They had all done a mountain of research trying to find out who she was, where she was from, known allies, basically anything they could. Nothing had come up. Even their informants in the Mutant underground had gone quiet and cold.

A million theories and ideas had been thrashed out, and nothing had been resolved. Logan stood staring out of the main window overlooking the basketball courts. He watched silently as the kids played, happy in their innocent world and completely oblivious to the turmoil coursing through their teachers. Jubilee stood next to Logan, the Professor, behind his desk sitting in stony silence and the others Scott, ‘Ro, Bobby and Hank were scattered around the room also sat in silence

Each of them physically jumped when Kitty burst through the door holding a green folder. “I got her!” She laid the folder on Xavier’s desk and flipped it open. There was a picture of Carol and another of her family. “Carol Danvers, also lovingly known as Ms. Marvel. Superhuman strength, invulnerability as well as being able to fly, which I’m guessing could be handy! She doesn’t age either. There’s no mention of a healing ability; she simply just doesn’t age. She fits our woman.”

“Well done, Katherine. Did you find out anything else?” Xavier smiled at her warmly, genuinely pleased that they finally had some answers, and if those answers lead to a possible solution, he would be even happier.

“Yeah,” she read off of the sheet in front of her. “Carol Danvers. Height, 5ft 11in, weight, 124lbs, eyes blue, hair blonde. American, born Boston, Massachusetts. Her father is/was, not sure, Joseph Danvers, Sr. Mother Marie Danvers…” Logan nearly laughed at that. The mother of the woman who was in Marie was called Marie. “…two brothers, Joseph Jr. and Steven, he’s deceased. She graduated with a B.A., was Chief of Tactical Operations for the Department of Homeland Security, a former intelligence agent with the CIA, and a NASA security chief. By all accounts a competent, intelligent woman.”

Xavier nodded for her to carry on. “Apparently in the early 1980’s, she was used in what looks like a military programme, forcibly, and by the looks of it, the details are really, really sketchy. They tried to get her to be some kind of trained assassin…”

Logan snorted. “Fucking typical!”

Kitty coughed and read off her notes again. “But she refused to comply and escaped after a number of years in holding, heading straight for our old friend Magneto. The reason she’s been so hard to find is that when she was taken into this ‘military programme’, they wiped her record, everything. According to the world, this woman doesn’t and never has existed. I had to hack into a number of heavily protected government systems to get the information.” She sat down heavily in one of the plush chairs opposite the Professor. “That’s all I’ve got on her.”

“Magneto. Really how predictable. I should have known.” Xavier clasped his hands in front of him and rested his elbows on his desk. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t help Rogue at the present.”

Logan turned to face the group and leaned on the wall by the window, crossing his arms. “I think ‘Carol’ wants out.”

Scott picked up his coffee and took a sip before speaking. “What makes you say that?”

“She said something the other day about the voices in her head. Rogue’s voices. She didn’t know about them, and I think they’re doing her head in. They obviously don’t want her up there as much as we don’t, even Magneto which is kinda strange.”

“Who has she got up there anyway?”

“Last time we talked about it, which was a while now, six months maybe, um… just me and Bucket-head…” He noticed the confused look on ‘Ro’s face. “Magneto!” She gave a silent ‘O’ when she got the nickname Logan had used.

Xavier set his delicate teacup down on his desk. “I simply can’t access her mind unless she lets me. Rogue’s mind has always been a very difficult consciousness to penetrate because of the ‘passengers’ she has. But when I was working with her on the control of her mutation, if she completely relaxed, I was able get in. Only briefly, mind you, mere minutes or sometimes seconds at a time, but I could.”

“So, if this Carol chick lets you in, you can get Rogue-y back out?” Jubilee spoke as she crossed the room and sat on the couch next Scott.

The Professor addressed them all again. “In theory, but there are many factors to consider.”

“Indeed there are. I know not many or, in fact, none of you want to hear this, and I probably won’t be very popular, but we have to consider the human rights of this individual in...” Hank put his hands up at the shocked looks he got from Scott, Bobby, Jubilee and ‘Ro.

“No way! You can’t consider the feelings of someone that basically raped Rogue’s mind.”

Bobby spoke next. “I agree with ‘Ro. She forced her way in and she must have realised that this was a possible end result.”

“Bobby, Hank does have a point, even though I agree with you.” Scott unconsciously touched his side when he spoke.

“Scott’s right. There is a point I’m trying to make here. Carol Danvers is/was an individual. Yes, she obviously forced her way into Rogue’s consciousness and took over with every intention of hurting or killing as many of us as possible, but… She has a right to be considered. She may not have, as Logan said, realised the full implications of her actions, or she may have been forced by Magneto somehow. My guess would be he didn’t tell her the full extent of how this would affect her. Either that or he simple lied to her. We have to make sure that the actions she took were her own, but the point remains that guilty or not, capable or not, she still needs to be afforded basic human rights.”

“And if they weren’t her own actions?”

“I… I don’t know. I suppose, if you looked at it from a medical point of view, Rogue has Multiple Personality Disorder and Carol is her ‘other’ personality. Court rulings in America and England that have dealt with MPD cases have gone the way of proving that the extra personality is in some cases a completely separate entity. In the majority of those cases, the extra personality is completely unknown to the original owner of the body, and Courts have ruled that this personality should be afforded the same basic human and legal rights as any other individual. There has also been one rather landmark case where the original person had committed a crime, and the Courts *almost* decided not to convict because the ‘extra’ personality was innocent of the crime, and imprisonment would have been an infringement of ‘their’ basic human rights. It’s a very difficult and complex area to deal with.”

Xavier sat back in his wheelchair again. “From what she has said to us, she knew what would happen to her own physical body. She even went so far as to tell us she was dead and that her intent was to eliminate the X-Men. But if what she said to Logan is true, she didn’t realise that there were others inside Rogue’s mind. Magneto didn’t give her all the facts.”

“Hang on. While we’re on the ‘save the evil lady’ bandwagon, have you thought that good old Mags doesn’t even know about Rogue’s playmates?”

“Yella’s right. Why or how would he know?” Jubilee frowned at the name Logan used for her, but then smiled when she realised he had agreed with her. She had been spending a little time with him, and they had chatted about Marie and the whole situation. He made her feel a little better, having someone close to her best friend to talk to.

“That’s very true. I think only the people in this room know the full extent of Rogue’s mutation. It certainly leaves us in the bargaining seat. We can effectively stop the voices and ‘help’ her by extracting her from Rogue.”

“We are not bargaining with her. No way!”

“Logan, she has to let me inside her mind for me to be able to help Rogue. We have proved that even with the help of medication, I can’t do it. She has to agree, if the voices are as you say effecting her. If she does, then I can take her out of Rogue’s mind completely and permanently.”

Hank sat forward again. “Logan, we also have to consider this woman’s family. Kitty, you said there were parents and a younger brother?”

“Uh…” she checked her scribbled notes. “Yeah, the eldest son died in a car accident about six months after his 17th birthday. I can’t find any record of the parents past their last known address, which was late 1981. Anything after that has been kept off record or wiped, but I have a loose lead on the brother. Well, it’s not a loose lead. I’ve figured out who he is, but I can’t prove it.”

“What do you mean, my dear?” Hank smiled at her warmly. Logan noticed and smiled; Bobby also noticed the fact that Hank smiled at his fiancée but didn’t pay any attention to it.

“His records disappear at around the same time as hers did. Then, almost the same time, in fact the same day, a new identity appears. Persons the same height, weight, hair, eyes etc, but different name and a new family. He was very, very young – seven or eight years old when this was all switched about – so he may not even know who he really is.”

“I get why: the family lose their eldest son, their daughter was kidnapped because of her mutation, they wanted the younger son safe so they gave him away and had his identity changed. It’s a little extreme, but I can understand why people would go to such lengths to make sure their child was safe.” The others nodded at ‘Ro’s conclusion.

“There’s more… he’s a mutant, in fact, and I really hope that you didn’t mind me checking Professor, but he’s an ex-student of the Institute.”

“Who?” The look on Xavier face was stern. Everyone in the room could tell he was very worried.

“Sean Cassidy, a.k.a Banshee.” She pushed a photo of him onto the desk.

Scott rose and walked to look at Kitty’s notes. “Hang on, Sean was in my year. He came from Ireland. There’s no way it could be the same guy! We played football together. He hung around with me and Alex.”

“It is. It has to be. The records were deleted and then created from the same point, the same computer terminal, the same time. The dates match, his age matches, even his appearance is similar to hers.”

“Kit-kat, what about his mutation?”

“Um, superhumanly powerful lungs. Throat and vocal cords can produce a sonic scream for various effects, such as to overwhelm listeners with deafening noise, stun them with tight-focus low-frequency sonic blasts. Effective even against shielded ears by penetrating the skull via bone conduction. Um, can plunge them into a hypnotic trance, disorient them, nauseate them, or simply render them unconscious. As well as confusing scanning equipment. Oh, and the clincher for me, as we all know siblings sometimes share similar mutations, as well as the *superhuman* strength of his lugs, he can *fly*!”

“No way! No way does Sean have anything to do with that piece of shit!”

“Scott, from what Kitty has uncovered, she wasn’t always like this. She was an intelligent woman, with a good life, a loving family. For all we know she could have been in a relationship with someone, maybe wanting to get married, have kids. I mean, come on, at one point in her life she was just like the rest of us.”

“I know, ‘Ro, but, I’m just finding it so hard to believe.”

“Things happen to people, bad things. It makes them change. You don’t know what’s happened to her to make her so damn nasty.”

“So you’re condoning it?”

Logan gave a sharp bitter chuckle. “I think you know me better than that!” He moved and sat on the edge of Xavier desk. “Is there anyway we can prove this Banshee is her brother?”

“A DNA test would be the only true way.” Hank cleaned his glasses as he spoke.

“Hank, Kitty, check the school medical records. When Sean and Scott were students, the physician, Elliot Roberts, was extremely thorough. He would have a DNA sample for every student. I think its important that we find out for sure, and then we may be able to use that to our advantage. Logan, talk to her about him; see if it hits a nerve.” He nodded at them all, and they filtered out of his office in silence. Once alone, he leaned his elbows forward on his desk and rubbed his temples.

Logan followed Hank and Kitty down the corridor to the lower level elevator. Kitty pushed the button, and Hank gestured to Logan. “Coming down now?”

Logan’s only response was to raise a cigar and walk out the front door into the grounds. “He’s not taking this very well, is he?”

Hank smiled at her as they entered the lift. “No, he cares for Rogue as we all do, but their friendship is a very special one.”

She looked at him and rolled her eyes. “Please! Special friendship, any fool can tell they’ve been in love with each other for years. They are both just too stubborn and stupid to do anything about it. If this whole situation proves anything, then it’s that people wait too long to say how they really feel. Take your opportunities, say what you need to say, and do what you need to do before it’s too late and you never have the chance.” He was staring at her and she shook her head. “What?”

He took a step towards her, faltered slightly, touched her chin lightly, and then kissed her, chaste but meaningfully on her lips. Her eyes flew wide and she stiffened in surprise, then she softened into him slightly, placing her hands on his shoulders. He pulled away, and if it weren’t for his fur, she would have been able to see he was blushing.

“You’re quite right, my dear. People wait far too long to tell others how they feel. For example, I have waited three years to tell you that I find you rather alluring. You are a light-hearted, pleasant, and radiant young woman who is not only incredibly intelligent, but most beautiful also.” The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened. He shifted and looked at his feet before looking at her and continuing. She was too stunned to speak. “And now I fear I may have embarrassed you…”

“Hank, no. You haven’t. I had no idea you felt this way.”

“I must say, it feels rather good to have it out in the open. And now I think we should get along. We have much to do, and if I don’t get out of this elevator immediately, I fear I may kiss you again, and considering your happy relationship with Robert that would be inappropriate.”

He turned to leave, but she caught his arm. “I don’t mind.” She leaned up, and he kissed her again. This time her arms wound round his neck, and she pressed herself against him. She didn’t realise that they had moved until her back hit the wall of the elevator.

He broke the kiss and smiled at her so widely his fangs showed. “I… I don’t understand?”

“My relationship with Bobby isn’t happy.” She walked out of the elevator, and he followed her into the lab. “In fact, it hasn’t been good for a while, and I’ve just been avoiding it, or looking for an excuse to end it. But I don’t want to use you as an excuse and I don’t want you to think that you’re an excuse, your not. Look Hank, I’m not saying I want to jump into anything, because I don’t. I need to get things sorted out with Bobby and my head sorted out a little bit too. I’m attracted to you Hank, I won’t lie about it, but I not ready to jump from one person to another just because they’re there.” She sighed heavily. “God, that sounded so harsh, I don’t mean it like that! I’m sorry.”

He took her hand and kissed it gently. “I understand completely. You have my support if you need it.” She blushed and they got on with trying to find Sean Cassidy’s records and DNA samples.

Logan blew smoke out with a heavy sigh. He had walked round the back of the house to the small memorial garden that had been erected for Jean after she saved them all at Alkali Lake. He sat down on the bench and continued to smoke as he stared at the tall elegant stone that bore her name.

He put the cigar out, putting the stub in his pocket so it didn’t make the little garden look untidy. He knew Jean would have hated that. He walked over to the stone. “I could use some help here, Jeannie. This woman isn’t Marie, but she looks and smells like Marie, and my dumb metal-encased brain keeps thinking it’s Marie. But it ain’t. You’re not going to help though, are ya? You’ve done all the helping you’re gonna do. You knew, didn’t you, knew how she felt about me. Tried to tell me too, didn’t ya, darlin’, but I brushed it off. I think you knew I loved her too. Stupid, stubborn old me, huh.” He gave a small chuckle. “Night, Jeannie. Sleep easy, darlin’.”

He walked slowly back into the mansion, straight to the elevator and down to see Carol.

***********END OF CHAPTER FOUR

Title: Control 5/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!
**********************

Logan walked into the cell room, and she was lying face down on the cot reading a girlie mag. Hank and Xavier had insisted that she have books and things to read, even if she was a ‘prisoner of war’. As such, she still needed to be treated fairly.

“Hey.” She didn’t turn when he spoke; she knew it would be him. No one else came in. Even the Professor didn’t come in without Logan.

“Carol.” He’d been calling her that since she told him. She got off the cot and threw the mag down on it, facing him squarely.

“Actually the last time I checked, I could have sworn my name was Marie.” He looked up from his boots and went to the bars of the cell. “Hey, sugar.”

He searched her eyes and found nothing but soft brown. “Oh Marie!” He opened the cell quickly and touched her face. Then he went to open the collar, but her hands stopped him.

“Don’t. She won’t be gone long.” Her tone was calm, but crackled with underlying frustration and possibly anger, he wasn’t sure.

“How?” His words were urgent.

“Woke up, and it was me. She’s still there, and… it’s hard to describe. It’s like she’s giving me some air. It’s weird.” She smiled at him. “So who’s taking my classes?”

His breathing was heavy, and he slammed his hand flat on the bars. “How the fuck can you be so calm?”

She shrugged. “What do you want me to do, Logan? Beg you to let me out and take the collar off, give her the chance to kill all of you? I’m not stupid. She’d love the opportunity to hurt you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Even though you seem to be enjoying each other’s company.”

“Don’t!” He stood with his hands on his hips.

She faced him squarely and shouted at him, “What, it’s not what I think? Actually, I know you better than anyone else. So yeah, it’s exactly what I think it is!”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” His emotions were running wild, and he wasn’t able to hide his anger at the whole twisted situation.

“That you’re hot for her. You like the power, the strength of her, and the fact that you’re in control!”

He grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “Fucking hell, Marie, it’s you. It’s all about you. You’re the one I’m hot for, you’re the one I want out of the damn cell. You, not some psycho bitch who spits venom every time she opens her fucking mouth! I want you! If she’d have been in anyone else’s body, I would have killed her by now, and screw the consequences.”

“Screw the consequences? Logan, you’re practically screwing *her*.” She pulled away from him and paced a little, unable to accept that it was really her he wanted. “I feel it, you know. She may be the one in control and calling the shots, but I can *feel* you touching her, Logan. I could feel your hands on her, gentle and caring. Kissing her, licking her skin! Tasting *her*.”

“It’s you I’m touching, you I taste. It’s your body, Marie!”

She shook her head in disbelief at him. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not me, Logan, I’m not there. I’m in another room, watching, hearing. Yes, I can feel it, but I’m not there. It’s not me, Logan, not once has it been me!”

“But …but it is you. I want you, Marie. I love you. I look at you, and I smell you. Yeah, I hear her, and it makes something base on the inside take over, and I want to control, possess, and take what I want. She makes me want to forget everything, just have what I’ve wanted for so long. But… but it’s because of you that the feeling is there, the need, the want is there. Because I love *you*, because I want *you*.” He turned away and ran his and over his face.

The slow clap of her hands made him turn back to her. A mocking round of applause and deep blue eyes met his gaze. “Bravo! A rousing speech. Not sure she bought it though...”

A sharp gasp and a squeak was all he heard when the back of his hand hit her face. Then once again, he had her by her shirt and slammed unceremoniously against the wall. “GIVE HER BACK, YOU HEAR ME, YOU SICK BITCH? YOU GIVE HER BACK TO ME NOW!”

“No! Visiting hours are over, baby, and you’re off the list! You have nothing left to bargain with.”

“Oh, really!”

“Yeah, really! You know that you won’t beat me around indefinitely, because it’s *her* precious body. I know damn well you won’t hurt me; you wont hurt *her*! You’ve got nothing to hold over me anymore, and you know it!”

He pushed away from her with a deep growl. “Fuck you!”

“That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it? Have all that pretty young flesh at your fingertips.” They stared at each other for a beat or two. He hated the fact that she was right. All he wanted was Marie.

Carol looked at him knowing that she wanted him, for the first time she had actually found someone she thought she could want. “This isn’t going to end well. You’re not the guy who gets his girl and then has a happy ending. I want to *live*, and if that means little girlie here gets the heave-ho, then so be it.” He watched as her eyes filled up, and then tears ran down her face. “Did you hear that I said, I *want* to live.”

He put his arms out to the sides and gestured to the room. “This isn’t living. You stay in Marie, you stay in this cell. You get fed twice a day and a change of clothes. That how you want to live? ‘Cause it’s all you get, darlin’. No window, no fresh air, never get to feel the wind in your face. If you want to live alone in a cell with no one to talk to, apart from the voices in your own fucking head, then so be it. And me, well…” He gave a bitter chuckle and fixed her with a hateful stare. “I never come down here again. You stay in Marie, I never want to see that face again.”

She grabbed the sides of his jacket and spoke quickly, her voice full of panic. “I... I could g… give her to you sometimes. You could have her, have me. We could make some kind of agree…agreement, and you could...”

He pushed her back, the sheer amount of desperation in her voice making him want to hit her again. “You think I want you?” He snarled his words at her.

“I know you do. I felt it when you kissed me, tasted me! Fuck, I felt it when it was pressed against my stomach the other day! You do want me. I know it!” He couldn’t deny her words; her point of view was just wrong.

