Chapter 11 – Some things should be left to Steve McQueen
"Stay with me kid."
Sharp slices of noise surround me. They fade in and out. Words without meaning, echoing uselessly around the hollow of my mind. Where... what...? I can hear shouting but I don’t understand it. And there’s the sharp ring of metal grinding against stone, the rusty thick smell of blood.
Logan?
I try to get my mind to work, but it’s sludgy and dark and won’t do what I want. Thoughts bend away from me when I try and focus on them, broken and... and...
Where am I?
My eyes open a crack, I try to focus. Fuck, but I hurt. The sort of hurt that stabs right down from under your fingernails, all the way to the very tips of your toes and makes you want to scream with the fury of it. I swallow, try to control it before I pass out, but I can taste bile in my throat and I’m not entirely sure I can control anything.
"Kid?"
Huh? Bleary. Everything is splotchy and dark. I try to concentrate. Try to focus on the voice. The cold roughness of a stone wall at my back helps to ground me. There’s a clammy breeze on my face; it’s sweaty and nauseating but it lets me know I’m outside. I think. I hope. Oh God I don’t know. Everything waivers and slides away from me again, ears ringing as the cold stone soaks through my skin. I’m freezing.
But I’m still alive.
So I try again. Concentrate.
One hand fumbles loosely for the floor as the other goes to my side. It feels numb, but the dark stain across my shirt is no longer spreading. He managed to touch me, I realise fuzzily. He must have done. Though not for long. Just enough to stem the bleeding. Maybe... I cough messily as my thoughts spiral again. Fuck. That hurts even more. No more coughing.
As awareness creeps back to me, the slick sound of claws grows horribly clear. Ripping through clothes and flesh, screeching off stone. There’s grunting. Swearing. Yelling. My ears stop throbbing and gradually I draw direction from the sound.
There. To the left of me.
Fighting.
Oh my God, we’re still outside the bank.
Logan? I want to call out, but I can’t. I want to do something to stop him. To fix this. No I don’t. I want to run away. I want to hide. Just stop. Please just stop.
But I can’t make a sound, and nobody notices me. Not now.
He doesn’t give them the chance to.
Six are left, but he’s a snarling fury, lamplight shining darkly on the strips of blood that streak his skin and mingle with the sweat on his ripped shirt. He roars as he drives those claws into flesh. I see his face contort as they shoot him, trying to take him down but he keeps on coming... he just keeps on coming. And he’s here. How is he here? How can he just...?
Oh God... I think I’m going... to do...something really... useful... like... pass out.
I take a deep giddy breath. Press my clammy palms against my forehead and try and stop the world from swimming. But everything’s moving. He’s moving. A feral darkness in their midst. And they’re moving. And the ground beneath me is moving as the world tilts and the dusty street is swamped in a slick redness. Someone screams nearby; I can hear an answering wail. A shiver of recognition. Police sirens, there are police sirens in the distance. We need to... fuck it’s hard to think. We need to... to...
There’s a blur of clothes and a muffled thump as a man is thrown at the wall beside me. Logan is upon him in an instant. Claws hidden, bloody fingers grabbing his chin, forcing his lulling face upwards. A rough growl. "Who you workin’ for?"
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this. Not really. This is not like the Danger Room. There are no casual cigars here, no snarky remarks. Here he’s a killing machine, pure bred and lethal. This is the weapon they made of him. This is the Wolverine.
And no joke, it is terrifying.
He sniffs the other man’s scent, then backhands him across the face. Hard. "I said, who THE FUCK do you work for?"
I watch dazed, as the stranger tries bleakly to focus, but it’s a loosing battle and he soon gives up. He manages a bloody smile instead.
"Last chance," Logan warns putting his fist between the man’s eyes.
The man coughs. "Fuck you," he wheezes.
Not the right thing to say.
Shit.
With a flash of adamantium claws slick straight through his frontal lobe like knives sliding through warm butter. He snarls as the weight of the man slumps forward upon him. Shoves him to the side.
I think I’m going to be sick.
"Get up kid."
Actually, I know I’m going to be sick.
Instinct takes over and I flinch, backing away in a sudden panic. But he growls at my reaction and I instantly know it was the wrong thing to do. Don’t run from the beast. But what can you do if you can’t run? Shit, I can’t think straight. He saved me. It’s Logan. I know him... don’t I?
"Get up," he says again. The words are bitten off. It’s a command.
I swallow, stumbling for time. "I don’t think I can."
This doesn’t even get a reaction. "Get. Up."
Fear strikes through me at his tone and I fumble my way to my feet, the muscles in my side taught and raw and screaming in protest. It nearly makes me pass out again.
