She couldn’t sleep. Never mind that the last time she had slept full eight hours a night was weeks ago, her mind kept buzzing and whirring, trying to form a solution to a problem. A solution she didn’t even want to find.
How the hell do you kill a man that can’t die?
At first she had been adamant in her refusals to aid professor and Logan in their quest, but things had gotten to a point where there were no other options anymore. Logan spent his days heavily sedated, thick steel manacles binding his wrists behind his back, wandering aimlessly around the mansion, dozing off every now and then from sheer exhaustion. Students had long ago gotten used to finding him sleeping, snoring softly, from odd places. They had received strict instructions not to approach him in those situations, but to inform professor instead. He’d send somebody to wake him up, or possibly drag him away from a classroom he had wandered in to in his dazed state.
And he was rapidly developing immunity to drugs Jean kept loading in to his system.
She sighed and sat up. She wasn’t going to get sleep. Not lying here and contemplating the best way to kill Logan. They had to be wrong. There had to be something professor had missed. Some way to clear Logan’s head without killing him. She would find it, and they could all laugh about this little episode in the future. In very, very far future. She got off from the bed, pulled a bathrobe over her nightgown and grabbed her laptop.
She walked through silent corridors and halls, slippers swishing softly against the thick carpet. Big cup of hot cocoa was what she needed first. Then a silent, but not too comfortable corner to tuck in to with the laptop. Preferably somewhere where she would have a view over the back garden. She would go through every paper and document, every source. She would go through them as many times as it took to find a way to bring Logan back from shadows he had fallen to.
“Oh, hi Jean…” Greeting died to her lips. It wasn’t Jean in the kitchen as she had first thought. Logan stood there, staring in to open fridge.
“Logan?” She called him. Logan turned to look at her, wrinkling his nose awkwardly.
“Itches. My nose. It itches…” She put her laptop to the table and reached to scratch his nose. Logan closed his eyes and let out a relieved sigh.
“Thanks…”
“No problem. Hungry?” She asked. Logan shook his head.
“Could you give me a beer?”
“Okay…” She wasn’t sure if would it be wise, but what was the worst that could happen? Logan already spent his days in a drunken stupor. She took out a bottle and opened it, placing it in front of him, and turned to dig deeper, to find the milk for her cocoa. She heard Logan muttering something.
“What was that?” She asked.
“…pour it to a glass?”
“Oh, of course!” She retrieved a tall glass from the cupboard over the sink and poured the beer in to it, placing it in front of him and going back to her task of heating the milk and mixing cocoa powder in to it.
Ten minutes later she was finally satisfied for the end result. Just the right amount of cocoa and sugar. Just the right amount of cream. And tiny marshmallows. She took a tentative sip, letting out satisfied sigh, and turned to take her laptop.
Logan was sitting at the table, glass of ice-cold beer in front of him. He hadn’t even touched to it. He just sat there, looking at it.
“Something wrong with it?” Marie asked worried. It was unusual for Logan to nurse a single beer this long. Again he muttered something.
“I’m sorry, you have to talk louder. All of us haven’t been blessed with enhanced hearing.”
“… a straw?”
“A straw?” She wasn’t sure if she had heard him right. Was he asking a straw?
“Yes.”
“Okay…” She retrieved a packet of plastic straws.
“Umm… There’s green, red, yellow and blue, which color…”
“Just give me a fucking straw, okay!”
“Okay, okay! No need to get angry… There. I gave you blue one.”
“I know what color it is, Marie. I’m not fucking three years old.”
“Sorry…”
“Forget it… What’s keeping you up this late?” Logan asked after taking a long sip from his beer.
“Couldn’t sleep. Kept thinking. What if there’s something we have missed?” Logan cocked his eyebrow.
“You and Xavier have already gone through everything trice. Wouldn’t you already had found it if there was something?”
“I don’t know. I thought it couldn’t hurt to check once more. I was going to look up some older files and go through my notes I wrote when I was going through those tapes you made with professor.”
“Need a hand? I’m kind of tied up now, but I have nothing but time…” Logan smirked, rattling the chain that bound his wrists.
“Are you sure that it’s a good idea? To look at that stuff? Maybe we should just go and ask Jean to give you something to help you sleep…”
“She already gave me a shot little over half an hour ago.” Half an hour ago?
“Then how… Why… What…”
“Drug she’s using doesn’t work anymore. Felt a little dizzy for couple of minutes, that’s all. So… It would probably be a good idea to get to work, huh?”
“Uh-huh…”
“What the hell did they do to me? Jesus! This is sick!”
“Maybe it would be better if you went to bed…”
“No, no… I’m fine. Christ… Could you turn the page for me?”
“Use this.”
“A pencil? Marie, what mmph!”
“Keep it in your mouth and turn the pages with it.”
“Mmm-hhm.”
She went through page after page, eyes practically glued to the screen of the computer. Only sounds in the kitchen were ticking of the clock, occasional mumbles and grunts from Logan and rustling of the paper when he fought to turn pages with the pencil she had slipped between his lips.
“Whaddis?” Logan mumbled and tapped the document in front of him with the pencil.
“What?” Logan spat out the pencil.
“What’s this? There’s something about some sort of implant they were going to install. Some kind of chip.”
“Jean has scanned you dozens of times. She has gone those scans through with a fucking microscope. If there were some chip, she would have already found it. Maybe they changed their plans…”
“I don’t think so. Look at the dates. There’s ten days missing. What happened during those days? This is the only part professor wasn’t able to bring back. What was so fucking horrible compared to the rest of this shit, that I couldn’t remember it? There are moments where they cut out my fucking organs while I’m awake, for Christ’s sakes, and I could remember it happening. Every detail. What the hell happened during these ten days?”
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