He got close to her face again. “I want the body you’re in and the girl who goes with it! All I ever wanted from you was control. Maybe let loose, have a go, and smack you around a little…” He looked her up and down coldly. “But that’s it. You’re not worth anything else.” And as far as he was concerned, she really wasn’t.

His mind had finally found the line and drawn it.

She smiled at him. “Still means you’re willing to give me a part of yourself that you won’t give her.”

“No, you’re right. I won’t let her have that part of me. The dark part…” He stalked closer still to her. “The part that wants to hurt, the part that wants to claw at your skin and fuck you till you’re bleeding and begging me to stop, to hurt you and take pleasure in your blood and pain and suffering. I’d never let her have that part of me!”

“Then you’re a fool! You think that if you get me out of this body that she’s going to want whatever’s left of you? Why the hell would she? The past month you’ve been practically dry humping me every chance you get!”

“I don’t care if she never wants to see me again.” He looked her squarely in the eyes. “At least, it would be her and not you!” He walked out of the cell and slammed the door, locking it instantly.

“I’ll hurt her again.” She said it coldly, and he knew she meant it. Not because her scent showed no lie, but because he knew she was fucked up enough to do anything.

He smirked and dug his hands in his pockets. “Go ahead, ‘cause once you’re gone, I can heal her up. And trust me, darlin’, you’ll be gone. You’re gonna let Xavier in your head, and you’re gonna get lost.”

“Really, and why is that?”

“If you don’t, I’m gonna bring your little bother in here and show him what a sick, twisted bitch you’ve become. Then I’m gonna stand back and watch the look of disgust as it washes over his face.” He smiled at her shocked expression, enjoying the act that he had hurt her. “You see, I know who you are Miss Danvers, or is it Ms. Marvel? And I know who your parents are, and I sure as hell know who and where your little brother is!”

He stalked out of the room, but he still managed to hear her gasped word as the door slid shut. “Joseph!”

Standing outside in the corridor, he rested his head against the wall. He could still hear her; she had been shouting for him since the door slid shut. Only thing he wasn’t sure of was who was shouting. One minute, he was positive it was Carol, and the next he thought it was Marie. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor. She screamed his name over and over, and he just sat there and listened. He couldn’t go back in, even if it was Marie calling for him. He knew she would be gone again by the time he got to her.

The main elevator opened, and Xavier and Scott came into the corridor. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Mentioning Cassidy got a reaction.” He thumbed towards the noisy cell behind him.

Scott moved forward towards the med lab. “I’ll go see if Hank and Kitty have come up with anything yet.”

Xavier nodded at Scott, and Logan rose to his feet. “How long has she been calling out?”

“Couple of minutes. Chuck, there’s something I need to tell ya. When I came down here earlier, it was Rogue. She said it was weird, like Carol was giving her some air or something.”

“You’re sure it was Rogue?”

“Trust me, it was her. Brown eyes, plus no one can call me on my fuck-ups quite like she can.”

Hank, Kitty, and Scott came out of the med lab, and the Professor addressed them all. He sighed heavily before he spoke. “I want the entire team in the med lab now. I believe that I have found a way to extract Carol from Rogue’s mind, and we need to come to this decision as a whole.” He closed his eyes briefly and called to his X-men.

Xavier gestured to Hank to close the med lab door as the last of his X-men came into the room. All of them stood in front of him: Logan, Ororo, Bobby, Hank, Remy, Santo, Jubilee, Kitty, Peter, Kurt and Scott.

“I have asked you all to gather as I have found a way to eradicate this woman from Rogue’s mind. Do you remember the first time Magneto kidnapped Rogue? Well, I found her at the train station using Cerebro. The normal way for me to access a person’s mind is for them to let me. It is possible without permission, I just don’t like doing it. But in the case of Rogue, it has always been very difficult given the nature of her mutation and the effect it has on her mind. I haven’t wanted to use this avenue, but personally I see little else, but when I use Cerebro, I can in a sense force my way in.”

“Like at Alkali Lake.”

“Yes ,Scott exactly like that. But there is an enormous risk to Rogue. If, like at Alkali Lake, I push just a little too hard I could render her brain dead. The plan would be to use Cerebro to force my way into her mind and push out Miss Danvers. I cannot and will not make this decision alone.” He sighed, before carrying on.

“Carol has made it plainly clear from my meetings with her that she would more than willingly bring harm to any one of us given the opportunity, and my individual opinion is that negates the issue of human rights. We do not have the pleasure of a judicial system because of our anonymity, so the decisions that we make must be the right ones. If we leave this woman in Rogue’s body, in control of Rogue, we effectively lose Rogue as if she had died, and Carol must remain a prisoner with us or handed over to the government and held in the same way Magneto was. But if we remove Carol from Rogue then, due to her body already being deceased, we are effectively sentencing Carol to death. Do you all understand this?”

They all nodded. A few murmurs sounded before they all fell silent again. “There are many things still to consider, Rogue’s health being the first and primary concern. There is still the possibility that, no matter how gently I go, this procedure could go wrong, and Rogue could be left in a vegetative state. Also, there is the family of Miss Danvers; we have discovered her brother. Hank and Kitty have just informed me that the man in question is still a resident of New York and is, in fact, a police officer. As far as they can ascertain, he does not know who his sister is. My thoughts are not to inform him, allow this man to live his life and not to bring him into things.” He paused briefly. “I need all of you to help make this decision. I realise that some of you may feel uncomfortable making this decision for her, but Rogue is unfortunately in no way able to help us. We must base this on what we feel and think Rogue would want. We, after all, know her best.” He sighed. “This decision must be unanimous. If there is even one person who has the slightest doubt that Rogue would not want this procedure or they don’t feel that it is morally right, then it won’t be done. There will be no convincing. Once the decision is made, that’s that; other avenues will have to be considered.”

He looked around the faces before him. “Whatever your decision, make it your own, and please make sure you understand the severity of the situation and the consequences. Given the nature of this, I think we should make the decision swiftly.” He moved over to the door and opened it. “I will be in my office for the next three hours. I look forward to hearing from you all during that time.”

Logan spoke before Xavier even left the room. He ignored the voice in the back of his mind telling him to mention that Carol had said she wanted to live. “You know how I feel. Do it.” Xavier nodded and headed for his office.

Over the next three hours, the X-Men scattered throughout the mansion to sit and think. Jubilee and Santo were the first to go to see Xavier; they agreed with Logan. Next were ‘Ro, Kurt, Peter and Remy; they agreed as well. Bobby went on his own and discussed the situation with Xavier further. He didn’t quite understand how the MPD part worked with Rogue, and he didn’t want to ask any questions and appear stupid in front of the others. Once the Professor explained again and a little more simply, he agreed that Carol should be taken out of Rogue. Hank and Scott arrived at Xavier’s office just as Bobby left; they both agreed to the procedure. Kitty was the last. She walked into his office, sat down in the chair and said, “I don’t know.”

“Katherine, I said before that there would be no convincing and I won’t. What is it that you’re unsure of?”

“I found this woman, found out about her life, her family. She was like me, Professor. She had a mother, father, two little brothers. Her parents obviously cared a great deal, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to hide Sean. She was smart. She had a life, a career. How can we be sure that with time, a little rehabilitation, she won’t want that life again? But then, where does that leave Rogue? Limbo, dead, I just…I …”

“Kitty it’s all right.”

“But it’s not, Professor. She’s a person just like everyone else, a person just like me. I could have chosen the careers that she did, you said so yourself once. And then there’s Rogue, my teammate, my colleague… one of my best friends. How can I even consider ending her life?”

“Kitty, this is one of if not the hardest decision that we face. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with it.”

“I know.” She was quiet then, and she stayed quiet for around five minutes. She stared at her hands and fiddled with the edge of her sweater sleeve. The Professor simply watched her with infinite patience. When she did finally speak, her voice was very quiet. “Rogue, I choose Rogue.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She got up and left the office. Not bothering to open the door in her haste, she phased through it.

Xavier closed his eyes telepathically calling to the team. ~The decision was unanimous. I will attempt to save Rogue.~ He thanked each of them for their support and understanding.

When he got down to the med lab, he advised Hank to ready the medical equipment in case anything went wrong. He also told Logan and Jubilee to go into the cell with Carol/Marie and monitor her. As Xavier closed the door to Cerebro and took up his position, the main body of the X-Men were gathered in the staff kitchen. All were silent and ready to wait.

Kitty and Scott stayed with Hank. Bobby wanted to stay, but Kitty shooed him off. Logan took Jubilee into the room with Carol’s cell in it. She hung back slightly, and he could tell she was nervous about being in the room with Carol. He didn’t blame her.

“Took you long enough, you bastard. You think that you can talk to me like that and walk OFF! I don’t think so, you dumb-assed mule!”

“Something I said, Carol?” Logan stood next to the cell and unlocked it. Jubilee stayed leaning against the main door to the corridor. She eyed Carol and simply listened for any change.

“My brother! Where is he? How did you find him? I have been trying for years! And you bunch of prissy little fucking goody goodies spend a couple of days, and you know!”

“He lives in New York, he’s a cop…”

“Logan!” He turned to look at Jubes when she butted in. “You can’t seriously be telling her anything?”

“Why not?” He looked back at Carol. “In a little while, Chuck’s gonna have her outta Rogue, and she’ll be dead for good this time. She may as well know, doncha think?”

Carol stood facing him. She was still inside the cell even though the door was open. “What do you mean? He can’t do shit to me. Marie’s little head is far too fragile to be poking around in. He’ll kill her and he knows it!”

“Wrong, darlin’.” He leaned against the bars casually and ran a finger down the white streak in Marie’s hair. “He’s coming in, and you’re coming out. I’m getting my girl back…” He got close to her face, close enough that she could feel his hot breath, smell his recent cigar. “And you’re going to hell!”

She shoved his chest hard, and he took a step backwards, laughing at her. Turning her back to him so he couldn’t see the fear and emotion on her face, she ran her hands through her hair. “What... what if I just let her out… let her come out, whenever she wants? We can share this… this body. It doesn’t have to be like this…” She could feel a slight pressure in the back of her mind and knew Xavier was trying to get in. “I know things, things about Magneto. I can tell Xavier secrets, plans, everything… please!”

Jubilee looked her up and down. It was the first time really that she had been anywhere near Carol, and she wondered how Scott hadn't noticed that it wasn't Rogue. It looked like her best friend, sounded like her best friend, but she could tell by the mannerisms of her, the way she moved, held herself, the way she spoke bitter and hateful, the way she begged. Definitely not her best friend.

“What do ya think, Yella? Shall we interrupt Chuck to ask him?”

Jubes looked Carol up and down again, but this time so that Carol could see the look of hate and disgust she was giving her. “Nah, she could offer me the fricking moon, and it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Glad to know we’re on the same page.” Logan was now standing with Jubilee by the door, and both were staring at Carol, waiting for her to be gone.

Carol shifted nervously on her feet, panic, fear and desperation dancing in her eyes. Logan felt a slight twinge of something, maybe it was guilt or regret, he didn’t know. He pretended to pick at his nails while he thought about it. What should he feel guilty about? Not realising that every time he touched her, tasted her, shamelessly pressed his erection into her, it wasn’t actually Marie under there. She had made it clear herself that she hadn’t been there, not once. What could he regret - letting Marie go to the library all on her own in the first place? No, that wasn’t his biggest regret. Leaving? No, not that one either. It was never telling her how he really felt until it was forced out of him. That was his biggest regret, one he would put right the first chance he could.

Logan looked up as Carol pinched her nose. He smirked, “Xavier come to say hi?”

“Fuck you! I’m not going anywhere, you Neanderthal. I didn’t leave my body a dried-up husk just to be fucked over by a bunch of weak-assed wannabes! Ah!” She grabbed the side of her head and staggered.

“Well, you know what my crazy old Chinese aunt used to say: ‘A wat who gnaws at a cat’s tail invites destwuction’, which I think means, serves you right, lady!”

Logan chuckled at Jubes’s fake Chinese accent. “Your aunt told you that?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, that and do not employ handsome servants, which I never got, by the way.”

They purposely ignored the moans of pain coming from Carol. “Chinese women in charge of a household would never employ attractive servants in case their men strayed.”

“Ok, so how is it that *I’m* Chinese, and *you* know that and I don’t? Aside from the fact that I’ve never set foot out of the United States.”

He smiled genuinely and shrugged. “I dunno.” And he really didn’t. “You’ve never been out of the country?”

“Only if coming to pick you up from Canada a couple of terms back counts!”

“Nah, that don’t count!”

“When you’ve finished with Little-Miss-Fortune-Cookie, you can tell your Professor that I’m not going anywhere!” Carol pushed Logan in his side, but rather than move him, she fell backwards herself, landing on her bottom. “I don’t want this!” She was panting with the effort of trying to keep Xavier out of her head.

“It’s not about what you want, lady. It’s all about my girl Roguey.” Jubilee smiled at her, but on the inside, she wanted to get out of the room. She couldn’t shake the fact that the woman in front of her looked like her best friend, and she was in pain. It was extremely hard to watch.

Carol struggled to her feet and watched as Logan sat down on the only table in the room. He crossed his arms and stared at her. She looked from him to Jubilee to the door. She made towards the door, but Jubilee stood in front of it and held up one hand. “I wouldn’t!”

Carol watched as Jubilee let her mutation crackle and spark slightly, and the electrical charge rippled around her hand, ready to explode into fireworks. Carol smiled and lunged at Jubilee. Logan quickly grabbed the back of Carol’s top, but it was too late. Jubilee gave her a short spark, and it charged through Carol and straight to the suppression collar, shorting out its circuits. She stumbled back from Jubilee’s blast and Logan’s grip.

Jubilee and Logan watched almost in slow motion as the green indicator light on the side of the suppression collar faded and went out.

**********END OF PART FIVE

Title: Control 6/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Carol took their moment of distraction and ran with it. She grabbed Jubilee and pushed her into Logan. They both fell back, and Jubilee hit her head on the bars of Carol’s cell. Blood poured from her forehead, and she tried to shake off the dizziness and stay conscious. Logan regained his footing easily and got hold of Carol’s arm before she could get the door open. She turned on him, got two strong handfuls of his shirt, and slammed his back into the door.

“Tables turned, baby!” She kneed him in the groin. He let out a loud groan and fell to his knees, gasping for breath; even his regeneration couldn’t cope with the sheer strength of her.

Carol giggled, turned to the door, drew back, and kicked it. It flew off its hinges and smashed into the wall opposite, the noise echoing through the lower levels of the mansion.

Inside the med lab, Hank, Scott, and Kitty all jumped as something crashed into the wall outside. Scott looked at both of them. “Stay here.” He left the med lab and walked into the main corridor in time to see Carol rip the fused-out collar from around her neck.

She looked up from the broken metal in her hands and smiled at Scott. “Well hiya, Scotty.” She let it drop to the floor with a loud clank. Scott swallowed the lump in his throat and took a wary step back. “How are we today? Stomach all better?” She smiled again and gave a little jump towards him. “BOO!” Then started laughing as he jumped back further.

Jubilee heard her laughing as she got up and tried to help Logan to his feet. She couldn’t manage to hold herself up, so he ended up helping her sit on the floor, her vision swimming in front of her and threatening to make her sick. He pressed a finger to his lips to indicate she needed to stay quiet. She took a deep breath, nodded weakly, and rested her head back against the cold wall and fell unconscious.

Scott raised his hand to his glasses just as Logan appeared in the corridor behind her. She didn’t seem to notice, and Scott said nothing to alert her. He simply kept his eyes on her, letting Logan get close.

“Now, Scott, you can’t use you little red beam in here…” She gestured to the metal corridor and then tapped the side of her head. “I know you can’t control it properly without that nifty visor of yours. So let’s not even try it, shall we? Besides…” She shrugged and raised her elbow, jutting it backwards sharply and hitting Logan in the face. “You wouldn’t want to hit Logan!”

He dropped like a stone onto his back, blood all over his face pouring from him; she had hit him superhumanly hard, driving the bone of his nose back and up into his brain. On any other person, it would have killed them instantly. Logan simply lay unconscious while his mutation healed the vast damaged done to his brain and face.

She turned back to Scott and shrugged again. “You’d think he’d be more of a challenge, wouldn’t you?”

Scott dove sideways, back through the med lab door and shut it. He knew that Logan would heal. He had already seen his chest rise and fall with easy breathing, and knew Logan would be ok. He felt terrible at leaving Logan to basically fend for himself, but his fear of the women was immense after the damage she had done to him the first time. Scott turned to Kitty and Hank. “Help me block this door! QUICKLY!”

Carol shook her head at the voices behind the door. “Like I’m interested in you anyway! God, Scott, paranoid much!” She turned around and swung her hips towards Logan. Stopping by his unconscious form, she swung her leg over him and sat down across his waist.

He groaned as she punched him on the side of his face, splitting the skin by his eye briefly before it healed over. Grabbing his shirt with one hand, she shouted at him and punched him with each word. “WHAT’S …SO …SPECIAL …ABOUT …HER, …HUH? SHE’S …WEAK, …SHE’S …NOTHING, …JUST …A …STUPID …LITTLE …GIRL. TOO …DIM …EVEN …TO …NOTICE …HOW …YOU …FEEL. WHY. DON’T. YOU. WANT. ME?” She stopped hitting him and yelled in his bloody and unconscious face. “TELL ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH! TELL ME! TELL ME! TELL ME! TELL MEEE!”

She got up and walked away, leaving him bleeding all over the floor. The pain in the back of her mind grew, and cradling her head in her hands, she staggered to the end of the bright corridor and banged her fist on the door leading into Cerebro and the Professor. “STOP!” She hit the door another three times, leaving big dents in the metal.

“Mmmarie…” She turned to see Logan on his side trying to get up.

The pain increased even more. She fell against the door and slid to the floor. Her eyes stayed opened wide as her body began to twist and convulse on the floor. Her jaw clamped tightly shut, and her hands fisted painfully as she fitted. Blood trickled from her nose until her body went limp and her eyes slid shut slowly.

_________________________

Hank stood over Logan, instructing him to hold the ice-pack directly over his forehead and nose. He growled and moaned and, much to Hank’s annoyance, wouldn’t keep still. He kept insisting on looking over the other side of the med lab every few minutes. That’s where Rogue lay. Or Carol, they weren’t sure yet. She hadn’t woken up.

She was on her side, arms curled into her like a sleeping child but held in leather medical restraints, oxygen tubes in her nose, which was still slightly bloodstained, and a grey shade to her skin. Monitors beeped and chimed around her, telling those who knew how to read them that she was alive, breathing, heart beating, stable. But they couldn’t tell if she was Marie, or if Carol would still be there when she woke up.

Xavier had emerged from Cerebro to find Hank rushing a bleeding and once-again-fitting Rogue into the med lab and Kitty and Scott helping Logan to his feet and into the lab. When Logan’s healing had worked enough to allow him to speak, he pointed Scott in the direction of Jubilee, who was still propped up against the wall where Logan had left her. Scott carried her into the lab, and Hank promptly gave her something to help her regain consciousness.

Xavier said that he thought it had worked, but there was no way of knowing until Rogue woke up and allowed him into her mind to check. That had been two hours ago.

