Title: Missing 9/?
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!
**********************
Louise had called the Professor and Logan for help. Logan had instantly wanted to kill Victor when he’d seen the remains of the red handprint heal from Louise’s neck, but she had managed to convince him that Victor hadn’t known who she was, that she had woken him up and startled him. Only when the image of her mother dangling on the end of his fist flashed in his head had Logan backed down, yeah, he knew what that was like. She very carefully avoided mentioning the way that Victor had kissed her, or that he’d even kissed her at all.
Logan watched the bigger man pace around Xavier’s office like a caged animal, as Xavier gave him all the information he could about the world in the last twenty years or so that Creed had been locked away in a dark dingy cell. The only information that had seemed to affect him in any way was to learn that Magneto had died. He had been like a father and Creed had seemed saddened by his passing.
“So how quickly are you geeks throwing me outta here?” He scratched his head with his large claws.
“And where would you go?”
“I’ll find somewhere, old man, don’t ya worry ya-self about that. Somewhere I’m not a pet project for some dense little girl.”
“Watch your mouth, Creed.” Logan growled at him.
“Fuck you, runt!”
Logan sprung from his position by the wall and pushed on Victor’s chest sending him back a step or two. “Didn’t think I was your type!”
Victor grabbed Logan by the collar and snarled in his face. “You’re not, but your little girl is!”
Quick as anything Logan brought his head forward and butted Victor in the face, then both had their claws out, ready to kill each other. Xavier raised his hands and mentally held both men in place.
“I think that’s quite enough of that.” He released them and Logan growled as he flipped his wrists and his claws quickly slid back into place. Victor smiled and he backed away to sit on the plush couch, arms casually resting on the back of it: Baiting Logan was much more fun than leaving.
“Victor, I want answers about that facility, as I am sure you do. Who was behind it, their intentions and weather or not we are all at risk. I am happy to offer you a place to stay here while this is investigated and after that you can go where you please, but there have to be some ground rules.”
“Sure, Prof. Name ‘em.” He smirked at Logan, who simply just wanted to kill him, right there and then.
“You are to avoid the students’ questions - none of them are old enough to remember you or your affiliation with the Brotherhood, and I’d like to keep it that way. You may come and go as you please, but have consideration for others who live here. The lower levels are off limits, completely and no trouble.”
He smirked at Logan again. “Whatever. So are you gonna be a good little bell boy and show me to my room?”
Logan glared at Xavier and stormed out, slamming the door as he went. “Victor, I suggest you do not continue to bait Logan. My influence over him has always been limited and I do not wish anyone to get caught in the crossfire. There’s an empty room on the third floor, left hand side at the end of the corridor. It should suit you.”
Victor stood up and mock-saluted the Professor. “Whatever you say, *boss*.” He chuckled as he left.
Liam, sitting on his vantage point at the top of the stairs, watched Logan storm from Xavier’s office and head for the far corridor of the mansion, the one that held the secret elevator. A few moments later, he observed Victor Creed leaving the office and walking cockily up the opposite set of stairs.
Completely torn, Liam remained where he was, not knowing what to do. He wanted to confront Creed about the damage he had done to his sister, he wanted to be with her and comfort her, he wanted to talk to his father about the whole messy situation, and he also wanted to go to Hank’s lab and find out the test results.
But instead he stayed on the stairs until his backside was numb and his stomach growled painfully. After a while, he pulled himself up and wandered towards the small staff kitchen. Once he had the fridge open he stared again, frozen in indecision . Leftover pasta or make a sandwich? He closed the door and sank into a high-stool by the breakfast bar, elbows on the counter and his head in his hands.
“Rough day?” The soft melodic voice made him jump a little. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you ok?”
She smiled at him and for a brief second his breath left him - she was beautiful. Then she smiled again, the action causing the cut on her lip to pinch and she winced a little. He frowned. It was as if he hadn’t seen the marks before. “Yeah, I’m fine, thank you.” He gestured to her face as she touched it almost shyly. “Are you?”
Sighing, Jean opened the fridge and took out a large carton of OJ. Liam watched as she gracefully fetched a glass and filled it. She instantly knew which cupboard to find the glass and if he’d have thought about it, I would have been a warning.
