Logan’s afraid he won’t survive the mission tonight.
I could tell as soon as he came trotting down the stairs into the Control Room. My jaw still drops every time I see him in the X-Men leathers, all muscles and long, angular bones packed into the black uniform. He’s a fiercely-built man, and the X-gear makes him look even more formidable.
And sexy. Whoever came up with the ‘what is it about a man in uniform?’ saying had never seen Logan in the leathers, or they wouldn’t have bothered asking. Then I shake myself back to awareness; he’s nervous. He’s never nervous. This mission is bad news. It’s got snake-bite written all over it.
That’s why Logan doesn’t want me along, and insisted that I stay at the mansion and handle the communications grid. It sucks, but he’s right. I’m not that bad-ass in a fight unless I go gloves-off, putting everyone at risk. I’m even afraid for myself, if one of ‘them’ gets stuck inside my head. We’re taking down a lab tonight, and I don’t want any of those stone-hearted psychotic bastards running around inside my head any more than the rest of the team does.
So, I’m ‘Radio Girl’ tonight. Logan’s leaning over me where I’m plopped in the swiveling chair which gives me fast access to every bank of equipment splayed around me. My gloveless hands are flicking every switch, testing every channel, squelching and tuning and checking every com-device, marking different channels with masking tape and a Sharpie so I’ll know who’s talking to me at every moment, where they are, and who’s with them.
His hands go into my hair and I calm a little. I hear him whisper, “Turn your skin off,” and I know what’s coming. It takes me all of three seconds and one deep breath now, to switch it off. As soon as he hears my steady exhalation, he grabs the back of the chair and whirls me around, pulls me up and I’m wrapped around him, legs at his hips, arms around his broad shoulders, and his face is buried in my shoulder. His hands are blatantly grabbing my ass and hauling me tighter against his hard body. His leather squeaks against my PVC vest and it sounds like a none-too-delicate fart, making us both break out laughing! Nerves are settling down as we soak each other in before he flies out with the team in the Blackbird.
“I trust you,” I hear the words breathed into my hair, and I think those are the most profound, most loving, most respectful words this man could say to anyone. “I know you’ll take care of all of us. Don’t sweat it, baby.” I wish I had his confidence.
“I’ll do my best,” I whisper as I lean back a little and caress his cheek just above the ‘chops he still sports. I hear other women complain when men grow beards for winter, and I think they’re all crazy. That silky, manly hair is so goddamn masculine, I love it. He’s all man, and he’s all mine. He hasn’t looked at another woman since we started sleeping together. HE asked ME to move in with him, and HE said IT first.
I love you.
It was so simple, and not in the act, so I believed him. Momma always said not to believe one word that came out of a man’s mouth when he was on top of you, or wanted to be, and I believed her. For all her weakness about how my father reacted when I manifested and had to leave, she did have a purse full of pearls of wisdom that she taught me while I grew up. Logan said it first, over beer and hockey and jalapeno nachos. He meant it.
I made him wait a whole hour before I casually slid it into the conversation, too. I love you. I swear it took more courage for me to say it. I figured if those words ever came out of my mouth, targeted at Logan, his ass would be in the saddle and down the road before the ‘you’ part left my lips. He just grinned and said, “I wondered when you’d get around to that.”
The com devices are squawking again and we separate. Storm’s calling the team to the hangar. It’s time to mount up and go clean up Dodge City, which is actually the lab in a small town in Tennessee. Logan hesitates a few seconds, so I know he’s got something important to say, or else he’d be running down the hall by now. His eyes meet mine and he stares deep, long, before he finally takes a breath and steadies his voice, like it’s just any typically casual conversation.
“I left something in our room for you, sort of a present. It’s tucked under the mattress beneath your pillow, out of sight. I didn’t want anyone who might go nosing through the room to spot it easily. Make sure it’s there tonight or whenever you go to bed if we’re gone a long time.”
“What is it?”
“Just some stuff you need to know, that’s all.” He kisses me then, gently, deeply, lovingly. And it comes out of his mouth again, “I love you.”
This time I don’t make him wait. “I love you, too, baby. Come home safe.”