Jubilee was now sitting cross-legged on the exam table next to Logan. She had been sick several times, and Hank insisted that she stay in the med lab, pointing out that “unspotted side effects of a head injury can be fatal, my dear.”

Logan stood up and threw the ice-pack on the exam bed, running his hand through his damp hair with a growl. His head hurt like crazy, and it had only been the last 20 minutes or so that he’d been able to see properly. Glancing at Jubilee, he noticed that her eyes still hadn’t left Marie. He sighed and rubbed his face. He felt useless and frustrated.

“Ya think it’ll be her?”

Logan didn’t have to look at Jubilee to know she was crying. He could smell the salt from her tears mixed in with the normal plasma smell she had because of her plasma based mutation. “Don’t know.”

He turned and watched her hastily wipe away a tear from her face. Her tears and washing her face after being sick had removed all her makeup, and she looked like a kid again, like the annoying little brat that had hung around with Marie when they had first got to the mansion. Someone he had eventually got to know and thought was *ok* by his standards, which, according to Marie, meant he liked her a lot.

Moving next to her, he wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders, and she immediately collapsed into him, sobbing for all she was worth. He wrapped the other arm around her and let her cry, rubbing her back gently. Despite how he felt, it made him realise it must have been awful for her to be attacked by her best friend. He knew that all the kids at the school, past and present, all had an unwritten rule to never use their mutations on one another. And Jubilee had had to do just that. Even though on the inside it wasn’t Marie, it must still be hard for her.

She pulled back from him, wiped her face, and smiled at him. “I’m so telling everyone you’re just a big softie.” He couldn’t help but laugh at that; so did she. Then she thought she shouldn’t be laughing, and she started crying again, immediately falling back into Logan’s embrace.

Another hour passed before Rogue stirred. Her eyes opened slowly, and she saw a hand, slim pale fingers, with nicely shaped nails at the ends. The fingers on the hand moved as they came into focus, a small twitch, nothing more, and she realised that it was her hand. She tried to move it, but it wouldn’t budge. It just jerked weakly. She frowned at her own hand as if it was doing it on purpose, and then she noticed the thick leather restraint around her wrists tightly secured to the side of the bed. Her head hurt, and she wanted to rub it. She wanted to move her hands. She couldn’t understand why she was restrained, or why she wasn’t allowed to rub her head.

“Hello, Rogue.” His voice was quiet, almost a whisper and calm. Her full brown eyes looked up to meet the calm blue eyes of Charles Xavier. He sighed in immense relief.

“H…hey.” Her voice felt sore, like she had been shouting a lot. “What’s going on?”

“You’re very weak. I need you to let me into your mind, Rogue. It’s very important. Can you do that?”

She nodded. If Xavier said it was important, then it must be. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.” He closed his eyes for around ten seconds and then opened them again with a smile. “Go back to sleep. I’ll explain everything later when you’re feeling up to it.”

“Logan…”

Xavier wondered if she wanted to see him, or if she meant that she didn’t, her mind was so jumbled he couldn't tell. “Jubilee was quite upset, and Dr McCoy instructed him to take her upstairs to rest. Nothing will keep him away. He’ll be back in a moment.”

“Mmm… k.” Her eyes drifted shut, and she was asleep again in moments.

Xavier turned his chair towards the door as Logan came back through, and Hank joined him at the Professor side. Hank spoke to Logan first. “Is Jubilee alright?”

“Yeah, she’s nursing some coffee and Advil. She’ll be fine. What about Rogue?”

“She woke up very briefly, and it was Rogue, not Carol. I was able to check her mind for a little less than ten seconds. It’s very jumbled at the moment. She needs time to rest, her body as well as her mind. She needs time to heal, but as far as I can tell, Miss Danvers is no longer present. In fact, and I will need Rogue to confirm this, but all other consciousness in her mind are gone. It wasn’t my intention, but given the circumstances, I had no choice.”

Hank nodded with a smile and went to check the monitors surrounding Marie. Logan hung his head and shoved his hands in his pockets, frustrated he couldn’t talk to her, tell her how he felt, tell her he was sorry, tell her *anything*, the weather, the colour of his shirt, *anything*.

Xavier put his hand gently on Logan’s arm. “She asked for you.” After meeting Logan’s heavy gaze, he smiled and left. Hank sat at his desk and began scribbling notes on his clipboard.

Logan stood next to her bed and looked at her face. Then he let his gaze sweep over her until it landed on her wrists. “Hank, can I take the restraints off?”

He turned in his chair to look at Logan. “I see no reason not to.”

Logan immediately undid the restraints on Marie’s wrists and ankles, dropping them to the floor. He brushed some hair out of her face. She smelt hospital-ish, and he wrinkled his nose. “Can she be moved?”

Hank turned to Logan once again. “Well, yes, but…”

Before he had time to finish his sentence, Logan gently picked up Marie in his arms and carried her from the med lab. “She won’t want to wake up down here.” And with that, he was gone. Hank had a small bronze statue of Buddha on his desk. He tapped it on the head with the tip of his pencil and said a silent prayer for both Logan and Marie to come through this all right and together.

The halls of the mansion were quiet and still. Logan was grateful for it. They had told the students that Marie had been taken ill. Luckily, none of them had witnessed Carol’s attack, so none of them had asked any questions or been suspicious.

He strode down the teachers wing and came to a stop outside his door. He looked at her and then to his door, unable to decide if she would like to be in his room or not. Their last conversation hadn’t started or ended well, so he guessed that the answer would be no.

Her door opened easily, and he gently laid her down on the bed. After he covered her over with her blankets, he sat on the edge of the bed looking at her face. She still had a small split on her lower lip, but the bruise on the side of her face had gone now. Both had been from him. He secretly wished that she had never got control of her skin. He would be able to touch her now, heal the marks that he had caused. Sighing heavily, he realised that it wouldn’t change the fact that he had done it. It wouldn’t change the fact that he had hurt her, hurt her in more ways than one. He had betrayed her trust, used her body against Carol, and generally been an asshole, more than an asshole, not that that excused his behaviour ad he knew it.

Logan rose from the bed as quietly as he could and crossed to the huge chair in the corner. He didn’t like the chair. It was three times the size of a normal chair. When Marie sat in it, she looked like a miniature person sitting in a giant’s chair. It was a cream colour with a green floral print on it. Jubilee had bought it for Marie’s 21st birthday. Marie and Logan had thought it was a joke at first, but after seeing the look of complete sincerity on Jubilee’s face, Marie had pronounced she loved it and thanked her best friend. Logan knew the truth: Marie didn’t dislike it, but she would never have bought it herself. He flung Marie’s jacket out of the chair and onto the desk. He sank into it nicely and within seconds he was asleep, not realising how exhausted he was.

Twenty minutes after Logan had fallen asleep, he was woken up by the soft sleepy moans of Marie. She was shuffling around in her sleep, tangling her legs in the covers, and moaning. He couldn’t make out the words she spoke, but he noticed the light sheen of perspiration on her skin. He moved over to her, untangled her legs, and straightened her on the bed. He was about to go back to the chair, but changed his mind, settling next to her but on top of the covers. She moaned and shifted in her sleep again and, in the end, came to rest against his chest. He smiled and wrapped an arm around her, falling asleep again almost instantly.

***************END OF PART SIX

Title: Control 7/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************


It had been dark when Logan had taken her to her room, so he hadn’t bothered to pull the curtains. Now bright sunlight beamed through the window and shone on Marie’s face. She opened her eyes and smiled at the clear blue sky outside her window. A soft snore to her right made her head snap round. Logan.

He was next to her on his stomach, was still fully clothed apart from shoes and socks, facing towards her. His face was calm and handsome. She stared at him. She should be reaching out and touching him. She should be smiling, giggling like a complete girl because he was in her bed, but she wasn’t.

She thought his face was the same. His face was always the same, but the man underneath was different somehow. How different she didn’t know. What was she to expect from him now? How was she supposed to be around him, face him? She looked at him one last time. She just didn’t know him anymore. For some reason, that thought made her search her mind for the switch for her skin, wanting to flip it on.

She gently rose from the bed and padded silently into her bathroom, not letting out her breath until the door was shut behind her and locked. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy, her bottom lip had a small split in it and she had a burn on her left wrist from Jubilee’s blast, other than that it was just her.

After a quick shower, she brushed her teeth. She felt dirty somehow and wanted to scrub every part of her that she could. By the time she finished, she had scrubbed so hard her gums had bled.

Once she had rinsed her mouth out, she brushed her wet hair. She hadn’t brought any clothes into the bathroom with her, so she just put on her thin silky white robe and went back into her bedroom.

Logan was awake and sitting on the edge of her bed. His shirt open, his chest as bare as his feet. He looked tense, but he smiled at her as she walked in. She didn’t have time to smile back when her phone rang.

“Hello? Yeah, Hank. Ok, later on this afternoon if that’s ok. I want to get a little organised. Yeah… thanks.” She put her phone down and sat in her giant chair. “Hank and the Professor want to see me in the med lab after lunch.”

“I’ll go with you.” His voice was still gruff from sleep.

“No. There’s no need.” She rose and opened her closet, taking out black jeans and throwing them over the chair. Then she started searching for a top. She felt numb, empty, hollow somehow.

“Marie…?”

She didn’t turn to look at him. “Yeah?”

“Are you ok?”

The chuckle escaped before she could stop it, and she turned her head and gave him a cold look. “What do you think?”

He stood up and put his hands on his hips, looking her up and down. Her head inclined his way slightly. She knew he had stood up; he also noticed the change in her scent: nervous, cautious… scared.

“Marie, are you afraid of me?”

She turned around and threw the top she was holding into the chair along with her jeans, resisting the temptation to say, ‘Well, duh!’ “Would you mind? I want to get dressed. Go over a few things on my own. I have about a million and one questions, and none of them are gonna be easy to sort through.” She looked at his face and thought he suddenly looked old somehow, weathered, eroded by all the worry.

Her gaze dropped to her feet, and he knew the answer. Taking a step towards her, he put his hand out to touch her arm, and she jumped back, her gaze never leaving her feet.

“Don’t.” She was looking at him now, into his eyes, and he saw the pain in her, the unshed tears building up making them glisten.

“Marie… I… please don’t shut me out.”

Her voice was a whisper when she spoke. “What was it you said, ‘at least it would her’? You said you didn’t care if I never spoke to you again, but at least it would be me. Did you mean that? You would rather have me hate you than not be here at all?”

“Yeah, I meant that.”

She nodded. “That’s how its gonna have to be for a while, because I can’t do this. I don’t think I can be this close to you.”

“Marie, please…” His voice was pleading. This was what he had feared, this was what he’d been most afraid would happen - that Carol would be right.

She ran her hands through her hair, her anger at him and the whole situation coming to the forefront. “What did you expect? That I’d wake up and we’d be back to normal? Did you honestly think that I would be able to look at you and still see my best friend?”

“So what is it you see?”

“I don’t know. I… feel like I don’t know you anymore. I’ve always been so honest with you, completely open. Laid bare to you. Granted I never actually told you about my feelings, but you know absolutely everything there is to know about me, how I feel about things, love: life, sex the whole lot. You probably know me better than I do. But… but you - you’ve held all this ‘stuff’ back, shut ‘me’, out and it’s like I don’t know this person that you’ve got tucked away in there. And it scares the shit outta me, that it’s been there all along and I’ve never seen it. And I’m sorry, I really …am, but I don’t know how to deal with that. How to deal with this person, with you.”

“Marie, you don’t have to ‘deal’ with me. I’m still the same guy.”

“The same guy? Really, ‘cause the Logan I know would never have backed an abused and scared woman against a wall and threatened to RAPE HER!”

“I wouldn’t have done it! It was just a threat. I wouldn’t have hurt you, you know that.”

“Do I? Do I really? Because I’m not so sure anymore, Logan.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “She told you I lie to you everyday, but I don’t actually tell you a lie, I live a lie. Yes, I love you. I’ve been in love with you for… for forever, but… I just resigned myself to the fact that you would always want something I don’t have, that I would never be enough for you, and… and I was right!” She sat down in her giant chair. “Carol had it, didn’t she? Whatever it is that you want, what you ‘like’, she had it.”

“The only thing that woman had that I wanted was you! Don’t you get that?”

“No, Logan, I don’t. Because in all this time, you’ve never acted like that toward me. You’ve not once made any kinda attempt to… to be with me. So why now, why would I believe you now? How do I know that it was all nothing more than another shit-stirring episode to get at Carol.”

“It’s the truth. I love you! Have done for a while, but I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I was scared, ok? Scared that you really wouldn’t want me. And as for Carol, I…”

“Would you have raped her? Honestly, tell me the truth.” She had her legs tucked under her and was biting her nails. Her scent still held nervousness, but the fear was slowly ebbing away.

“No. Never. It was just something to try and hold over her, stop her from hurting you, but she called me on it in the end.”

“So why kiss her, lick her, rub yourself against her? You can’t deny it, Logan. You wanted her. I mean, God, Logan, I feel like you’ve been fucking my best friend behind my back. That’s how this feels, like betrayal!”

“Alright!” She jumped when he shouted, backed into the chair a little. The fear in her shot up again. “It’s a dominance thing, ok? I want control, that’s all. The dark part is there. I don’t like it, but it’s there. And I meant what I said about that too: no way would I ever be like that with you.”

“And what if that’s what I want? What if, I like that kinda stuff, sex games roughness, what then? What if you can’t control ‘it’? What if that’s just how we’re supposed to be? What then?”

“That’s not what we’re supposed to be, you don’t want that, Marie, there’s a difference between games and violence, and I would never let it happen. I wouldn’t.”

“How the fuck do you know what I want, Logan! You’ve never asked, never taken the time to find out.” She rubbed the tears out of her face and stood up, realising that she didn’t know what she wanted either, a lot had changed. “Can you please leave now?”

“I’m not going anywhere till we sort this out.”

“What’s to sort out?”

“This is me and you, Marie. We need…”

“There is no me and you! We’re friends! The last time I checked, I was your friend, nothing more. Now all of a sudden, you’ve decided that you’re in love with me. It doesn’t work like that, Logan. I’ve never said that I don’t love you, and let’s face it, you can’t tell me that you haven’t known that I’ve been in love with you for years, but I can’t just wake up and be you lover, or girlfriend, or whatever the hell it is you want.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against her desk. “You said that there’s part of you that wanted to hurt her, tear, scratch her skin, take pleasure in her, and in her pain and suffering. Is that what you want now? When you look at me now is that what you see?”

“Darlin’…”

“Answer me.”

“Marie, I think we…”

“You can’t, can you? What is it, Logan, can’t you tell me the truth? I know you can’t lie to me, that much I know about you.” He took a couple of steps towards her, and she raised her hand to him. “I said don’t.”

“Touch me.” Another two steps, and he was in front of her, close enough that she could feel his breath on the top of her head.

“Logan, I don’t want…”

“Turn your skin on, and touch me. See for yourself how I feel about you. See for yourself that I don’t want to hurt you. I’ll open up, I’ll be laid bare for ‘you’, I’ll tell you how I want to control you, dominate you, posses you, own you. See all sides to me, know me Marie, please!” He grabbed her wrist in desperation and raised her hand to his face. She didn’t try to pull away; she was just frozen to the spot. “Turn it on, Marie.”

“Logan…”

“Turn. It. On!” He snarled his words at her, and tears slipped from her eyes again.

“I CAN’T!” She yanked her hand away easily and turned her back to him, breathing heavily. He was still close to her. She could feel the heat from him on her back and his breath on her neck. She sobbed her words out. “I’ve… I’ve been trying to turn it on ever since I woke up. I can’t. The switch or whatever, I can’t find it. It’s gone. Everything’s gone. There’s nothing there, no voices, no advice, no comfort. You’re not growling, Eric’s not lecturing, nothing. Just me, and I can’t remember the last time it was just me up there.”

Her shoulders started to shake as she sobbed. Logan put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around gently, his anger ebbing away at seeing her upset. He pulled her to him and stroked her hair, much the same way that he had with Jubilee. She didn’t put her arms around him or make any attempt to touch him, and he noticed. She just shook and sobbed.

Logan’s hands on her hair felt heavenly, and before he knew what he was doing, his fingers had laced through the warm strands, his face pressed against her cheek, lips brushing the edge of her ear. He kissed her ear, then her cheek, jaw, trailing to her neck. The grip in her hair unconsciously got tighter and tipped her head back, allowing him to lick her throat. He was so engrossed in the taste of her, he missed her strangled moan.

One hand left her hair and pulled the top of her robe to one side. Her tears still rolled down her face as he let his sharp canine teeth graze over her exposed collarbone. Reddening the skin, but not breaking it. She hated the fact that this was waking her, easing the numbness, making her feel. As her tears stopped, she realised that this shouldn’t be happening, but she wanted it to so badly.

She pushed on his chest and turned her back, re-arranging her robe. “I need time, Logan. The trust we had is… it’s not gone, but it’s fucked up. And before you say it, it’s not all your fault. Carol is to blame as well. She trawled through all my memories, my feelings, and latched her hate and pain onto you.”

He sat in her giant chair. “Why?”

She sat on the edge of the bed facing him. “She didn’t just go through my memories, Logan. She went through yours and Magneto’s as well. She saw what happened to you, what Stryker did, and felt that you should be like her. You should be in pain, suffering, because of what they did to you. But you’re not. Your life’s not perfect - whose is? - but you’re not like her. You held onto your sanity, self-respect, your morality, all of that whereas she wasn’t able to. She hated you for that, hated me because you wanted someone like me, someone she saw as weak in comparison to her.”

“I think I should leave.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I need to get organised and…”

“No, I mean *leave*. Get away for a little bit and give you some time.”

“Run away? Logan, that won’t achieve anything.”

He stood up and paced as he spoke to her. “You said you need time. I’ll give that to you. Fuck, I need time ok!” He got up and paced in front of her. “Fucking hell, Marie, I’ve gone from being so sure that I would never take advantage, that I would be able to control it, to… to not hurt you, and what happens? Five seconds after I touch you, I’m so far gone I can’t think past being inside you. I‘m standing here right now in this room, and I can smell our combined scents, arousal, sex, and that’s all I can think of, Marie, having you. I’m struggling to keep my hands of you!”

She looked him up and down. He was tense, and she could tell that he wanted her by the slight bulge in the front of his jeans. She did need time because she was still scared of him, but she didn’t want him to leave. She would have to push it aside, hide it. If he did leave, she would just get angry and bitter at him. She needed to do something to make him stay, something that would show him what happened was all right, and that he wasn’t the monster he made himself out to be.

He picked at the buttons on his shirt, his shaking hands trying to do them up, but she put her hands on his to stop him. “I don’t want you to go. How can we work this out, get the trust back, if you’re not even here? It’s ridiculous Logan.” She almost laughed at how quickly things had swapped between them, now she was the one trying to convince the other to work things out and he was the one wanting to run and avoid.

“Marie…”

“I don’t want to hear it. You’re not going anywhere. I’m just as bad, Logan. I told you to leave twice, but I also told you not to touch me, and then I was as lost as you were! And you can’t blame my wanting you on you being in my head anymore because you’re not there. No one is.”

