Wolverine tried to shield his eyes from the remaining floating debris particles with his arm but he still had to be able to see what he was putting his feet down on. And what he was walking into. Metal cross bars and beams jutted out in all directions from the sections of walls that somehow were still standing and those in ruins stacked up on each other on the ground. Only the metal skeleton of the building remained. All wooden supports completely gave way, reduced to mere splinters scattered in a fifty foot radius from where they should be.

Because he was on the lowest level he wasn’t really worried about the floor giving out from under him. It felt like most of the concrete foundation was relatively intact. It was the randomly falling ceiling chucks that worried him. Right now it was just a trickle of plaster powder coming down into his hair. But any second the floor above him could give way, what with him walking on most of its support structure.

Unfortunately visual was nonexistent. Any and all lamps or ceiling fixtures were completely shattered to nothing. And there was one emergency light, glowing somewhere in the distance. Though most of its glow was blocked by the carnage and very polluted air.

“Wolverine, ya down here, sugah?” The thick southern lit float to him from someone in the distance behind him.

“Back here!” He called back. “And don’t lean on that wall with the crack. I think it’s gonna go any second.”

He heard her mumbled swearing. This was something she did a lot. It was followed by several crashes and small collapses. Then more swearing.

“You alright, darlin’?”

“Fine,” she grunted then cussed again. She must have found careful footsteps too difficult a task for her because she just hovered over the last few fallen cross beams between them. She slowly touched back down in front of him then looked up skeptically at the shedding ceiling above their heads.

“Scott says we gotta clear out. He gives an ETA of five to ten minutes before the whole building gives,” Her wide green eyes studied the immediate war zone around them before turning back to him. “He figures we’ve got what survivors there are out already.”

Logan nodded. “Yeah, probably. I haven’t seen anyone still kickin’ in this whole area.”

She shook her head and bit her lip, evidently trying to keep it steady. “We really got here later than a June bug in December, didn’t we?”

He sighed and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. “We came as soon as we could. Can’t do anymore than that, kid. ‘Sides. We got fat boy and slime breathe. Magneto and Mystique probably took off right after Mystique set the bombs. They look like her usual style.”

“They didn’t deserve this. I mean, what? One of the company’s chairman expressed anti-mutant feelings and they have to kill 83 innocent people?”

“The Brotherhood’s a bunch of sick bastards. That’s all there is to it.”

Suddenly they red ‘X’ on her belt began beeping and they both jumped at the sound of it. But instead of a belated bomb somewhere being the cause, Cyclops’ irate voice came crackling through. “Rogue. Wolverine. What do you two not understand about ‘get the hell out of the building’?!”

“God damn prick,” Wolverine mumbled before pressing down on the glowing belt buckle. “We’re comin’, Scooter, keep your panties on.”

“Come on, sugah. I think I need scotch.” Rogue took his hand in hers and began the few careful footsteps back towards the partially collapsed hallways that lead to the exit. He followed closely behind her, watching both of their footsteps.

It was slow and careful going but they managed to make it back into the major hallway. There was a more direct route to the outside. It was the one Logan came in through, but when they tried to go back that way it was nothing but a wall of contorted metal and concrete. Hopefully though, even going the longer route, they’d get out before all the cards finally came tumbling down.

The whole place was a disgusting sight, even for the Wolverine. He smelled the bodies before he saw them so he tried to turn Rogue away from seeing them as they went but it was impossible to hide all of them from her. Mainly in this section it was women in tan and grey business suits, scattered charred paper around them. He was going to enjoy killing Mystique. Someday. When Summers wasn’t looking.

Logan suddenly stopped without warning, nearly pulling her arm out of its socket. “Wait,” he finally said after she already ricocheted back into him.

“Logan, I don’t think either of our ‘invulnerabilities’ covers being buried under three stories of rubble.”

He silenced her by squeezing her hand and turning away. One side of his nose twitched once. Twice. Then again. She wasn’t sure where she was supposed to be looking. Where his eyes were pointed or where his ears were leaning towards. She stepped closer to him so her deep voice floated only into his ear when she whispered. “What is it? Mystique?”

“No, shush.” She shut up and tried to focus her own senses, not that she thought she actually any hope in hearing what Logan was hearing. Or smelling. Whatever it was that put that look of absolute concentration on his face.

She gave him a minute or two; at least it felt like it it’d been that long. But the moaning and groaning of the building seemed to get louder in her and the anxiety began itching up fast in her chest.

“Logan--” She started.

“Come on, this way.” He finally snapped out of his trance and pulled her hard after him. They jogged quickly back where they came and took a quick turn into one of the many blown open doorways.

Logan stopped short again, causing Rogue to collide into his back. It was an office. The desk was still relatively intact except for the filling cabinet crashed through one end of it. There was a scattered window letting in some fresh air but three bookcases were lying on their side covering most of it.

He let go of her hand and slowly made his way towards the desk. She followed behind him when he kneeled down in front of it. If it was Mystique or Sabretooth he wouldn’t have kneeled down, he’d have rammed his claws through the top of it.

Together they moved away the large chunks of ceiling and wooden rafters away from the front of the desk. They didn’t get very far before the sound of something hitting the bottom of the desk startled Rogue. She looked to Logan but he seemed very unsurprised and just continued to throw large clods behind him.

