It took hours before Stryker finally got his fill of his ‘entertainment’ and left him to himself. He wove in and out of consciousness, unable to escape the nightmare. Awake or asleep he was stripped bare and strapped to cold metal and wet from blood or sweat or whatever.
It was pitch black and originally he though the pain had blinded him. But there was some commotion outside of his door and then a streak of light before the darkness returned around him.
He thought for sure that during his ‘bonding’ with Stryker the bastard had actually screwed up. That he was finally going to die and be rid of it all. Surely he wouldn’t heal if he bled out. But the man had talent, knew more about how much his mutation could take then he did.
Straddling the border between nightmare and hell was slowly driving him insane. Hours into the prolonged isolation part of his ‘breaking’ his mind managed to concoct her smell. Cinnamon and honey forced its way to him through the blood, gunpowder, and formic acid. He focused on it, trying to push out everything else. Maybe, just maybe, he’d remember that smell, even after his memory was wiped clean and he was a blood-lusting killing machine again. If he concentrated hard enough on the spicy sweetness more things came clearer. He could almost hear her footsteps too– light and quick, slightly off-balanced.
He closed his eyes and fought back the image of the tank and tried to picture her instead. It was so easy, now that her scent was strong in his mind. Old, strong green eyes surrounded by a baby face; finally he had found some sort of a rest from the grotesque nightmare he was in.
A quiet, long drawn out metallic moan came from somewhere in the room. His mind was too lost in its oasis to pinpoint it. Or care.
“Logan.” Her voice whispered to him, calling him from somewhere.
“Logan.” He lost himself in the soothing thick southern accent that melted over his nerves. The pain lessened each time it said his name, a sweet, ethereal healing chant. “Logan.”
“Logan, sugah. Ya gotta try real hard ta wake up for me now.”
The lines between reality and unconsciousness must have blurred worse then he thought because he was sure he had opened his eyes. But opening his eyes should have meant that she wasn’t there anymore.
“Hey there, cowboy. An’ here ah thought ya was gonna stand me up all night long.” Her eyes. They weren’t shimmering emerald green he had envisioned. They were dark, stale and puffy.
“No,” he groaned, flinching at the pain that soared through his brutalized throat at getting the word out.
“You’re... you’re not supposed to be here.” Each word was edged with glass and cut deeper and deeper.
A soft cotton gloved hand laid lightly over his stomach. The same spot Stryker’s cold rubber one was hours ago. “Neitha are ya. That’s why ahm here.”
They were fucking with his head already. That had to be it. They were screwing with his memories, using them against him to make him crack. She was wearing the old gloves, torn and dirty. She had gotten knew ones. It couldn’t be her. They couldn’t have caught her. Not already. They just couldn’t have.
Fiery tears leaked from his eyes, burning down his cheek and made the head inside his throat an unbearable inferno.
“No... No, you can’t be here—“ he chocked hard. “The car, everything, it was to keep you safe.” His voice wavered and he tried to blink her image back into focus again. “It was to keep you out of here...”
“Ah know, sugah.” She whispered into his ear, running her other hand through his hair to try and sooth him. “But ta be fair ya ruined mah plan ta keep *ya* out of here first. Guess we both made quite a pile up.”
She jumped back as he suddenly began thrashing, his agitation taking a hold of him. “No. No! You can’t be here! You can’t be real. It can’t be for nothing. Please, please it can’t all be for nothing.”
She had to bit down hard on her bottom lip to fight back the tears as she watched him. Her memories from the Them she had in her head prepared her for a lot of the things she might see, and she was able to brace herself before she came in. But none of them, not a damn one, included him crying. She remembered seeing him awake as he was pumped full of hot liquid metal and he hadn’t cried. And here he was a crying mess and it was completely her fault.
“Shhh... Okay. Okay, Logan.” She forced a tentative smile to her face as she stepped back beside him and carefully put her hand on his arm. “Ya right. Ah ain’t really here. Ah ain’t real.”
She waited as his eyes searched her face and she fought to keep the smile up. He relaxed slowly and let his head fall back down onto the table he was strapped to.
“You’re not real.” He repeated with a sigh and she quickly nodded and wiped her hand over his face, desperate to remove the evidence of what she’d done to him.
“Naw, not in tha least bit. But if ah don’t get ya out of here ah’ll neva get mah wings.”
He starred back at her silently as she could tell her was confused as to just how a figment of his imagination was going to help him escape. But she was. She was going to get him the fuck out of here if she had to drain everybody in the state to do it.
She took a deep breath and steadied herself as much as possible before she turned her attention back to the sight that made her stall in the door.
His legs were covered in blood that was slowly trickling from the long, deep cuts down both his shins. Her gut flipped over the closer she got. Two metal clamps in each leg held the skin back, showing off the tainted gleam of metal inside.
“If...if ah take these out,” She began and tried her best to still her trembling hand before she laid it on his knee, inches above one of the gashes. “If ah take these out ya will heal, right?”
Because of the restraint on his chest he couldn’t lift his head up enough to see her but he could feel her hand and the searing just below it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll heal. I heal.”
She nodded and tried to smile at him again to encourage the sanity she could see slowly returning to his eyes. “Ya sure do, sugah. Alright, ah’ll... jus’ let me get these damned bonds of ya first.”
