DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid
track three // “BREATHE”
AND BALANCED ON THE BIGGEST WAVE / YOU RACE TOWARD AN EARLY GRAVE
“Me?” Logan huffs out a mirthless laugh. “You’re the experts.
I’m just the guy who gave her a place to lay low for a while.”
– Logan –
Too slow. The rhythm inside his skull, against his chest. Grasp and release, rise and fall. Consciousness has always come in jolts. From one thing to the next. This murky building of awareness…too much like incremental death. Death as he imagined it was yes or no. There or not. He isn’t prepared for the reality.
Logan can feel Xavier prodding against his mind before he can smell him, well before he can force his eyes open.
He breathes roughly. “What happened? Is she all right?”
“She’ll be all right,” Xavier replies.
The relief hurts, almost worse than the regret. Barely able to lift his arm, he has to shut his eyes to summon the strength. “What did she do to me?”
“Whenever Rogue touches someone, she takes their energy, their life-force. In the case of mutants, she absorbs their gifts for a short while. In your case, your ability to heal.”
“I feel like she almost killed me.” Fair price, set against the alternative. More than fair.
“If she’d held on any longer, she could have.”
Bleary-eyed, Logan studies Xavier. More unsettling than his own mortality is the implication. “What do you know?”
Xavier sits back in his chair, fingers coming together on his lap. “Only Rogue knows what happened to Captain Danvers, and even then I’d be surprised if she knows the whole story.”
“Government clinic. Your fuckin’ enlightened masses.” There’s a break in his voice. Can’t shake the weakness.
“The situation is not that black and white. For the sake of us all, it mustn’t be. Each case has to be judged individually. All circumstances, all sides taken into account.”
“She ain’t a killer.” He’d be on his feet, could he manage it.
“You’re misunderstanding me. The truth – the truth as she feels it – is that Captain Danvers’ death was, in fact, her fault.”
“Her skin – ”
“I agree. However. For better or worse, Rogue is in possession of one of the most complicated mutations I have ever encountered. But what she did or does, the person she is while under the tyranny of others’ influence is much less important than who she believes herself to be, who she wants to be. In time, I can help her to understand that.”
The tenseness in Logan’s shoulders is exhausting, forcing him to settle into the mattress. “Your word again?”
“Yes. This time for free.”
Little choice in believing him. Even so, Logan can’t come up with a reason not to.
Xavier, smiling thinly, pulls back from the bed. “Rogue is perfectly safe where she is. You should rest. You’ll both feel better in the morning.”
The room goes dark, and Logan sinks into sleep. He drowns in it, surfaces, only to be dragged down again. A laboratory is a battlefield. A rent by the hour kind of room, carpet drenched in blood. Claws won’t pierce his chest plate, but his guts are in his lap. He has his fist against Marie’s parted lips. Raised veins around glinting green eyes crinkle like smile lines.
Logan jerks up in bed, holding his bent hand in front of his face. Under his skin, he can see the tip of his middle claw ready to spring.
Fuck’s sake.
When he gets into the shower, he makes sure the water’s boiling. It pounds against his muscles, coiled tight with rushing blood. His body’s overcompensating for what Marie rightfully took, preparing him for a fight that he’s not about to have and wouldn’t win anyway. The pansy-ass designer soap clenched in his fist suffers the brunt of his aggression.
Second morning in a row he’s gotten out of bed cranky and wondering how the hell he’s going to face Marie.
Kiss won’t kill me, he said. What the fuck did he know?
Painfully obvious, he’s in over his head. Yesterday he put food in her stomach and money in her pocket, things she needed. Today he’s got nothing to offer that’s worth a damn, because sometime between then and now Marie turned into a seventeen-year-old kid who wants him to call her Rogue like everybody else, who thinks she’s a monster and says they’re just alike. Its not something he can wash off, the feeling that Marie trusted Xavier with a hell of a lot more than she ever intended to tell him. Not all that surprising, but he reduces two bars of soap to pulp over it.