He just smirks and kisses me again, then runs for the door. I feel like I’m going to explode, like my heart will burst through my ribs and thud onto the console. I ache inside. It’s pure emotion, so how does it feel so damned physical?
The lab is a nightmare, I can hear it over the coms. Mutants are dead, some are dismembered, some are infants. Some have been poisoned, some burned, raped, harvested for organs. It’s a slaughterhouse. It’s not military: it’s private. God, we can’t even blame the ‘military scientists’ like Stryker and his thugs. These are organized citizens who won’t tolerate mutants in society.
I’m so glad I don’t have to witness this in person. I’m so sorry Logan does, because I can hear through his com when his claws come out in rage. Sometimes it’s in a fight, because I can hear his growling, then hard breathing and livid swearing. Sometimes I can hear pitiful moans and gasps for release, and he is silent, and that’s when I know he’s killing out of mercy.
One day soon, when this nightmare is behind us, I’m going to insist we go into the mountains for a few weeks, or twenty years, and give him some time to clear this from his soul.
I can hear Pete yelling for Bobby, and Bobby is screaming for Pete to leave him. It’s falling apart around their heads, and Logan is barking words to Storm from his side of the complex, but Storm is pulling the beta team out of the building. That means Logan is alone in there.
Then his com goes silent. I don’t even hear the “NO!” that tears from my throat. I yell his name over and over, but there’s no response. I gotta get Storm back in there.
“Storm! Logan’s down somewhere on the far side of the complex! Get someone to him NOW!”
I should be there. I don’t care if I have to touch a dozen of those bastards and spend the next year in a psych ward getting them under control. I should be there with him. Damn him and his over-protectiveness. I’m his wing man, I should have his back!
Storm’s com throws a burst of static in my ear before I hear her panicked voice yelling to get the survivors in the plane. I hear machine gun fire and explosions beyond any firepower we knew these motherfuckers had. Someone else is in the mix now, but who? Then I hear Storm yelling through the static, “... para... military.... get them in... find your seats... buckled... now!”
They’re already in the ‘Bird? I scream into my microphone, “Where’s Logan?!? Get him in the plane!”
I hear the engines being throttled up hard and then the ear-searing shriek of the ‘Bird lifting off in a hurry, but she doesn’t answer me until they’re leveled off in the air. When she does click the com on, I hear moans and crying in the background before she whispers to me, “There wasn’t time, Rogue.”
I sit numbly in my swivel chair until Pete comes and pulls me out of the Control Room two hours later, promising that they’ll monitor the com-desk constantly until we know something. Kitty sits down and puts the headphones on and Pete walks me up to our bedroom: mine and Logan’s bedroom. Where is he? He’s supposed to be home safe tonight.
“I’m sorry, Rogue, but I have to go back down to help out with the survivors. I’ll send someone up to be with you as soon as possible.”
“No. I don’t want ‘company’. I want Logan back.” and even I am shocked at the deadness in my voice, before I come to life a little and focus on him. “No babysitters, Pete. Anyone comes through that door who isn’t Logan, I’ll drop ‘em where they stand, got it?” I display my bared hands to accentuate the point.
Pete understands, and backs from the room respectfully, pulling the door shut behind him as I sit stiffly on the bed.
Time passes and I sob and curse and blame him and blame myself and blame everyone who ever hated a mutant or wore a white lab coat. I blame Storm for leaving him behind. I blame Logan for separating from the team. I blame Bobby for getting wounded and needing Pete to drag him from the building. I blame Pete for saving Bobby instead of Logan. I blame Stryker for turning Logan in the un-killable killing machine that the X-Men desperately need and the military would want if they knew about him.
I blame God. I blame Xavier.
I start over until I’m exhausted and dehydrated from crying.
