When she was brought out onto the platform, the universal thought that swept through the crowd was that she’d been sent to the wrong auction. A girl that slight, that young, with eyes that big, had no place in this world of violence and bloodshed. There was no way she was a fighter and it was obvious she wouldn’t even be able to survive as one of the prizes for the winner.
Her hands were bound in front of her and her wrists and ankles were chapped and raw from the heavy irons that encircled them. She was seriously underfed – each of her ribs could be easily counted from a distance, even under her ragged shift. There was a bruise high on her right cheekbone that marred her already pitiful features and her body swayed with obvious exhaustion.
“You got the wrong crowd, Snap!” somebody in the audience called jeeringly. “We don’t need no ladies’ maids!”
John Snapdragon, the owner of the MCL – Mutant Combatant League – shook his head seriously from where he stood beside the trembling young girl. “This ain’t no ladies’ maid, gentlemen,” he responded. “This is a killer. She’s already put down two of our guards this mornin’.”
The buyers roared with laughter and disbelief, but a broad-shouldered man with a limp and three deep scars running down his face quietly slipped to the front of the crowd, examining the girl with a critical eye. “Two hundred,” he called.
Snap’s gaze fixed on him quickly. “You sure you know what you’re gettin’ into, Horse?” he warned. Horse only nodded, and Snap announced the bid. Nobody challenged it – nobody wanted to pay money for something that would probably die on the way home, not when they knew who was up for sale tonight. Everybody was holding on to their cash and their pipe dreams for when *he* was brought out.
Snap confirmed the sale of the girl for two hundred thousand dollars to Horse, then handed control of the auction over to his assistant while he escorted her down to her new owner. Horse noticed that he hooked a long iron rod to the chains that linked her hands, effectively pulling her along while keeping her at a safe distance.
“She’s one of the ones who still remembers Before,” Snap said quietly without preamble as his eyes flickered back over to the girl. Her intense glare had focused on him with fiery disdain at the word, and Snap shivered at the unadulterated hatred in her expression. Unconsciously, he shifted away from her, and she sneered, one corner of her mouth curling up wickedly. “No matter how many times we do a mindwipe on her, that’s the one thing she remembers – that she was free one time – and she’ll do anything to be that way again.”
“She ain’t old enough to remember Before, is she?” Horse asked suspiciously as he raked his eyes over the girl’s painfully thin body. She didn’t look much older than nineteen, and the Registration Act had been passed over thirty years before. Mutant-slavery had become the norm five years later. Any way you sliced it, there was no possible way she could have been one of the Free Remnant.
“She absorbed an immortal awhile back. Keeps ‘er from agin’. She’ll most likely look nineteen for the rest of ‘er life.”
“Absorbed?” Horse asked. “That ‘er power? That why she’s so fuckin’ dangerous?”
“Got it in one,” Snap confirmed. At the knowing smirk that twisted Horse’s ugly face, Snap snorted with dry amusement. “Figured you musta known somethin’ ‘bout ‘er. No other reason for ya to spend so much on a little cunt like ‘er when the Wolverine’s comin’ up.”
“That who the big surprise is?” Horse asked with mock ignorance.
“Ain’t no surprise and you know it. He killed his last owner, but that ain’t stoppin’ these fuckers from tryin’ to be the next unlucky one.”
“He makes a helluva fighter,” Horse agreed. “But we all know Wolf’s gonna get ‘im.” He shook his head, one hand coming up to lightly touch the three scars that ran parallel down his face, barely missing his left eye. “’Swhy I bought her,” he grinned. “Ain’t no better way to make money than puttin’ down the Wolverine.”
Snap regarded him suspiciously, but he knew that Horse, at nearly sixty years old, knew things that no human should. He was one of the few to have had any interaction with mutants before the Mutant Registration Act was amended to legalize mutant slavery, and the story behind those scars was one that nobody except Horse himself knew.
Shrugging, he handed the girl’s long metal stick to Horse. “Well, then, there ya go. She’s all yours.”