“It’ll heal in time. Want some?” She held up the carton, and he nodded before he knew what he was doing.
“How did it happen?”
She set his glass down in front of him and shrugged as she wrapped elegant fingers around her own glass. “I refused to tell them what they wanted to know. Sell out the people I care about and they thought that they could force the issue.” She licked her lips. “They were wrong.”
All he could think as she stared at him and blinked was how long her lashes were. He felt something like a slight tickle in the back of his mind, but shook it off. “Um, that’s very brave.”
She looked away and smiled demurely. “Not really. Stubbornness, more like it. Rogue used to say I was nearly as bad as her.”
He laughed. “You knew Rogue?”
She nodded over the rim of her glass. “Mmm, yes. A long time ago, she was a good friend. When I heard she’d died, ‘oh, I was a mess.” She took another sip of juice and locked her eyes with his. “Did you know her? Ah no, you’re far too mature to have been one of her students.”
Taken aback slightly, he smiled. “Um, yeah I knew her.” His head began to ache a little, but he put it down to the stress of thinking things over.
“Lovely lady.” She linked her hands under her chin and continued to smile at him.
He nodded. “Yeah, the best.” He fiddled with the rim of his glass, not meeting her eyes, his mind flashing an image of his mother in the stasis chamber.
“Did I say the wrong thing?” She reached across and touched his hand.
He blushed and smiled at her, pulling his hand back. “No, no, I um, it’s a long story. It doesn’t matter, really.”
“Long story, huh? We’ve all got one of them.” She touched her face and hissed. “I guess I’ve got a couple more now.” She dropped her head and put her hand over her eyes, her shoulders beginning to shake.
Liam looked around the room and then at Jean, not having a single clue what to do. He stood up, moved round the counter and sat next to her and lightly touched her shoulder to try and comfort her. “Don’t cry, it’ll all be ok, don’t worry.”
She wiped her face and smiled at him. “You’re so sweet.” Again for a split second it was as if the bruises and the cut on her face were gone and all he saw was her beautiful face. Her hand fell on his arm and she gripped his bicep. “Wow, you must work out a lot!”
He blushed again, smirked and shrugged. “Well, yeah.”
“I should really try and get back into the swing of exercising again I suppose, but I simply just don’t feel like much.”
“It might help you recover a little better.”
“It might.” She fiddled with her earring, making sure that it caught his attention. “I might feel even better if the Professor would give me some kind of inkling into who did all of this to me.”
She let her hand slip from her earring down her neck and slowly caressed her own neck, down her collarbone and finally coming to rest at the apex of her blouse. Liam watched the movement, watched her hand as it trailed down her skin to the top of her blouse and he saw the top of her bra as she fiddled with the material.
“Um, he’s investigating it.”
She smiled to herself as his adam’s apple bobbed as he watched her. “Really? Has he made any progress?”
“Just that it was the Friends of Humanity.”
She smiled and carried on fiddling with the edge of her blouse, all the while whispering in the back of his mind to trust and to tell her all he knew. “He doesn’t know anything else? If the FoH are working in conjunction with a hidden faction of the government or another mutant group?” Liam shook his head numbly and an almost silent ‘Good’ slipped from her lips as she stood up.
Liam shook his head again and rubbed the back of it. “I’m sorry - what did you say?”
“Nothing, just that I was tired and going to get a little rest. You should do the same, go to bed, *sleep* for a few hours.”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m sorry I never got your name.”
Jean held out her hand gently and looked him square in the eye, a perfect smile on her lips. “It’s Elaine.”
He shook her hand, smiling again. “Liam. Nice to meet you.”
“And you, thanks for the company… and the comfort.”
He couldn’t help but look at her ass as she left the kitchen, then once she was gone he couldn’t remember what he had been doing in there in the first place and went straight up to his room and to bed despite the fact that it was only half way through the afternoon.
Jean purposely strode through the familiar corridors until she came to a faded wooden panel on the third floor. With a small push it slid in and then up, revealing a hidden tunnel. She followed it out to the mansion garage, sparing a look over her shoulder every now and then. Once out into the garage she slipped her shoes from her feet and ran to the service road that lead out onto the main highway. A large black limousine pulled up and she gracefully climbed into the back.