She saw the knees first, slightly scraped and dirty, trembling against each other. She quickened her pace, nearly shoulder Logan out of the way in her haste. As more and more of the rubble gave away to them and the little boy crouched in the dark became visible, shaggy brown hair painted grey with debris hanging over his face and cut arms wrapped tightly around his legs.

The boy lifted his head at the newly arriving bit of light flittering through to him. His big hopeful brown eyes looked up to Wolverine. Fear quickly clouded the hope out of the boy’s eyes and a high pitched scream tore from his mouth as the threw himself further back into the fallen filling cabinet.

Rogue swore under her breath and pushed Logan back behind her. He went without argument, letting her take the lead. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, are you alright? Does anything hurt?”

“No! No! Stay away from me!” he cried out, pressing his body as hard as he could into the metal cabinet.

Rogue glanced behind her to Logan before turning back to the violently crying child. She tried to soften her voice the best she could, hopefully ease away some on his trembles. “We got to get you out of here, honey. It’s not safe, do you understand?”

“No!” He sobbed again. “Don’t touch me!”

“Fine.” Logan spoke over Rogue’s shoulder. “We won’t touch you. But you gotta come out from under there, kid.”

“You wanna kill me,” his words came out in between sobs.

“No,” Rogue quickly corrected him. “We wanna help you. We don’t want to hurt you at all, I promise. Come on out now.”

The little boy wiped his nose on the shoulder of his shirt but it did nothing to slow the torrent of tears going through him. “I want my mommy.” He choked and coughed some before saying in more of a whisper, “I want my mommy” again.

Rogue’s bright green eyes began to haze over with moisture of their own. She barely felt Logan’s hand on her shoulder. “Okay, sweetheart. Okay. We’ll help you find your mama, I promise.”

“No!” He screamed again, nearly splitting Logan’s ear drums. “You’re freaks! You’re just like them! You did this! You took her! Where’s my mommy?! What’d you do to my mommy?!”

“We’re not them, kid.” Logan tried to suppress his growl. “We’re the good guys. Now, my friend here said we’d help you find her and we will. But she ain’t under there, is she?”

“NO! You’re all the same!”

Snot was not freely flowing from his tiny dirt smudged nose and it was all Rogue could do not to reach out and wipe it away for him. The poor small thing was nearly seizuring his tremors were so bad. She just prayed to God that they could talk him out before the building collapsed. And that she hadn’t seen his mommy already somewhere out in the halls.

“We don’t have time for this, Rogue,” Logan growled in her ear. She knew the next thing he was going to say was to just grab the kid. But she couldn’t see doing that to him. There had to be another way to get him to come out.

“Don’t you think he’s been through enough already?” She replied with a snap in her voice to the question before he could ask it. She definitely did not want the kid to hear him saying that.

“He’s gonna get us all kill,” Logan countered.

They glared at each other. Blue and green matching up in a challenge of wills. Rogue sighed and turned to the little boy again, not willing to do it Logan’s way just yet. She just needed to plead with him a little bit more. “Listen, honey. I know you’re scared of us. And that’s okay. Big boys get scared all the time. But this big building isn’t in very good shape right now and you’re just not safe enough under there. And I know this is hard for you to believe, what with what you’ve been through, but we don’t want you gettin’ hurt. So please just come out from under there and the three of us will go find mama together.”

“You...you wanna hurt me. You’re trying to trick me,” he mumbled through his sobs.

“Rogue.” Logan warned.

She nodded, reluctantly. Evidently they weren’t getting through to him. To add to the tension the ‘X’ on Rogue’s belt beeped again. Cyclops’ voice filled the air around them, nearly as nervous and shaky as the little boy’s in front of them. “Rogue? Please tell me you’re out of the building?! We have a full collapse of the west wing. Rogue?!”

Rogue touched her fingertips to the communicator. “I’m here, Scott. We’re not out yet but me and Logan are both fine. We’ve...we’ve run into a complication.”

“What kind of complication? Do you need backup?”

“No. No, don’t send anyone else in,” she said, looking at the boy, who had now curled himself in the fetal position under one of the open drawers of the filling cabinet. “We’ll be out in a minute.”

“Well hurry the hell up!”

“You heard the fearless leader, darlin’,” Logan started to push her out of the way. “Time to get out of here.”

She got to her feet and took a few steps back to get out of Logan’s way as he tried to squeeze his hulk of a body in through the opening. At the boy’s first chilling scream she covered her mouth and closed her eyes. The screaming continued, on and on, filling the tiny destroyed room around them. She could hear what she figured was his tiny little fist and his tiny little feet colliding with Logan’s hard body through the terror but she kept her eyes tightly closed. She didn’t want to see it flooded over his entire tiny, little face. She stayed back as they went past and didn’t move until the terrified cries were far away down the hall.




What I said By Norman Stock

after the terror I
went home and cried and
said how could this happen and
how could such a thing be and
why why I mean how could
anything so horrible and how could
anyone do such a thing to us and what
will happen next and how can we live now
its impossible to understand its impossible
to do anything after this and what will any of us do now and how will
we live and how can we expect to go on after this
I said and I said this is too much to take no one can take a thing like this
after the terror yes and then I said let’s kill them