The Phoenix Compound
November 31


I look back over what I've told myself, what I've come to believe, and I know it's wrong not because of what I've admitted but what I have conveniently forgotten. The things I have said do not exist come back to life between us, immaterial and material at the same instant. Like a cement floor, like the absence of light. It is something you can touch but not hold; glimpse but not gaze upon.

She believes she knows what happened between us. I believe I know. Somewhere in the middle lies the truth. We're not the only ones interested in finding out what that is. Scott wants it too, or thinks he wants it. He needs to put two and two together and have it equal four so he can find justification for hating me. For trying-- and almost succeeding-- to kick my guts inside-out earlier this afternoon. I've got news for the kid: two plus two doesn't always equal four. Sometimes it equals five, sometimes it equals nothing.

I don't know where I heard that; I think I remember it from a book Marie used to read a lot. It was named after a year...1974 or maybe 1984. She talked about it non-stop until I finally broke down and read it just to prove that Scooter's not the only one who can understand fancy stories. I understood it all, but I didn't agree with it, or even like it very much. A man and a woman tried to fall in love in a society where an all-powerful government controlled every thought. In the end, they gave up. Of course, there was torture and starvation and the usual brutality, but ultimately they chose to surrender each other just to spare themselves a little pain.

(Never, I mumbled under my breath, rubbing my hands over my knuckles. No way they'd make me do that to her.)

I should be less rash with my promises. Maybe then they wouldn't break so easily. Ironic, I'd forgotten about that book until today. Until now, when I watch her wash blood from the rag she's using to clean my face, and I remember. I remember what the man and the woman said to one another when they were face to face again, after the torture and the giving up.

/I betrayed you, she said./
/I betrayed you, he said./

I feel those words in my gut when Marie turns around; an expectation to say them and hear her echo them in return. But, nothing so direct. We've lost the ability to deal it out honest and take it in straight. We resort to lies of silence: lies because the truth takes words neither of us are willing to say, even if we knew what they were.

"You two could have pulled punches out there today."

A twist of the rag between gloved fingers; pink-red water drips Into the rusted sink. Some of it, inevitably, clings to the gloves. She could have taken them off. A year ago, she would have.

"Tell that to Summers."

The kid wasn't lying when he said he'd been practicing. He hits with more force, more often, with less hesitation than I remember. Back when we sparred before missions, he always had a slight reluctance to his punches, a bit of strength held in check as if he had to justify each swing he took. Not anymore. He fights hard. Dirty. He fights like me. I wonder what finally convinced him to let it out.

"He was just trying to do his job."

"And what's that?"

"Protecting Jean. And me."

/No, darling,/I want to tell her, /You're not his job. You're mine./

Has he ever slipped up too? Or does she reserve that sort of memory for me alone?

"Why'd he drag it out for so long?"v

Even after I started winning-- it took longer than expected; my arms were starting to grow tired of finding new places to hit him-- he refused to give me so much as an inch. That made it harder. I used to watch hockey with the guy; I was in his wedding. We might not be on speaking terms at the moment, but that still didn't change the fact that I thoroughly disliked having to beat him unconscious in front of his wife. He wouldn't let me do it quickly, either. Had to hold on until a lucky right to the temple knocked him cold. She unfolds the rag, dips it into a bowl of boiled water (clean at least in theory).

"It's hard for him to lose this kind of thing."

"It's happened before?"

My stomach starts to knot up from something deeper than bruised muscles. Please don't let her say he lost her in a match. I'm not stupid; I know what that means here. What it'd bring back for her. A moment of anger....why'd he bring her here...why didn't he find somewhere else, safer....

/At least he didn't abandon her./

Leave it to my demons to bring up the obvious.

"It didn't happen to me."

She didn't have to tell me that, she didn't have to but she did. But another thought follows, almost as cold.

"Jean?"

A nod.

"Last month. It was...bad."

No, not Jean, too. That's not fair. Now I understand why Summers hits so hard. Once you lose someone like that, once you realize how small and helpless you really are, you spend the rest of your life trying to make up for it. Every day, every fight. You could win it all and it would still never be enough.

"Has he ever lost you?"

"No."

She smiles, but no relief or cynicism comes to sight. Only an upward curve of her lips, cold and sharp like it was cut into glass with a stone.

"No one wants a death warrant. At least no one here."

"You're not a death warrant. Not in my book."

"Of course I am."

She sits down on the edge of the bed, one hand tilting my head back while the other dabs the cloth across a fat cut above my eyebrow.

"For the first time in your life, I could kill you if I wanted."

"So why not?"