He’s got no right to fault her for thinking the worst of him. She lied to protect herself. Told him she was older to give him incentive for her to stay, probably, and never let him touch her so he wouldn’t have a reason to hurt her back. He tried to leave her in the bar, the woods, insulted her, doubted her, took advantage. He would’ve sent her off to fend for herself on bad evidence. She’d be paranoid and alone somewhere in the Yukon about now, if Magneto’s lackeys hadn’t made their move when they did. If Xavier’s people hadn’t shown up, she’d be even worse off. Because of him. And when she tried to release him from a nightmare, he skewered her with three foot-long razorblades.
With friends like him.
Dressed, Logan takes off down the hallway on a prowl. He has to make sure she’s okay, only he wants to do it without her knowing. Scent says she’s already checked in on him.
It leads him to the dinning hall, where he can look in from the side door. A handful of kids are scattered along wooden tables, hunkered over notebooks. Marie, wet hair hanging down, is the only one at the buffet. As she leans over to scoop food from the far side, her purple blouse rides up in the back. Denim clings to hollowed contours and unmarked skin. He doesn’t understand how something so delicate could offer so much protection, but he’s grateful to it.
Logan raises an eyebrow when Marie turns, revealing a tray piled high with all manner of sausages and hash browns, none of the syrup-drenched stuff she usually goes for.
She stops abruptly, and he has to stand up from his lean to see past her. A trio of wide-eyed girls, including the bushy blonde from yesterday, aren’t in the doorway for long before hightailing it out of there. Logan’s ready to cross the room when he catches a glimpse of the satisfied smirk playing across her face.
That delicate skin of hers is thicker than he thought.
Marie’s got her back to the door, so she doesn’t see James Dean chuckle his way behind her as she sits down. He makes himself at home, straddling the bench. “Come now, Roguey. That’s no way to make friends.”
She arches an eyebrow, biting into a sausage link. “Sparky, did I say you could sit next me?”
Pyro scoots closer. “Did I ask?”
“Aren’t you brave.” Sarcasm goes wistful at the end, just barely, but Logan hears it.
“You’re not all sunshine and lollipops,” Pyro shrugs. “I can dig it.”
“Such a rebel.” She tears a off a large chunk of biscuit, swallowing almost without chewing.
Pyro tries to snatch a piece of bacon, but she fends him off with her fork. “Down girl,” he yelps. “There’s plenty for two.”
“Listen, I have never been this hungry in my life and that’s sayin’ something. So try that again, and I start callin’ you Stumpy. Get your own.”
He laughs at the three-pronged fork she’s still pointing at him. “Look at you, a regular wolverine kit.”
A fucking riot, this punk.
Snorting, Marie digs up a heap of potatoes. “‘Kit’? You pulled that out of your ass.”
“That’s what they’re called,” he replies, defensive. He drops his elbow on the table, leaning in. “What’s your story?”
“You’re too young to hear it.”
“The rumors are pretty vicious. If I had to sum up a best of, you’d be a kiddie prostitute serial killer who makes trophies out of mutations, and you were in Claws’s room last night shaking him down – He’s either your last john or your pimp, there’s controversy.”
Logan grits his teeth, but it’s Marie who growls low in the back of her throat. An authentic growl, no giggles. He’s starting to wonder what Xavier meant when he said she took his life force.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Don’t hate on the messenger. I actually forgot to mention the part about you being inbred. I’d chalk that up to the twang. I had an Australian accent when I was little. Kindergarteners are mean.”
Her lip quirks slightly. “It’s been a long, tough life for you, I can tell.”
“I’ve been here two years and some people still think I burned my foster parents alive, if that makes you feel any better.”
“How’s that supposed to make me feel better?” Marie lets her fork fall into her food. “Of all places, you’d think people here – ”
“Even freaks need their own pariahs. Ignore it. It’s smoke.”
Logan frowns. He should be the one taking the edge off for her, instead of playing peeping tom spectator like an ass.
Marie mirrors Pyro’s posturing, her expression a smile waiting to happen. “You put a lot of effort into making yourself repulsive.”
“Or am I now putting a lot of effort into getting into your pants? It’s a mystery.”
