“Rogue, I need you to do something.”
She could still hear professor Xavier’s words echo in her head. But she couldn’t see the stack of tapes and papers in front of her, every single one of them labeled with a name ‘Wolverine’, and a session number. She had barely started listening the first tape when she had thrown the recorder away, smashing it against the far wall of her office. Instead of papers and tapes she saw Logan. Naked, bleeding, strapped on to a metal plate, screaming his lungs out when scalpels and wound retractors parted his flesh.
“Why?”
“Because we needed to know,” professor spoke from the doorway.
“But why Logan?” She asked, feeling bile rise to the back of her throat when professor answered.
“Because he was the one we could trust to go in there and come back out alive.”
“Whose idea it was?” She asked fighting back nausea that tried to overwhelm her.
“His. We knew about those places, but we had no proof. Nothing, just vague rumors about what was going on behind closed doors. At first we thought he could go in as one of them. Get a job as a janitor, or maybe a security guard. When that failed, he decided that we should continue anyway. He would let them catch him. He would go in and get as much information as he could, and would return as soon as he was able. I managed to monitor him every now and then through Cerebro, on moments when he wasn’t too heavily sedated, and from that I knew that he was still alive. All I could do was to wait for his return.”
Her gaze drifted from professor back to the table in front of her. File after file, tape after tape, filled with every imaginable atrocity that could be committed by human means. Few of them even by inhuman means. Pitting two mutants against each other wasn’t a rare event in those places where Logan had spent sixteen years during which she had played with dolls and her friends, getting education and coddling from the real world. He had a metal skeleton. He had metal claws buried inside of his arms. Permanent souvenirs from his trip to Hell.
“Those tapes and files contain all the information I was able to retrieve from his mind. All the proof we need to shut down those centers and maybe even make them to remove the registration act. I do not wish to expose too many peoples to this information. Since you have developed a relationship of sorts with Logan, I think it should be you who puts it all together.”
“But…”
“This is not a punishment, though I understand that it may feel like one. But this will help you to understand better the situation you’re getting in to. He’s not the same man you met when you were just a child, Rogue,” professor said and left, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
That night she went to bed feeling miserable. She had spent whole day listening the tapes and jotting down notes, trying to form coherent sentences while all she wanted to do was to curl up and die, hide from horrors which Logan’s strangely calm voice described, as if they hadn’t been performed to him. Now she found it impossible to forget, to detach her mind from that task. Every time she closed her eyes she could see a sickening slideshow of him, of Logan, in various states of hurt and blood.
“He shouldn’t have done that.” She opened her eyes. Logan was sitting on the floor of her room, leaning his back against the door, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers.
“Xavier?” She asked. Logan nodded.
“There was no reason to shove that load of shit and filth upon you. It was none of your business.”
“Oh, God, Logan… It was horrible! Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“Say what? Tell you the whole fucking tale? For what? To score pity points?” He took a sip from his beer and laughed bitterly.
“You and Xavier are the only ones besides me who know where I was and what I did. As far as the rest of this freak show is concerned, I was on the road, drinking my ass off and getting laid. I prefer it that way. I don’t need sympathy or pity. I did what I had to do to stop it happening again to some poor schmuck who wouldn’t get out of there alive. I did it because I could. I would do it again if needed.”
“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered quickly. Her mouth felt dry and her throat was too parched to speak out loud. Logan snorted.
“Then stop pitying me and do your goddamned work! I didn’t do it so that you and Xavier could stuff those tapes to the back of a filing cabinet because you were too terrified to write down what is on them!” Logan almost shouted and stood up, opening the door and turning to leave.
“And get some sleep, for Christ’s sakes. It gets harder and more scattered towards the end,” he added more softly before closing the door and stomping off.
It took her whole year to go through the whole material and form a single document that revealed Logan’s gruesome story in detail. He had been right. At first his memories were coherent, but the further she ventured to that black world of blood and grime harder it got to distinguish hard facts from delusional ramblings. Things he had gone through, drug regimen they kept him under, and sheer monotony of days had turned him nearly insane, and there were moments she wasn’t sure if he was there at all. And then there were other moments that made her cry. Long periods filled with silence, after one whispered word. Word that floated through screams and ragged intakes of breath.
“Marie…”
During that year which she spent cooped up to her office Logan made himself scarce, hardly bothering to nod a greeting when they passed by on the corridors. She noticed that he kept his own company, avoiding other residents as well as her too. And it seemed to suit just fine everybody. He was the Wolverine. Grouchy, bitter and mean being lurking in the shadows, drinking and brawling, attending missions when he felt like it, mostly just lounging around and driving them nuts just with his presence. She started to wonder if Xavier had been truly right. If there really wasn’t anything left from the man she had learned to know to some extent when she was a child.
“It’s finished?” She shrugged out of her thoughts and turned to look at him. Logan was standing at the doorstep, leaning against the doorjamb, that ever-present cigar dangling from his fingers.