Our eyes collide; silent dares. I wait for love or hate but there is Only distance. A remote gleam, winter sunlight falling across coal.

"The last time I killed a man was back in January. I try not to exceed a quota of two murders in a year's time."

"That wasn't murder--"

"Don't tell me what it was."

She pulls her hand back abruptly. A patch of dried blood sticks to the cloth as she moves; a wound opens into fresh blood. Neither of us flinch.

I catch her hand in mine before she can get too far.

"Marie...,"

Her fingers stiffen into concrete, rigid, unmoving. The lines of her face mold into a similar mask. I try not to wince.

"Marie, look, you don't have to do this for me."

I flick my gaze toward the bowl then back to her.

"I've been beat up before, and I can take care of myself."

I want to know why she bothers, why she extends the motions when her hands and face turn stone underneath my touch. It's like the kiss when I claimed her; I never know if it is merely a form, an endured ritual, or if it is a promise of absolution. I need to know this. I want to put two and two together and have it equal four, just this once.

"Who ever said I was doing this for you?"

She twists her hand free of mine.

"It might be that I'm just selfish. That this is all for me."

"Why?"

"Because."

The rag brushes a smear of blood at the corner of my lips, and I almost imagine that her fingers push through the cloth a second longer than absolutely necessary.

"I never could stand to see your pain."

Her eyes crack when she says it, light spills from the edges, the kind of glow you can't look at for long because it damages your eyes. But even though I know that, I want to keep on staring. It's beautiful; it's gone before I even can believe its existence, but it is enough. It is enough to hope.

There are words waiting to pass between us: reasons why I left, reasons why I came back, reasons I took her from Scott. I'm not sure if either of us are ready for the first two, but I'm willing to gamble on the third. Pick a card. Roll the dice. I take a deep breath.

"Do you want to know why I challenged--"

"Tell me how they hid your mutation."

She glides around my question as if she never heard it. As if it does not exist, not even in the past because she never allowed it to reach the present. Now she's moving away from me, walking back to the sink and the boiled water. The sides of my jaw tighten in frustration; I force them to relax. Have to keep it open between us, have to keep the words coming.

"It's pretty simple. Drugs, first, about two weeks worth of heavy stuff, and then an implant regulates the effects long term."

"What about side effects? Didn't it make you sick?"

"Like a dog."

Her head flicks up from the bowl, almost looking at me, but her eyes don't quite make it to mine before they dive back to the rag twisting between her fingers. Her hair falls so I can't see her face, but when she talks, her voice is softer. Subdued.

"That bad, huh."

"Yeah, at first. Now it only hits every few days."

"What happens?"

"Nothing big....headache, dizziness, a little nausea here and there. Lovely stuff, really."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't ask me to do any of it."

"So why don't you take the implant out now that you're here?"

"I'll need to hide my mutation until we can cross the border back into Mexico. They'll let us through if they think I'm a human and you're my property."

"Guess that's what I am now, huh? Property."

"C'mon, darling. You know better than that."

"Maybe. Who says I'm going anywhere with you?"

I let my breath leak out in a slow, deep sigh, taking a moment to sort through the commotion in my mind, searching for just the right words. For once, let me find the right words.

"No one is saying anything, Marie. I didn't take the therapy and cross the border and let Scooter pound me so you would feel like you owe me something and decide to come back with me. I'm here because I had to find you, just one more time, to see if we still love each other the way we said we did."

She's looking straight at me now, eyes all big and dark and asking me if I mean it. I can't tell if she's hoping or fearing that I did. But I'm not finished yet. I'll show her I do mean it, but that she doesn't have to be afraid.

"If you want to go back to Scooter and Jean, I'm not going to stop you. You can leave right now, and I'll know that it's over and that I can stop looking for you. Or you can stay, and give me one month to prove that nothing between us has changed like you think it has. Just one month. That's all I ask."

Two full minutes of silence.

"One month. And after that you'll go."

"You'll never see me again, if that's what you want."

"And you'll give me space. You won't try to ask any questions or anything else like that."

"Nothing you don't want asked."

Outside I am doing an admirable job of pretending calm, but Inside my bones are shaking until they're about to peel out of the adamantium. Desperation does tend to have that effect on one. She tilts her head to the side, watching the water droplets slide From the edges of the rag. The surface refracts the light, she captures it with her finger, soaking it into the glove.

"We have a month."

When she drops her gaze back to the bowl, I think she's smiling. Maybe not on the outside, but in tiny, hidden ways beside her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. For the first time since I walked into the compound, I think we might stand a chance.



Pheonix Compound
December 18


"Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Just do it. I have a surprise for you."