"You have a car?"
"Yes," I choke out. Then I look across the street, the blurry flashes of wavering streetlamps swinging together until they’re in focus again. "No." Where has it gone?
"Fuck." I hear him snarl. Then without further warning, he hefts me up into his arms and his strong legs are running.
My fingers curl into his damp shirt and it’s all I can do to hold on.
Consciousness, when it returns, is like a sludgy trickle. A pin prick of thought, stubborn and slow. It takes me a while to realise I’m cupped in the softness of a car seat, surrounded by smells of clean leather and open air. Scott’s car, I realise with a jolt of sadness. And I’ve got blood all over it. My skin and clothes stick painfully to the upholstery and it’s all such a mess. Scott would be so unhappy if he was around to see it.
For some reason that upsets me more than anything else, the thought of Scott disapproving. He’d be so disappointed in me, it makes me want to cry.
I stare fixedly out the window. Clench my teeth.
I don’t want to cry.
I watch the blur of blackness. Try to distinguish tree from building from empty night. From the fuzzy blanket that still muffles my mind. From anything.
I really don’t want to cry.
But my pulse is throbbing and my side is burning, blood seeping sluggishly into my top again, and my head is spinning, and I can’t quite comprehend how I got from where I was yesterday, to here.
We take a corner far too fast and my seatbelt digs in. With a fumbling hand I try and loosen it slightly... he strapped me in? What does that mean? You know, you should wear your seatbelt. My memory plays tricks on me, but it’s dark outside, not bright and cold with snow. I’m not sixteen and he’s not a stranger.
I risk a glance sideways, completely unprepared for the emotion that squeezes at my throat. He’s driving, totally focused on the road, freshly healed knuckles gripped white around the expensive steering wheel. Like the rest of him they’re smeared with blood.
Because of me.
I made him like that.
I’ve never seen him that way before. He was unstoppable out there. There was no graceful beauty to his fighting; it was functional, what was needed. It was a messy, gritty slaughter. All those guards, all those...men.
Dead.
That’s such a horrible short little word. They were all just piled up together. Lifeless lumps of torn clothes and flesh. All that movement and calculating energy, gone. Cut off. Halted. Because of me.
It makes me feel numb.
Numbness is good, I tell myself. Numbness is better than feeling horror or guilt over what happened. That would be a lot harder. But numb is cold. Numb isn’t real. Numb feels like I’ve stepped outside my own skin and I’m looking down on my minefield of a life with a detached curiosity.
Part of me wants to break. Wants to give in and snap. Screech. Scratch my face and rip at my hair. You’re a bad person. You’re a mess. Give it up. This is what happens when you try and become someone else. You don’t deserve life.
Another part wants to remain stubborn and aloof like I have been for the past few months. That part wants to fight for it, to say ‘to hell with it all, they were trying to kill you! Have some freaking backbone and stand up for yourself!’
But I was the one there when I shouldn’t have been. I should have just left well alone. They were just doing their job. Weren’t they?
Oh God. What does that make me?
Numb.
It makes me numb.
I try not to think about them, but images flash back every time I close my eyes, scoured onto the backs of my eyelids. Stolen memories rise to the surface. One of the guards, Michael, his name was Michael, he’d just booked a weekend to take his girl away. Another had a three year old kid waiting for him at home. One guy still lived with his parents and felt guilty for watching porn. Working extra shifts. Hated the fucking job. Needed the money. All people. All individuals.
My thoughts slip and suddenly I wonder if they got away, or if they were part of the pile Logan left for dead outside the bank.
Fuck, I feel sick.
What did we do? How did it all go so wrong? We’ve robbed, we’ve stolen, but no one’s ever been killed before. Not like this. We planned too carefully, planned so that no one got hurt. She promised. Mystique. She promised me no one would need to get hurt. We’d just take back what was ours. That’s all we wanted to do!
Shit, I’m so stupid. I’m so fucking stupid.
Maybe they’re right to fear us, to lock us away and ‘cure’ us. Maybe we are monsters.
Beside me Logan swears, bringing me back to the present as he wrenches the car around another corner. He has a slow healing cut across his face and he looks exhausted, so much so that I want to reach out to him. But in my head the slump of a man’s body against the wall, Logan’s claws retracting from his skull, plays again and again, and instead I begin to shake.
"Logan?" I croak. Is that my voice?
I struggle to sit upright, but his hand reaches over and pushes me firmly back down into the seat.
"Don’t move," he warns. "Haven’t been able to heal you properly yet. Right now I need to drive."
There’s no emotion there, nothing of the man who would look out for me. Just hard fact.
He doesn’t even look at me.
