DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid
track four // “GREAT GIG IN THE SKY”
LIFE AND LIMB FOR A KISS OF DEATH
“You’re so full of shit. If you were really so righteous
it’d be you in that thing.”
– Logan –
Logan can barely tilt his neck far enough to see the top of the Statue of Liberty, collared tight as he is in Cyclops’ leather daddy getup.
“The torch,” the man with the stupid-ass plan says, motioning the start of follow the leader.
“Hey, if you wanna go buy some souvenirs, don’t let me stop you.” Logan points his thumb back at the jet camouflaged under the George Washington Bridge. “Meanwhile, Storm can drop me off up top, and I’ll save the girl express.”
“That would be quicker,” Storm agrees, giving him a second to feel superior before she exchanges semi-amused looks with Jean. “Except the X-Jet is completely made of metal.”
“Like you,” Cyclops puts in. “So stay out of Magneto’s way.”
Logan takes a step forward. “You wanna run that plan by me again?” He didn’t put on this dopey goddamn uniform and strap himself into that aerial deathtrap just to be put on bitch detail. Magneto has it coming, and Logan’s going to deliver.
Cyclops lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I asked you before if you’d have a problem taking orders. Magneto knows we’re coming, but the rest of the world doesn’t know the X-Men exist. That’s part of our mission.”
“You may talk hush-hush, but I’m not the one who gave the train station a new sunroof, pal.”
“No, you were the one who stabbed Rogue through the chest.”
“Scott,” Jean snaps, visibly drained from the stimulant and the stress and Cerebro.
Logan trains his glare back on Cyclops. “Hey, why don’t you take your little mission and stick it up your – ”
Thunder crashes. Storm’s eyes are as fogged over as the harbor. “We work as a team,” she says. “There’s a seventeen year-old girl and a city full of people to save. Settle this.” In that moment, she’s as compelling as the Professor ever could be.
“I’m sorry,” Cyclops states, looking each of them in the eye sincerely.
Share the burden, Logan reminds himself. Do right by Marie. He motions Cyclops forward with only a minor undercurrent of sarcasm.
Judging by the claw marks, Sabretooth took out the guards at the base of the Statue awhile ago. Jean doesn’t find any pulses. Cyclops sets his jaw, and Logan reads his thoughts as a red scroll across his visor: “Two I didn’t save.” Heroes. The guilt only lets them stay shiny so long.
They climb in through the busted door, heads swiveling. Magneto’s goons could be anywhere. Cyclops motions to keep silent, so they can’t get the jump as easily. Logan takes the rear as the four of them file into a room full of overpriced junk practically on their tiptoes.
Little knives stab at Logan’s eardrums when he sets of the metal detector. He promptly sticks his claws in it.
Through the sparks, Fearless Leader gives him an unappreciative look. Logan lets his middle claw do the apologizing. Cyclops takes the abuse with the derisive half-smile of somebody with a working sense of humor. Logan sniffs the air suspiciously. Cologne’s unmistakable, so One-Eye checks out. But there’s still that smell.
“There’s someone here.”
“Where?”
“I dunno. Keep your eye open,” he recommends, slipping out of the room’s dimly lit center.
“Logan.” Cyclops loses sight of him. “Damn it.”
From the shadows, a ripple of blue catches his eye. A moment later, that shapeshifting bitch steps out wearing an X-Man Wolverine suit. “I know there’s someone here, I just cant see him.” Cyclops, Storm, and Jean busy looking around, Mystique brandishes a set of claws.
Logan comes at her from the side, knocking her into the ground. She’s faster on her feet even in his body. She twists his face into a sadistic grin as she merrily prances out of his reach. He kicks her back into the maintenance hall and they square off. Her second set of claws shoot out. The savage delight she emanates from his eyes puts a look of disgust on his own face.
She blows him a kiss, and it’s right up there with the goddamn creepiest things he’s ever seen.
“Logan!” Cyclops shouts, his hand to his visor.
The grin falls from Mystique’s stolen face as they both put out their hands to keep from getting blasted.
Mystique slices through some cables, slamming the door on their private party from hell.
She gets him with an elbow to the forehead. Logan retaliates with a backhand claw swipe that would have cut her in half. He growls, his frustration readily apparent.