“No.” He barked and flinched again at the pain it caused in his tender throat. “Take them out first. I... I don’t want to hurt you.”
She was going to give him an ‘it hurts me more to see you like this’ but it wasn’t about her. If that was what he wanted then that was what she was going to do. Hell, at this point she would have even given some consideration to calling Them in if he had asked her to. Thankfully he hadn’t said that or worse to just leave him and get out. “Okay. Should ah count or somethin’ or jus’ do it?”
“Just do it.”
“Okay,” she repeated, more to herself than to him, as she starred down at the sight in front of her. She took a second to look over the hideous contraptions lodging firmly into his legs, not wanting to hurt him more than necessary. Lt. Anderson guided her eyes to a release trigger on the side.
One hand grasped the side of his leg to steady it while the other moved to the clamp and lightly lay over. She tried not to push it any farther into his leg but she had to have a grasp on it or she couldn’t pull it out. Quickly she flipped the trigger and pulled the first clamp.
The claws sprang out of their holding just as she pulled it away and he grunted, but managed to stay muted. His body was another story and it screamed loudly, bucking hard off the slab, the bonds wrapped around his arms, chest, and legs, being the only thing keeping him onto the bed.
“Ahm sorry,” She mumbled but quickly moved to the next one. The process was repeated three more times before each offensive device was thrown to the floor.
She tried to sooth him by ‘shhh’ him softly and massaging the sides of both his legs; her gloves were stained with his blood already, a little more wouldn’t hurt. Sure enough, right before her eyes the gap in the skin slowly started to shrink, joining itself back together.
“Alright, sugah.” She quickly moved to his head again, pulling out a key from shirt and reaching for the first wrist bond. “One of tha nice men in tha hall was very generous an’ said ya could barrow his pants.”
She laid the folded black square beside him. His now free hand slowly moved to touch it but was stopped as she leaned over him, plastering her chest over his to reach his other hand. He was trapped and could do nothing but lay there until she finished. He couldn’t help but wonder if she did it on purpose, the action brought her neck extremely close to his nose and he was practically immersed in the cinnamon and honey confection that blocked off all his other senses. She was gone and at his feet sooner than he was ready for and he jerked at the gunpowder corrupting through her solacing scent.
“Okay.” She was back around his side again, returning the key back into her shirt. “Ah don’t mean ta put pressure on ya or anythin’, but ya gotta be able ta walk. We’re awfully damn far in here. An’ there ain’t no columns.”
She watched as the muscles in his arms and back danced and jerked under his skin as he pushed himself up. He grabbed the pants and unfolded them, putting one foot in.
“You’re not going to make a joke about me being nude?” He huffed, his eyes and attention all on trying to get the pants on without actually having to stand up.
“Ah haven’t seen anythin’ funny.” His head jerked up at the seriousness in her voice only to find her face just as stern. She shrugged at his shocked reaction, and forced her third smile for the day. “Ya’ll be tha first one ta know when ah do, though.”
He nodded, flashing a weak grin of his own.
“Ya sure ya can walk, Logan?” She asked, the humor dying in her voice again.
“I can walk.” He strongly declared and pushed off of the table.
His feet connected with the ground but his knees either forgot or weren’t strong enough to lock and he grabbed the table to keep from buckling. Rogue was quickly at his side, her hands wrapped around his arm, *again* pointlessly trying her damnest to hold him up.
“Logan—“
“I can do it.” He interrupted her. Strong, defiant sapphire eyes meet hers where up till now pained frantic ones were. She nodded to him, biting down on her lip again, but kept her hands locked around him.
His mutation was lagging horribly from the vast about of healing it had to take care of during Stryker’s visit and not having any fuel put in. But it would work, it always did. It just needed a little bit more time.
He leaned against the table and took several deep breaths. It just needed some more time. He turned his head to the pillar of a little girl at his side. “How did you get in here, anyway?”
“Ahm not really here, remember, sugah?”
“I mean it, Rogue. How’d you get in? Where are we? What’s it like out there?”
“The same way ah always do. Ah don’t have a fuckin’ clue. An’ watch were ya step in tha hall, there’s quite a few bodies layin’ around.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, slightly surprised. That was the closest to a straight answer he’d ever gotten out of her the first time around. Slowly he leaned down and buried his nose in her hair. She didn’t flinch that time, but stayed uncomfortably still. Still, even standing in the middle of a secret military base she didn’t smell the least bit afraid.
Well if she wasn’t afraid then neither was he. “Come on, darlin’. Let’s get tha fuck out of here.”
He took her hand, it was sickeningly damp, probably from his blood, but his hand couldn’t have been much better. The first step was careful but he could feel how much stronger his legs were already.
“But Logan, there’s a rumor goin’ round mah head that there’s a captain here that plays a mean yahtzee. Ah bet we could take him.”
He jerked around to glare at her but was met with a naughty little grin plastered all over her face. Her hand in his gave him a little squeeze.
He couldn’t help it, a small smile spread onto his face too. Guess that was supposed to be her joke for him. “We’ll look him up later, kid. Let’s go.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Logan and Rogue have something else in common now. Logan thinks they're both crazy.