I try to swallow and it hurts like hell, a few stubborn tears trickling out from the corners of my eyes. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. I got shot. I got fucking shot! What the hell was I doing? When on earth did I begin to think I was invincible? If Logan hadn’t come along when he did...
I screw my eyes shut; hide the inky blur of landscape that’s speeding past. "I wanted..." I manage, "...I didn’t-"
"Save it, kid." He almost bites out the words, not angry, but...something else. Cold.
But then he seems to soften slightly, and I hear him sigh as he takes one hand off the wheel to scrub at his face. "Now’s just not the time, okay?"
Now’s not the...? Oh God, that must mean...
He’s driving really fast and my brain finally puts two and two together. We’re still being chased? "Are they...?"
"Yes."
Shit. They must be close. My stomach turns, but I'm too exhausted for anything else.
"Where’s..." I cough and it hurts. "Where is-?"
"The blue wench?" I see his jaw work.
"I didn’t... don’t worry," I try and fumble out a sentence, but it doesn’t help. I can see his knuckles tighten.
"I don’t know," he says eventually. "She took off not long after I got there."
I expect to feel shock, but it doesn’t come. Neither does hate. Or fear. There’s nothing there. Just the numbness, layering over me like a thick blank emptiness, leaving me hollow and void.
I remember her calling. Splinters of blood and the echoing sound of my name. I remember her fierceness to fight. But she didn’t come back to help. Instead she ran. Saved herself. It was Logan who refused to leave me there to-
"Dammit!"
Jesus! My stomach spins and cramps as the car lurches out of control. What's happening? I see Logan grab the wheel, fight it, yell with the effort, but it’s not enough, it’s not enough! Oh God! My hand automatically fumbles for my seatbelt; eyes wide; heart suddenly racing; blood pounding; metal screaming; road spinning and twisting the world as a sudden lurch of surging weightlessness hits me.
Then the moment’s shrieking silence is replaced by a sickening crunch.
I try to hold on. It’s all I can do. The buckling of metal; the folding crack of bones and the crushing screech that follows as the car scrapes along the ground with continued momentum. It grates through my mind. It feels like it goes on forever, panic fisting in my gut, holding my body rigid until we finally... eventually... come to a... stop.
Then there’s a dull silence.
I try to remember how to breathe.
Fuck, it hurts. My chest feels...tight...crushed. My legs...feel... nothing. Oh God. I swallow. Cough. There’s a dull thumping in my ears. Around me the car is scrunched up like shreds of paper. I’m on my back, I realise. Up against the passenger window. My thoughts are in fragments. Like the glass. Things slide into focus. Broken. Bent. Crippled. Logan’s almost directly above me. He’s pinned by the wheel... it’s buckling under his weight.
"Logan?" It barely comes out more than a rasping whisper. I can taste blood. It wheezes and bubbles in my throat as I try to draw in air, the stench of burnt rubber suffocating me. "Logan?"
But he’s unconscious. And the whole car is beginning to creak and shift.
"Logan?" Please wake up. Please. I don’t think I’m going to survive this.
I lick my lips. They’re so dry. "Logan?" I’m trying not to sob, but I can’t even get that right. Please. Wake up. I can’t move, and the steering wheel...it’s getting worse, collapsing under the strain. I can see it happening. Hear the faint ticking of the cooling engine. Smell the tang of oil, the saltiness of blood. His. Mine. I can’t stop it. Please wake up!
A sudden shriek of twisting metal and for a moment he just hangs there, lifeless, supported by the remnants of his seatbelt. But it’s half severed by shards of glass from the windshield, and I can see it fraying under the strain.
"Logan!" I try one more time, but it makes no difference. A sickening crack, and the whole thing finally gives.
He lands heavily on me. I brace myself for pain, but... but it doesn’t hurt. Why doesn’t it...? He’s crushing me but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything...wait. Yes I can. Oh God, it’s because I’m taking his mutation. I can’t! I’ll kill him!
I clench my eyes, grit my teeth. I won’t kill him, I won’t. I won’t do it. I won’t. Goddamit! Make it STOP! Slow it down!
I try to focus, but it hurts so goddamed much. Especially when I can’t...I can’t... Oh God but I need to slow it down. It’s all I can think about. And I can think about it. I can. I can muffle it. I can drown it. I can suffocate it. Force it. Slow it down. Slow. It. Down.
Until there’s nothing left.
Nothing at all.
And a thick blackness engulfs me.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
A/N: Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's still reading this & for all your comments so far *g* It's keeping me going! And with this chapter, I feel I should apologise to all the people who hate cliffhangers...*winces slightly* In advance? Sorry. *hides*.