“Tick-tock.”
“You’re prettier with your mouth shut.” Stuck-up barfly told him that once. He fucked her friend instead.
Mystique runs at Logan, bending him over a metal bar. She suffocates him with one hand. “I kissed her goodbye for you,” she uses his voice to leer. Against the leather glove between them, she presses her lips.
Furious at the implication, Logan bites down on her palm and shoves her off of him. She slashes his face, but he slices through her flimsy excuse for adamantium. She shrieks and runs.
The next room is flooded in red lights. Logan ambles in, limbering up as he does. She comes at him with a flip, but he has no qualms about jacking himself in the face. Getting some height, she spin kicks back into her lithe, femme fatal self. When she hits the ground, she licks her bleeding lip with a promise in her eyes that says been a naughty boy.
Disturbingly distracting thoughts swirl around Logan’s brain, keeping her on top. She contorts herself around him, cracking his back and choking him. Impotently, he tries to gut her like a scaly blue fish. She runs her fingernails down his cheek slowly, drawing blood. He can smell Marie on her hands. Twisted bitch, using his face and the kid’s trust to fucking prey on her.
Mystique catches his renewed ferocity. Before he can furiously break from her grasp, she kicks him square in the nuts.
He’s just managed to straighten himself up when he catches a steel chain in his claws. He drags her in so they’re face to face, but she flips away to hit him with a goddamn door. Logan claws through it. She saves herself with a ballerina move. Like a damn spider monkey, she climbs up a pipe upside down.
Leaving Logan on the ground, balls in hand, wondering how the fuck he could be losing.
All five sense at maximum alert, Logan tries to pick up Mystique’s trail again. He’s more than prepared to finish her off.
Lightening glints from the tinted windows.
“Logan, is that you?” Storm’s voice, from behind.
What a tired trick. “Shh.” He sniffs once more for confirmation. “The other one ain’t far away.”
“Come on. We have to regroup.” It’s even something Storm would say.
Closer. That’s it. Right behind him.
“I know, but there’s a problem.” He pivots and sinks his claws right into her squishy entrails.
Storms gentle eyes flare in shock, then cloud over as she gasps.
“You’re not part of the group.”
Her eyes go yellow, and the claws reappear as fingers. Storm’s white hair turns to red.
Savagely, Logan retracts his claws only to shoot them out again. When she shrieks, he replies, “Shouldn’t have touched her.”
“You’re a saint,” Mystique hisses with Marie’s face, blood visible in her mouth.
Her accusation misses the mark. Logan doesn’t need to be a saint, just not the kind of pervert Mystique gets off on. She’s made the difference so obvious to him, he should almost thank her.
She falls off his claws, completely herself as she breathes her last.
Logan brushes himself off, lets his bruises heal, and goes off to do exactly what she said. Regroup.
He opens and door and there’s Cyclops with his hand to his visor again. He’s half-carrying Jean.
“Hey – Hey. It’s me.”
Cyclops has gotten a little savvier. “Prove it.”
“You’re a dick.”
The Boy Scout takes a second to decide if he’ll let that kind of language slide. “Okay.”
Never would’ve guessed it takes high-stress situations to loosen Cyclops up enough to be passably human.
From the stairs above, Storm catches their attention. “Come on.”
It’s a long, steady climb up to the top. They take assessment of their situation: Mystique and Toad eliminated, leaving Sabretooth and Magneto. In the spirit of getting fucking on with it, Logan doesn’t comment on the fact that it took three supposedly trained superheroes to dispatch one leap frog whose best weapon was his tongue, for shit’s sake.
They’re barely inside Lady Liberty’s head when Logan looks up at the ceiling and finds he can’t look back down. “Everybody get out of here.”
“What is it?” Cyclops asks instead of doing anything useful.
“I can’t move.” Logan is flung halfway to the ceiling.
A piece of green metal clamps Storm low on the wall. Cyclops tries to blast a piece coming for him, but he just ends up with his arms strapped down. He’s facing Jean, who can’t budge the metal no matter how hard she grits her teeth.
