Despite her best efforts the pain wasn’t enough. Nothing she could do to herself silenced the insistence murmur in her mind that she enjoyed pain, that she should inflict more of it, that it would ease the pressure of claustrophobia weighing down on her lungs. Even better than the pain was the taste of the sweet nectar of blood on her tongue as she raked it over a fresh, quickly healing, wound.
Worse than the maniacal blood lust was the fear. She couldn’t decipher hers from the AWOL soldier, the one that begged and pleaded with her when all she could think about was snapping his spine from his pelvis bone. It was almost funny. How scared she was of the beast-man when he was just a constant noise, a figure. Now he was a part of her and it should be so much worse but she just couldn’t get over the soldier’s fear of her. So she was forced to find a medium between the three of them. She curled up in a ball by her cot and bit down deeply into her arm and prayed hopefully this time it wouldn’t heal. At least they all agreed on one central thing. She wanted out.
Somehow her head lifted and she glared at the door. She wanted the fuck out. Her mind was completely exhausted but her body lifted to its feet anyway. And before she could reason with herself, she was throwing her body at the bars of the door again. She had lost count how many times she had done it already. Or how many times she told herself and whatever was driving her that she just couldn’t do it, it wasn’t working. ‘One more time’ the voice floated cold and demanding over and over again.
She pushed herself off the ground, rubbing her shoulder, slightly surprised at the faint, lingering pain.
‘Again.’
Frustration built up in her again and she roared as she charged. She slammed against the steel again but refused to fall and gripped the bars. She jerked and pulled herself flush with the metal surface, panting. Just a quick rest; she’d do it again; she just needed a quick rest.
Her heavy forehead came to rest against the bars as she closed her eyes. She tried to concentrate on the incessant murmurs, shut them up. But as she attempted to weave through the tangled fibers of her mind her nose twitched.
Her eyes popped open then narrowed as her nose twitched again. That smell…had she not noticed it before? It was so strong. She turned her head towards it again.
“You,” she growled, focusing on the dark just behind the bars on the other side. The rumbling in her throat continued as she took four steps closer to the shared side, although careful to stop a few feet away.
A slow, sinister smirk spread onto her face. “Ah know ya in there, runt. Ah can smell ya.”
The darkness behind the bars didn’t move but her ear nearly twitched. She heard the growl. Her smirk widened and she lifted her hands up to pop her knuckles.
“Aw,” She purred. “What’s wrong? Puppy wet his pants again?”
The growl escalated in volume and her newly sensitive eyes could just make out the movement in the shadows. Then two bright beacons of blue showed in the darkness, followed by a flash of white just under them.
“Come on, second rate,” she urged. Then she laughed, loud and chilling. “Maybe if ah beat ya into a pulp they won’t fill ya up again.”
The front half of his body came completely out of the light then. The massive muscles in his arms tense and corded from how tightly he hand his hands fisted at his side.
They both stood, equal distance away from the bars, starring off with each other for some time. Wolverine’s nose twitched in a few quick rapid sniffed then he growled again at the familiar scent. It was a deeper, rumbling vibration that went straight through the air to her.
‘Charge him!’ The voice snapped angrily. She managed to keep her body back against the urge, just barely, by digging her finger nails in the palms of her hands to satisfy the need for pain. But it didn’t take long after starring at him for her hatred to grow. Her blood reached boiling point and she rushed to the side bars, yelling at the top of her lungs.
She ran full speed into the metal, her arms reaching through to swipe at him with her hands. Wolverine moved at the same time, glistening claws erupting from his hands. The movements of her arms were useless, attempting to attack with weapons that weren’t there. Her nails only scratched harmlessly down his bare chest.
The clash ended when an uncharacteristically loud roar came from him. She gasped then screamed as jerked further against the bars. Lifting her head she looked briefly into his cold blue eyes before she whimper and stumbled back.
His face wrinkled up as she continued to back up, removing herself from of his claws. He left the claws out, his all of his muscles tense and ready for her next attack. But instead of swearing at him and coming again she wavered unsteadily on her feet, both her arms clutched tightly around her stomach. Finally she gasped and fell straight down onto her knees to the hard concrete floor.
His eyes widened when she remained silent and saw a tear trailing slowly down her cheek. Then she lifted her head and look up at him and he took a tentative step back, claws still ready.
“Ah--” she started then gasped and tighten her grip on her wound. Finally the pain was intense enough. She couldn’t feel how close the walls were around her or detect the staleness in the air. Nothing registered beyond the god-awful pain in her stomach.
Her head hung low as she pushed herself, slowly moving to sit on her butt. The tears only increase when she tried to scoot back towards her cot, one arm pulling her body, the other still wrapped around herself.
She managed to make it, though now panting and sweat plastering the white pieces of hair to her the side of her face and neck. With a heavy sigh she rested her back against the side of the cot, barely noticing how it dug into her back.
It took a few moments but slowly the pain began receding. She sighed and wiped her face with her sleeve and finally looked up.
Wolverine hadn’t moved. He was just standing there he with claws out, watching her. There was no emotion or hint of anything on his face but his eyes barreled into her with their usual intensity.
She swallowed, resting while the puncture wounds healed. When she was sure she would manage to live after all she licked her dry lips and tried to give him an unthreatening smile.
“Ah--”
He interrupted her with one word, hissed out between his teeth. “Creed.” She was sort of gob smacked into silence by the accusation in his voice.
“You smell like Creed,” he added, his scowl getting worse as he looked down at her.
She said the only thing she could think of. “Ah’m not.”
He ‘humpf’ and turned around back towards his darkness. She called out to him pushed off up to her feet, her wound already healed. He cocked an eyebrow at her, his mouth moving to a fierce frown.
“Ah’m not…ah didn’t want--,” she wasn’t sure how she was going to explain her actions to him. It turned out she didn’t have to. He merely retracting the claws and turned his back to her.
“Get rid of Creed,” He snarled before he disappeared back in the shadows.
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