She was his pet project. Tiny, untouchable scrap of death.
Of course he had done the right thing. Contacted Xavier ASAP, asking him if he knew any reliable oncologist who wouldn’t mind about the fact that the patient at hand happened to be a mutant. He had wasted considerable amount of cold, hard cash, and little time to get the fact that he already knew written to a paper. The girl was indeed dying. There was nothing that could be done, except to keep her comfortable during the last stage of the disease that had settled in to her and dug it’s roots deep in to her fragile body.
“You do realize that she’s a child? A human with emotions and feelings?”
“Cut the crap, Xavier. I’m going to take care of her.”
“Yes. Yes. I have no doubts about your sincerity. But please, do remember to thread carefully. And remember, Wolverine… Nobody, not even you can fool the reaper.”
There were nights when he laid awake in his bed, listening her soft and even breathing echoing from the silken cradle that hung from the ceiling in front of the window, cursing her mutation that was willing to steal his secondary gift of enhanced senses, but stubbornly refused to suck his healing power in to her dying flesh.
There were days he cursed the Gods he didn’t even believe to begin with for straddling such a pixie with something as heinous and vile as a cancer.
Then there were nights and days when he was able to sit back and observe, concentrate to his chosen task. Keep listening her body as it slowly but inevitably wound down. Keep watching her as she kept watching the world through his borrowed eyes, trying to gauge her feelings and thoughts through her reactions that she so rarely let to surface.
“What is her name?”
“The woman she lived with called her ‘Rogue’. She doesn’t seem to like it that much. I have started calling her Marie.”
“Marie? May I ask what prompted you to…”
“She likes that name.”
She seemed to like her new name almost as much as the shots of morphine he kept injecting in to her when it started to look like she was in pain. He tried not to do that too often. She’d get cloudy-eyed and start swaying back and forth, small, incoherent murmur echoing from her chest, and corner of her mouth twitching to something resembling a crooked smile.
He knew they were curious. Every single one of them just aching to find out everything and anything there was to know about her. He preferred to keep them in darkness. It wasn’t their business. If he let one person in, that one person would drag the next one, and before he knew, Jean would whisk the girl away from him and lock her in to the infirmary for the rest of her days, heavily medicated and sedated for her own good. Jean Summers wasn’t a bad person, but that was the doctor’s approach on to things, and first and foremost she was a doctor.
“She… She looks happy. I trust things are going well?”
“Yeah.”
Happy? He didn’t know if she were happy or sad, or just plain bored, but she smelt okay, and every now and then there was this strange, watery gleam in her eyes and soft, purring sound inside her chest, especially when she saw something he knew she liked. Perhaps she was happy.
And the stench of death kept escalating from day to day. He could already smell it through her clothes, heavy protective pieces that were padded from the inside and lined with the same silk from which her cradle was spun, lightweight but strong web of giant arachnid.
It was an interesting experience to follow the approach of the reaper. To listen the small click-clack of his bony heels, see the small, barely visible flashes of cold and sharp blade as it kept slicing her life off as if she was been pealed as an onion. Never had he seen the death this close and detailed. The slow but certain process of oxidation, until one day blood red rust would clog up the whole delicately designed piece of machinery created from flesh and bone.
“I’m worried about you, Wolverine.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? You’re wasting your resources to a girl who’s going to die anyway. You have no way of knowing if these transfers are harmful…”
“Fuck you, Xavier. She’s my responsibility. I’d know if she was hurting because of this.”
“It’s not the girl I’m worried about…”
“It’s good to know that you care for her that much.”
It was hard. There were mornings when he didn’t felt like getting up at all. The girl seemed to be satisfied with that, just sitting in her cradle that spin restlessly around and around in front of the open window, staring at the swallows that kept soaring in the air outside. And he kept staring at the girl through his lowered lashes, trying once more to settle wading through the day with dulled senses just so she could see the goddamned birds.
Sitting cross-legged in the netted cradle, her small fingers curled around the silvery strands of silken ropes she looked every bit worth of sacrificing a small proportion of himself even perhaps permanently. She’d only need wings from the swallows and she’d been good and ready to go.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Aargh! Somebody tell me what this is? In my opinion this isn't angst, but somehow general doesn't quite cut it!