Magneto flows down, palms up. “Ah, my brothers. Welcome.” He looks over at Logan. “And you. Let’s point those claws of yours in a safer direction.” Effortlessly, Magneto bends Logan’s arms. He clamps his fists square against his sternum and seals him in with part of the wall.
Sabretooth jumps down, amping up Logan’s already high level of motherfucking pissed off Wolverine.
To Cyclops, Magneto warns, “You better close your eyes.” Sabretooth pulls off his visor and drops it to the ground.
Eyelids squeezed as tight as his jaw, Cyclops grunts, “Storm, fry ‘em.”
“Oh yes, a bolt of lighting into a huge copper conductor. I thought you lived at a school.”
Sabretooth’s deadened eyes are trained directly on Logan. He growls nearly inaudibly, but the beast deep down in Logan recognizes the challenge.
“Mystique.” Magneto gets only the crackle of a dead line for a response. “Mystique.”
Logan opens his mouth to drop the news that he killed the bitch, but Jean cuts in. “I’ve seen Teleford Porter.”
“So, my teleport managed to break out of Hiram Prison. And to find you. He’s become even more powerful than I could’ve imagined.”
“He’s dead,” Jean reveals.
“It’s true.”
Storm had been the one watching him, while Jean fixed Cerebro, Cyclops calmed the students, and Logan managed his frustrations in the high-tech gym they called the Danger Room.
“I saw him die. Like those people down there will die.”
“I fail to see the connection. You know as well as I the brutalities visited on those poor souls in Hiram Prison.”
“They did experiment on him,” Jean concedes. “But I performed the autopsy myself. It was brain cancer.”
“Your machine killed him. Slowly, but it did kill him.” Storm keeps steady eye contact as Magneto bends down to her.
“I don’t believe you,” he enunciates. A steaming load, far as Logan can tell. Any sonuvabitch ready and willing to murder one of his blessed “brothers” for the cause ain’t about to be tearjerked by elevated cancer risks.
Storm keeps on trying to appeal to an insane man’s reason. “You can’t be that certain.”
“My dear, someone has to be,” Magneto replies, as if he’s the one making noble sacrifices.
The faint pop of fireworks from Ellis Island alerts them that the UN Summit festivities have begun. All the ducks lining themselves up in rows.
Magneto pushes himself away from Storm’s condemning gaze dramatically. “Why do none of you understand what I’m trying to do? Those people down there, they control our fate and the fate of every other mutant.” He waits for doubt to flicker in Storm’s eyes. Jean is just as unswayed. “Well. Soon our fate will be theirs.”
Beneath the sound of the fireworks, Logan hears the echo of Marie’s small, strained voice begging for help. His blood boils.
“You’re so full of shit. If you were really so righteous it’d be you in that thing.”
Magneto turns the full impact of his colorless gaze on Logan.
Louder now, Marie repeats, “Help! Somebody help me!”
They all hear her now. The X-Men increase their struggles to get free as Magneto silently raises himself above his so-called brothers.
“Please! Somebody please help me!”
Her voice is brittle. She must have been yelling for an eternity by now. Magneto had to have done something to drain her strength. Her hysterics mean she knows what’s coming next.
“Somebo – ” Her voice drops too low for him to make out anymore.
Sweat drips from his forehead into his stinging eyes. He tests how much room he has in his restraints.
Keep calling, Marie, he wills her. This ain’t the end. Don’t give up on me yet.
She’s up there all alone, tied up and helpless, knowing that bastard sonuvabitch coward is on his way to lay his hands on her. He’ll force himself inside her head. She’ll fight him, and it’ll hurt her so much. So goddamn much.
Logan lets out a roar for Marie to hear, and unleashes his claws through his ribs and out his back. His heart bleeds where he nicked it.
The restraints give way against his bulk. His name is on Jean’s lips. He plunges straight down, landing spread-eagle hard enough for his lungs to bruise.
Hard enough to fool Sabretooth, who stands above him. He growls. Logan opens his eyes. Quicker than the dumb bastard can respond, Logan has his claws shoved as far into him as they’ll go.
Sabretooth sends him flying outside onto the Statue of Liberty’s crown. A foot more and it would’ve been a hell of a long way down.
