"Logan?"
She spoke in a soft voice so she wouldn't disturb him, but he'd known she was coming from the moment she set foot off the elevator. He could hear the tinny click of her heels on the stainless steel surface of the hall floors easily, and noted that she probably had something papery stuck to the sole of one of her shoes. The scent of her fear and adrenaline was still stuck in his nose from where he'd breathed her in almost half a day earlier.
Of course, the hissing slide of the large metal doors as they opened didn't disguise her entry into the medlab either.
She repeated his name once more when he didn't respond. Though his eyes were closed, she knew he was awake - his thoughts were racing too fast for her to grab hold of any specific one, but he was definitely projecting.
"I have the results of some of the tests we performed," she said, her normally well-composed voice betraying the slight nervousness she felt from simply being around the man.
She'd known how uptight the round of exercises they'd done previously had made him and she'd suggested that he take a nap while they were waiting for the latest round of lab work-ups to be done. But with as alert as he was now, she had to question whether or not he'd heeded her advice. Then again, she'd witnessed for herself just how quickly he could rouse from a deep slumber.
"How's the kid doin'? She settlin' in all right?"
He opened his eyes then, squinting at the bright burn in his retinas from the florescent ceiling. He wanted to ask her to shut some of the lights off, but decided against it.
"I think she's doing okay. I mean, it's hard to say after only this short amount of time, but...well, we've found that establishing a routine, putting them into some type of 'normalcy,' if you will, helps them adjust more rapidly."
"You sound like the Boy Scout with that little spiel.”
She titled her head to the side, almost attempting to hide the amused grin creeping along the corners of her mouth. He certainly had no shame. “The Boy Scout?”
“Don’t play dumb, Doc. He’s prob'ly even got his socks in color-coded order.”
This time she smiled. “Actually, everything’s in color-coded order with him. Makes it easier for his eyes to spot the differences.”
He looked up at her then, tilting his head awkwardly back and to the side so he could watch her while she straightened out some of her equipment. “So he can’t see in color? Is it ’cause o’ that set o’ goggles he’s got on?”
“Yes. The visor and glasses that he wears are made of a ruby-quartz lens - one that keeps his beams at bay.”
"Beams? That his mutation?"
She nodded and pulled a sterile sheet over the metal tools that she'd been rearranging. She'd felt a quick stab of apprehension from him somewhere in the back of her mind and could only guess at the cause until she glanced over her shoulder and saw where his eyes had landed.
"He uh...Scott had an accident when he was younger. If it weren't for that, tests say that he probably would've been able to control them without the aid of an outside filter."
She was hoping that, by engaging him in some sort of small talk, she'd be able to gain some openness, or perhaps make him a bit more comfortable. What she was about to go in to was so bizarre that she almost didn't know where to begin. The few years of hospital training she'd had as a doctor had prepared her for the worst - or so she'd thought.
She remembered how he'd felt earlier, when Xavier had confronted him in the office. His anxiety was so great then that it had been a struggle to bring up some of her psi-shields to block it off.
The strange thing was...she almost hadn't wanted to. Her mind was literally pulsating with his fear, but she didn't want to leave him, didn't want to shut him off when his heart was screaming like that.
"That why he's so uptight now? 'Fraid of another 'accident'?"
He was being a jerk and he knew it. Truth was, he really didn't care - as soon as he could, he was packing up and leaving this place. He could already tell there wasn't anything for him here.
“Scott has to have a lot of control to keep his mutation under wraps.”
That last comment had bristled her a little bit. She knew Scott, how much of a stickler he was, and she should've assumed that, with someone as brash as Logan apparently was, that they'd immediately clash, but she didn't think he'd be so bawdy as to start in on him right in front of her, not while she was trying to help him.
“I’m surprised he’s able to think about anything past how far that stick's shoved up his butt.”
Of all the -
She stopped then, noticing the way his lip curled up into a half-smirk, half-grin. She could almost taste the self-satisfaction pouring out of him and knew that she'd been had.
All right - so this guy liked to get under people's skin. She'd let him have his fun - wouldn't encourage it, but wouldn't exactly reprimand it either.
"Well, he's a multi-tasker, that's for sure, so something like that is easily managed where Scott is concerned."
