Title: Missing 13/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: R
Category: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!
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Logan watched her pace around the room. She was tired he could tell - her body ached, her head ached and he knew she wanted to relax but couldn’t. He rested his head against his headboard and sighed. “Marie… sit down.”
She stopped and stared at him, then sat down on the edge of his bed, the bed that used to be their bed. “I just don’t know what to do Logan. She’s so scared and I know Liam can feel it too.”
“Chuck’ll help, he helped you.”
“Actually, good old ‘Chuck’ didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
Curious, Logan moved over, beside her. “Whatdya mean, I thought you two had meditation sessions or whatever flowery thing he does?”
“Logan you can’t call it ‘flowery’ when you used to do it too.”
“Mines a different kind of meditation, darlin’. Come on, whatdya mean?”
She scrunched up her face and then turned to look at him. “Promise you wont get mad?”
“I make a point of not making promises I can’t keep. Spill.”
She gave a short laugh at him then took a deep breath. “It was Erik.”
“Magneto?! *He* taught you how to control your mutation?” He was just plain shocked.
“Kinda - the him in my head. He made me realise that it was just a simple case of putting up shields in my mind. He made it sound more like magnetic fields, but you get the idea.”
“Does Chuck know?”
“Yeah.”
“So, is that weirdo still in your head?”
She frowned. “Charles?”
“No, Mags.”
“Oh, him. No, he faded a long time ago, along with the lovely and quite insane Ms Danvers.”
Logan leant towards her and nudged her slightly. “What about me?”
She met his eyes and almost smiled at his childish curiosity, but quickly looked away at her feet, cursing the heat rising in her cheeks. “No, you faded too.”
“Darlin’. Why do you even try to lie to me?”
She laughed. “What gave me away?” She had never let him fade, she’d clung to the last shreds of him and held him to her as if her life had depended on it.
“Scent. It gets a little bitter when people lie. Or it could just be the way you turn beet red.” He dropped his voice and whispered in her ear, making sure his breath tickled her skin. “Which by the way I think is kinda cute.”
When she turned her face to meet his their noses touched. “Cute? You, Mr-badass-Wolverine just used the word cute?”
“Ain’t no other way to describe you.” He reached his hand up and ran the back of his fingers along her cheek. It felt smooth against his own hardened skin, perfect as if it had never been touched before. Turning his hand over so that the tips of his fingers were touching her, he moved to her lips, running lightly over their plump surface.
His eyes followed his fingers and she watched him. Before she could stop herself her lips parted slightly, allowing one of his fingers to slip into her mouth. He felt the edge of her tongue flick over his finger before he slowly removed it and put it into his own mouth, savouring her taste.
Before either of them had another conscious thought his hands were back on her face and he was kissing her. The taste of her on his finger was good, but it was second best and he simply wouldn’t settle for that, he had to have the real thing. Her tongue swirled around his as he laid her back on the bed, her thighs falling open easily to allow him on top of her, his erection pressing heavily against her.
Although their kisses weren’t fast, or frantic, at first, they soon became filed to the brim with need, threatening to overflow. They could feel each others’ desire, she hadn’t been touched like this for so long, she hadn’t felt wanted like this and hadn’t needed to be touched so badly for such a long time.
Logan felt her stiffen under him and he pulled back. “You ok? Um, is this too fast?”
She pushed him away and sat up, but though he did the same, his hand remained on her thigh. “Seven years, I haven’t done this in seven years…”
“Marie we can go…”
“Wait. Its not seven years, it’s nearly 19, Logan I haven’t had sex for nearly 19 years, not unless sex with myself counts and I don’t think it does.” He looked at her puzzled. “I know you, you… you couldn’t not, you know.” Then he caught onto what she was trying to say and he dropped his head with a sigh.
“No I couldn’t.”
“How many?”
“Marie, I …”
“Jus’ tell me Logan.”
“Four.”
“Times or women?”