A paw picks him up by the back of his uniform. As he’s thrown through the cold night air, Logan grimly notes that Fangs’ obvious healing factor is apparently faster than his own. On his sore side, he hits the ground. In one fluid motion, he rolls to his feet and unleashes his claws.
Sabretooth’s response is to cold-clock him into next week. Logan lifts his ringing head to find his tag hanging in front of his double vision. While Sabretooth is busy growling his triumph, Logan breaks the chain with a claw.
“This is mine.” A decent man can make that claim on an object. But even as he drips his tag into his uniform, the crude fact remains – having it back does nothing to alleviate the enormous pressure threatening to break him from the inside.
Abruptly, Logan’s hurtling toward the city’s skyline again, fireworks bursting in air behind him. He manages to thrust a set of claws into a point on the Statue’s crown. Momentum spins him three hundred and sixty degrees until he’s back on his feet.
When Sabretooth squares off across from him, animal to animal, something on the razor’s edge of familiar cuts through Logan. Sabretooth has always been stronger.
He knows that intimately, without anyone having to tell him. Same way he knows Storm’s serenity has to come out of a chaotic past, that Cyclops must be a momma’s boy, that Jean has another side buried deep. Same way he recognized Marie in that dive in Laughlin City, hard as he tried to deny her. Facts are facts. It’s what he chooses to do about them that counts.
So, knowing he has an snowman’s chance in hell, Logan launches himself at Sabretooth’s throat. He gets him on his back. Logan pulls back his elbow, ready to take off his head.
From above, Marie lets out an unholy scream. Nothing, not even certain defeat, can stop Logan from looking up in alarm.
Sabretooth hurls Logan off Lady Liberty for the third time. Logan waits until he’s halfway down her face before he sticks in a claw. Sabretooth doesn’t even bother to glance down for the satisfaction of seeing his opponent’s mangled body cratered in pavement. Bastard’s stupidity flies in the face of instinct.
Quickly and precisely, Logan punches pockmarks into the historic national monument as he scales back up.
Back on top, Logan looks down into the head. The X-Men are still rendered useless. But when Sabretooth touches a thick fingernail to Storm’s cheek and tells her, “You owe me a scream,” the look in Jean’s eye makes it clear that shit isn’t going to stand.
Logan jumps down to make it easier for her. A little breathless, he says, “Hey, bub. I’m not finished with you yet.”
A cracking snap arrests all their attentions. Logan has to shield his eyes against the light as the torch explodes open. Marie’s screams blend with Magneto’s.
Logan rips his eyes from the light to meet Jean’s fierce gaze. Woman has a plan.
“Scott, when I tell you open your eyes.”
“No!”
“Trust me.”
Logan holds up Cyclops’s visor. “You drop something?”
Jean floats it into position and adjusts the blast. “Now.”
Hot, red light hits Sabretooth square in the chest. Roaring, he rockets backward. Logan watches him all the way down. When he’s safely crashed into the splintered shards of some poor sap’s boat, Logan frees Storm, Jean, and Cyclops.
“Thanks,” Cyclops says in a clear attempt to be the bigger man.
Logan lifts his eyebrows ironically. “Don’t mention it.”
The four of them line up on the edge of the gaping hole Cyclops punched Sabretooth through. Magneto is a gray lump below the thick, spreading light. Marie is alone on the top of the world. Still hollering her head off, so Logan knows the fight hasn’t left her.
“Gotta get her out of there. Cyclops, can you hit it?”
“The rings are moving too fast.”
“Just shoot it!”
“I’ll kill her.” Cyclops can’t hold the intensity of Logan’s gaze. “Storm, can you get me up there?”
“I can’t control it like that. You could fly right over the torch.”
A hardness threatens to settle on the half-masked face of the X-Men’s fearless leader. He could have taken Logan at his word. Marie’s not the only one running out of time. Right now, it’s save Marie and save the city. But in a few minutes it’s going to be save Marie or save the city. Someone Cyclops knows or faceless millions? The classic hero’s gambit.
Just one more reason heroics ain’t Logan’s line of work.
“Then let me go,” he volunteers. “If I don’t make it, then at least you can still blast the damn thing.” Cyclops can feel real noble for trying anyway, and then real pissed at Logan for blocking his shot.