Her hands went to his bare chest, letting them slid down to his perfectly sculpted abs, then slowly wound around his waist until they came to rest in the dip of his back. “You were right. This is me and you. I need to learn to trust you again, and you need to have a little faith in yourself. Stop taking the blame all the time.” She shook him a little in her arms. “Leave some guilt for the rest of us!”

He gave a little chuckle. “You know me. I don’t like to share.” He kissed the top of her head. “I don’t want you to be scared of me.”

She pulled away from him and sat on the bed again, tucking her legs under her. “It’s not that I’m scared of you. Logan, look this is gonna sound really harsh, and I don’t want it to, but…”

He sat sideways on the bed so he could look at her. “Just say it, darlin’.”

“Its like someone’s smashed my rose-coloured glasses, and I can see you, really see you and for the first time. I can see what you’re capable of and that’s what scares me, Logan. I know you’re dangerous. I’ve always known that. You’ve never hidden it from me or tried to make out that you’re something you’re not, and I have to admit it adds to the bad-boy appeal, but… this is different. It’s just that I know you could hurt me, I’ve always known that, but it whether or not you ‘would’ that I’m not sure of anymore.” She fidgeted a little before she carried on. “I don’t have your memories anymore, but I did, and I can remember the way you were with women: rough, demanding…”

“Sex, is that what this is about?”

“No, Logan, it’s not about sex. It’s about trust. Well, it is about sex, but not like that. It’s whether I can trust you with my body. The things you said to her, did to her, the way you touched her. You hit her. Is that coming to the surface just with Carol, or other women as well?”

“Marie, it’s not like that. I was never gonna rape her/you! I can’t believe you would think that I could hurt you like that.”

“You can’t deny that you hit her. You hit her, and then you were kissing her, groping her. You threatened her with it. So do the two go hand-in-hand with you?

“No.” He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “No.”

“Who are you trying to convince? Me or you!” She stood up and went to her dresser, wanting to find a band to tie her still-damp hair out of her face.

“Don’t get fucking snippy with me, Marie.”

“Why? Gonna give me a smack for it?”

She heard him growl behind her but didn’t hear him move. His hand quickly closed around her upper arm and spun her round, and then he had hold of both her upper arms in a tight grip. “I may be a fucking asshole. I may be rough when I fuck. I may like to scratch and bite, but I like it, and, fuck, a lotta women like it too. To be honest, I always figured you for liking it.” He noticed that her face flushed a furious pink colour when he said that, and he knew instantly he was right. “I also may be possessive, demanding, scary and a little on the violent side, but I would never, fucking never, have sex with a women without her consent. Do you fucking understand me?” He shook her one last time and let her go, turning away and breathing heavily.

He could smell her fear, but also her arousal. She was wet, and it was calling out to him. “Show me.” He turned to see her pink face was completely serious. “Show me what you’d be like. I want it. I want to know.”

*****************END OF PART SEVEN

Title: Control 8/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

“Show me.” He turned, to see her pink face was completely serious. “Show me what you’d be like. I want it. I want to know.”

It took him five seconds to make his decision, looking at her face, inhaling her scent, but never weighing the consequences. He closed the space between them and secured his hands roughly in her hair, tipping her head back so his lips could meet hers. The scent of her fear mixed in with the wet heat of her arousal and made his pulse run wildly through him as he devoured her lips.

Shaking hands pushed the shirt from his shoulders, and he let go of her long enough for it to fall to the floor, as his lips brushed hers in a none-too-gentle caress. His tongue slipped from his lips to taste hers, tangling with the wet flesh inside her mouth and sending all blood south of his body. She pressed herself against him as their kiss deepened. His spare hand snaked down to the tie on her robe. Yanking it free, he pulled the robe from her humid body roughly.

Every rough movement or firm grip on her flesh made her scent spike with fear before ebbing blissfully back into desire, lust, and heated arousal. It drove his mind into temporary insanity and forced his body to react to it, ignoring the warnings his brain desperately tried to make him listen to.

He grabbed her pert and fleshy bottom and hauled her up off the floor and against him, her legs wrapping around him as he turned and took four easy strides to the bed. They landed across it with a bounce, his lips and teeth never leaving her pulse point behind her left ear, but the bounce causing the point of his teeth to sink in further than he had intended, breaking the skin.

His nostrils filled with a touch of fear once again, but when he licked the tear-drop of blood from her skin and his hand drifted down to slip into her already soaking wet entrance, it once again ebbed away. Her head fell backwards, and her body arced off the bed, into his hand, as he sunk his middle finger into her. Round soft breasts presented themselves to his face, and he wasted no time in tasting one, sucking the nipple and surrounding darker skin into his mouth. Then he bit her nipple sharply.

She squeaked at the pleasure-pain, and her hips bucked into his finger, driving it deeper. As he sucked her breast harshly and slipped a second finger in to join the first, he curled them upwards, pressing against her g-spot. He pumped his fingers into her. Wet sucking sounds echoed through the room, and her back stayed arced.

Her mouth was open, with nothing more than rapid hot breath escaping. He watched as her eyes slid shut, her hips lost their rhythm against his hand, and she scrunched the sheets in her fists. Marie gave a sharp yelp as something exploded in her groin and spread warmth and euphoria throughout the rest of her body.

As she tried to get her breathing under control, she heard the faint whisper of denim being shifted around, and before she could think again, Logan’s naked body was pressed against her. His hot erection nudging at her entrance, his hands all over her, kneading the flesh of her hips, thumbs rubbing heavily against her hip bones, making her squirm under him, wet lips pressed against her throat.

He snarled and thrust into her, unable to hold off from having her any longer. Then she felt him gasp against her neck at the feeling. He placed his hands either side of her head and raised himself up to look into her eyes as he pumped into her. At the end of each thrust, he gave a sharp flip of his hips, making the tip of his cock brush her base, sending shock waves into her.

The feeling of him inside was similar to what she had experienced with Bobby and Santo, but the size of him was completely different, not in length, but he stretched her painfully wide. Her legs clamped around his hips in an attempt to make him slow down so she could get used to the intrusion, but she couldn’t hold on to him as his thrusting got faster and harder.

Her hands flew to his chest, scraping her nails into him as her back arced into each of his thrusts. Her nails stung him, and he instinctively grabbed her wrists and held them against the covers over her head. Fear crept into her scent once more as he switched them into one hand, leaving her defenceless against him if he chose to change the mood of things. He used the other hand to grip her thigh. She tipped her head back and whimpered, giving him the opportunity to lick and suck at her neck.

She tasted like salt, sex, and baked cinnamon. She tasted like him, and it drove him on. “Harder!” He barely heard her voice above his own breathing and her whimpering, but he did as she asked, smashing into her brutally, his fingers digging into her wrists and her thigh. The hand gripping her thigh let go, and he dragged his nails hard down her skin, and she came instantly, letting go of another startlingly loud yelp. Two thrusts later, he stiffened and bit her collarbone with a snarl, emptying himself into her roughly.

_______________________________

She’d been laying long enough for the sweat and other fluids on her skin to dry in the cool air of her room. She was on her back, staring at the ceiling. Logan lay next to her, her head resting on his chest. Both were still naked; both were silent.

After he had come, he’d sworn. “Fuck!” She wasn’t sure if it was said as a compliment or in annoyance or regret. She was scared to ask. Then she’d buried her head in his chest and sobbed. She didn’t know why she was crying. It could have been the pure emotion of the moment. The last months’ events catching up with her. The fact that she knew he really did love her and that she really did love him. That she was desperate not to lose him and would to anything to prevent that.

Or she thought that she could be crying because he had, in her eyes, proved her wrong. They had just had amazing, rough and brutal sex. He *had* hurt her physically, and she had enjoyed it, but he hadn’t taken it to a point where the pain outweighed the pleasure. He had been right; this was completely different. Now she believed the words he had said, she believed that he wouldn’t hurt her.

He had brushed her hair to soothe her, but words had failed him. She had stopped all sound and movement a little while ago when she had fallen asleep, clutching him tightly. He eased away from her and sat up.

She moved and winced at the slight pain in between her legs and through her hips. “You ok?” His gruff, emotion-riddled voice startled her slightly.

“Yes.” She sat up next to him.

“Did I hurt you?” He kept his voice quiet.

“Yes.” She was honest with him. He had hurt her, but she had to be honest with him. “But - it was what I wanted.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?” She touched his arm, trailing her fingers lightly down to his hand.

He stood up and shoved his jeans on, pulling them up but not buttoning them. She scooted back so her back was against the wall and pulled the sheet over herself. He turned to her, running a hand through his hair. “Does everything cover it? The way I treated you, the way I treated Carol, the fact that I’ve been too much of a dick to admit how I feel about you? Or how about the fact that I’ve just taken complete advantage of you?”

“You didn’t take advantage of me, Logan.”

“Yeah, you think!” She stood up, keeping the sheet around her, and stood by his side. He didn’t look at her so she poked him hard in the arm with her forefinger. “Hey!”

“Would you just let it go already? Logan, for God’s sake, this was a good thing. We needed this. *I* needed this, needed to know how good this could be. You were right. And I… I’m sorry.”

He touched her cheek, running the back of his hand down her skin. “It could be better, not like that, gentler, and it can still be good.”

“I know, Logan. I’ve had sex before!”

He gave a soft chuckle, relaxing slightly. “I wish I knew a way to make this better. Instantly.”

“This is the life of Logan and Marie. So there is, and never has been, such a thing as an easy road.”

“I want it to be easy. You deserve a little bit of ‘easy’.”

She frowned. “And you don’t?”

“It debatable what I deserve, darlin’.”

She huffed, rolled her eyes and slumped on the bed again. “And here we go with the full-of-guilt, woe-is-me shit again!”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He put his hands on his hips and faced her.

“It means exactly that. You can’t just be… be satisfied, can you? Happy with what you have. If this conversation had gone the way I wanted it to, you wouldn’t even be in this room, let alone half naked and fleshly laid!” She knew that this was not entirely fair. She chose to do this as well as him, instead of addressing the real problem. She knew she shouldn’t really lay all of it at his feet , but her anger made the words leap out of her mouth before checking with her brain first.

“So you didn’t want this, because forgive me for pointing it out, darlin’, but during all that, only one word came out of your mouth, and it sure as hell wasn’t no!”

“That’s not what I mean, Logan. I mean, you just make out you don’t deserve jack shit! That you’re the big, bad, evil Wolverine, a lifetime of sin, hate, and evil deeds that you have to spend another lifetime trying to atone for, thus spending every waking, fucking minute beating yourself up and being miserable!” By the time she had finished ranting, she was standing in front of him, one hand waving around emphasising her points and the other holding the sheet around her.

“My life hasn’t exactly been perfect or given me reason to hope for anything…”

“For fuck’s sake! You can’t remember the best part of it. Why do you automatically assume that it was bad? You’re a good person, Logan. Why think that you would have been anything else back then? Life sucks sometimes. Why do you have to go through it hating yourself for it? Christ, you’re as bad as Carol!” His eyebrows went up, and she put her hand over her mouth. “Logan… I - I didn’t mean that…”

He picked up his shirt from the floor by her desk and shoved it on. “Forget it.”

He walked to the door, and she grabbed his arm. “Logan, wait, please!”

Pulling his arm free, he turned on her. “You think I need to let go? Maybe you do too. I have no idea what the fuck is going on. One minute we’re arguing, trying to convince each other what’s best or what we need to be doing. Then we’re fucking, and, trust me, I ain’t complaining about that. And then we’re arguing again, and why? Fucking Carol, that’s why! I can’t deal with this, fucking switching between all this shit!”

“What, and you think I can? You think I wanted this? That I wanted to be smacked across the back of the head with a baseball bat, shoved helpless in front of Magneto of all people, drugged, and then invaded by some psycho bitch? You think I wanted that, you think I can deal with that?” She turned away and sat in her chair, her head in her hands. “And that’s just the point. We’re not dealing with anything. We’re just shouting at each other and avoiding the fact that we just don’t know each other anymore.”

He sat down on the bed. “You’re wrong.”

“I am? How so?” She rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands.

“We know each other. We just need to be clear on where the blame lies and accept it.”

“Logan, you can’t blame every…”

“Shut up and listen to me for once, will ya! No, I didn’t start this. Magneto did, but it’s my actions towards Carol in that cell that have caused this. Marie, you have every right to be angry with me, everything right to be upset, annoyed, and scared, but surely you know now, after… you know that it wasn’t you making me feel or behave like that. Don’t you?”

She watched the emotions play on his face. He was scared this time, scared of what she thought of him. She knew he needed to know the answer, needed to know she forgave him his actions. She wasn’t sure that she could and she knew that the proud man in front of her would run rather than wait for her to sort through things.

Slowly she got up and crossed the room. She eased into his lap, keeping the sheet between them. Her fingers lightly traced his mutton-chops, his jaw, and his lips. She smiled brightly, and he smiled back, a genuine smile of love, and she kissed him lightly. “I love you.” His nostrils flared, but all he could smell was Marie, no fear, anxiety or nervousness. He smiled again and kissed her back, this time letting his hands wind gently into her hair and his tongue slip into her mouth.

As she changed her position and straddled his lap, he kissed her again hungrily. His left hand snaked up her leg, under the sheet, to grip her bottom again. She smiled into his lips and moaned when he rubbed her against his growing erection.

Their moment didn’t last long as Marie’s bedroom door burst open, and Jubilee flew into the room at high speed. “Holy mother of Elton John, get a room!”

“We’re in a room, yella, now fuck off!” Marie untangled herself from him and stood up.

“Hey chica!” She grabbed Marie in a tight hug. Marie closed her eyes and hugged back as hard as she could. Both girls held onto each other and swayed slightly as they stood. Logan watched them and frowned. He suddenly thought that maybe he should have just hugged Marie to start with; it looked like that was what she wanted. “Girl, next time you want to go on vacation, pick somewhere a little easier to come back from!”

Marie laughed and broke away from Jubes. “What did you have in mind, Hawaii?”

“Nah, more like LA. More shops and fewer psychos. Well, more shops anyway!” She hugged her again. “Missed you, girl.”

“Missed you too, Jubey.”

Marie looked at the large dressing on Jubilee’s forehead. She touched it lightly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, and besides, if you recall an occasion previous to your much loved mutation-control, when we got drunk and decided to swap shirts? You’ve done worse!”

Jubilee pulled away from Marie, and she swatted her arm. “I was drunk, and it was an accident!”

“Girl, you put me out for three days, and fireworked the curtains in the main hall!”

Logan chuckled as he got up and did his shirt up. Jubilee pointed at him. “Logan, dude, why don’t you do up your pants first!” She whistled at him. “Don’t need a diagram for what you two have been doing, and, hot diggetty dog, is she a lucky girl!”

“Jubilee!”

“What? Just appreciating the view. It’s not like you haven’t done your fair share of it over the last few years! Just ‘cause you got your hands on it now, and you don’t want to share.” Marie cast a shy glance at Logan who just smirked and raised an eyebrow at her. “And anyway, it’s not like you can miss it, for Christ’s sake. I mean, the man has his pants open!”

“Ok, that’s it. Out, you!”

As Marie pushed a giggling Jubilee from the room and shut the door, Jubes called out, “Catch up with ya later, chica!”

She turned to Logan and shrugged. “Sorry about her. Probably eaten a bucket load of M&M’s.”

“You’ll need to talk to her later. There were a few things she didn’t handle very well.”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

He reached forward and took her wrist, turning it over to reveal a small burn. “That.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I owe everyone an apology… even though I don’t really, I kinda feel like I want to apologise. Uh Scott! God, this is gonna be so hard!”

“You don’t owe anyone an apology, darlin’.” He sat on the chair to put his socks and shoes on. “Especially Scott.”

“You’re just jealous I got to gut him before you did!” She laughed, and so did he. “Sorry, that shouldn’t be funny.”

“Shouldn’t, but it is.” He rose and picked her up in his arms, hers wound round his neck. “I’m gonna go find Chuck. I got a couple of things I want to ask him. You be ok?” He kissed her quickly and lowered her to the floor.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have *another* shower and get something to eat. Then talk to Hank and after that, probably swallow a truck load of Advil and sleep for a year.”

“Sounds like a plan, baby.” He kissed her again and walked to the door before turning to her again. “We ok, I mean, really ok?”

“We will be, I promise.” He smiled and, with a silent click of the door, was gone to see the Professor.

She sighed once she was alone, and with all the voices in her mind gone, she truly was alone. She opened the window to try and relieve some of the mugginess of her room, then went into the bathroom. She turned the shower on and dumped the sheet in her laundry bin.

Once naked again, she ran the tap at the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She scrabbled around the side of the sink, looking for her towel. She scrubbed her face dry and threw it back onto the side, but she missed and hit her toothbrush glass instead. She tried to save it, but it smashed in the sink and into her hand.

She yanked her hand away expecting it to cut her skin and bleed, but the glass just *bounced* off her skin. She looked at her hand and then into the mirror to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Her eyes didn’t look quite right, and she leaned closer to the mirror. Her right eye looked blue, but as she concentrated on it, it faded to brown. She shook her head and looked again. Both her eyes were brown. She must be imagining things. She was just lucky with the glass, and her eyes were just a trick of her pale bathroom light.

She let out a little chuckle. “God, I need a shower and some food before I start imagining I’m being followed around by little bunnies in ballet dresses!”

Marie turned away from the mirror and stepped into the shower, letting the steaming hot water wash over her skin.

*************END OF PART EIGHT

Title: Control 9/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Marie walked down the main stairs and into the corridor. It was closer to lunchtime than she had thought. She and Logan had obviously argued the morning away, as well as other things. She smiled at that thought.

She was happy that he had told her he loved her, and she was happy that she had made love to him, but his actions towards Carol still nagged at her. She could sense more than know that he was still holding something back, from himself as well as her, something he refused to admit or accept. She wondered if he even knew it was there himself. She just wasn’t sure what.

Arriving at the cafeteria and finding it jam-packed with students, she suddenly didn’t feel like a crowd. She turned and was about to walk off, when one of her art students called to her.

“Miss Rogue. Wait up.”

“Angela, hi, how are things?”

“Good, thank you, Miss. How are you? When Dr. McCoy told us you had meningitis, well, we’ve all been really worried about you.”

“Meningitis, yeah, that, well… I… I’m fine, Angela. I just need a little bit more rest, and I’ll be back to bugging you about your homework.”

“Great, it will be good to have you back. Miss Munroe is a bit of a slave-driver.”

Marie laughed as the girl ran off down the corridor to her next class or wherever she was off too, her blonde ponytail bouncing along behind her. Marie watched it swing. “Blonde, mmm, maybe I should try that.”

Marie turned down another corridor and walked into the staff kitchen. She made herself a ham sandwich and put the coffee machine on to make some strong coffee. As she munched her sandwich, waiting for it, Jubilee came in.

“Well hello again!” Jubes hopped up on the counter next to Marie. “A watched pot never boils, girl.”

“That’s not really accurate, is it? I mean, whether you watch it or not, it’s gonna boil.”

“Bit like Logan, really. If he watches little Rogue long enough, he boils. And going from what I saw this morning, your proverbial coffee mug runneth over!”