Fighting the maelstrom inside my head and heart, I try to lay down when I hear the strange crackle beneath my pillow, and remember that Logan left something hidden in the bed for me. I feel inside the pillow case, then beneath the pillow, beneath the sheet, and finally there it is under the mattress: a manilla envelope, thick with papers stuffed inside, and not sealed with adhesive, just the little bendable clasp. I turn it over and see Logan’s handwriting: do not open for 3 days. But it’s not sealed, so he won’t know if I open it, and he knows that, too. It’s just his sarcastic little joke to close it without actually sealing it, knowing my curiosity will over-ride his weird sense of humor, and the clasp is open before I finish the thought.
Papers. Stacks of papers and more papers, a little book like a bank book, another envelope... what is this stuff?
I start at the top.
It’s a will.
I cry some more, then keep reading. It’s probably not legal, but then very little of our personal affairs are, since most of us live under assumed names, code names and false identities. He owns nothing, really, except the Harley and a truck, both of which his papers insist are mine now.
“No,” I hear someone’s voice whisper, then realize it’s mine. I’m not his heir until he’s dead, and we don’t have a body. He’s un-killable. He’s alive somewhere, so this is all just paperwork he did up on a whim.
There are stapled stacks of paper from some investment firm. I recognize the names from helping handle Xavier’s overflow from his desk sometimes. When I would play secretary-for-a-day, the Professor would teach me about handling money on the sly. He had a network of mutant and mutant-friendly financial people. Anyone with that amount of wealth has to have people to finagle at his instructions. Apparently Logan had some financial finagling going on, too. There’s a lot of stocks and some stuff I don’t understand, and then there’s that little blue bank book in my hands.
Flipping the cover open, I find an old savings account under one of Logan’s assumed names. I know most of them thanks to my Inner Logan. I turn to the last entry. The account was closed out a year ago, but a serial number is hand-written in Logan’s unmistakable hand on the last page.
Someone knocks on the door, and I growl, “GO AWAY!”, then “WAIT!”, and I rush the door, leaving the paperwork scattered over the bed. Jerking the door partway open, I see ‘Ro waiting, but I can tell from her face it isn’t good news.
“Where is he?” It rushes out before I can form any better words.
“We don’t know. Rogue, I’m sorry. There were so many survivors, and a paramilitary force coming that we knew nothing about. It was out of control. We had to go.”
“You had to leave a team member behind? You have the potentially lethal force of a team of well-trained mutants at your disposal, and you ‘had’ to leave him behind?!?” My voice is getting colder and harder, but I cannot check myself.
“We were incredibly outnumbered, and our mission was to rescue. We rescued over a dozen people, even children. We had to remove them before....” She trails off, knowing it’s pointless, and stands in silence.
“Is there any word on his location? Anything at all?” My voice sounds like steel, I’m clamped down so tight.
“Nothing, I’m sorry.”
“Then leave me the fuck alone,” I snarl at her and slam the door shut again. I throw the deadbolt just to make my point.
I grab the little account book and log on to an off-shore system that Xavier told me about a few months before he died. I type in the serial number and wait. Oh shit, it’s passworded, and there’s nothing written in the book. I try ‘wolverine’ and ‘rogue’ and ‘mutant’ and ‘cagefight’ and ‘claws’, and then log out and start over when the system shuts me out for too many false starts. Then I try ‘adamantium’ and ‘stryker’ and ‘blackbird’ and even ‘scooter’, but then I’ve got one more try before the system shuts me out again. On a whim, I try ‘laughlincity’ and I’m in the account!
I go into shock when I see how much is in the account: over a half-million dollars. How did he get that much money? I can fund a search-and-rescue mission of my own if I have to, but where to start? I shut down the system and go back to the bed. There are more papers, titles... and a letter in his writing. I start shaking as I peel open the roughly folded page and start reading.
Marie,
Don’t freak out. If you’re reading this, then something went wrong on the mission. Everything in this envelope is yours now. Do what you want, go where you want, be who you want. You are the only one on this whole fucking planet that means anything to me, so live your life well.
I knew you wouldn’t wait three days.
I love you.
Logan
I fold everything neatly back into the envelope, put it back beneath the mattress, and shake for another hour or two. Then as the sun is rising, I finally fall into a numb sleep, wondering how I’ll ever survive losing him.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
"He’s never nervous. This mission is bad news. It’s got snake-bite written all over it."