“Women.” He stood and ran his hands through his messy hair making the little peaks stick up even more. “But only once since you’ve been here, in stasis. You left and said in no uncertain terms that you wanted jack shit to do with me. I got mad and had a few benders. Then when you turned up here in that hazard suit, you wouldn’t let me near you, wouldn’t let me help, touch you, anything. I realised how much I’d missed you.”
“Only once since I’ve been here?” He kept his back to her.
“Yeah, couple of Christmases ago. Drank enough Scotch to sink the Titanic, I woke up in some dingy motel room. The girl was gone, but I could smell what happened.”
“Thank you.”
He turned back to her, anger and confusion crossing his face at the same time. “What? Thank you?”
“For being honest. You could have lied and you didn’t. Thank you.” Rising gently from the bed as she walked to the door, but as she opened it his palm slapped against it slamming it shut. She turned and met his gaze, she knew he was trying desperately to gauge her mood, her reaction, but couldn’t because he couldn’t smell past his own hurt.
“We split up, I thought… I thought I was never gonna see you again, thought that you hated me and wanted me out of your life, you… YOU left me! I tried to explain Marie, but you *wouldn’t* listen.” She watched him pace back and forth, getting more and more agitated.
“I know and I would never judge you for that. Jesus Logan how can I have expected you to be faithful to me when I didn’t want it! I just wanted to know if you’d been with anyone, that’s all.”
“So why walk out, huh? Why not just sit back on the bed and we pick up were we left off, why walk out?”
“Because we shouldn’t be doing this anyway Logan. You’re right, I left, I lied about the kids and kept them a secret from you and I’m sorry, I am so very sorry. It was selfish and stupid and at first done purely out of my own hurt pride, but the more time went on the harder it got to tell you, and the FoH were everywhere… I only just managed to keep me and them and where we came from a secret. I’m sorry Logan, ok, I’m sorry.”
Sometime during her rant she had started to cry and she leaned her back against the door, wiping her face, but the sound of his voice, quieter than before made her forget about her tears. “Do you love me Marie?”
He sounded so unsure, so scared, but she could still see the tension, the anger. Although less than before, it was still evident in his frame, radiating out towards her. “Logan…”
“Jus’ answer, dammit. Do you love me?” Resting his forehead against hers, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his voice just above a whisper. “Just tell me, god, just tell me that.”
A heartbeat passed, two, three...
“Yes. I never stopped loving you. It was just another reason to stay away. I knew that I loved you and that I would always love you and because of that I would end up forgiving you and I was so angry with you that I didn’t want to.”
He moved away from her and raised his hand to her face again, wiping away a couple of fresh tears she had shed. She gasped first at the feel of his touch and then at the single tear, the one clean pear shaped tear that he let go of, as his anger and some of the tension left his body. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but…”
“Ya did.” He looked confused, honestly not able to remember ever telling her. “In the blackbird, on the way back from rescuing the Professor in Dallas, ya remember? The Brotherhood nabbed him and I got hurt on the rescue.” She couldn’t stop crying.
“I remember. Ya ended up with a metal rod through your stomach.” His breath touched her lips as he spoke and she briefly wondered when he had gotten that close.
“And you pulled it right out, told Hank to stop his fussing and touched me, held on for so long. You were in my head, whispering how much you needed me, needed me to live and how much you loved me. So that’s how I know that you do. S’why I never asked you tell me or nothing. ‘cause I already knew.”
His lips descended onto hers the second that she had finished talking, his lips were hot and demanding with open wet kisses. Sweeping his tongue along her full bottom lip made her open her mouth and he kissed her with as much love as she did him. Marie found her hands captured in his, fingers intertwining as she moaned into his mouth.
Once they broke apart after their initial kisses it seemed to open a floodgate, his hands began to roam over her body, seeking access under her shirt and feeling her skin. He was whispering in between kisses. “I… love you…so, so…. much. You’re so beautiful… so soft, I missed… you…. so much darlin’. I never… want to…. be without… you again… love you…”
All she could do was moan and press herself against him, her senses on overload, her body arching into him, screaming out for more of what he was offering her after being starved from him, from anything for so long. “God Logan!” She pulled his shirt over his head and threw it away, then as he took her lips again she made him growl by dragging her nails down his back.