“Jubes!” Both girls giggled and leaned on one another. “God, I have missed you so much.”

“Makes two of us!”

“Listen about the thing with Carol, I…”

“Don’t worry about it. These things happen. Well, no, they don’t, but you know what I mean. Yeah, it was awful, you/Carol were like the biggest psycho bitch in the universe, but hey, she’s gone. You’re not, so it’s win-win.”

Marie laughed. “I can always rely on you for straight answers.”

Jubilee looked confused. “What do you mean?”

Marie poured her coffee and shrugged her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter.” She picked up the mug and sat down at the small table. Jubilee sat with her.

“Hey, what’s going on? Wolvie-man playing games with you? Uh God, don’t tell me it was a wham-bam, thank you, ma’am?”

“No, nothing like that. We…”

“Come on, since when do I and not-hearing-the-dirt go together?”

Marie gave a little laugh and then took a deep breath. “This morning, before you got there, we argued. A lot. About stuff, Carol mostly, and I don’t mean to be, but he’s got me a little worried, maybe scared a little.”

“Scared? What - of him? Why? God, did he… did he do something this morning? Cause if he did, I’ll spark his sorry ass. You know, right before he fillets me, but I’ll do it!”

Marie looked around her nervously. “I’m not talking about it here.”

Jubilee nodded, a serious look firmly on her face. “Ok, let’s go for a little walk.”

They got up, leaving Marie’s coffee, and walked out the back door into the gardens. They walked, arms linked, in silence, until they got past the line of trees at the bottom of the property and to the small lake. When they had been students they used to come here and sit on the rocks and talk about boys. Well, Jubilee would talk about boys and Marie would talk about Logan and Jubilee expected Rogue to talk this time.

*********

Logan came out of the Professor’s office and decided he needed some air and a little space. He went through the kitchen and out the back, thankfully not running into anyone. As he walked towards the lake and his favourite tree, he put a cigar in his mouth but didn’t light it. Once past the tree line, he did an athletic jump and swung himself up into a thick oak tree. Climbing to a particularly high and wide branch, he sat astride it. The tree was massive and had amazing cover; he had spent a lot of time out here, happily avoiding students and staff alike. He rested his head back against the tree and closed his eyes, his senses enjoying the refreshing smell of nothing but nature.

*********

The girls sat down on the cold rocks overlooking the still lake. There was enough tree cover that no one could see them from the house or surrounding grounds, but they could see out and should notice if any one came from the house in their direction.

After checking around for others, Jubilee spoke first. “OK, spill it.”

Logan opened his eyes at the sound of Jubilee’s voice. He looked out through his canopy of leaves to see them sitting side-by-side on the rocks by the edge of the lake. He could smell Marie’s nervousness, so he decided to hang back and listen.

“He didn’t do anything wrong this morning.”

“So what is it?”

She sighed heavily. “It’s the whole thing with Carol, things he said to her, did to her. The way he behaved with her, what he ‘got off’ on. That’s what’s worrying me.”

“Wait a second, he ‘got off’ with Carol?”

“No! Just - but he could have. She taunted him with it, and the woman definitely had something he liked, but I don’t know what.”

“So what did he do?”

She ran her hands roughly through her hair. “Oh Jubes, I don’t know if I’m even right with this. I mean, an hour ago, I was like ‘Yeah, I *know* him’. But do I? And it’s not like he’s lying to me. It’s more like he’s lying to himself, you know? I know he won’t hurt me even though he could if he wanted to, but… but now I’ve been thinking about it again. I just don’t know. I’m just so damn confused, Jubilee. I feel like my head is gonna explode!”

“Honey, you have so lost me.”

She looked at Jubilee and took her hands in her own. “You and me?”

“Girl, my lips will stay as tight as my ass!”

Marie nodded and took a deep breath. “He hit her - me. Well, no, it was definitely her. He hit *her* a couple of times, kissed her, licked her skin, put his hands wherever the hell he wanted to, and didn’t give her a choice about it. Jubes, he got turned on by it, being in control of her, like real male dominance kinda thing. Once he even got a raging hard-on and rubbed it into her. To be honest, with Logan I can sort of understand the dominance issue, but…”

“Oh my God! He hit you – her, whatever? So, what your frightened because, he got horny and hit you – her or did he hit her and got horny? Actually I’m not sure which is worse!”

“It’s not that exactly.” She sighed. “Jubes, he threatened to rape her.”

“WHAT?” Her eyes went wide, and her mouth fell open.

“Shh, keep your voice down!” Marie looked around her nervously.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Marie chewed on her lip.

“Tell me what he did, exactly, ‘cause that’s just so off!”

“She shouted at him, something about me. So he punched her, then pushed her against the wall, started kissing her, and then he got her hands. She still had the cuffs on, above her head.”

“Then what?” The shock was still evident in her voice.

Marie’s voice was calm and quiet. “He started undoing her pants. She’d been abused years ago, some military thing. Her guards raped and beat her up a lot; she passed on some memories of it. I think because of that and the fact that he’d just hit her, Logan scared her, so she tried to push him away. Said no. He put his hand over her mouth. He told her that next time if she gave him any lip, he’d do it. He said he’d ‘found her stopping point’, whatever that meant. Told her she was weak, nothing, and that she wouldn’t be able to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. If he’d have gone through with it, Jubes, she wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell. I mean look at him, he’s…”

“Virtually indestructible! Fuck! Double fuck! Did you call him on it?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“He said that it was just a threat, and that he would never have done it, that he would never have hurt me. I think he was just trying to get a reaction, shake her up a little, and it worked.”

“I bet it fucking did!”

“He said that it was because he could see me, smell me, and he wanted me, but he somehow confused it, the desire he felt for me. It got twisted around with the way she made him want to dominate and control. I could feel it a little.”

“How does that work exactly? How could you see or feel when she was in control?”

“It’s like I’m looking though her eyes. I see what she sees, and what her body feels I feel too, but it’s muffled, like I’m in the next room or something.”

“I still can’t believe he threatened to rape you.” Jubes shook her head and sighed.

“Carol, not me, and he didn’t…”

“Mean it, yeah, you said that already!”

“He didn’t actually do it either Jubes!”

“I’m sorry, but I’m having a little trouble knowing where the difference is? Carol, you, where’s the difference?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“But it is you. It’s *your* body. He hit *you*, he had *your* body backed against a wall, a hand over *your* mouth, *your* hands in cuffs. You were the defenceless one.” Marie bit her lip as she listened to her friend. She hated the fact the Jubes was making sense. “Ok, let’s say for argument’s sake that he’d done it? Let’s say that it wasn’t just to get a reaction, and he ignored her protests completely, got her pants open and… you know… right there against the wall. That cell is underground, under the mansion. She could have screamed until her voice gave out, and no one, I mean, no one would have heard her. Would you have still slept with him this morning? Would you still be in his bed, still be walking around with a hickey the size of Mars? Would you still be so sure that it wasn’t *you* then?”

“Jubes he didn’t do anything but threaten her…”

“No, I’m serious, come on, would you? Who would he have been raping, Rogue?”

“I… I don’t know. Jubes, it’s not like that. You’re making it sound awful. He loves me.”

Jubilee threw her hands up in the air. “Oh my God! Do you know what you sound like? One of those domestic violence women.” She put her hands over her heart and put on her best Southern accent. “Oh well, officer, he only hit me ‘cause he loves me. It’s all my fault. Don’t blame my man. He’s confused; he can’t help how he gets!”

Marie got off the rock and went to leave. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

Jubilee grabbed her arm. “Yes, you fucking do! Because who else is going to call you on this? Logan is my friend too, but you’re my *best* friend. He’s crossed a line Rogue, how can you not see that? If you’re so damn sure…”

“I am sure. He loves me, and he wouldn’t hurt me like that, it was a threat.”

“Babe, then why bring it up? If you’re so sure, why tell? ‘Cause if you were, you would have kept it to yourself, maybe told me ten years down the line when you’re married with two kids, and you know what? We would have had a laugh about it, maybe, or you know maybe not, but this is now, this is fresh, and you are about fifty miles from sure.”

“It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. He knew the difference. It was a threat, Jubes, nothing more. We talked, argued. He explained, and I…”

“Wait a sec… hold the phone! You had sex with him this morning. Please tell me…”

“Jubes, he didn’t do anything.”

Jubilee got off the rock and faced her friend. “Did he hurt you?”

“Jubes…”

“Honey, please, tell me he didn’t.”

“He did, but I wanted it. He said that there was a difference between rough, dominating sex and what he implied towards Carol. I wanted to know. I wanted to know that you can have rough sex, and it doesn’t have to be rape. I got what I wanted. It was good, Jubes. It made sense of things.”

“Made sense of things, how? He threatened to rape you! And as for the argument, I bet I know exactly how that went. You argued your point, got snippy, angry with him, and then he went all self-loathing and undeserving, and, being the person you are, you tried to make him feel better about himself, and you forgave him. Am I right? Fuck you did, didn’t you? You forgave him for threatening to rape you! You, Rogue, not someone else, you.”

“It’s not like that.”

Jubilee could see how upset and tired Marie was, so she calmed herself down and spoke more softly. “Ok, ok, ok, if… and I’m going with if, if it was just a threat, he said that it was seeing you, smelling you, that made him confused. Where’s the difference? This is what worries me girl, he saw you, smelled you, and so he threatened *you*? I don’t get it.”

Marie shook her head at Jubilee, her eyes beginning to fill up with tears. “It’s not like that. He knows me, and I know him, and it’s not like that.”

“Yes, he does know you, but I know you a whole lot more. I know the you who’s spent hour after hour sitting on *that* rock crying your eyes out on my shoulder, because of him! Because of the looks he threw at Jean, the way he was the only one to touch you, or because he disappeared off to Canada again. Not once have you sat on the rock and cried about Bobby or Santo, do you realise that? Does he know that? Does he know the effect he’s had on your life?”

“I got over it!”

“Oh bull! You’ve never got over him, and that’s the point. You’ll do anything for him, because you love him, utterly and completely. You love him, and, chica, that’s a good thing, but it’s also why this is so easy for you to fall into. Just because he says he loves you, it doesn’t make it all right. Just because he says that he wouldn’t, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have. How do you know? How do you really know?”

Marie wiped her eyes and chewed on her thumbnail. “I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so tired, and my head hurts, and this… this is all just…”

Jubes sat next to her and put her arm around her. “Look, I’m your best friend and being said person I’m entitled to be tactless. Doesn’t this creep you out even just a little, I mean, ok, he didn’t do it, but he could have, he could have raped someone. Doesn’t matter that it was Carol, in fact it doesn’t matter who it was, he could have raped someone. It would be different if he had some weird alter ego - Jekyll/Hyde thing going on, but he doesn’t, this is just him.”

“It doesn’t creep me out Jubes, and if I’m honest, I mean really honest with myself, I’ve always known what he’s capable of. I’ve seen it first hand and through his memories, he can be dangerous, mean and nasty and damn right cruel, but I’ve never had it directed toward me.”

“Can you really forgive him, for Carol?”

She nodded weakly. “Yes I can, but I don’t want to be scared of him, I don’t want to be scared of someone I love.”

“Tell me exactly what you’re scared of? You said you think he’s lying to himself rather than you. What do you mean?”

“I think he likes the whole dominance and control thing more than he’s letting on. Maybe it’s his mutation…”

“His claws? What have they got to do with anything?”

“They’re not his mutation, Jubes. I mean his senses, his strength, survival instincts… His instincts, period. They’re his mutation. He’s not an animal, but he does have animal instincts, small traits that came straight out of the Canadian wilderness.”

“So we’re talking …primal urges, that kinda stuff?”

“I think it’s where the control issues come from. Gotta be top dog, you know, leader of the pack.” She wiped her face again, sniffing loudly. “But I don’t know why her, why would her in my body bring it out in him?”

“Look, I’m…I’m not liking this whole situation, but… but the more you talk, the more I think I’m beginning to understand him a little. Only a little mind you.” She squeezed Marie’s shoulder as they sat together. “She took something that, as far as he was concerned, was his – you – and she used your body against him, against everyone. In his eyes, she *made* him hurt you. I saw her taunt him and from what you said, she did want him as well as being afraid of him. So yeah, he would have smelled that, her want or whatever, but coming off of you! I suppose that could bring out some… primal-ness and a few control issues! A need to have control over her, make her see that she wasn’t in the bargaining seat and no matter what she sad or did, she wouldn’t take you away from him.” She squeezed Marie against her again. “I think you need to talk to him again. I know you love him and if you want to have any kind of relationship with him you need to be clear where you’re both coming from. It’s not just a case of believing what he says; it’s knowing that what he says is true. If its about sex…”

“Its not about the sex, this morning proved that.”

Jubes smiled playfully. “Rough sex and sex games can be fun, not my thing personally, but a lot of people like it. And besides, Logan’s always struck me as the ‘tie-me-up-tie-me-down’ kinda guy! ”

Marie gave a small laugh. “I’m sorry, who are you and where is my un-sensible and scattie friend?”

They both laughed. “Outside looking in, chica. It’s always easier. Um, have you thought about touching him?”

“What do you think I was doing this morning?!”

“Oh, mind-gutter! I mean *touching* him, with your skin, you know, zaap zaap?”

“He told me to. He wanted me too so I knew he wasn’t lying to me about the rape thing being a threat, but… but I can’t. I can’t turn it on anymore, Jubes. The switch is gone.” She slumped back against Jubes.

“What? Have you told the Professor, Hank?”

“I’m going to see them in a minute.”

“Oh babe.”

“I love him, Jubilee. I love him. I can’t change that. God, this is so fucked up!” She got off the rock and stood at the water’s edge with Jubilee behind her, she picked up small rocks and started tossing them lightly into the water.

“Do you think you should tell the Professor?”

Marie didn’t turn around. “Yeah, I’m gonna see if he can help me get it back.”

Jubilee sighed. “I don’t mean about your skin. I mean about Logan.”

She spun round to look at Jubilee. “Are you nuts? I can’t do that.”

“Carol was involved in some military assassin programme, which is probably where she got abused. By her guards, Rogue, you said it yourself. A sick twisted pervert raped her because he was in a position of control. What if this situation comes up again, we have someone here that we can’t turn over to the authorities and Xavier puts Logan in charge of them? Say Mystique, even tough she’s a complete bitch, would she deserve to be treated the same?” Jubes stood in front of Marie and rubbed her arms. “Sweetie, no matter which way you put it, Logan abused her, her situation and his position. It may well have been a threat, doing it for a reaction, or to use against her, but…”

“He shouldn’t have.” Marie started to cry. Jubilee put her arms around her, and once again the two friends held each other. “I won’t lose him, Jubes! After everything I will not lose him!”

Jubilee gave a defeated sigh into Marie’s hair. “Ok, don’t say anything to Xavier, talk to Logan first. And if he hurts you…”

“Jubes, he had every opportunity to turn nasty on me this morning, and he didn’t. It was rough, it was demanding, but God, it was so good, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“Just be sure, chica. Please. It’s not just now is it, it’s… a month from now, a year even. Five years from now you could get fed up with cigar stubs on your nightstand, yell at him for it and he’ll snap!”

Marie turned back to the lake, tossing stones into the cool water again, she watched as the ripple rings floated across the still lake. “If his patience is going to snap Jubes, he’ll just snap and that’s that.” She tossed another rock and it skimmed and jumped three times over the water before sinking to the bottom.

Jubilee stood next to her. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to tell him the truth. That I love him and I want us to be together, I’ve always wanted us to be together. But… but I don’t understand, I don’t understand why he acts the way he does and why me? I can get past the thing with Carol, you know and I don’t really have a problem with the dominance thing, I kinda like it, but I need to know he’s not going to do this to someone else.” She threw another small rock, it went nearly to the other side of the lake before it fell into the water. “He’s never gonna be stable Jubes, he’s always gonna *snap* at things and in a way its the way I want him, he has a raw edge, a risk and yeah I know I’m flirting with danger, but…”

“You like it.”

“Yeah I do. Is that bad?”

“No, there’s a lot to be said for the appeal of tall, dark and dangerous. But you have to have boundaries Roguey, limits and both of you need to know where those limits are and when to stop, when to say ‘hey, too much’.”

“Jubes… thank you.” She hugged her close again, and Jubilee laughed.

“God, you sure know how to worry a girl.”

“Sorry.” They broke apart, and Marie wiped her face smiling. She felt so much better for discussing how she felt with someone other than Logan.

This time Jubes picked up a small rock and threw it across the lake, it only got a third of the way and dropped into the water, she frowned at it. “I think we need to get drunk.”

“Oh yeah, we so do.” They both laughed as Marie threw a slightly larger rock at the lake. There laughter died as they watched, almost in slow motion, as the rock flew clear across the lake and hit the truck of a tree on the other side. The rock smashed into dust on impact and the tree shook violently, shaking leaves to the floor and scattering the birds resting on its branches.

Jubile looked at the scattered remains rock and then back to Marie. “O-Kay! What they hell was that?”

Marie gave a small chuckle. “I… I dunno!”

Jubilee took a couple of steps back from her, then pointed a finger towards Marie’s face.

“Jubes, its me, I swear its me!” Marie put her hands up to stop Jubilee from running.

She watched as Jubilee frowned at her in amazement. “Brown, they’re brown again! This is bad!”

“I think I need to see the Professor. Now!”

“Really? ‘Cause I was thinking Disney Land!”

*********

Logan watched Marie smash the rock into the tree stump. His fear of loosing Marie had taken over and he was out of the tree and running to the other side of the lake before he could think straight.

As he ran towards the rock e let his claws out with a growl. Both girls heard him at the same moment and turn towards him.

Marie out her hands out to him, the same way she had with Jubilee. “LOGAN WAIT!”

*****************END OF PART EIGHT.

Title: Control 10/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

He hated the med lab, hated the smell. He hated the fact that he had to sit and wait, and he hated waiting. He hated the way Jubilee sat with him, hated the way that she kept eyeing him sideways like she was waiting for him to spring from his seat and attack her. Hated that Marie wouldn’t look him in the eye. Hated that he could smell her fear. Hated the words that he had heard her say. Most of all he simply hated himself.

Logan wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but he stayed for Marie. There had been so many times when he had felt like running, needed to get away from his or others’ high emotions, but he had stayed for Marie. Stayed because she needed him for some reason or another, and he couldn’t deny her anything. The only time when he had purposely stayed away was when he couldn’t take his own feelings, couldn’t stand the weight of his love for her.

He and Jubilee had waited while Hank examined her physically. Hank checked her blood pressure, heart rate, her eyes, and her ears, all of which he declared normal. He took a full body x-ray that he also said was perfectly normal. He checked her height, which was the same as always, but when he checked her weight, he said that she had gained around 8lbs. After using callipers and taking various measurements with little gadgets around her body, Hank said that the gain was muscle on her thighs and upper arms. Aside from that, she was in perfect health.

Now they waited while Xavier examined her mind. Logan watched as she lay on the exam bed as still as she could manage given her nerves, but he could still see that she was shaking slightly. He could hear her rapid heart rate. Xavier was poised calmly at the head of the bed, his hands either side of Marie’s ears, his eyes closed and his face a picture of silent concentration. Occasionally, his eyebrows drew together in a frown, but mostly his face showed no emotion and gave nothing away.