“Finished,” she affirmed, not sure of how she should respond or react to his sudden interest.
“Good. Ready to go?” Logan asked. She scrunched her forehead in confusion.
“Go? To where?”
“We have to get you drunk or laid. Preferably both.”
“Huh?”
“Trust me. It’ll make you feel better.”
“It’s so fucking unfair…” She slurred, trying to focus her gaze. There seemed to be several Logans, all of them sitting in front of her and swaying back and forth.
“What’s unfair?” Logans asked. She had to think about it for a moment.
“I’m ready to keel over… And you’re not even tipsy! It’s so fucking unfair!”
“One of us have to be sober if we’re ever going to get to the next part of our plan,” Three Logans smirked lazily.
“Next part?” Was there something else? Had she forgotten something?
“The part where you get laid.”
“Uhh… I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now…” She was ready to pass out.
“Besides, who would want me? I’m a freaking mutie!” She emphasized that fact by pointing at the tattoo that glowed eerily blue from under the concealer she had applied carefully hours ago when she had been getting ready for her night out with Logan.
“Come on! Since when did you turn in to a wuss? Stomach in, breasts out! Show me you’re a woman!”
“Fine. I’ll suck in my stomach. I’ll stick out my boobs. But I will definitely not show you, or anybody else if I’m a woman or not…” She grumbled, straightened her back and whipped off strands of long, brown hair that had fallen over her face. That defiant move made her tilt to the side, and she almost fell off from the chair she was sitting on. She managed to drag herself back upright.
“Christ! I’m complete klutz! This is so fucking embarrassing…” Logan snickered and caught her hands before she hid her face.
“Don’t. You’re cute when you’re blushing.”
“Cute? I’m cute? Spank you very much, mister!” She hissed, downing her drink. It did nothing to alleviate the heat that was caressing her cheekbones. It only served to intensify the feeling up to a point where she felt that she would most likely spontaneously combust if she didn’t get out of here soon.
“And now would be a good time to go home…” She heard Logan’s voice murmuring from a distance, which was very odd, because she could feel his hands around her, his chest against her side, his breath tickling her throat, which had to mean that in fact he was awfully close to her.
“But I didn’t even get laid yet…” She whined sleepily, grabbing the front of his jacket and shaking him to make her point clear.
“Not yet. Later.”
“You promise?” She asked, focusing, and finally managing to catch his eyes.
“Cross my heart and hope not to die.”
When she woke up later she was at first confused and disoriented. Room felt all wrong. Bed felt all wrong.
“What the hell…” Somebody was snoring next to her. She bolted off from the bed, regretted moving so abruptly when her stomach and head protested, and took in her surroundings. Room looked vaguely familiar. And in fact, even the snoring sounded somehow familiar. She crept closer to the bed and squinted her eyes, trying to see better in the dim light that seeped through closed curtains. Logan. She was in Logan’s room. Quick inspection revealed nothing out of place. She was fully clothed. No used condoms lying around. Even Logan had some clothes on. A black T-shirt and boxers. She let out a relieved sigh and snuck to the door.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Logan asked.
“Uh… To my room? To my own bed?”
“What’s the rush? We never get to the last part of our plan…” Logan smirked, turning on his side and rubbing his chest.
“First off, it was your plan. And second… I… There’s… Fuck! I’m sure there are several good reasons why we shouldn’t go through with that wacky blueprint of yours.” She squashed the sudden urge to grab something heavy and hurl it at him when Logan’s smirk got only wider.
“You sure were on board with that idea last night. In fact, if you hadn’t passed out…”
“I’m not listening! I’m not listening!” She slammed her palms over her ears and started to singsong from the top of her lungs to drown out his voice. When it seemed that he stopped talking she stopped and let her hands fall to her sides.
“… As I said, if you hadn’t passed out, we would have probably fucked the living daylights out of each other.”
“Logan!”
She bolted out of the room and choose the shortest possible route to her own. It didn’t occur her before she locked the door to her room behind her, that she had to be nuts. Completely insane. There had got to be something seriously wrong with the way she was thinking. There was no way she had just given up the possibility to see if the rumors circling around about his proves in bed were true.
“And I wasn’t just thinking about Logan in bed. I wasn’t… Oh, fuck. I’m screwed.”
“Not yet you are. You ran out too fast,” she heard his voice through the door. He sounded clearly amused.
“Go away!”
“I’ll go. I just came to bring your boots. You forgot them in to my room. I leave them here.”
She waited for several moments, listening the sound of retreating footsteps, before she dared to open the door. Corridor was empty for except her boots that sat next to the door. There was something tucked in to the left boot. A slip of paper, with a small key attached to it. ‘Moving out. I’ll be at the cabin.’
She knew that the key would fit perfectly to the lock on the cabin’s front door.
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