Taking the rod and giving it a sharp jerk, Horse pulled her over to him, keeping her bare skin well away from his own. “You remember me, honey?” he grinned. “’Cause I sure as hell remember you.”
She didn’t speak or make any indication that she’d even understood him, so he just laughed with wicked delight and pulled her along behind him. “Don’t matter,” he chuckled. “You’re exactly what I been waitin’ for. You’re gonna make me a shitload of money, and put down your fuckin’ boyfriend to boot.” He licked his lips as he glanced over his shoulder to where his biggest rival stood watching the stage with single-minded intensity. “And Wolf’s about to waste a fuckin’ lot of cash.”
Looking back down at her, he grinned evilly and said, “Mind if I call you Rogue, honey? I gotta feelin’ the name’s gonna fit ya real good now.”
The atmosphere had passed frenzied about an hour before, and the excitement was putting a serious strain on Rogue’s self-control. She could smell the blood, pain, and adrenaline in the cage outside her room, but Horse wouldn’t let her fight yet. She paced the little room furiously, pausing every now and then to throw a hard punch at a wall or kick over a chair. When Horse finally came in to check on her, there wasn’t a piece of furniture left intact.
He chuckled. “Save it, honey,” he advised her fondly. “Tonight’s your big night; wouldn’t want you to tire yourself out and fuck it up.”
She spared him a glance and a low growl, and he laughed again. “I know; you want to fight. Bad.” The hungry look of fury that crossed her eyes was her answer and he nodded. “And you’ll get to. But tonight’s the Wolverine, honey. You want to be fresh for that, dontcha?”
She nodded reluctantly before aiming one last half-hearted kick at a mutilated chair. Rogue was his prize fighter, as he’d known she would be. He’d groomed her, carefully planning the mutations he allowed her to absorb to mold her into the perfect killer. He didn’t give her anything spectacular – the crowds craved body-blows and teeth-marks and real blood, not fancy fireworks or telekinesis – but he let her have enhanced strength and senses, mind-blowing agility and quickness, and a small healing factor, just enough to make sure she stayed in the game, but not enough to stop her from bleeding.
He’d groomed her mind as carefully as he had her body, knowing that creating the ultimate killing machine was a dangerous undertaking if that machine wasn’t on your side. He’d told her that her memories of being free were true – once upon a time, she had been one of the free mutants and she had been happy, until a man named the Wolverine, a man she loved, had betrayed her and sold her to the slave traders.
Tears had welled up in her eyes then, but she’d blinked them away quickly and settled her face into lines of murderous rage. He’d smiled with pride, knowing he had her. He’d told her that he cared about her, and that’s why he couldn’t set her free – not in a world so hostile to mutants – but that he’d do his best to take care of her. He’d even help her get her revenge on the man who’d betrayed her -- after all, the Wolverine was a fighter like herself, and he had a score to settle with him too. He’d touched the scars on his face in explanation, and she’d nodded, a hard light flaring in her eyes. She would fight the Wolverine, and she would kill him.
Now, as she regarded him silently – he wasn’t even sure she could speak; she never had – he saw her mind running over everything, weighing her need for immediate violence against her thirst for revenge. Finally, she sighed heavily and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her toned body and raising her eyebrows sharply at him. He chuckled.
“Later,” he assured her. “If you win, I’ll let you have anybody you like. Anybody at all.”
Part of his taking-care-of-Rogue package included giving her a prize after every fight – a man, or sometimes a woman, of her choosing. He always watched from a secluded spot as she took her prize, forcing them to please her body until she was satisfied, and then killing them when she was done. The first couple of times, he had been certain that she didn’t know he was watching. But the third time, after she’d snapped the petite redhead’s neck and torn the windpipe and arteries with her teeth, she’d looked up at the darkened window and grinned, her tongue flicking out to catch the foamy speckles of blood that had spattered across her lips and chin.