After what seemed like an eternity to Logan but was realistically only around 10 minutes, Xavier opened his eyes and moved round to the side of Marie. She sat up but stayed sitting on the exam bed. She met Logan’s eyes for the briefest of seconds and then went back to staring at the floor, her bottom lip caught nervously between her teeth.

“What the hell’s going on, Professor?” Her voice was quiet and riddled with emotion.

“Rogue, you have never completely absorbed a person before. She took over, and this has proved an enormous strain on your mind. Normally, you are able to control the flow of memories and thoughts, sorting out the other person’s consciousness and separating it from your own. But because you were drugged, you were unable to do this, and Carol’s mind mixed in with your own mind. It is confused and attempting to re-order itself, hence the reason you have found it difficult to turn on your own mutation.” He paused briefly and linked his hands in his lap.

“The mental switch that you use for that is also confused. Something I learned from being inside Carol’s mind is that she didn’t know how to use it, she couldn’t figure it out, so your mutation stayed in a mute state. I believe that the reason you are having trouble with it now is that, because she muted the switch, it has been confused into thinking that it was part of Carol’s mind and does not respond to you. But something that is responding to you is Carol’s powers. It appears that you have a ‘switch’ for those as well.”

“I can turn her powers on and off when I want?”

“It appears that way. Once you are fully rested and have your mind in a little more order, I would be happy to work with you in this regard. Help you find a balance and, with any luck, gain control over your own mutation again. Hank has already mentioned to me that it would be a good idea for your own benefit to test the limits of these powers to make sure you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else.”

“So, I’ve somehow merged with her?”

“In a sense, yes. I removed everything I could find that wasn’t you, and I’m sorry because I know you had become accustomed to the others in your mind. There were parts of her that were too ‘involved’ with you to be removed, so they are still there.”

“Am I still me?”

“Yes. There might be trivial things that you notice, for example suddenly liking a food that you’ve never had a liking for before, or knowing certain information…”

“Like knowing how to drive after Liberty Island?”

“Exactly, that knowledge and skill you obtained from Logan. As for personality traits, any leftover will fade as they always have done before.” Xavier heard her mind say that she didn’t want to be like Carol, and he smiled at her. “Rogue, you are your own person. Your thoughts and feelings are your own; no one else’s.”

She didn’t mean to project her next thought, but she couldn’t help it, and Xavier heard it. He replied in her mind, so as not to embarrass her. ~The subject of sexual preference is thought to be too deeply ingrained into an individual’s mind to be influenced in this way.~ She sighed and smiled at her feet.

Hank coughed, moved to stand next to Marie, and smiled brightly. “I suggest that you get a good hearty meal inside you. Lots of vegetables and red meat would be preferable. If you can stomach it, one or two glasses of red wine wouldn’t do you any harm either; believe it or not, it helps to bring down your blood pressure, which at the moment is a little high. Then at least eight hours sleep. If you have any trouble with that, I have some herbal remedies that might be of use.” He turned to look at Logan, his smile still in place. “For once, I would recommend that famous steak house of yours.”

Logan nodded and smiled, but Marie noticed the smile didn’t reach his eyes. She couldn’t shake the fact that he had heard every word she had said about him. He knew what she really felt. She didn’t know how he would react, how he would feel, or whether or not it would change him towards her again.

Xavier rested his hand on her wrist, smiled his reassurance, and wheeled out of the room. Hank shifted his gaze from Marie to Logan to Jubilee and then back to Marie. “What on earth is the matter with the three of you? You all look like someone had died!” He ignored the glare he got from Logan and turned back to Marie. “My dear girl, I realise that this situation is not exactly perfect, and there are a lot of issues that have to be resolved, but you’re alive and, as far as I can tell, in perfect health. You have been extremely lucky, and I think you should be glad for that if nothing else.”

He helped her off the exam table. “Thanks, Doc.”

“A special lady told me quite recently that you should take your opportunities when they arise, say what you need to say, and do what you need to do before it’s too late and you never have the chance, and quite frankly, I agree with her! Go out with your friends, take the entire team. Heavens knows, we could all use some R&R. Have a good meal, and then get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, start life as you mean to go on: a good breakfast, a little exercise, and plenty of fresh air. Carry on like that, your mind will recuperate, and you will have your control back in no time at all.” He paused briefly and smiled. “Trust me…” his smile widened. “I’m a doctor!”

Marie laughed and walked out of the med lab towards the elevator with Jubilee and Logan close beside her. Logan pushed the call button, and all three waited in silence for it to arrive.

Jubilee stepped into the elevator first, then Logan and lastly Marie. Logan pushed the button for the top floor, and they started to move up. All three stared at the door, completely rigid and unmoving, not daring to look at each other. The elevator stopped at the top, and Jubilee was first out. She turned and stood in front of Logan and Marie.

Jubilee sighed and then shouted. “OK! Enough with the awkward silence already!” She pointed at Logan. “So you heard every word…” Then she pointed at Marie. “…and you know he heard every word. So surely this makes everything a *lot* easier, doesn’t it? You got it all out in the open and told the truth about what you feel and think, and you heard her say it, so now you both know and you both know that the other knows as well, so, you know, talk already!”

“Jubilee, I don’t think it’s that simple…”

Jubilee rolled her eyes and walked off down the corridor. “WHATEVER!”

Marie was staring after her. “Jubilee!”

“BORED NOW!” She kept on walking.

Logan was leaning against the back of the elevator with his hands in his pockets and his face towards the floor. “Marie…”

Marie turned to stare at him. “What?”

He shrugged. “I should have let you know I was there or left and given you the privacy you obviously wanted.” He shrugged again and reached forward, running his finger down her white streak, a brief smile crossed his lips. “I let my fear of losing you get in the way of everything. I wanted you so badly, to have you, to have you as mine, and she kinda got there first. It made me angry that I’d waited for so long to do something about my feelings. It made me want you even more, want my scent on you, feel your skin against mine.” He rubbed his hand over his face and sighed heavily. “I guess I was scared that I'd never get you back. So I was taking it out on Carol. I was taking the only bit of you I had left and punishing the person who got there before I could get there myself. And you know, you’re right, I should never have threatened to rape her, never played on that. It was fucked up, and I can’t take it back. I can’t fucking change it. I want to, I want to make it all better, make you see me like you did before, without all the shit, but I guess I can’t change that either.”

“Logan…”

“Tell me, tell me what you want me to say, what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. You want me to leave, I will. You want me to be with you, God, I will, whatever you want, Marie. If you want me to fucking skewer myself to the school flagpole, I will! Just tell me please!”

“Logan, I don’t know…”

“I wouldn’t have done it, Marie. I wouldn’t have ever hurt you like that. Jesus, I wouldn’t hurt anyone like that. You gotta know that, Marie, you gotta believe me.”

“I do. I do believe you, Logan. I just… I just don’t want to be scared of you. I love you, and that’s what I want to happen, to love you, to be with you. I wanna take ‘us’ as far as we’re supposed to go, move in, marriage, kids, if that’s what we’re meant to be, if that’s what we want. I don’t want to go through all of that and have you thinking that you have to keep yourself in check and hold back 24/7. But I don’t want to be scared of you.”

“Damn it, you don’t have to be scared of me! Come on, Marie, let’s face it. It’s more than likely that I’m gonna lose it. I can be an angry kinda person, but it doesn’t automatically mean that I’m gonna take that out on you.”

“Ok fine, but what’s to stop you from doing this to someone else? Like Jubes, said and she’s right Logan, no matter what someone has done, you can’t treat them like that.”

“And I won’t, Marie. I won’t. I… I think we need to start again. There’s nothing else I can say to make you understand what’s going on in my head, ‘cause I don’t even know. Maybe you’re right. It’s a primal thing, alpha dog and all that.” He leaned back against the elevator wall with a heavy sigh. “She got under my skin, Marie. She made me look at you and see something I didn’t like, and I hate her for that. Making me react to you like that, like the enemy, like... I dunno.”

She looked him up and down. “Ok, this conversation needs to end before we both get so depressed we commit joint suicide. Let’s start again. Let’s start with dinner, give it a couple of weeks, and see how we go. I mean, we could have jumped the gun completely and simply just not work. We both agreed that we need time, so let’s give ourselves time.”

Logan nodded, and she turned to walk out of the elevator, but he took her arm gently and stopped her. “How about a holiday, couple of weeks away? Chuck’s still got that manor house in the south of France. You could get the rest they keep saying you need, and we could, you know, work on, whatever…”

“I like that idea. But… but no sex.”

He looked at his feet and chuckled. “No sex.”

She chuckled too. “No, sex is bad.”

He kept his head down and looked at her from under his lashes, a smirk on his lips. “Yeah, sex is definitely bad.”

Marie looked at his feet and slowly brought her eyes up his body, legs, strong thighs, flat stomach, and massive chest, still showing its shape under his clothes. Then she met his eyes. Hooded and dark, he looked absolutely lethal. She closed her eyes and sighed, trying to hold back her smile. She couldn’t believe him. Here she was trying to do what was best for both of them, and he purposely made himself look like a velvet danger-salad with sexy on the side. “Ya just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Actually I’d say helping myself was kinda the problem!”

She shook her head. “Ok, number one, stop looking at me like I‘m your next meal, and number two, can we go eat now?”


*********

Marie woke up on her side facing the brilliant sunshine. She sat up and looked around the large living room she found herself in. Logan was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone for a walk while she took a nap. She smiled: he had laid a blanket over her. She got off the couch and walked to the huge French windows that lead out into the vast grounds, opening them easily and letting the breeze into the room.

She walked out onto the grass, feeling its cool surface under her bare feet and looked back at the huge Manor House, it was amazing. She had taken the blanket with her, and as the wind grew a little, she wrapped it around herself and looked out into the gardens to see if she could spot Logan.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mare’s head whipped round at the almost musical sound of a woman’s voice. Carol. She was face to face with her. Marie dropped the blanket on the grass and took a step back, unable to speak. “Oh don’t worry, this is only a dream.” Carol’s voice seemed to echo somehow.

“I… I…”

“You don’t understand? That’s fine. Let me explain.” Carol took a step towards her, her blond hair waving around her, and Marie matched her step but backwards. “I’m not going to hurt you, Marie. This is your dream, but I’m here to tell you a few things.”

“Like what exactly?”

“You don’t know who you are, where you want to be, how you feel about Logan, and you think I’ve corrupted your view of him.” Marie looked around her frantically, trying to find anyone or anything to stop this. Carol smiled. “Don’t you like it here? Would this be better?”

Carol gestured behind Marie. As Marie turned to look in that direction, Carol pointed, and the scenery changed around her. The grass stayed under her feet, but she was suddenly standing in front of Xavier’s School.

“Or maybe this?” As Marie turned her head back to Carol, everything changed again, this time from sunlight to dark. She was suddenly on top of the Statue of Liberty, the wind chasing her hair all around her face.

“You’re meant to be dead!” She shouted over the sound of the wind.

“Yes, I am dead. My body is dead, and thanks to Charlie-boy, so is by mind. You’re still alive though, and you know what? You’re wasting it.” Carol pointed behind Marie. “Look.” Marie looked. She was in the bar in Laughlin where she had met Logan. The noise almost deafening, cheering on the fighters. She watched as Logan punched out his opponent with ease, then stalked back to the side of the cage to finish his shot of whiskey. She gasped at the sight of him. Then everything shifted slightly, and it was gone. The bar was empty, and it was silent. “That’s when you knew, that’s the moment. The moment you knew who he was and what he was. Still got in his trailer though, didn’t you? You somehow knew that he could kill you without a second thought, but you followed him anyway. Why?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Carol nodded her head behind Marie, and the bar disappeared into the interior of a train. Marie stood next to Carol and looked at herself, covered by her thick green coat. She watched Logan sit with her, talk with her, and then she heard him promise to take care of her and hold her close to him.

“You saw the good in him, whereas others had only seen the bad, the hate, pain. He was something to fear for them, something to back away from, but to you he…” Marie looked at Carol as the train turned into her room at Xavier’s.

“Why are you doing this?” Marie looked around her again, refusing to believe that this was in fact a dream and hoping that someone would come to her aid.

“Because I’m the only one left inside. Oh, don’t get me wrong, if your mind could have given you Logan or Erik, it would have, but your choices are limited of late, aren’t they, honey?” She let her head drop to the side as she looked at Marie who was reminded of a curious puppy. “You see …” Her room began to change around them again, this time turning to the cold, metal-encased room that had held Carol. “You need to realise a few things.” Marie stayed paralysed. “Who knows your name? Your real name. No one. You have never told them, never wanted to. You’ve known them for years and never told them. Yet you’d known Logan less than five minutes. The only one who knew, the only one you wanted to know, was Logan. He was the one you told your secrets to. You cry on his shoulder, spar with him. He’s the one who takes you for burgers, makes you laugh, and you’re the only one, the only one, he lets in under his defences. You know you want him.”

Marie stood staring at her for what seem liked an eternity, trying to get a hold of what Carol was trying to say. Carol smile and crossed her arms, then waved a hand around the room a set of silver handcuffs materialised in her hand, she threw them at Marie who caught them clumsily. “You need to get this out of your system.”

Marie woke up with such a jump that she hit her head on the passenger side window, rubbing it instantly. The rain continued to fall down the outside of the window, unaffected by her sharp movement. Her dream faded away and everything came rushing back to reality.

“You ok?” Logan’s voice brought her completely back to reality.

“Yeah.” She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t meant to fall asleep.” Her fear slipped away from her, but the uncertainty of the whole situation stayed with her.

“Probably the red wine. We’re home.” He pulled the truck into the garage of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and she jumped out, ready to run back to the mansion without even saying a word to him, her mind still whirring from the strange conversation with Carol, she just didn’t know what she had meant.

“Hey?”

“Yeah?”

He walked round her side of the truck and stood in front of her, blocking her quick exit. “Trying to get away from me or something?” His smirk made her feel a little better.

She sighed. “No, I…I - I’m just so tired Logan.”

He looked at his feet and then back into her eyes. “See ya in the morning then.” She bit her lip. Feeling a little bit like a bunny caught in headlights, she stopped, frozen to the spot. He put his hand gently on her cheek.

She never really noticed before that even in a tender moment how dangerous he looked. She sighed. What is it about men who could kill you in a heartbeat? Why did they get you all hot and breathless? Was it the risk, the thrill of flirting with such incredible danger, or was it the edge? That edge that normal men just don’t have, men like Scott and Bobby. She had to smile at that thought. He kissed her then, swallowing her smile and her every thought as his hands sunk slowly into her hair, holding her firmly in place against his lips.

He let her go and smirked at her. She couldn’t help but giggle like a complete girl before she regained her composure. “Stay with me tonight.” She realised that she was just as impulsive as he was and right now she had a sudden impulse to be comforted.

The smirk on his lips faded and was replaced by a genuine brilliant smile at her words.

*************END OF PART TEN

Title: Control 11/12
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Nearly three weeks later, they were still more or less at the same point. Xavier helped Marie with meditations and breathing exercises, getting her to concentrate her mind on Carol’s mutation as well as her own. She could switch Carol’s on and off without too much trouble, but she was still having problems with her own. Once she managed to get it on for about a minute, but it had gone off, the switch out of her reach once again.

She was the first to admit that she hadn’t really dealt with the basic violation Carol had inflicted on her. She felt a little stressed about it, but the meditation sessions were helping. It wasn’t something that she felt she could share with Logan, because he was so intertwined in the 'Carol' experience. So she kept it to herself.

She and Logan were faring a little better. They were still sharing a room, sharing a bed. They had kissed and touched one another, but never taken it further, both frightened that the sex would cloud the growing trust between them. He had been a gentleman and never made any kind of move.

Each night they got ready for bed, he wearing boxers or loose sweat pants and she in little shorts and tank tops. But it wasn’t easy. From the moment that they got back to her room and started winding down for bed, the anticipation started to build, and by the time they had got into bed, they were both stinking of arousal and struggling to rein it in.

She would pretend to be removing her make-up or brushing her hair while she watched him take his clothes off in her mirror. He knew she watched. When it was her turn to undress, he busied himself with shaving or cleaning his teeth, but she always joined him in the bathroom and stepped naked into the shower with him still in the room. Countless times, had he cut himself as he watched her in the mirror casually drop her towel on the floor and reveal miles of perfectly toned skin and get under the hot spray.

It was exactly what he had just watched her do. She had walked in to the bathroom as usual, given his boxer-clad body the once-over, flashed him a sinful smile, and closed the shower door behind her. He continued to draw the razor down his face. He was looking into the mirror, but not at his face or the razor. He watched her. He could make out her pale outline in the frosted glass as she washed herself. Another pale movement. The shower door opened, and she poked her wet head out. He quickly went back to shaving himself.

“You ok, Logan?”

“Yep.”

“You, uh, got shaving foam all over yourself.”

He froze and raised an eyebrow at her in the mirror. “Kinda the point when shaving, darlin’.”

“You, um, want to come in here so I can wash it off for ya?”

She caught her bottom lip in between her teeth, and a mischievous twinkle was in her eye. “Sure, why not? Make some room.” She disappeared back inside the shower as he rinsed his razor and followed her in, purposely leaving his underwear on.

He swallowed hard as he closed the door. He was close, close to her, and she was naked, her back to him as she rinsed her face under the spray. He touched her shoulder, and she turned around slowly. He wanted to touch her, God he wanted to so much, but all this had to be at her pace. Him jumping in and not consulting her about things had been his downfall before. He wouldn’t risk it this time.

She adjusted the showerhead so that the water fell over both of them. Then she used both hands to gently rinse off the foam from his jaw and upper lip. He didn’t know what to do with his hands so he kept them by his sides. She bit her lip again, and his eyes caught the action, then swept down quickly and back to her lips.

The brief look at her chest had his groin stirring even more than it already had. She brushed his lips with her hands and then let them trail gently down his shoulders and onto his stomach. He lowered his forehead to hers. She couldn’t resist the closeness of him and reached up to kiss his lips.

The minute their lips met, his hands were no longer dormant by his sides and he simply had to feel her skin under his hands. They crept down her arms to her waist and then onto her bottom, revelling in the softness of her. He gripped her and pulled her against him as she slipped her tongue into his mouth. As the kiss grew in boldness and heat, she felt the shower wall against her back, and he felt one of her hands snake into the front of his boxers.

Kissing each other feverishly as they let their want, need, and desire get the better of them. She didn’t let him stop the kissing - only for brief moments to catch their breath. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing, remind him of Carol and ruin the moment, so she kept kissing now realising how much she had missed the feel of him against her and the closeness they shared as well as the love. Even though she didn’t know it, he was doing the same, happy to keep kissing, to say nothing, happy to let her set the pace.

He kept his touches on her light, his grip gentle, and he kept his restraint. He didn’t bite her, he didn’t scratch her, but he couldn’t stop the odd growl escaped him. He knew that those things, the biting and scratching would not be part of every lovemaking, but he had waited so long the desire to mark her was enormous. He held back and let her control the moment so that he could control himself.