"But it isn't even Christmas yet."

"It's close enough. C'mon."

"Fine."

"No peeking."

"Put your hands over your eyes to make sure."

"And I used to wonder why they called you paranoid."

That earns a grin. She is gonna love this. Really. Just let me set it down at the right angle so I can watch her face once she opens her eyes....

"Can I look now?"

"Not yet."

"All that noise you're making certainly isn't helping the suspense."

"Gimme one more second."

Where's the plug again...ah, right here. This piece of junk better live up to the two hundred dollars I spent on it. If not, I'm going to beat a refund out of someone's hide.

"It's been a second."

"Count out three more and then you can look"

"Three.."

Straighten the antenna....practice my smile to make sure it looks real. Don't want to take any chances, here...

"Two."

Adjust the dial, thump it twice when it sticks. Fiddle with the volume to make sure I don't blow her eardrums.

"One."

Flip the switch. Watch her eyes fly open, lit up like the Christmas tree we don't have; follow the movements of her hands as they fly to her mouth, covering the dropped jaw.

Starting to smile now; waiting for her voice, the final approval.

"Logan..."

/C'mon, baby, say you like it. Say I made you smile./

"How did you find it? A radio? Here?"

She shakes her head.

"Not even the Elders have radios. It must have cost a fortune."

I shrug it off.

"I have cash."

"You shouldn't spend it on me."

"You don't like it?"

"I love it."

"Then it was worth it. End of discussion."

"Thank you...I mean, really. Thank you. I can't remember the last time I heard music like this."

"Didn't I see your violin case under your bed?"

"Um, I don't exactly play much anymore."

"Why not?"

"How did you find this?"

Only a momentary tension between jaw and teeth at her evasion: by now they have become commonplace. Her excuses are prefabricated. Convenient. Plausible denials block every attempt I make to talk about any part of life after we left the mansion. Every day, every night, every moment between us passes in a struggle for things not to say. It even carries over into the night. I lie on the floor and listen to her uneven breath against her pillow, her relentless tossing between the sheets. That hurts, to know that she doesn't even want to close her eyes or let down her guard until sheer exhaustion demands it. We're supposed to be something better than this.

The radio is meant to remind her of that something. It was our secret; a peculiarity we share exclusively with one another. Every couple has one. Summers quotes his wife poetry; I dance with Marie behind closed doors. We draw the curtains, prop a chair under the doorknob to keep out anyone and everyone, and we turn up the music until she feels it in her bones and I feel it in mine, and it talks between us. Saying things neither of us could ever put into words. It's a private show. No one else will see the desire, the wanting; no one else hears the secrets and the prayers. It's a ritual; by now it is also a last resort.

"This place has some pretty efficient ways of getting people things they aren't supposed to have."

"I see."

She already knew this; she doesn't even try to hide it.

"So..."

I attempt to inject nonchalance into my voice even though my bones are twisting into loops.

"Want to try it out?"

This is the real test. The critical moment.

/Maybe she isn't ready...maybe you should wait...No, no time. All or nothing. Just don't let her freeze when I touch her. Don't know how much I could handle it./

"How?"

"Dance with me."

A shadow across her eyes, a slight recoil in the direction of the door. For a minute I stand convinced that she is going to run, but no, she's still. More than still; she is wax. We wait amid dead sound and the whisper of blood slowing to a completely stop, stagnating within our veins. Her eyes shift to pitch black, the color of oil, the kind that stains your fingers and lodges in every crease of your skin, and refuses to wash away. That is how her gaze sticks to me, coating me to suffocation point.

"Yes." She bends her head slightly sideways. "Let's dance."

"Do you like this station?"

"Just turn it up and let it play."

I edge the volume control higher until a slow, deep throbbing layers the air like a heartbeat. Ambient guitar. Disconnected emotion: a voice that sounds like rainy streets and turns everything you look at grayish-blue, a smudge on a photo.

/You in the dark, you in the pain, you on the run.../

She takes my hands between hers, one at a time, runs her fingers over the knuckles, soft enough to set the skin on fire, each bone burnt to ash. Just before combustion, she moves her hands to her elbows, peeling off the material shielding her arms.

"Let's make this honest," she says. "Nothing covered up. Nothing easy and nothing safe."

"You want it, you got it."

/Living your hell, living your ghost, living your end./

The black oil eyes thicken, oozing down into the type of grin I have never seen before. It congeals across the surface of my skin, my bare hands inches from hers, daring me to flinch away. Instead I push closer. Only fingertips away from touch. "So what are you waiting for?" she says. "Dance."