“Fair enough. But you have to admit it – you Googled the kit thing just so you could make that joke.”
“Slander. I would never go to all that trouble for just one joke. I got about fifty.”
Her smile breaks. “For instance?”
“For instance, did you know that wolverines are also called skunk-bears? I was hoping to mention that to Claws at some strategic point.”
Marie picks up her fork, all traces of amusement gone. “His name is Logan.”
“That’s the rumor. He’s supposed to be indestructible.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty resilient. And it’s a good thing, too.” She half-turns and lifts her eyes to meet Logan’s.
His folded arms drop to his sides. No way she’d seen him without his knowing.
Marie releases her stare, gloved hand going to rub the back of her neck, and he takes the moment to walk away. If she were anxious to talk to him, she’d have said something earlier. She deserves her space, he tells himself, though his gait is a little quick for courtesy.
He heads to the other side of the mansion, to the kitchen where a woman who blinked vertically made him dinner yesterday before the question and answer session with Xavier. What’s the use of a telepath who won’t read his mind? He read Marie’s, mixed her up good while he was at it. Jean at least made the attempt, though she didn’t tell him what she saw. Never told him what the tests were all about, come to that, just took a lot of notes.
Logan slows down. He’s getting jerked around and the front door’s open.
But he made a deal.
Jaw tight, he walks into the empty kitchen and pulls open the refrigerator. All he finds that he can easily fix for himself is ham and cheese. Nothing wrong with a hunk of meat between two slices of bread, but as he chews he recalls Marie leaning over to set down a piping hot steak in front of him, telling him she’s spoiling him rotten with her family’s best recipes and giving him an eye full of cleavage in the process. He had the luxury of being smug then, because all he had to do was sit back and enjoy the show while Marie maneuvered herself into his bed.
Like the thought police, the smell of synthetic amber and sandalwood – bottled urine would be more worth the fifty bucks – hits Logan’s nostrils, making him huff out a growl. He stands up straight, his back to the door on the pretext of slapping together another sandwich.
Pretty boy waits pointlessly for Logan to acknowledge him first. He has most of his second sandwich eaten before Cyclops finally relents. “You’re wanted in the – ”
“Toddle back to daddy, Scooter, and tell him I’m not in the mood.”
Making a noise like he’s shoving that stick further up his ass to suppress whatever it is he actually wants to say, Cyclops replies, “No. It’s Jean who wants you – ”
“No surprises there. But in that case.” Sandwich in hand, Logan shoulders past him.
Following, Cyclops finishes testily, “ – in the med lab for more tests.”
“Jeanie’s nothin’ if not thorough. I imagine she’ll be dedicating a lot of time to lookin’ me over.” Swallowing the last of his sandwich, he steps into the elevator and presses the button before Cyclops can get in. “Sorry, doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“That’s fine. I have an appointment with Rogue to go over makeup classes with her. She missed her junior year of high school.” Second time he’s gotten the last word in because of a closed door, and the sanctimony just rolls off him.
Striding to the med lab, Logan’s got a scowl on his face until he sees Jean massaging the dark circles under her eyes. She quickly stands, sliding on her glasses. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than you, I had to guess. You been down here all night?”
“I couldn’t sleep after what happened.”
Leaning against the examining table, he lifts an eyebrow. “I’m touched.”
Jean shakes her head slightly, tongue resting momentarily against her teeth. “I study mutations. It started out as a hobby but it’s become a bit more than that. I was discussing your case and Rogue’s case with a colleague, Dr. Hank McCoy.”
Logan folds his arms across his chest. “And?”
“And Hank contacted Dr. Moira MacTaggart, who’s doing genetic research at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. She’s not a mutant, but she’s a very good friend of Charles’.” Jean takes a moment to move over to the computers and start pressing buttons. “She has people on her team who were formerly employed by Southaven.”
“She’s a great friend of mutants. Right.”
“Moira’s won a lot of influential medical professionals to our cause just by being willing to work with them. It’s a strategy and it gets results.”
“Yeah? So what’d she say?”