He had her legs wrapped round his waist and her back slammed firmly against the door in a heartbeat. It vibrated against her back, but she only registered his mouth gently sucking on the sweet spot just below her right ear. The second time the door vibrated she definitely noticed it as it was accompanied by a familiar voice.
“Hey, anybody alive in there?”
Marie broke Logan away from her neck and tried to calm her breathing. “Jubes.”
All Logan could do was make a pained face. “Ignore her, maybe she’ll go away.”
There was more thumping on the door. “Heard that you miserable Cannuck, let me see my girl!”
He let Marie down to the floor again. “You got 10 minutes with that loud mouth and then…” he kissed her deeply. “Your sweet little southern ass is mine!”
“Whatever you say sugar.”
As he closed the door behind him he could hear the happy shrieking of the best friends’ reunion. He smiled. Any other day, he would have told Jubilee to fuck off so he could have Marie, but she needed it, she needed her friends to adjust back into things and he congratulated himself quietly on doing the right thing for once.
He turned towards the stairs planning on going outside for a cigar, then maybe sitting quietly while he thought up a thousand different ways he could kill Victor Creed for even thinking about touching his daughter, but Scott shot past the bottom of the stairs and called to Logan to follow him.
“Logan, come on, the Professor has had some news about the facility. We know who’s behind it.”
He feel into step beside Scott and they jogged down the hall. “SO who is it?”
“Magneto!” Scott opened the door to the Professor’s office.
“MAGNETO! He’s dead, right, tell me he’s dead?”
“Yes Logan, you’re quite right - Erik is dead. But his connections are apparently are still quite alive. My source is a mutant who used to be an affiliate of the Brotherhood before it disbanded some time ago.”
“So who is this guy? Can we trust him?”
“Scott, he has always been an informant of sorts, but I have always had to keep his identity a secret. Information that he has provided in the past has always been trustworthy, so I have no reason to doubt him now.”
Logan relaxed his body slightly and let it slump into one of the professor’s plush chairs. “So get on with it Chuck, the suspense is killing me.” Scott chuckled at Logan’s dryness and sat down next to him.
“As it turns out Magneto did buy the facility when the original company went bankrupt around ten years ago, but we can’t find a record of the ownership being transferred after his death.”
“So this Belzec Magnes guy or whatever the fuck his name is…”
“Belzec is the name of a Nazi extermination camp and Magnes is polish for magnet.” Rogue walked casually into the room. Xavier had known she was there and asked her telepathically to enter. Logan smirked at her as she perched herself on the edge of the desk.
Scott rose and hugged her, a broad grin on his face. “Its good to see you, properly, I mean.”
“Thanks, its good to see all of ya as well. But what does a Nazi camp have to do with anything?”
“Belzec Magnes is the property developer who bought the facility that Jean said she had escaped from, where we found Sabertooth.”
“Darlin’ how the hell did you know that?” She smiled a little shyly, glanced at the Professor and tapped the side of her head.
“Magneto. Of course, that’s what it has to do with this. I never thought to check out the actual name for hidden meanings or language variations. Well done Rogue, it’s good to have you back.” He sighed deeply. “I hope that we can make your transition back into a normal routine as easy as possible for you. This kind of situation can be traumatic if not handled correctly. My door will always be open for you.”
“Thank you. But I think at the moment I just need to concentrate on the kids, that’ll get me through.”
Scott touched her arm and squeezed a little. “We’re all here for you, and for the twins.”
“Thank you, I…”
The office door flew open, reverberating against the wall with a loud crash as everyone spun round. Hank rushed up to the desk and threw down a series of what at first glance looked like x-rays.
“Hank, what on earth is the matter?”
“It’s in his brain… I’m, I’m astounded! I heard of it being researched into and even read some of the preliminary findings, but no one had ever tried such a barbaric form of control, it’s… it’s just…”
“Hank! What?” Hank seemed to come to his senses, and looked from one to the other of his friends.