“All right, do it. Jean, use your power, try to steady him.”
Storm backs up with a Hail Mary in her voice. “Hang onto something.”
A strong wind kicks up instantly, lifting him off his feet. He looks back at Jean, the only person between him and the bottom of the harbor. His stomach lurches as he flips higher. Suspended upside down, he reaches out to catch hold of the machine. The wind stops, allowing Logan to push himself to his feet.
From the side of the platform, Magneto does the same. Logan wonders how the hell that fucker is still conscious as he drops down into the bright light.
Marie’s eyes are shut tight. The grip of her hands on the machine forces her body up. It’s agony where she is, but a least she’s still alive.
Logan springs his claw to free her. Magneto has enough juice left to slow him down, bend his claws – It’s possible they’ll stay deformed. He imagines the gore. Every time – But the pain only compels him to push harder. His left hand set of claws are easier to control. Just a few more seconds. Hang in there, darlin’.
Neck visibly straining, Marie hiccups a sob. The hair at her temples goes shock white.
His claws clink against the metal rings. That’s it. Closer. His skeleton spasms with each clang. The thickening light must be almost to Ellis Island by now. Sparks fly out. Damn it, Cyclops, don’t try and be Captain America. You called her your student, so put her first. Christ’s sake. Just wait –
Red flashes in his peripheral vision, striking Magneto and freeing up Logan’s claws to shatter the machine in an explosion of intensely dazzling luminosity.
The opaque sky is heavy and black above the city’s shuddering glimmer. Suspended between the two is an abyss – silence and sound, death and life – three hundred feet up and entirely self-contained. A second holds an infinity.
Cut through the restraints, and Logan and Marie is all there is.
She’s delicate as a spider web, just as deceptively strong. The tremor he feels as he lifts her body is the ache of his own pulse.
“Come on,” he murmurs.
Her eyelashes don’t flutter when he touches the blanched strands of her hair. An external marker of internal wounds. She’s been aged against her will.
“Come on.”
He gets his glove off with his teeth and throws it to the side. His bare hand hangs above her immobile face. There are no cuts to heal over, just a mind relentlessly invaded. But his is an offering. He places his palm on her still warm skin. Closes his eyes.
Logan waits for a pull that isn’t there. Life-force is too intangible a concept, so he thinks about his open vein pouring directly into her. He pushes. Nothing.
Emotion seethes up and simmers over. Not an animal desperately howling, but a man choking on hope. He tips his nose against her chin and grips her hair. Presses her forehead to his lips. Please. Oh, goddamn it, please. No one could hold her closer.
A tug. Tantalizingly slow. He kisses her forehead again, teeth bared in pain and gratitude. Weakness crashes over him. He cradles her head in the crook of his shoulder, grazes her mouth as the shock of paralysis sets in.
The agonizing crawl of his burning skin forces his eyes open, along with three gashes from the fight with his sick double. Blood soaks his back. Every wound is owed to him – tonight alone how many times has he cheated death? – but what Logan gives to Marie is supposed to be a gift. He wants to be more than his history of violence.
Nothing calms the rage like chasing the flavor of tobacco with an ice-cold brew. Except maybe a Rocky Mountain sunrise or the whistle of an axe splitting a log. The endlessness of the open road. A jukebox that doesn’t play anything this side of ’79. Greased up auto parts that fit together like a puzzle he’s already solved. Not much, these things, but they make up his better nature.
He’s lived more substantially in one month than he has in fifteen years. That thought he holds onto. He needs her to be sure that he means what he’s doing.
There’s so much more. Things he maybe would’ve liked to see her do – put up flannel wallpaper, rock a toddler on a tree-swing, answer a call from home – but Marie has accepted all a man like Logan can give anybody he loves. The chance to live better off because of him, inevitably without him.
Only – Hell, if he can’t cop to it now, as the last bit of his too long life is sucked out of him to be put to decent use, then when? – He would’ve stuck around this time. He would have. And maybe, a piece down the road, neither of them paying too close attention, Logan would’ve given his life to Marie a different way.
The excruciating miracle of the here and now proves too much for his mutilated flesh. Logan yields to incremental death.
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