Jean inhales slowly, lips thin and posture stiff as she sits back down in the desk chair. She’s revving up for a long one, and he can already tell he’s not going like it anymore than she’s enjoying the prospect of telling him.
“I ain’t gonna bite,” he says, relaxing his stance for her benefit.
A flicker of appreciation, then her features settle back into serious. “In Congress there’s something called the Usual Suspects, a group of mutants that the Senate Select Committee uses as reference points. One of our students, Kitty Pryde, is a Usual Suspect. Sometimes she’s invoked as sort of the harmless face of mutants, most recently Senator Robert Kelly decided to use her ability to walk through walls to prove that all mutants are potential criminals.”
“You mean the sonuvabitch who talked himself right into gettin’ kidnapped.”
“Senator Kelly and his aide have been missing nearly three days now. We believe Magneto is involved. Vanisher – Telford Porter, the mutant they arrested at the scene – is almost certainly a scapegoat, only the FBI isn’t letting anyone talk to him but their lawyers. So we can’t be sure what Magneto’s eventual aim is. The chances of the Ellis Island plot succeeding were slim to none, but it’s a distraction that’s working for people like Senator Kelly. Delaying the UN Summit has brought more attention to the Registration Act, something no mutant wants.”
“The MRA passes, mutants aren’t happy. Magneto gets his army.”
“Certainly a possibility, but Charles doesn’t think so. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor, so the Professor doesn’t believe he’d risk it.”
“I were him, I’d risk a hell of a lot to make sure nothin’ like that happens again,” he says darkly.
“If mutants make a preemptive strike, it could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. People right now are scared and some of them are hateful, but that’s a far cry from genocide.”
“Exactly how far away is ‘cure at any cost’?”
Jean seems to deflate. “I wish I had a better response for you than ‘it’s complicated,’ but, honestly, Logan, we’re doing the best that we can.”
“I believe you are.”
To his surprise, her body language tells him she takes his words to heart, they mean something.
“Unfortunately, right now all I can offer is speculation. Hank has a theory about what Magneto wants with you. The adamantium framing your skeleton is an extremely rare alloy with innumerable potential uses – except that no scientist we know of has been able to experiment with it successfully.”
“So this Hank thinks Magneto wants to strip me down and use me for parts.”
“In so many words.”
And for that, he got airlifted out of Canada. Just when he was starting to have something that resembled a life, he thinks, before remembering it was a sham.
Jean sits forward in her chair, the end of her swept-back hair curling around her shoulders as she rolls her neck. “We know that Magneto has some sort of weapon in mind, Charles was able to see enough for that. The best we could do is track his known associates, which is how we found you. Obviously, whatever Magneto is planning is to be done during the UN Summit, or he wouldn’t have bided his time the way he has. And with Senator Kelly kidnapped, it’s turned into a matter of pride. The UN Summit is going to proceed, and it’s going to be more than diplomatic posturing.”
“None of this makes much sense, far as master plans go.”
“Admittedly,” she agrees, sitting back heavily. She smiles wryly. “Magneto is usually two steps ahead, until the last possible second.”
“You had many run-ins with him?”
“A few. Mostly battling it out over spheres of influence. He resents Charles teaching what he thinks of as the revolutionary generation. Magneto organized a ring of mutant gangs in the city, LA and Chicago. We broke them up.” Mouth tight, she adds, “The police came down awfully hard on the ones we couldn’t bring here in time.”
Goes to show these kids have good reason to hate the law. Marie was terrified when he told her the cops were on their way to the bar.
With a bemused smile, Jean studies his face.
“What?”
Coming back to herself, her smile widens. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re projecting clear enough even for me. You’re very protective of her. Selflessly so, considering – ”
“Hey, she did what she had to do because I forced her. You shouldn’t have told her not to touch anyone here. Three weeks livin’ with her, and you can be damn sure she never tried anything on me.” The irony of the lecher having to defend the virgin would be laughable, if he wasn’t so dead set on getting Marie’s story straight. “There’s nothin’ wrong with her finding somebody to trust won’t fix.”