/Never seem to get in the place that I belong. Don't want to lose the time, lose the time to come./

I slide my hands over her arms, a thin sheath of air the only thing holding skin from skin. She never gave off this kind of electricity before, when I healed. She never drew this kind of heat. My hands come to rest around her waist, loose, a circle she could break if she wished. She could break many things about me, now, if she wished. I would let her.

/Whatever you say it's all right. Whatever you do it's all good. Whatever you say it's all right./

Her face and body move with mine like she is close to me and far away at the same time. Like I am dancing with a shadow, something my hands will pass through if I try to pull too near.

/Silence is not the way. We need to talk about it. If heaven is on the way.../

Her hands rest on my shoulders, sometimes moving to brush my face with split-second touches. The temple. The cheekbone. The bridge of the nose. Not enough to drain but enough to test resolve. But whose-- mine to keep dancing with her or hers to keep from holding on until it hurts.

/You in the sea, on a decline, breaking the waves. Watching the lights go down, letting the cables sleep./

"Logan...,"

There it is, again, that glass-stone whisper, hard and vulnerable at the same time, capable of shattering and being shattered in equal portion. Her lips are close enough to my ear that if she were to so much as slant her head sideways, our faces would touch.

"Why are you letting me keep my gloves off?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"I told you. I could hurt you."

"And I could hurt you."

"So what's stopping us? Both of us?"

"Trust. Love."

"I don't have either of those things. And I think you know why."

"What?"

/Whatever you say, it's all right. Whatever you do it's all good. Whatever you say it's all right./

"About the farmhouse...were you telling the truth or just bluffing?"

"I wouldn't bluff about that."

"Then tell me what you know."

She pulls her face back from mine; I feel her spine stiffen into Iron and cement. The oil in her eyes has caught fire and is burning, or maybe all I'm seeing is the clouds of smoke from a deeper fire.

"Marie...we don't need to do it this way"

"No."

She breaks away, shoulders back, chin razor taut.

"I want to hear you say it. I want you to look me in the face and say it all out loud."

"Why?"

The gloves reappear in her hands with magical speed, she yanks Them over her fingers and up to her elbows in short, angry jerks as she talks. "You can't, can you." A shake of the head. "How can you say that nothing between us is different when you can't even say the word?"

"I can say it."

"C'mon then. I'm waiting."

I begin to form the word; I push it to the edge of my tongue, up against the back of my teeth, and then I fall back. Paralyzed.

"You're afraid of it, aren't you."

Her voice is more glass than stone, now, the edges broken and sharp and cutting into me with surgical precision. My chest is neatly sliced open: my innermost organs viewed in contempt.

"You're afraid to say it because that means you have to accept it. Accept me, like this, not like the sweet little girl you remember. And you're not willing to do that, are you?"

Silence. And beneath the silence, heat. And beneath the heat, rage, starting to creep inch by inch over my mind, a wall of red dust like a desert sandstorm. Anger at the futility, at the walls between us she will not let me climb, at the tears in her eyes--even now, even as her words sharpen-- and at the fact that I have no control over those tears. I could not stop them if I tried.

"I think you should take the radio back." She says.

Twist, twist, twist, the blade corkscrews through my soft places, in between the metal bones and hardened cynicism. Into the fleshy places only she knows how to hurt.

"We won't be using it."

I find my voice again, not in words but in an explosion.

"Ok, Marie, you want to hear it? Fine."

I take a step toward her, shouting loud enough to make her flinch, despite her external ice.

"You want me to say it? I'll say it. You were raped. You were raped and I couldn't stop it because I wasn't there. Are you happy now?"

She's shaking, the blackness gone from her eyes, washed out by the sheen of moisture spilling down her face. I see these things with my eyes, but they do not reach my brain. I stand in a red haze and listen to myself scream.

"Are you, Marie? Does hearing it straight make it easier to blame me?"

She fixes her gaze straight on me, and I can see her visibly pulling together the pieces for one final blow. I do not attempt to block. I stand and let her finish doing to my insides what I've just done to hers.

"I don't blame you." No quiver; her stone voice. "Blame would require some part of me to care about some part of you. And that's not going to happen again. Ever."

Three seconds later, the door slams behind her.

I hear myself call after her, a roar, not her name, then watch the claws smash in the face of the radio, skewering the metal and wire. It sails, seemingly of its own accord, into the wall across the room, graceful and melancholy until the moment of impact. I am helpless as it shatters into pieces.

I am helpless.

The words come back to me again.

/I betrayed you, he said./
/I betrayed you, she said./

Sometimes, there is nothing else to say.
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