“Well?” She turned to look at the other passenger as the car pulled off and she put her shoes back on. He was tall, handsome and wore the most expensive dark grey suit a man could buy.
“They have absolutely no idea, I played the poor defenceless woman routine perfectly. The most powerful telepath in the world my ass, his view of the world and stance on morals…” she laughed. “He only skimmed my mind enough to confirm my partial truths. I told you spraying the FoH logo on the floor would throw them, the cover worked perfectly.”
“What about Creed?” His accent was English, his words clipped and precise showing his good education.
“He’s in place. I took away the mental blocks this morning, the old man is happy to trust him for now and Creed has no idea what’s going on - he has neither the intelligence or mental strength to resist the mind suggestion. He can’t remember a thing that happened to him in Ohio and he wont be able to tell Xavier anything about our plans. When the time’s right we can activate the primal-aggression chip I inserted into his brain and along with 18 years of isolation, beatings and torture, he’ll happily kill anything he looks at, including Xavier.”
“What about the woman, is the intel right?” He inspected his well-manicured nails.
“I couldn’t get down to my old lab, but from what I picked up from the boy’s mind, she’s alive. They have her in some kind of stasis chamber, which means she’s still carrying the virus and is possibly a threat, but one that can always be eliminated later on. It also means that good old Dr McCoy was never smart enough to produce a vaccine…”
“So it’s unlikely he’ll be able to produce one for our little project.”
“Exactly.”
“Will Creed be enough?”
“I believe so. They all have history with him, their focus and investigations will be on him and the facility and a possible attack on their precious mansion. He’ll cause enough trouble just wandering around being Victor Creed, but when we activate the chip, they’ll have more than enough to keep them busy. The Professor would never probe his mind without permission and Creed would never let him, so there’s not a problem.”
“So by the time they realise what’s going on, Creed will have provided enough of a distraction and it will all be all over. When will we be ready?”
“Two days and thanks to us, humankind is well and truly screwed and there’s nothing the good Professor can do about it.”
“It’ll serve him right for showing you the door.”
She placed her hand on his knee. “It’s a good job he did, otherwise I would never have found you. I’ll still never know how Eric managed to kept you a secret from Xavier and the rest of the world.”
He smiled. “My father was a smart man.” He leaned across the car to kiss her.
“And he’d be proud of you.” He touched her lip and her eye, then trailed his hand down her neck.
“Sorry I had to give you all that.”
She kissed him deeply and bit his lip as she pulled away. “I enjoyed every minute of it and you know it.”
He pushed a button on a side console and the screen between them and the driver rose, then without any warning he backhanded her across the face. She hit the side of the limo with a little yelp, but didn’t have time to recover as he grabbed her hair and pulled her roughly into his lap, her face millimetres from his. “Then maybe I should give you a few more?” Her twisted smirk gave him all the answer he needed as he kissed her roughly and ripped open her blouse.
********
Louise had finally decided to leave her room as the light began to fade outside and the students began to move to their dorms for the night. She’d deliberately stayed out of Liam’s and Logan’s way - not that she knew where either of them were, anyway. She didn’t want a confrontation or an ‘I told you so’ from either of them.
As she walked out onto the back patio, the one that was reserved just for teachers and team members, Jubilee was coming inside.
“Hey, you ok?”
Louise sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. Any news from Hank?”
“I went down about an hour ago and he told me to leave him alone - at least until the morning. Personally I think he’s still a little pissed with me about the rabbit.” She rubbed Louise’s arm. “Go to bed, if anything happens he’ll wake us.” Louise nodded and Jubilee left her outside.
Louise leaned on the wall by the railings staring out into the nights sky, watching the stars twinkle against the black blanket of night. She wished that things were simpler. That her mother was with her and that she and her brother could just be left alone with both their parents instead of everyone and everything working to keep them all apart.
“Funny, you never struck me as the stargazer type.”
She jumped and turned to find Victor standing beside her. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Got the answer right there Princess. Hell.”