He kissed all the way down her body until he got to her triangle of light brown curls. Raising her leg to his shoulder, he began to kiss and nip and lick at her clitoris adoring the smell and taste of her. Soon she was moving her hips in time with his efforts and gasping and moaning uncontrollably until she cried his name and came in his mouth.

Logan stood up and kissed her as she pushed his boxers down his legs, and he wasted no time in kicking them away before raising her thigh and nudging his cock against her entrance. She pulled his hair and kissed him hard, and he sunk into her slowly, inch by inch. She bit his lip, making him jump. She was trying to push him. She knew he was holding back and she didn’t want him too. Even though she knew she had him, knew he loved her as much as she loved him, she wanted all of him. Once he was all the way in, he hoisted her up against him, and her legs instantly went around his waist. Mere seconds later, they were both coming breathlessly against each other.

He pulled away from her, panting, and then kissed her chastely on the forehead. She huffed, suddenly feeling frustrated, and pushed past him out of the shower. “Marie?” She grabbed a large towel and walked back into the bedroom as she wrapped it around herself. Logan rinsed himself quickly under the spray and followed her, wrapping his own smaller towel around his waist.

“Marie, what’s wrong?”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Nothing. Everything is *just* fine.”

Picking up her brush, she began to rake it through her hair, but it clattered to the floor when Logan pulled her arm round to face him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She pulled away from him. “This…” She picked up her brush and threw it on her vanity. It knocked over a couple of bits of her make-up, but she ignored it. “This whole thing is exactly what I didn’t want!”

He shook his head. “You invited me in the shower Marie…”

Her frustration with the whole situation flared at him again. “Exactly! I invited *you* in. I knew this would happen, Logan, I knew it! I knew you would hold back.”

“I’m trying, ok? I’m trying to get past this.”

“Get past what?”

“The fact that every time I looked at that bitch, I saw you, wanted you to be there, to be safe, and now every fucking time I look at you, I see her! I keep waiting for you to turn on me and taunt me with a body that isn’t fucking yours!” He sat down on the bed. “I just want all this to go away.”

She watched him sigh and then sighed herself. “Well, it won’t go away, and quite frankly, I’m fed up with trying to make it go away. For God’s sake, let’s just get on with life, shall we? This is getting fucking ridiculous. You didn’t mean it. You’re not going to do it again, so let’s just get over it. And anyway, it’s not fair to lay everything at your door. You didn’t start this. I’m doing it, too. I’m frightened I’m going to say something or do something to remind you of Carol, and you know there are going to be moments like that, but we’re just gonna have to deal with it. I’m sorry for getting angry and ruining something that was good, and it was good, Logan, but it’s not enough, and you know it. I can’t - I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep going on thinking that everything will be ok, them something happens, and we’re back to fucking square one.” She knew that she was overreacting a little, maybe being a bit of a control freak, but she couldn’t help. Carol had taken away her basic right to control herself and now she was gone, Marie wanted to act on her own.

She had been pulling out clothes and shoving them on while she talked. Now she stood in front of him in her jeans and bra. As she put her t-shirt over her head Carol’s words from her dream came back to her. ~You need to get this out of your system.~ Logan’s voice brought her back to her senses, but she didn’t hear what he said.

“What?”

“I said I was sorry.”

She harrumphed and shoved her feet in to her flat ballet-style shoes. “For fuck’s sake, will you grow a pair, and stop fucking apologising!”

After she slammed the door behind her, Logan grabbed the bedside lamp and hurled it at the wall shattering it completely. Small shards of cream-coloured ceramic flew around the room and settled like heavy snow on the floor and other surfaces. He stood there in the mess, his chest heaving and his emotions running wild.

*********

It took him nearly an hour to clear up the room. In the end, he had given up with a dustpan and brush and taken the vacuum from the cleaning cupboard downstairs and sorted out the room. He made the bed, opened the window, and as he did, he saw her seated on the edge of the huge fountain, the moonlight reflecting on the streaks in her hair.

As he got dressed, he heard the phone ring in the main hall. He ignored it. He had never answered it, and he wasn’t about to now. Before he left the room, he checked out the window; she was still there, sitting in the silent dark and steaming angry. When he got to the hall, Scott was just hanging up the phone.

“Logan, I have to wake up the Professor. One of our informants has given us a location on Magneto, but he’s moving again, so we need to move fast. Small team: me, you, ‘Ro, and Remy only.”

“Ok, I’ll wake ‘Ro and Gambit.” Scott headed off up the stairs. Logan hesitated briefly looking out to the gardens. Should he tell her or keep her safe out of the way? “No, she’ll kill me!”

He ran out into the garden. She didn’t turn to acknowledge him, but he could tell by the way that she tensed that she knew he was there. “Marie, we got a location on Magneto. Scott’s gone to wake the Xavier.” He turned around and ran back into the mansion, Marie right behind him.

Ten minutes and a quick briefing later, they hurried into their suits. Logan, Scott, and Remy were the first out of the men’s locker room, closely flowed by ‘Ro out of the women’s. When Marie followed her, fully suited up and scraping her hair back, Logan went nuts.

“No, no way are you going anywhere!” Scott was nodding his agreement.

Before Marie could speak, the Professor did. “I want Rogue to go. She will hopefully provide an element of surprise. Magneto must have figured out by now that his plan failed, but I doubt he is expecting to see Rogue.” He looked straight at her. “Use it to your advantage, where possible.” She nodded, and they all walked through the hangar door to the Blackbird.

As the jet rose through the basketball court, Marie fidgeted with her gloves, unsure why she had even bothered putting them on. Her mutation was dormant, and as far as she was concerned, useless. She glanced at the seat next to her and watched Logan flex his fingers in his own gloves. Then he let his claws out and then back in again.

He met her eyes. “You still pissed at me?”

“Yes, Logan. I am so still pissed at you. I’m pissed at Carol, Magneto, the whole fucking world, and its mother!”

He smirked at her. “Just so I know.” He didn’t really have to ask; he could smell the tension and anger in her.

Another ten minutes, and Scott gently set the jet down on a helicopter pad on the top of an old building. They stepped out and headed silently down the side of the building, then in the direction of what looked like an abandoned steel works. It had metal chutes, pipes, and open metal stairs all over the place.

They had worked out a plan to split into two groups: Storm and Remy, and Rogue, Logan, and Scott in the other. Logan, Rogue and Scott scaled the side of the building and looked in through the skylights to see inside. Storm and Remy scouted around the bottom.

Through the top skylight, Scott pointed out Magneto and Pyro to Logan. They were seated at a huge desk looking over some maps and plans. They could also see Mystique sitting behind some computer screens with another mutant that neither of them recognised. Rogue was over the other side of the roof and beckoned them silently to her. She pointed to one other mutant that Scott and Logan didn’t know. She said his name was Spike and that Carol knew him. She told them that he threw some kind of spikes from the insides of his forearms at incredible speed.

From Rogue’s vantage point, they were behind Mystique. The computer screen she was looking at were CCTV monitors, and when they saw Storm and Remy cross the screen by the side of the building, Rogue gasped, and Logan swore quietly. Their cover and element of surprise was blown.

Mystique immediately raised the alarm, and Spike and Pyro ran out of the building to fight Storm and Remy. Scott, Logan, and Rogue leaned over the side of the building to see lighting crack, speeding spikes, flames and flaming cards fly.

“Scott, you go down and help them. We’ll deal with Magneto and that blue bitch!”

“Ok, be careful Logan. Magneto can tie you in knots, literally!”

All Scott got as a response was a curt nod. Scott took off over the side of the building, and Logan and Rogue ran to the furthest skylight. “I’ll take blue. You take care of bucket head.”

“Ok.” She got ready to jump down with Logan. He opened the skylight, looked at her, and paused briefly, noticing she was letting Carol’s powers into her, her eyes were slowly turning blue as she let the superhuman strength course through her body.

He ignored it. “On three… one… two… go!”

They jumped together. Logan landed in front of Mystique and tried to get the first punch in, but she was too fast for him and kicked his legs out from under him. Once he regained his footing, he flew at her, claws out and a snarl on his lips. She turned away from him and dodged his claws easily. Then, grabbing the computer screen, she smashed it over his head with an evil smile.

Rogue ran at Magneto. He levitated a metal filing cabinet and launched it at her. She wasn’t quick enough to dodge it, but laughed when it quite literally bounced off of her. “You’re gonna have to try harder than that, old man!”

And he did. A barrage of metal objects, different sizes and weights, flew at her from every direction. Some hit her, some missed. Others she punched out of the way. She was enjoying using the strength, showing him that instead of hurting her and ruining her, he had in fact given her something better. “You know what they say, Erik. What doesn’t kill ya!”

The last thing that came flying at her was a long metal bar. She caught it, spun round on the spot, and threw it back with everything she had. Magneto didn’t have time to get out of the way, and it hit him across the chest and face. He flew backwards with the force of the blow, and he hit the wall behind him before sliding to the floor unconscious, possibly dead. Marie hesitated knowing she should check if he was alive or not, but she simply didn’t care anymore as long as he was out of her life.

She turned away from Magneto just in time to see Logan pull both sets of claws free from Mystique chest. She dropped like a stone to the floor, an expression of death on her face.

He stepped back and frowned at her. “You ok?”

She smiled. “Perfect ten, sugar!”

His gaze swept over her, and he chuckled. “Yeah, you are.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes at him. “Not now. Let’s help the others.”

When they broke out of the back door and into the loading area behind, all hell had broken loose. Storm was unconscious, Scott and Remy had dragged her behind a large dumpster, and Pyro and Spike had them all pinned with flying spikes and flames. The force of the flames was pushing the dumpster back and squashing them against the wall.

Logan charged at Spike, his claws drawn and swiping away each projectile as it came towards him. Marie turned and ran back into the building. She jumped over Mystique’s dead body to the other side of the room and grabbed a fire extinguisher. “Oh well, if it doesn’t work, at least I can hit him with it!”

She ran back out to the fight. She fumbled with the control of it. Once she ripped the pin out, she pointed it at Pyro and squeezed the handle. It made a strange noise, like a kid blowing raspberry, and did nothing but dribble. She rolled her eyes. “Plan B!” She snuck up behind him. “JOHN!” He turned, surprised by someone using his given name, and she swung the extinguisher. It hit him under the chin, sending him sailing backwards and through the window of an adjacent building.

Logan had managed to knock out Spike and was attempting to move the dumpster away from a trapped Remy, Scott, and Storm. Rogue dropped the fire extinguisher and concentrated, closing her eyes. Then she let Carol’s mutation fade away as she steadied her breathing the way Xavier had been trying to teach her over the last few weeks.

When she opened her brown eyes with a triumphant smile, she saw Spike get to his knees and produce three projectiles from his arms. Logan had pulled the dumpster away, and Scott came out first as Remy helped a now-conscious Storm. Marie knew that Logan hadn’t seen Spike. He took aim.

“LOGAN!” She closed the space between Spike and Logan. Logan turned as she plastered herself to his front, wrapping her arms round his neck. Her body jolted against him as the three spikes hit her across her back, the last one piercing the area around her heart.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Logan saw the red beam of Scott’s visor take Spike’s head off, but he didn’t care. Marie was weak in his arms, and they dropped to their knees as he held her. “NO! Marie… please!” Her eyes shone with pain, her mouth open in a constant gasp, and her breaths were coming in short bursts. Her warm blood trickled over his gloved hands as he held her up.

Scott shouted to Storm to fly to the Blackbird, get the first aid kit, and radio home to get ready for a casualty. Logan heard all of this but didn’t register anything but Marie’s slowing heartbeat.

“Marie, come on… just stay awake. Stay with me Marie!” Tears started to form in his eyes and then slipped down his face as her heartbeat weakened even more. “Turn your skin on…” He couldn’t help but shake her slightly. “Come on Marie!” She continued to gasp for breath as she raised her hand and touched his face where his tears made lines downs his cheeks. “Marie, please! Turn your skin on, turn it on, come on, God damn it, turn it on!”

He ripped a glove off with his teeth and held it to her face. Some of her blood from his glove was on his hand, and it smeared over her cheek. He wanted to gag at the smell of her blood and the increasing smell of death. “Don’t you die on me. Don’t you dare fucking die on me, Marie! Turn it the fuck on!”

She choked and gasped. “C…can..t. find… switc…”

He shook her again. “Find it, please just find it! Please, Marie, please, please…”

A serene smile crossed her paling lips. “Love…y…” Her eyes became dull as her life slipped away. Her heart gave a last weak beat, and her hand fell limply away from his face.

He stared into her vacant face, her eyes looking through him at nothing and her heart no longer beating. Then he shook her slightly, his voice weak when he spoke. “Marie? Ma…ree?” He kissed her lips, her cheeks and her eyes as he sobbed and held her to him fiercely. “Marie… Marie… Please not her, anyone but her! Not Marie, not her, please not her!” His sobs grew. “No, no, no, no, NOOOOOOO!”

Scott backed up against the side of the building, slid to the floor, and hung his head in his hands. Remy kicked the dumpster as hard as he could, then rested his head against it, unable to look at Logan and the girl in his arms.

Storm ran up the ramp into the Blackbird and just as her hand had closed around the radio, she heard Logan scream ‘No’. It slipped from her hand as she realised that once again, she had lost a treasured friend.

*****************END OF PART ELEVEN

Title: Control 12/12
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!

**********************

Scott stood up. He couldn’t take the scene in front of him any longer even though it had all unfolded in mere seconds. Listening to Logan’s sobs was heartbreaking, and he knew that they would have to move him soon.

He was about to touch Logan’s shoulder when he heard him gasp and choke on a sob. Scott glanced at Remy to see if he had heard it, but the Frenchman hadn’t moved, so he knelt beside Logan. “Shit! Remy, help!”

Logan’s hand was gripping her pale face, and Scott could clearly see the thick lines of Logan’s veins as her mutation took his healing from him to save her. Scott held Logan up. He couldn’t talk, and by the looks of things, he temporarily couldn’t breathe. Remy ran to them and got behind Marie, supporting her weight from Logan.

Two of the projectiles dropped out of Marie’s back, and just as she weakly opened her eyes and took her first breath after minutes, her mutation stopped. Logan coughed and panted. “Marie, turn it back on… Marie! Scott, it’s not enough. She’s….{cough cough} she’s still bleeding!”

Remy pulled his glove off and put his hand to her neck. “She’s unconscious, but chere has de pulse.” He stood pulling her into his arms as Scott helped Logan to his feet.

“I’ll take her.”

Scott shook his head and wrapped Logan’s arm round his shoulder. “No, Remy will take her, and I’ll take you. Come on, let’s get you two back to Hank as quickly as we can.”

As they reached the jet, Remy took Marie in first. Logan watched him carry her up the ramp and then collapsed onto Scott. “Rem, put her down and help me with him.” Remy ran back to Scott, and they hauled Logan into a seat. Scott left Logan with Remy and went back to Marie. He checked her pulse again - weak, but it was there. Remy had placed her on her side because of the last projectile in her back. He made sure she was secure and padded the wound to try and stem the bleeding. Aside from that, he had no clue what to do apart from get her home to Hank.

‘Ro was sitting in the pilot seat staring into space. Scott had to shout to break her out of it. “’Ro, she’s alive. Make the damn call!” She immediately fumbled to pick the radio back up and frantically called back to the mansion as Scott began their ascent.

Logan woke up with a start. He was on his side on an exam table in the med lab. “Marie…” He sat up and was on his feet, but they gave out, and he fell.

Scott caught him just before he hit the ground. “Easy. Hank said she took a lot out of you. He had to give you antibiotics and a lot of pain killers.”

“Where is she?”

“Next door… she’s alive.”

“There’s a but, isn’t there?”

“She’s still in a bad shape. Your healing took care of most of the damage. Hank still had to remove the last spike. He said it luckily missed her heart. She’s going to be fine.”

He sighed in relief. “Thank fuck for that. I’ve never been so glad to nearly die.”

Scott chuckled. “That’s what you said the last time.”

He stood up and stretched, cracking his neck and flexing his shoulders, the news that she was going to be ok making him feel better. “I don’t get why her skin only turned on for a few seconds, then off again.”

“She’s alive, so I’m surprised you care.”

Logan chuckled as he stripped off his uniform trousers and put on the clean sweats and wife beater that Scott was holding. “You’re right; I don’t care. Not at the moment anyway.” He shoved the wife beater over his head. “What about bucket-head and Pyro, did ya hand them over?”

Scott nodded. “Xavier contacted the authorities right away. St John was taken to the hospital, but unfortunately, he isn’t expected to last the night. By the looks of it, Rogue shattered most of his spine and nearly broke his neck. I know he was with the Brotherhood, but he used to be one of my students, and I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”

“Feel sorry for him all ya want, won’t change nothing for the little turncoat. What about Mags?”

“Magneto was confirmed dead at the scene. So was Spike. Mystique…”

“Oh don’t tell me that blue bitch pulled it again?”

“Yep, not a trace of her.”

“But I got her. Her blue lifeless carcass slid off my claws. How the fuck can she be alive?”

“I don’t know, but apart from some blood, they found no trace of her anywhere.”

“Fuck, fucking blue, fucking, Houdini bitch!” Scott shook his head, smiling at his friend’s cursing as they left the smaller med bay room.

The main med lab was quiet, but Logan could hear the even breathing of the woman he loved and had thought for a brief moment he had lost forever. “Told you she was ok.” Logan chuckled at him. “I’ll leave you alone for a while.” Logan nodded as Scott left, unable to tear his eyes away from Marie.

He walked over to her as she lay on the exam bed and brushed some hair gently away from her forehead. A familiar tingle spread through his fingers, and he pulled them back. He looked at his fingers and then back to Marie. Her skin was on.

Hank’s clipboard was at the end of Marie’s bed. Logan picked it up and checked through his notes on her condition. A lot of it he didn’t understand, and because of Hank’s awful handwriting, most of it he couldn’t read, but he couldn’t see anything anywhere that said her mutation was active.

Putting it down, he went back to her and touched her face again. Nothing happened. He sighed. It must be turning itself on and off without her knowing, or he figured that she could be accidentally doing it in her sleep.

He pulled a chair away from Hank’s desk and placed it next to hers. He stroked her face again, gently letting his fingers slide over her skin. It was soft and cool. The fourth time he touched her, her skin caught him briefly again. He gasped and pulled his hand away. “Fuck it!” He looked around the room and checked that the doors were shut completely. Then he sat down next to her again.

He took a deep breath and pushed thoughts of his love for her to the forefront of his mind, then laid his hand over her neck. Nothing happened. He huffed. “God damn it, Marie, concentrate, will ya?” He touched her again. This time his body felt the shock of her drawing him in.

Thoughts rushed into his head as he poured into her. How much he loved her, how much he wanted her safe and back with him. How sick he’d felt and emotionally naked he’d felt when he thought she was dead. How he realised that the arguments they had had meant nothing. Everything he had thought and felt over the last few months. His guilt, his pain, his joy and elation, everything. Then abruptly, just as he felt the last grips of consciousness slip, the pull stopped.