He’d startled, feeling a flash of fear as he realized she was looking straight at him, but then relaxed as she’d nodded in acknowledgement and approval. *Watch me,* her eyes had seemed to say. *Watch me and see that I am the alpha. I dominate. I will not be defeated. You have power over me only because I choose to let you.*
He’d believed her, and he still did. He knew what she could do – she’d once been thrown naked into a cage with a wild mother lynx who had been separated from her cubs… and though the margin of victory was thin, Rogue had won.
Now he heard the roar of the crowd and the clanging of the bell as the last match was ended. The challenger was dragged unconscious from the cage while the victor had to be wrestled out with electric prods.
“You’re up, honey,” he told her only seconds before the announcer bellowed out the next match over the bloodthirsty roar of the crowd.
Smiling with self-confident malice, she straightened up, shimmying a little to make her barely-there costume shimmer. Horse smiled in appreciation as he followed her out, the streaks of white in her ponytail swinging down over the metal mesh halter-top. The tips of her hair just barely brushed the matching skirt that ended at her upper thighs, just below her ass, which was, coincidentally, just where her spike-heeled leather boots began.
“Here is the moment you’ve been waiting for!” the announcer screamed into the crackly microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen! The fight of the century, right before your very eyes! The Rogue – versus – the Wolverine!”
The already-riotous crowd raised their frantic volume a couple of notches as Rogue ascended the steps into the cage, smoothing her elbow-length leather gloves over her fingers and walking the perimeter, flaunting her body with every step. Her message was clear: I will be more than the survivor. I will be more than the conqueror. I will be the god of this cage, of you, and of my opponent. I will dominate and destroy. Watch and tremble.
Moments after she’d reached her corner, still flexing her hands within her unnecessary gloves – she could control her gift now, but she liked the way they made her look – her challenger, shirtless, barefoot, and in jeans, entered the cage with much the same attitude. Their eyes met across the cage and the Wolverine snarled viciously. Rogue simply gave him an evil half-smile and blew him a mocking kiss.
The light in his eyes changed then, lust and a promise of bloody seduction entering his expression as he raked his gaze hotly over her firmly curved body. The announcer had already backed out of the cage, not trusting those two to wait for the bell.
The Wolverine rolled his shoulders and snapped his neck violently, leering at her as he stalked gracefully to the center of the ring. She came out to meet him with a sensuous sway, her lips curling upward into a deadly invitation.
“What kind of a name is Rogue, darlin’?” he mocked her openly, the heat in his gaze searing over her body.
In response, she ran her eyes over his form with a disdainfully raised eyebrow and met his gaze again, her sentiments written all over her face: *You have been weighed and found wanting.* He snarled in offense, and she smirked, shrugging. “Ah don’t know, sugah,” she said finally, matching the derision in his voice. “What kind of a name is *Wolverine*?”
The crowd fell silent for a half-second, awed at the sound of her voice. Most of them there had seen her fight before, and never once had she uttered a single syllable, not even a grunt of pain. The sweet, Southern lilt of her accent seemed in direct opposition to what they knew of her as a brutal, sadistic fighter; even Horse looked up in surprise, flickering his eyes across the room to catch Wolf’s shocked gaze.
The moment was broken with the harsh clanging of the bell, and the crowd bellowed with renewed bloodlust as Rogue struck out quickly, drawing first blood from Wolverine’s mouth and artfully dodging his return attack.
She danced away from him lightly, licking her lips as they curled upward in a smile of pure evil delight. He released his claws with a loud snikt and she laughed. So the fight began.
The two circled each other in a dance of death, sometimes making contact with the other’s body, sometimes missing completely. Once, Rogue darted in quickly from behind, managing to tear the skin at his neck with her teeth, and the crowd screamed its encouragement. It was Rogue’s trademark kill, and one that they loved – when she would dart in under her challenger’s defenses, tear his throat open, and back out of his reach before he even had time to react.
The Wolverine was quicker than most of her opponents, though, and when she tried that particular move on him, his claws were waiting for her. She screamed as the metal tore through her abdomen, but quickly writhed her way off the claws and latched onto the skin of his right bicep with her mouth. She flipped on her original mutation, and the crowd watched in awe and horror as veins began to stand out on the Wolverine’s face and body and the wounds on Rogue’s body began to close up rapidly.