That shut him up for at least the time being, so she took the opportunity to pull up a stool and sit near the bed. Logan finally sat up then, sensing that she had something to say to him beyond the harmless banter they'd been sharing. He saw the clipboard she held in her hands and then, just over her shoulder, the large envelope she'd sat on the rolling cart of medical supplies. He didn't like the way she'd adjusted her glasses on the tip of her nose. She was reading something on her...file, or whatever the hell it was she had in front of her, and from the looks of it, it wasn't good.
"So what's the news, Red? Don't tell me I got the flu or somethin'," he pressed, trying to ease his own tension in the guise of a joke. Though her presence eased it a bit, he hated being in that lab more than anything he could recall at the moment.
She held up the jacket he'd discarded earlier and thrust it toward him. "Here - why don't you put this on?" she offered, gently skirting the issue in favor of a few more moments of figuring out just exactly what she was supposed to say to him.
He took it, slipping his arms into it with a naturally fluid motion. "Thought you liked me better without it," he flirted, raising an eyebrow in that cocky manner of his that she'd already come to recognize.
She ignored him, knowing that it was all a ruse, a self-preservation technique that he'd probably long ago perfected. Even without her telepathy, she could feel his anxiety rising, dancing throughout the room, its energy kinetic, beating its way up and down her own psyche like a drum head.
"Logan...I wanted to ask you about the metal coating your skeleton."
There. She'd said it. Though this wasn't even the tip of the iceberg - she'd yet to even broach the subject of how they'd even grafted it there. Why, a procedure like that would -
"My skeleton? You mean my claws - my hands and arms?"
She looked up from her clipboard then, puzzled.
"I mean, I got it in my head, too," he continued, adding the information as nonchalantly as was possible when dealing with the subject of skeletal enhancements, "but I always figured that it was just plates or somethin' -"
"Logan, this metal - this adamantium - it covers your entire body," she interrupted with a confused frown. This wasn't making any sense. He had to've known - there was no way he couldn't have.
"The whole thing?" He spoke quietly, his voice still rough, but carrying a soft quality that she didn't even think him capable of having. He shook his head as he said it, like he was trying to shake the thought from his mind, but it was obvious from the look on his face that it had latched hold and would never let go.
"You didn't know..."
My God.
"Not for sure, no," he started, looking away, his eyes flitting about the floor with more uncertainty than he'd ever experienced in his life. "I uh...I've been banged up pretty bad on a few occasions - had the chance to see what's underneath a coupla times, but I just...I guess I didn't wanna think that that might even be a possibility."
It was there. For a moment she saw him - Logan, and not the Wolverine, or whatever other nickname he chose to call himself on that particular day. It was only for a second, but she could see the real him, the man that he'd taken great care to bury beneath the thick skin and leather.
"Do you know how it got there?" she asked, her voice quiet, hoping to soothe at least part of the ache she could feel coursing through him.
"My entire body? The whole thing?" he repeated, and it was obvious that he hadn't heard what she'd just said.
She nodded solemnly, slipping her glasses from the bridge of her nose and letting them settle against her chest where they dangled from her chain. "It was...it was surgically grafted from what I can assume. It's like a new layer that coats all of your bones."
"I was hopin' it was just a dream," he breathed, pushing himself up off of the metal table. His feet were shaky, knees wobbling as he hit the floor, but he walked a few feet away from the bench, his eyes settling on the oversized envelope again. He knew now what it held inside.
Jean watched, eyes filled with sadness as he ran his fingers hesitantly over the surface of the packet. She slid over in the chair and stood when she reached his side.
"Do you want to see them?" she asked, picking up the envelope and tugging at the string holding it shut.
She took his lack of answer as a 'yes' and pulled out one of the larger sheets. The lighted screen came to life with a buzz and, even though she'd already seen them, when she stuffed the black and white image into its holder, she had to stop herself from gasping.
'A picture so horrible shouldn't be seen in the light of day,' she could stop herself from thinking.
His skull, neck, shoulders, upper chest - they all resonated with the metallic film she knew continued throughout the rest of his body.
"Do you have any idea what could have happened to you, Logan?" she questioned, seeking the answer both professionally, and personally. The morbid curiosity she'd always had flared to the surface at this unimaginable situation and her eyes roamed the x-ray once more, searching out any clues it might give her as to how the procedure might've been done.
"You're the doctor. You figure it out."
She didn't even hear him move, but before she noticed he'd left her side, the hiss of the medlab doors announced his exit and she was left alone.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I just kind of thought this would have been a neat scene to have included in the movie - not by any means that what I have written here is high quality, but I thought it would've been an interesting exchange to set things up.