He was on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. Blood dripped from his nose onto the white sterile floor. His eyes were fuzzy and desperately trying to focus. Someone had just sworn at him, he was sure of it. He shook his head trying to focus on the voice he had heard, blood splattered in all directions. “…idiot, what the fuck were you thinking?”

Small hands grasped his shoulders and were lifting him to his feet, then shoved him roughly into the chair next to Marie’s bed. He looked at it and frowned. It was empty. “Huh?”

“Over here, sugar!” He looked at the person who had sat him down, the fuzziness gone from his eyes. Smirking, he snatched the front of her gown and pulled her into his lap, trying to kiss her, but she stopped him. “Yuck, your face is covered in blood!”

“What, why?” He looked genuinely confused.

She giggled at him and got some tissues off of Hank’s desk before sitting in his lap again. “Because, Mr. Impulse-Control-Problem, I sucked ya dry again. There, all clean.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her passionately. “I though I lost you.” Then he frowned and turned her around quickly, opening her gown and running his hand over flawless skin: no gaping hole, no spike, no scar, no blood, nothing. He turned her back to face him. Then he shook her and growled, “Don’t you ever, ever do that again!”

She smiled and kissed him, easing her tongue into his mouth as his hands sunk into her hair. Breaking the kiss to catch her breath, she giggled at him again. “I love you, you big, compulsive idiot!”

“God, I love you too.” After another lust-filled kiss, he stood up, carrying her with him.

“LOGAN! I have an open back hospital gown! Clothes, I need my clothes!”

He laughed as he put her down, and she ran to a cupboard where spare clothes were kept. He watched openly as she stripped off and put on dark grey sweats and a matching vest shirt, both embossed with a small ‘X’.

As they walked out of the med lab, he swung his arm over her shoulder and pulled her into him, kissing her head. She giggled and ran her hands over him as they walked. When they passed the battered door to Carol’s ‘cell’ Logan didn’t even notice, but Marie couldn’t help but look. ~You need to get this out of your system.~ Marie smiled.

“What you grinning about?”

She poked his chest with her finger. “I just cheated death. Don’t I got a right to be happy! Besides, I kinda figured something out.”

“Yeah, like what? How incredibly sexy I am?” She rolled her eyes.

Before she could answer, the elevator opened, and Hank nearly dropped his coffee as he walked out and met them in the corridor. “Oh my goodness! You’re up! Both of you!”

They were still clinging to each other. “Alive and kicking, doc.” Logan pushed the call button for the elevator.

“You touched her, didn’t you? Oh Logan, do you not ever listen? I’ve explained a thousand times that Rogue’s mutation affects you differently than anyone else. You take longer to heal from it. As it is your healing she takes rather…” Logan kissed her gently and then stared at her. “Logan, are you listening to me?” They turned away and walked towards the elevator door, and Hank harrumphed at them. “People simply don’t appreciate this facility and the work that I do. Anyone would think that I ran a… a ‘chop-shop’!” He turned away and went down to his lab door. “The planning, the research!” He called to them over his shoulder. “It doesn’t all just happen to be ready when you need it to be. *I* keep it that way! ” All he heard as the elevator closed was giggling and the distinct sounds of kissing.

*********

Logan and Marie had been in Marie’s room for the past twenty-five minutes snuggled up on her bed. Logan’s head was resting on the cushion of her breasts, and she was gently stroking his head. “Kinda puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, darlin’, it does.”

“No more arguments, no more doubt. I love you, Logan, and I trust you.”

He held her a little tighter. “I love ya too, baby. No more arguments, I promise. Oh Marie, darlin’, I would like nothing more than to… {yawn} to have you right this second, but you wiped me out, darlin’.”

She smiled and ruffled his hair. “Go to sleep, sugar, and in the morning, we’ll go get some pancakes.”

“Mmmm… only if they got steak on em’.”

She giggled and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Tyrannosaurus-Logan.” Five more minutes of stroking his hair, and he was snoring softly, his grip on her relaxed, and then she fell asleep with him.

When she woke up, she looked at her clock. It was just after nine at night: they had slept the entire day away. She smiled at him. Both of them were in exactly the same position in the bed, she smiled thankfully for a good uninterrupted sleep. She touched his hair gently with a smile. Then she eased herself out from under him. He snorted a little but didn’t wake, and she looked down at him, smiling.

She concentrated on his face and how she felt about him, just him. Her mutation flipped on. She wanted to jump and shout that she had figured it all out. It made sense now – she had only got control over her mutation after absorbing Logan on the Statue. Xavier had taken everyone else out of her head as well, but what nobody realised, even she, was that Logan was the key to her mutation. That’s why it worked for his touch. He was her body’s safety catch. When she was unconscious, it must have been the him in her head, flipping it on and off.

She really was happy, and she had come to understand what they both had needed: shock therapy. And it had worked, but she wanted to make sure. She crept into the bathroom and showered, then dried herself in silence, all the while keeping an eye on his sleeping form. She got dressed back in her sweats and vest. After a little bit of hunting around in the bottom of her closet, she found her rucksack.

She went round her room, collecting things that she wanted or thought that she would need: towels, blankets, a pillow. Then she opened her closet and selected her outfit, taking it out and folding it neatly into her bag. The last thing she grabbed was her make-up bag before she silently went to the door, then went back to her cell phone.

Most of the younger students were in bed and the older ones were in the rec room, playing pool or watching a movie. She smiled to herself as she walked all over the mansion, up and down stairs, through the library, out into the back patio and then back through to the hidden elevator on the ground floor, and she smiled happily again when it slid shut on her.

Once down in the secret lower levels, she headed for the med lab. Expecting to find Hank on his own, she simply walked in, not bothering to knock on the perfectly polished metal door. When it slid open, she opened her mouth to speak but closed it again in shock at the sight in front of her.

Hank was leaning over his desk, enjoying a passionate kiss with Kitty. His hand braced either side of her head and hers locked around his neck. Marie stood staring for a moment, and just as it looked like the heated kiss was coming to an end, she came to her senses and quietly backed out of the door, closing it with an almost silent click. Neither of them had noticed her, and with the soundproofing down there, they wouldn’t hear what she was up to either.

She giggled as she approached the door to Carol’s ‘cell’, then was stone sober as she pushed it open. It looked the same as the last time she saw it – bare apart from the cot bed, toilet, chair, small table and sink. The set of silver handcuffs Logan had used hung on the clothes hook. The bed had been stripped of its linen, and the mattress stood on its side to air. Everything had been cleaned and smelled fresh.

First thing she did was to use the blankets she had brought with her to make the bed. Then after a shaky deep breath, she dotted some candles around and left her lighter on the table ready to light them.

She got changed. She swapped her sweats for a black skirt that started way below her belly button, stopped about mid-thigh, and clung to her like lycra. She was already wearing black-healed ankle boots, so she left them on along with her black vest-top.

After another shaky breath that was all anticipation, she put her make-up back in her bag along with her sweats and shoved the bag in the corner. She sat down on the bed just as she heard Hank and Kitty take the elevator back up to the mansion.

Once the lower, most secret part of the mansion was again silent, Marie walked to the elevator and placed a small decoder over the security keypad on the control panel. She tapped in a few codes, and the lights dimmed to the emergency minimum. She smiled, feeling very pleased with herself, and went back to the cell, flipping open her cell phone. Scrolling through, she found Logan’s number and bit her lip as she pressed the green call button.

*********

Logan was in his own shower when he heard his cell phone ringing with that stupid ring tone Jubilee had put on it. He cursed her name again. Eventually he would have to get Marie to change it for him. He got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around him. Once he found his jacket, he fished around in every pocket, and just as he got the phone out, the frog-tone stopped ring-ding-dinging. He swore again.

Logan muttered curses to himself as he worked the phone and pulled up his missed calls list. ‘KID’ flashed up, and he smiled. He had been wondering where she was. He pushed the dial button and waited.

She smiled as she saw his name on her phone display. She let it ring several times before she answered it. “Let me guess - couldn’t find your phone?”

He chuckled. “Something like that. Where are you? I kinda got used to not waking up alone.”

“Well, that would be for me to know and you to find out.”

“Marie, darlin’, I just got out of the shower, and I need to find some clothes….”

He stopped dead at her sexy voice. “Wanna play a game?”

He frowned at his empty room. “Marie, where are you, and what are you doing?”

“I’m hidin’, and I want you to come ‘seek’.” She bit her lip again, wishing she could see his face.

He smirked. “Ok, I’ll play. Do I get a prize if I find you?”

“Mmmm… what do you want?”

“I want you to tell me where you are, now!”

She giggled and heard him chuckled on the other end. “Follow your nose, sugar.” She clipped the phone shut and laughed, imagining his face.

He stared at his phone for a beat or two, then laughed as he tried to find his clothes. Ten minutes later, he was trawling all over the mansion, following the fake scent trail that she had left him. When he passed the staff kitchen he saw Bobby siting miserably on his own. Logan noticed the beer in his hand and also noticed that it was one of his own, he let it slid as he had better things to do.

He cursed to himself for being daft enough to follow her trail, but when he came to the elevator for the underground part of the mansion, he enjoyed the way her scent changed from nervous to spicy sexual anticipation.

The elevator opened, and she heard it. She tossed her cell onto the small table and lit all the candles quickly, then went into the cell and shut the barred door behind her. The keypad beeped, and the light turned red for locked.

Logan stepped out of the elevator into the darkened corridor. What dim light there was reflected off of the gleaming walls, making the shadows dance. The elevator closed, and as he looked at the control panel, he noticed a light went red and an automated voice broke the silence. “ELEVATOR LOCKED. AUTHORISATION: ROGUE.”

He chuckled and then called out to her, wherever she was. “What’s the matter, darlin’, afraid I might run away?”

She stood still inside the cell and stifled a nervous giggle, then bit her lip as she heard his footsteps approach. He pushed the main door open and stood in the doorway, staring at her. She admired his choice of clothes: tight jeans, boots, and his trademark wife beater which stretched over his chest and exposed his muscled arms. Her mouth was already running dry at the thought of touching him.

His own gaze fell on her healed boots first. She knew from his memories how much he liked them. Then they travelled up her bare legs to the hem of her skirt. He raised an eyebrow at it before carrying on to her waist, then up to her covered breasts and finally her eyes.

A slow predatory smile spread across his face as he strode up to the bars. Then he looked at them and sighed, his smile fading into concern. “What are you doing, darlin’? You don’t want to be in here.”

Her vest top didn’t quite reach the top of her skirt, and she scraped her nails across the bare patch of skin. He watched her do it. Five red trails appeared across her stomach, and he had to grip the bars to stop himself from ripping the door off and throwing her against the wall and fucking her right there. “This is exactly where I want to be, sugar. We need to get this out of our system.”

Logan slid his hand down the bars to the keypad and punched in his own personal code, and with an electronic beep, the door opened. Then he rested his arms on the barred doorframe.

Looking her up and down again, he could feel himself getting hard, but he still didn’t know why she wanted to do this in the cell. It couldn’t hold any good memories for her, the same as it didn’t for him, but the way she looked and the smell of her made him want to forget all about what had happened before and concentrate on her.

She could see he was concerned about what she was doing, and she smiled at him for it, knowing that once he realised how much she wanted him and how much she wanted them to be together, he’d let go and go with the moment.

His eyes stopped at her extremely short skirt again. “Call that a skirt?”

“You don’t like it?”

He smirked. “Didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

Her gaze travelled down and fell on his crotch. It was her turn to smirk when she met his eyes again. “You don’t have to tell me, sugar. I can see perfectly well what ya think about my skirt.” She leaned back against the wall and bit her lip. “So are you gonna come over here or not?”

He walked in and stood in front of her, then slowly traced his fingers gently down her cheek to her neck. He slipped his hand round to the back of her neck and into her hair, lowering his head to take her lips against his. He moaned at the feel of her. The softness of her lips against his and the silkiness of her hair against his fingers felt like heaven. If that wasn’t enough, she pressed herself against him, and he could now feel every inch of her body.

It was her turn to moan as his tongue slipped into her mouth to taste her. She moaned again as she felt his other hand wind into her hair, and her back bumped into the wall behind her.

Her hands went straight to his chest, and she flicked her thumbs over his nipples, making him growl in between wet kisses. Sliding her hands down, she found the hem of his beater and slid it upwards. He willingly broke their kisses so she could pull it over his head. Logan smiled at her as he took her lips again; he almost wanted to giggle at the heady feeling of having her in his arms, horny as hell and taking his clothes off.

His lips trailed off of hers and down her neck. She gasped and whispered his name as he nipped her throat and used every pound of his solid frame to press her against the wall. He licked the spot where he had bitten her, and her eyes slid into the back of her head as she let herself be lost in the sensations he was giving her.

She pulled on his hair and then pushed him back a step or two. Once his eyes met her blazing blue stare, he frowned at her. “Marie….”

She placed her finger to his lips. “Shh. Like I said, we need to get this out of our system. You can’t hurt me…” she smirked at him. “No matter how much I want you too.” She lifted the bottom of her top, brought it over her head, and threw it at him. she wanted him to see her blue eyes and know that she had control over Carol’s powers. She wanted to see if he would change, see if he would turn nasty and in her own way she was testing him.

Her vest hit him in the chest and fell to the ground. His initial shock at her eyes was overtaken by desire at seeing her naked chest. Creamy orbs of flesh as soft as velvet that would fit neatly into his hands, topped off with a darker circle of flesh and a rosy pink nipple. Her breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing, and the movement had him mesmerised.

She watched his emotions play out on is face - confusion, then uncertainty, at himself or her actions she didn’t know, and then desire, need, and want. She bit her lip as she waited for him to make a move and, for the briefest of moments, thought that he was going to run from the room, but he didn’t. He moved towards her, and she backed once again against the wall.

The second he was close enough his hands found her hips, and his lips found the tip of one of her breasts. He nibbled at it, then licked at the spot he had reddened with his teeth. Once satisfied that one breast had had enough attention, he swapped to the other one, making her moan and arch up against him.

Her hands held onto his hair while his slid down past the hem of her skirt and then up her thighs under the stretchy material to her panties. He ran his thumb gently over her clit, smirking at its wetness through the material. He released her breast from his lips, kissed her neck and then her lips briefly. She watched him take the handcuffs off of the hook above them and stood silently while he secured them to her wrists.

She flinched slightly at the tightness of the cuffs, but his desire-filled gaze made her ignore it. He rested his forehead on hers, still meeting her eyes. “Still wanna play this game?”

She smirked. “It’s not a game, and I’m done playing.”

Before she could think, he spun her around to face the wall, raising her arms and hooking the cuffs over the clothes hook above her head. As her breathing quickened, he slid one hand down the front of her underwear and began to rub and pull at her clit.

Just as she could feel her stomach tighten and get ready to explode into orgasm, he stopped, leaving her gasping against the wall, her legs feeling limp and her body unfulfilled. She felt him kneel behind her, peeling her panties down her legs. He lifted each foot in turn and then brought the fabric to his nose, inhaling deeply before he tossed them aside.

He feathered wet kisses up her legs and on her buttocks, then slowly with a long growl licked the full length of her spine, giving her a full body shudder and making her whimper against the wall. She moaned when he bit her shoulder right before unhooking her hands and spinning her round to face him, securing her hands above her head again instantly.

She immediately arched forward to kiss him, but he pushed her roughly against the wall, plundering her lips. His hands were everywhere, gentle caress turning into hard unforgiving grip of his hands.

He stepped back from her, his chest heaving and a thin sheen of perspiration covering his body, making his tanned skin glisten in the half light. She watched as he kicked off his boots, peeled his socks off, and then undid his fly. His eyes stayed locked with her, a hard, desire-ridden look that was somehow telling her that if she wanted this to stop, now was the time to say something.

Her only answer to his heated stare was to arch towards him again, and he responded by dropping his jeans to the floor, stepping out of them and pressing his naked body against her. She raised her thigh, and he gladly gripped it and then the other, lifting her off the ground, making his heated erection came into contact with her damp curls.

Again their lips met roughly, nipping at each other hungrily in between proper kisses and genuine smiles of desire and love until he couldn’t take the heat from her any longer. Guiding his hands to her hips, digging his fingers into her flesh, he lifted her slightly and pushed himself into the heat he had been yearning for.

Her gasp filled the once cold and now scorching hot room with sound, followed by a joint moan of pleasure. She kissed him demandingly, biting his bottom lip hard. He pulled away, licking the blood off, but smiled at her deep brown eyes. The smile didn’t leave his lips as he kissed her with equal vigour and began to move in and out of her heat with a rapidly quickening pace.

Logan started going harder into her, his breath on her throat and his teeth close to her skin occasionally digging in and marking her. He brought his head up and rested his forehead on her, and his rough pumping continued. Staring into her eyes, his groin gripping her hard, his hands gripping her hips hard, and her back slamming hard into the unforgiving wall had only one end.

His own end. Her muscles began to clamp around his, and her eyes closed. He followed her, snarling, brutally pushing into her, and for a brief moment was lost to everything but the feel of the woman he loved wrapped around every inch of his tightly coiled body.

His orgasm passed, and his ears registered the end of her ecstatic muffled moan, and the fleeting pain of her blunt teeth once again taking his bottom lip to the point of pain and pleasure.

She rested her forehead against his shoulder as he reached up and unhooked her hands. Forgetting the key, he simply let out a claw and cut them off. Then they slumped to the floor, still joined and unwilling to move way from each other.

He lifted her chin and kissed her. Her hand touched his face and went into his hair, holding onto him. The kiss was nothing but love, and they both came away from it smiling.

“Admit it, I have the best ideas!” He shook his head like a dog, sweat flicking out in all directions.

He chuckled, still trying to catch his breath. “Hell yeah, darlin’!”

She ran her thumb over his bottom lip, now completely healed. “I love you, and I trust you. Always. And I’m sorry for being a little bitch.”

“I know, and fuck, I love you so much. Should have told ya a long time ago, but I’m a stupid bastard.” He kissed her again, this time on the top of her head. “Consider it out of our system, Marie.”

She giggled. “We could get some more handcuffs though! I might go shopping with Jubes tomorrow and buy some.”

He rested his head against her breasts laughing. “Fuck! You’re gonna be the death of me!”

She laughed too, their happiness now filling the room that they had both hated not so long ago. They kissed and laughed as they got dressed again and then laid down on the cot bed snuggled into one another.

“Do you know what I saw when I came down here earlier?”

“What?”

“Hank and…”

“God, did you get the ‘appreciating-the-facilities’ lecture again?”

“No! He was kissing Kitty! Had her sprawled over his desk.”

Logan laughed and it boomed out in the small room. “Oh God!” She sat up as he kept on laughing.

“What’s so damn funny?”

“Let’s just say it explains why Bobby was getting himself drunk on *my* beer earlier!”

They both laughed and snuggled down again. “He should have treated her better. I’m happy she’s with Hank, he’ll treat her like a princess.”

“Yeah, he’s a good man.”

She got up and tugged him to his feet as well. “Come on, sugar, take me back to *our* bed. I’m tired.”

“Really? I wonder why!”

They kissed their way back to their room, back into the world to bask into their life, together.


**********END