She pulled away and Wolverine stumbled back, dazed. Grinning in triumph, she shivered, rolling her shoulders and snapping her neck in a way that was all too familiar to the Wolverine’s owner and those who had laid their money on him. She flexed her hands and grimaced, crying out as she grabbed her head and fell to the floor. Her eyes met and caught Wolverine’s, and recognition crackled between them like lightning. In the next moment, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, Rogue following suit almost instantly.
Immediately, Horse and Wolf were in the cage, each running to their fighter. The crowd watched in horror and fascination as the Wolverine and the Rogue sat up as one, each releasing a set of claws – one metal, one bone – into the bodies of their respective owners. With a howl of victory, Wolverine stood, shaking Wolf on the end of his claws before throwing him into a discarded heap in the corner of the cage. Rogue pulled her claws up through Horse’s ribcage before she shoved the bloody mess away from her and stood, every inch of her body exuding leashed sexuality and sensual promise.
“Marie,” he breathed, and she grinned at him.
“Logan,” she purred in response.
“I knew I’d find you,” he growled, coming forward with possessive strides, intent on claiming his mate. To his surprise, she snarled and leaped away from him. “Marie…?” he questioned, the animal just below the surface seething with hurt and barely restrained violence at his mate’s rejection.
“Get us out of here first,” she snarled at him. “And then you can have all the time you want for sappy reunions.”
He looked around at the crowd that was turning mutinous and then growled at her. “You got a point, darlin’,” he admitted. “I don’t ‘specially wanna be buried in this town.” With a grim smile, he took her hand in his and pulled her toward the cage door.
“I’m not sure that’s such a wise idea,” she told him, hanging back a little and looking at the angry mob outside with wide eyes.
He met her eyes with a disbelieving expression. “You just about took down the Wolverine, and you’re scared of a few pansy assholes?”
Her lips quirked at his admission that she’d nearly beaten him, but her eyes again skated over the crowd with apprehension. “Yeah, but there was only one of you, sugar. There’s about two hundred of them.”
“You think we can’t handle ‘em?” he asked, and though his tone was flippant, the look in his eyes was deadly serious. *Can we make it out of here, or not? Where’s your faith?*
Squeezing his hand, she squared her shoulders and snapped her head to the side sharply, making the vertebrae in her neck pop loudly. “Bring it on, sugar,” she grinned, and they went down to meet their fates.
THE END
I am standing up at the water's edge in my dream
I cannot make a single sound as you scream
it can't be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch
this place is so quiet, sensing that storm
red rain is coming down
red rain
red rain is pouring down
pouring down all over me
well I've seen them buried in a sheltered place in this
town
they tell you that this rain can sting, and look down
there is no blood around see no sign of pain
no pain
seeing no red at all, see no rain
--Peter Gabriel
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Notes: SPECIAL CONTENT WARNING: One of my betas informed me that this fic traverses some dark, icky ground that you guys aren’t really used to seeing me cover. You might’ve gotten the slightest of tastes in “Further to Fly” or “In Darkness,” but this adds malicious intent where “Further to Fly” was just circumstances, and details where “In Darkness” was all guess-work. The language is offensive (the “c” word makes an appearance), the violence is brutal, and the sex has nothing to do with love. No hearts and flowers here, kiddos. Walk softly – here be monsters. :) Anyone who remembers a little sequel to this one called "Blood of Eden" and is looking for it...I have decided to retract it. I prefer this story as a stand-alone. I have a real weak spot for stories where Rogue fights Logan in a cage. I can’t help it. That, plus a love of Jack London’s “White Fang,” had a serious influence on this fic. Many thanks to Charon and J. Marie, whose “Out of the Cold” and “Shades of Grey” (respectively) had quite a hand in birthing this idea. Thanks to Terri, Taryn, and Andrea for the beta! You guys are quickly making yourselves indispensable… *grins*