She moved to go back inside, but his hand shot out to the wall and blocked her exit. Not being able to look him in the eye she stared at her feet. “What do you want?”
He took his hand off the wall and lifted her chin so she could look at him. She wanted to turn her mutation on and let him seep into her a little, but it was different now, he wouldn’t let her so easily feed of him.
His gaze was as intense as ever and she could feel the heat rising in her already. She blushed, cursing her body and its reaction to him. With the back of his hand he caressed along her jaw and down her neck, lightly touching where the bruise had been earlier. She closed her eyes tight at the sensation, willing her body to stay in control of her mutation, to not let it slip, not give away her arousal at his closeness and his touch. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes snapped open and locked with his. “I remember everything you did for me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I… I know.”
He stepped closer causing her to bump into the wall behind her. His hand slid softly from her throat to the back of her neck and into her hair, holding her head firmly as his other hand joined it. His lips descended on hers. The kiss was surprisingly soft, but grew with need as their tongues met. He carefully kept his fangs from cutting her as she arched away from the wall and into him.
When he grabbed her bottom and growled, pulling her flush against him and rubbing his groin against her, her inexperience and nervousness flared. She pushed him and he allowed himself to go back a step or two. She touched her lips in confusion and then fled, embarrassed by her own actions.
“What’s the matter, aren’t I good enough for Wolverine’s little princess?”
She turned, her face still flush and her lips swollen. “How did you know he’s my father?”
“One whiff of you and I could tell that.” He shrugged. “And I only have to look at you to tell who your momma is.”
He watched her think for a minute. “Do you hate us?”
“Us?”
“Xavier, the X-Men.”
He shrugged. “Situation’s changed. Apparently mutants are *accepted*, on the same side, so I guess I don’t have to kill you people anymore.”
“You shouldn’t have had to kill people in the first place. Magneto was wrong to make you do it.”
“Magneto didn’t make me do anything.”
“Then why?”
He smirked. “What can I say, he pitches a good argument.”
She frowned a little and shook her head. “So, what, killing people is fun?”
“No, not fun, but it had a certain, *addictiveness* to it. A good fight with someone, when you’re evenly matched, that’s fun. I don’t like killing people, but when you’re only good at one thing, you don’t get many employment choices.”
“And what about now?”
“What about now? Like I said Princess, world’s different.” He shrugged. “Maybe this time round I’ll find some kind of place in it.”
She reached out and touched his hand. “Maybe I could help you.”
He looked into her eyes and found nothing but trust and cursed it. He didn’t need to have someone need him or pity him, he had never had anyone get close enough to care and he didn’t want to start now. No matter how good he felt when she was close, no matter how she made him actually feel something, something he couldn’t quite identify. Definitely no matter how she made him feel human and almost like he belonged, almost content. Almost.
She gasped in surprise when he grabbed the waistband of her jeans and pulled her to him. “I don’t do the whole ‘boyfriend’ gig, there’s usually only one thing I want.” He licked the edge of her ear as his nostrils flared, filling them again with nervousness and slowly building arousal as she shivered against him, her body begging him to touch her, just one more touch. “And I think you want it too.”
He took her lips again, silencing her gasp. He almost didn’t feel her small hand push on his chest and he shook his head as she stepped away from him and leaned herself on the wall with one hand. He smirked at her. “You really are a little prissy Princess aren’t you?”
She glared at him. “Don’t fucking call me that! I have a name!”
He laughed and it almost sounded genuine, which was what he wanted, he wanted her to back away from him, if she did it then it was her fault, not his. “Whoa! Steady there Princess.”
“Don’t laugh at me.” Her eyes began to sting, but she refused to let him see her cry.
He grabbed the back of her neck roughly and kissed her roughly, this time not caring about his fangs. She pushed away from him and smacked him as hard as she could across the face. “Finally I get a little bit of that Southern fire.”
“You’re a pig!” And then she turned and ran back to her room, slammed the door ran into her bathroom and climbed into the shower fully clothed, starting the water so that her father couldn’t hear her or smell her when he came back to his room and she cried.
***************END OF PART NINE
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Again thanks to BC for the cool beta.