He had found the girl from a back room of a fight bar. Lonely figure sitting on a stool in the corner, swathed in heavy layers of cotton and denim even when it was near roasting inside. She had just sat there, huddled, staring dumbly off to distance when he had stumbled in with the conquest of that night, a woman who had seen her better days several years ago.

Generally he wasn’t a shy person. Modesty was something he had rarely gotten taste of, and usually found it needless. It didn’t occur to him to inquire about the girl before he was fucking the bleached old hag he had snagged from behind the cash register just before the MC announced the cage closed for tonight.

“Who’s she?”
“Never mind about that. It’s blind and mute. And a mutie on top of that all.”
“I didn’t ask what she is. I asked who she is?”

Blonde hadn’t been in the mood for playing twenty questions. She had had an entirely different game in her mind. He had been more than willing to comply, his cock hardened to almost painful proportions from the beating he had taken and given in the cage. He had fucked the blonde on top of a rickety table, the girl sitting in the corner unmoving, never reacting, not even when the blonde hag came screaming and wailing so hard that he thought he was going to be deaf for the rest of the evening.

“You mind if I take her with me?”
“Huh?”
“The girl. You mind if I take her with me?”
“What girl… Oh, Rogue. How much?”
“How much for what?”
“How much is she worth for you?”

He had bought the girl from the hag he had been boning for a price that would have gotten him two beers back in the bar. He had closed the fly of his jeans and buckled his belt, all the while staring at the girl who seemed to stare right back at him with those unmoving eyes, never even blinking.

“Time to get going, darling.”

He frowned before remembering. Blind. He stepped closer and laid his palm on her shoulder. The girl let out a strangled moan, noise coming somewhere deep inside of her chest rather than from her throat and mouth, trying to twist away from his hold and nearly falling off from the rickety stool.

“You’re coming with me. My name is Logan. I’m going to take care of you.”

Words spoken with utter conviction. Later on, when he looked back, remembering that moment, he’d frown and then smile little hesitantly. Take care of her? There had been nothing to take care of. The nature had already taken care of everything, leaving the people surrounding the girl the mere task of observing, staying out of her reach and hoping that she’d be comfortable.

He had thrown her over his shoulder. She had been screaming all the way through the bar. Just screaming as he trudged through the crowd, screaming with that bird-like voice of hers. Not moving. Not struggling. And eventually she had stopped even screaming. When he had sat on his bike, intending to hoist the girl behind him he had found the reason for her sudden silence. She had passed out. Face pale, black and blue from places her skin had touched his shoulder and back.

He had gotten off the bike, cradling the unconscious girl on her arms as she was spun from glass. Walked to a nearby motel and paid a room for the night.

He had placed the girl to the bed, then proceeded to wrap off layers of cloth from her, peeling her as if he were stripping bare a rosebud, pedal after another, until she had lain nude, and he was able to see the damage he had done just by touching her. Angry purple and yellow, fading to green and blue, distinctive shape of his fingers and palms, rounded blotches from his shoulder marring the porcelain that had been hiding underneath denim and cotton. And he hadn’t been able to resist. He had traced one especially dark bruise running from her shoulder, down her collarbone, ending between her barely developed breasts. He had felt sudden tingling that had nothing to do with anything than the basest of reactions, survival. Every nerve and fiber in him screaming to not to touch her. She’d burn him; consume him completely if he let that happen. And when she suddenly opened her eyes, sharp and lucid gaze zeroing in to his rather muddled from too many beers he felt like it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Not a bad way to end his days.

For a long moment she had just stared at him, questioning look on her face. Then she had sat up slowly, not even noticing her undressed state before she had brought up her delicate right hand, intending to cup his bearded cheek.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

He had wracked his mind in vain, trying to come up with a plausible reason for why he had seen it fit to take her with him. And there was none. No reason at all. Except that he had gotten curious. So he took her hand that still hovered hesitantly in the air and brought it on his cheek, pressing her palm flat against his skin. Felt the pull. Saw her eyes getting clearer. Felt his own vision and hearing falling strangely numb, muted.

Rest of the night he spend on the bed, on his back, following the girl with his murky gaze as she went around in the room, listening even the smallest of cracks and creaks, stopping to stare at a cockroach crawling over shabby carpet and just staring out from the window, her face lifted so that she could see the stars above.

Next morning his decision was made. He could smell the disease in her, sickening stench of approaching death. But she seemed satisfied, even happy now that she could see and hear. He’d take her home. At least he could offer her something more than a rickety stool at the back of a dingy fight bar.