Life went to certain rules, it had certain things that had to be done before they left each hotel.
Bleach was poured down sinks and toilets, gloved up they'd clean every surface they touched, even down to taking the sheets from a bed next door to put on their own stripped bed. Their sheets would be burned later when they were away from civilisation. She'd learned that this was necessary, they hunted men who if they found one trace of them would stop at nothing to kill them both.
After Xaviers they'd wandered a few places, met up with men who'd been injured in the war and who remembered Logan. She went alone, telling them she was his granddaughter and he'd asked her to look up his army buddies in his will. Some had been grateful to be remembered, others just slammed the door in her face and she could understand their bitterness to him. Hadn't he left them for dead, hadn't he stepped over their broken bodies to take the target and when they'd cried out in pain he'd just ignored them. To kill was the only purpose he'd had then, war was meant for things like Wolverine and he'd saved just as many as he'd killed.
But their main job had been tracking those who'd stolen his life from him. Not the government, oh no, they both knew how stupid that would be, how quickly they'd show up on the radar and be 'dealt' with. So they went for the scientists, the researchers, those who would have left the government and into private practice.
It was hard at first, to work together as they did, making Marie relive the horror she'd seen in her mind. Remembering and doing were completely different, their first one, a tech who'd strapped Logan down to the gurney that dropped into the tank had been a man in his seventies now. He had grandchildren of his own, the pictures were everywhere in his house, a smiling woman had opened the door to them before they'd entered and scoped out the interior.
Using their memories the story they had was one where she was searching for her father. She was a mutant and she was fathered by a guard at a military encampment and she'd been given a bunch of names to chase. One of the names had given him as a lead to other facilities where her father may be.
He was reluctant at first but when she'd lifted her face to his and let her eyes show him the pain that she'd absorbed from Logan, a list had been easy to procure. Many of the places were defunct and long gone but the names had been gold dust. Several matched the memories of faces in both their heads, they'd left and gone on their way but they'd both returned later whennight held sway over the perfect suburbian landscape.
B&E was easy when you had Logan, no alarm, no true security lights, nothing to stop anyone from getting in who really wanted to.
Inside they'd split up, Logan had gone to the computer in the study with some of their own hardware while she went upstairs. Creeping silently through the house she felt the nerves of a first mission but had the strength to know that she could do this. If she could control herself and her skin she could walk through a house she wasn't supposed to be in. Tracking the scent of the old man she turned the handle of his room, the silk glove sliding on the brass as it turned. Letting it swing in on it's own to it's own resting weight against the frame, revealing her target. She stood there for five long minutes, her body ready but her mind unsure, it was only when Logan chuffed at her from the bottom of the stairs that she moved forward.
The memeories helped her here, his face leering at her own as he strapped her down, the way his eyes had glittered with expectation as she'd been hoisted up. The pure delight that she'd seen ride through him when Stryker had approached with the first needle.
Tugging at her glove edge to reveal her tanned skin to the darkness in the room, her stealth covering the ground between the bed and the door with the utter patience of the already dead.
The breath of his wife next to him easy and settled, but the man next to her was waking up, he sensed her presence and it disturbed his dreams. Making him restless, making his tired heart pound in his chest as she got closer.
When she was hovering over him she brought the memory of the first injection of molten metal into her body forward in her mind. Held it in her skin ready to be loaded into the man who was beginning to wake. Her breath whispering to him as her finger ends grazed his own skin, 'Remember me'.
Her touch pushing the pain, the hurt, the pure terror into his frail frame, listening to his heart stutter as the shock of the invasion went through him. The eyes as they shot open, sightless in the darkness where she could see clearly. His hands clutching at his chest as the pain ripped through his body, a heart attack, a full blown heart aneurism, the muscle dying from her touch. Her skin forcing the pain into the man who helped create it. When his wife began to stir she left the dying man behind her, backing out of the room as the wife began calling to him. His last breath already rattling round the bedroom.
They left as silently as they came, taking nothing but the copy of the hardrive, leaving nothing but the death of their tormentor.
And that's how they started their journey, how they got to live in this life of hunting, stalking and killing. For some it was auto-accident, others it was slow poisoning as they added a filter that released a small amount of it through the water line to the house. There were many ways of vengence but they were careful, very careful.
And after each one they'd go to their home for the night and cross off the name, wipe it through and destroy the page they resided on. Then they'd touch each other, hold each other in the dawn light, curl up on the same bed naked as they were born. Love was in touches, sliding against each other, remaking the connection between them until there was nothing but the two of them in the world.
And when they left the room, there was no trace of them left behind, nothing but memory and they were erasing their own as they went through this life. Along this road of vengence, it wasn't for everyone, it wasn't the black costume of hope that went with Xaviers view of the world. It was their own, something they shared together, bound by it, content with each other at last.
It took a while to finish the list but then again they had all the time in the world.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
This is the final piece of the puzzle, what happened after they left the mansion and the protection of the X-Men and Xavier.
Chapter End Notes:
This is the *last* piece of this fic, hope you enjoyed it everyone, hugs Jo.