She felt like a marionette doll. A shallow husk of a person slumped into a tangled mess, no strength to move her own limbs without someone to pull her strings for her. She felt utterly defeated. Everyone in the whole damn base got out but her, everyone but the one person who was actually trying to get out. Karma was bull shit, there was no way she deserved this.
Her next course of action was pretty clear. She was going to sit there. She wasn’t going to budge until she couldn’t feel her butt anymore and she didn’t have any tears left in her head. Eventually the soldiers were bound to come back. They’d walk past and see her then throw her back in her damn cell. She’d just have to lie on the cot and wait till some spark of fight rekindled in her body. She was certainly all out of it now.
This time she wouldn’t have anyone. No funny and crude old women to braid her hair at night and tell her that she made the white streaks work. No younger girls fresh out of puberty to watch with wide eyes as she flipped off the lab personnel. No terrified, yet hopeful faces to look up at her like she was some kind of hero—she just hadn’t saved them yet. No solemn sapphire eyes shinning through the dark to follow her every move. No large, impossibly warm hands that held no gentleness but yet somehow never left a mark. She opened her eyes to find her hand unconsciously rubbing her knee. Well, almost never.
From now on it was just her. Just she and the distant voices in her head that she always kept pushed back. Maybe mow she’d open the flood gate—maybe then she wouldn’t be alone. Because there was no way they were going to put anyone near her ever again. The military wasn’t stupid. And they didn’t have the same over crowded problem the lab did. They had plenty of space to let her rot on her own.
She turned her arm over to finger the numbered tattoo like she always did when she wallowed in self-pity. She frowned down at her arm- it wasn’t there. Trembling fingers ghosted across her skin anyway. She wasn’t sure if she was glad Wolverine took the mark away from her or not. The only symbol she had left of the labs was the platinum stripes in her hair and she went through a hell of lot more than a bad hair job.
She scoffed and shook her head. There was no point pretending to herself that she was doing anything besides trying to find something to be mad at him for. She couldn’t be mad that he left, hell she’d been the one preaching escape to him from the moment they met. She was the one that told him to go. Had they both made it out she knew she would be crying in gratitude that the accursed mark was off of her body.
In hindsight she should have taken the cashmere sweater when Sie offered it. She already killed two people since she’d been there; eventually she was sure she’d get us to it.
“No,” she said out loud. No, she wouldn’t. She would never get use to taking a life. She wasn’t like Sabretooth or Wolverine. She couldn’t just swipe and swing because they deserved it. It made her nauseous. And if Sie wanted her to use her skin on all his targets-- she didn’t know how long it would take but she would definitely go crazy. Not even the carefree, reckless crazy of Sabretooth, the lost in a mountain of voices crazy that would make her no good to anybody. Maybe she should have told Sie that when he propositioned her.
The sound of distant footsteps began approaching. The soldiers were coming back sooner than she though they would. That was good, she supposed, the sooner they found her the sooner she could get to her cot. She was so tired.
“Why the hell do we have to do it, anyway?”
“You seriously asking me this? Because we’re about fifty pounds lighter than most of the guys. Besides, you really want to be out there tangling with the Wolverine?”
She lifted her head up at the name.
“Hell no. But I don’t want to be in here waiting for a mutant she-devil to attack me either.”
“You’re over reacting. We see her, we tranq her, she goes down. Unlike the problem they’re having outside, so be grateful. I still say fifty bucks that we find her body sliced and diced.”
Wolverine didn’t get out, she thought with a heavy frown. No, he was out but he hadn’t escape. She had been right without knowing it. It was more dangerous outside the base than inside it. Now it sounded like Wolverine had a mass pile of large soldiers on top of him. She only had two light weights trolling the halls for her. Exhaustion began easing off the back of her eyes.
“No way. They were cell mates for two weeks then escaped together? There was something going on between them.”
Had it really only been two weeks?
“Ew, dude, spare me. Why’d he come out but not her then, huh? Makes him a piss poor boyfriend according to your theory.”
Her lips curled into a small smile, she bit her bottom lip to keep it from moving any further. Boots moved closer, she never figured it would make her happy. She grabbed the bars above her head and pulled herself up on her feet. There was a little spark of fight in her after all and it was itching to burn a little hotter.
“That’s not what I said, jerk-off. And who knows. Between what happened in the surgery room and Sabretooth getting out too, anything could have happened.”
She moved down the hall running on her tip toes, again glad she didn’t have any shoes. Before she reached the cross sections of the hallway she grabbed the gun slung over her shoulder and ripped it over her head.
“Fifty on girly being gutted, take it or leave it.”
“You’re on.”
She turned it upside, grabbing the muzzle. Just a corner was a piss poor hiding place; she’d have to move fast. At first black toe she moved, swinging the gun hard. It collided into the closest soldier’s gut.
“Ugh, fuck!” He grunted as he doubled over.
The second man yelled and lifted his gun; she pushed his moaning companion into him. The shot went wide as they both stumbled to the ground. She quickly jumped onto the pile, grabbing the top man by his neck and flipping her skin on. He screamed, and then the man under him began screaming.
Everything shifted as she was thrown off. She landed on her side, the unconscious soldier beside her. The remaining soldier was crawling on his knees, trying to reach his discarded gun.
“Nuh uh,” she snapped and moved to her knees as well, grabbing his arm and pulling him back towards her. His other arm came up swinging, the back of his hand meeting the side of her face. She flinched but was able to get an elbow hard into his chest.
“Damn it!” He swore and fully dove at her, pinning her to the cold ground. She tried to get another swing in but he grabbed a hold of her arms with his gloved hands and pushed them to the ground beside her head. “Fucking mutie, that hurt!”
“Duh!” She snapped, struggling against his hold. He tried to switch her wrist into one hand; she bucked up against him during the process, making him drop one of her hands. She immediately pushed it against his face. He passed out in a second, falling limply against her.
“Get tha hell off me!” She huffed and pushed the comatose body off of her.
She smiled as she stood up. It was amazing how quickly she went from completely giving up to once again enjoying the escape. Now she could say she was not bored. She bent down and felt into the pockets of the soldier that pinned her. Her hand touched leather and she pulled out his wallet.
“Here ya go, sugah,” she said to the first soldier she touched and tossed the wallet at him. “Congratulations, ya won tha bet.”
As she turned to walk back the way they came she notice that something else fell out of his pocket in the process. She picked up the small white rectangle off the ground. A security pass card.
She ran down the hall. It had to open something down there. The soldier boys didn’t pop out of nowhere. And they knew about Wolverine. And that he was in trouble. She stopped running. And what exactly was she going to do about? After thinking for a second she turned around and ran back to the fallen soldiers.
“’Cuse me, fellas,” she said as she picked up all the guns scattered around on the floor. “Jus’ gonna borrow these.”
She took off running again, pure adrenaline pumping for the first time in her veins. ‘Hold on, big guy,’ she thought. ‘Give ‘em hell till ah get there.’
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Me and Rogue sat down and talked. I think we got this story just about figured out. :D