Jean nods slowly. “I should have considered her feelings. Alienating her wasn’t my intention. I was…I was taken aback when she mentioned Carol Danvers. That’s what I was getting at, about Congress and the Usual Suspects. Everyone knows Captain Danvers. The bill that forces mutants into an honorable discharge from the military is called the Danvers Act. It went into effect early last year, when her mutation surfaced. Her plane was shot down by friendly fire over a Fallujah school, and she was able to pluck it right of the air and drop it safely. The military didn’t know what to do with her. On the one hand, she’s a hero. On the other…it’s an uncomfortable thought, the idea of mutant soldiers turning into the next arms race.”
He’s been told something like that before. A face flickers in the back of his mind, gone before he can see it. It’s someone else, not the voice calling him an animal. Someone…He tries, but all he can come up with is the worried expression of the woman sitting in front of him. The warmth lingers, the familiar grace.
“Logan – ”
“So Danvers went to Southaven for treatment. Then what?”
“There was a lot of press, at first. A lot of hype – good Midwestern family, decorated officer, very patriotic. She wanted to be the first cured mutant so she could rejoin the Air Force. Camera crews and politicians went with her to all her doctor’s visits. Only Southaven couldn’t offer instant results. The process got longer, she was asked to come to the clinic permanently. The media lost interest over time. Then, three or four months ago, her death hit the twenty-four-hour news cycle. There and gone, because it looked bad from all angles. Official cause of death was ruled accidental, the fault of another mutant usually kept isolated the psychiatric wing.”
He wrenches himself away from the table, taking a few halting steps, rubbing his knuckles. Jean puts a hand to her head and he wonders if she can feel his insides squeezing. He tries to ease off, but stillness just boils at him. “They did it, the doctors. That’s what she said. They tried her out as a cure or something, I don’t know. They pushed too hard, and then they put the consequences on her. Jesus, Jean. What about all you activists? Wasn’t there an investigation?”
“Like I said, both sides wanted the matter to rest. Senator Kelly and the Senate Select Committee – we have allies we trust on that Committee – went to Southaven themselves to assure the American people that the –“ Jean opens one of the neatly arranged files on her desk and skims it. “That’s right, the ‘unfortunate security lapse will never be repeated’ and that the mutant, ‘a minor who remains unidentified for her own protection,’ was ‘under control.’”
Under control. “They hate us most of all because they can’t control us,” Marie told him. Sentiment seems even more familiar now.
Jean ruffles through some pages, most of them printouts with news headers. “The PR pitch was…masterful. It wasn’t her fault, you see. Her mutation was a disease, and it took her over and made her dangerous through no fault of her own. ‘Only a cure can save her.’ Prior to that, Southaven would make sure she couldn’t hurt anyone or herself again. For all we knew, it was true.” She lets the file fall shut. “Until that mutant turned out to be Rogue.”
“So they never even reported her missing. Doesn’t that tell you Southaven is more concerned with coverin’ their own asses than they are with protecting the public or whatever the hell their mission is?”
“Yes, it does. Hank thinks so, too. He’s very influential. I promise you, he’s gathering his own investigative team today.”
“You don’t promise that to me, you promise it to her.” He turns sharply, still pacing. “Don’t suppose she’ll believe you.”
Standing slowly, Jean replies, “She’ll believe you.”
“Me?” Logan huffs out a mirthless laugh. “You’re the experts. I’m just the guy who gave her a place to lay low for a while.”
“You’re her friend. It’s as true today as it was yesterday.” Her gaze is absolutely level, full of expectation. “I can sense…complications. But everything’s different now, and there’s no such thing as a clean break, not when you so obviously care so much. Do the difficult thing. Be her family, Logan. See her through.”
He pauses, hands on his hips, and looks down at his warped reflection the light makes against the floor. Jean’s asking a lot of him, but she’s offering something, too. A kind of death and resurrection. A chance to be somebody who won’t disappoint. Maybe he can take it.
For now, he’ll let it lie.
Rolling up his sleeves, he goes to sit on the examining table. “You wanted to see me about some tests?”
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000