Shaking his head, he spread the scans out on the desk. “Victor Creed, these are his x-rays and brain scans. His body x-rays and full scan were normal for a man or mutant of his size, but his brain scans have shown an anomaly.”
“What kind of anomaly and what does it have to do with barbaric uses of control?”
“Charles, forgive my ramblings, I… I have to admit I’m finding it all a little hard to grasp.” He picked up the main scan and walked to the window, holding it up against the light. “If you’ll look at this one, you can see here, just below the left side is a small white dot. In a normal hospital, this scan would be considered normal and this little dot would probably have been missed, but due to my overactive interest in genetics and brain function, I spotted it and had it magnified.” He went back to the desk and then returned to the window, again holding it to the light. “This is that small dot, but magnified 1800 times.”
The Professor, Rogue, Logan and Scott starred at the scan, but none of them really grasped what they were looking at. “What ya trying to say doc, Bagpuss has got a marble egg wedged in his head?”
Xavier got a little closer to the scan. “Hank, maybe you would like to elaborate further?”
“Yes. Yes of course. This section here that Logan referred to as a marbled egg, even though it does look like an egg, these lines are in fact the outer wires of a neural micro-chip.” Hank took a roll of tape from the desk and secured the scan to the window. “These small marks here are marks from the initial surgery to insert it and these ones, almost invisible to the human eye, are the scars from stitches that initially held the device in place before they degraded. Why his regeneration didn’t take care of them I can’t explain, possibly they could have been tricked by a druga nd therefore his regeneration didn’t see the scars as a threat to his health, I don’t know, but I digress.”
“What does it do?”
“Well, I can’t really tell just from the scans, but I can get a rough idea from the position in the brain. The central nervous system…”
“Uh, Hank I think given the company you’d better make this simple.”
“Bite me, Summers!”
“I’ll carry on. Think of the central nervous system—the brain and
spinal cord—as consisting of a box with an input and an output. The input
exerts its effects on special nerve cells called receptors, cells modified to respond
to what we can loosely term ‘outside information’ rather than to synaptic
inputs from other nerve cells. But if a device was placed in the brain in the right place it could influence the receptors. Damage to certain regions of the brain, most notably the prefrontal cortex, can result in extremely violent behaviour.” He pointed to the larger scan that showed the chip as a small white dot. “That is exactly where the chip is placed. The prefrontal cortex is that part of the brain that processes information regarding threats and fear, inappropriate anger and aggression.” He moved away from the window and cleaned his glasses on his lab coat.
“So this thing makes him angry?”
“My dear, it is much more than that. If this chip was ‘set off’, activated or even exploded, he would go far past the point of anger, he would lose all of his humanity and he would simply wish to kill and destroy everything in his path. Violence and berserker rage beyond all comprehension. Granted given Creeds nature, he is already prone to violent behaviour and he has serious control issues, but this would just shut done all rational thought.”
“So what does this all mean?”
“Quite simply, Scott, it means that he is a danger to everyone in this building. This chip was inserted by a surgical expert, they really knew what they were doing. If it has the capabilities to be activated by remote then he is a bomb waiting to go off. He would have no mercy, no recognition and on top of all that he wouldn’t be able to recognise anyone else as a threat, he would have no fear. Which in itself would make him lethal.”
“Hang on, Louise told me about that facility and finding Victor. Has anyone thought that Jean gave him to us on purpose? I mean from what I can tell, we figured out that the FoH thing is faked, who’s to say that facility wasn’t *hers*?”
“Rogue’s right.”
“Darn tooting, I’m right! Goddamned women! He’s the perfect weapon to use against us - I mean, how many people would he hurt before we brought him down? Is he a distraction, a revenge mechanism, what?”
“Yes, I fear you may be on right track Rogue. I feel we need to take action and find Jean before we run out of time.”
***********END OF PART THIRTEEN
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank to BC for the Beta and the direction.