Author’s Note: Since the next chapter is 36 pages long I decided to bust it up. So I apologize right off the bat for tell people the full back story would be revealed in this chapter. It’ll actually be two chapters from now, which is really the last part of what should be chapter three but I didn’t think anyone would read all 36 pages in one sitting. However, I will be uploading earlier than usual to make up for the long delay. So if you like it review, and if you don’t like it…well still review but try to say something nice at least!
Chapter 3
The inside of the massive stone castle was cool and dark; the cavernous echo of their footsteps slightly confusing to Logan’s acute senses. His eyes took in everything, swinging from side to side in an effort to understand what was going on, what lion’s den he was walking into. The entrance way, with its vaulted ceilings, and red runner carpet which led to what could only be considered a throne, was opulent, and it was obvious to all that entered this room that it was designed to awe. It was a room fit for a king, and Logan was pretty sure said king knew exactly what he was doing.
The group went around a bank of stone pillars that held the upper floors in place. These too were decorated in red and gold cords, and Logan smirked, apparently Magneto could color coordinate—nice. There were no stray people in this room, and from the lack of any lingering scents, Logan guessed it wasn’t often used. There when you needed it, ignored when you didn’t. That somehow made him feel better, knowing Magneto didn’t sit on that throne all day expecting to be waited on.
On either side of the raised throne were arched entrance ways partially covered by red curtains held in place with more gold cords. The group moved to the left archway, and it was there Magneto dismissed the guards, leaving himself, Pyro, Emma, and Logan to move through the opening.
Magneto didn’t turn to address him and neither did the others, they just continued up a winding staircase, first one floor, then another, before Magneto opened the double metal doors on the third landing. On the other side, Logan picked up the strong scent of disinfectant, and knew this was their idea of an infirmary. It was of a simple design, a single long corridor with multiple metal doorways on either side. There was no civility too it, just a hallway with doors, and at the end of the corridor, a room that smelled like blood and death. Logan took an involuntary look down at Marie and pulled her closer.
They stopped just inside the hallway, and behind them, Magneto shut the metal doors without turning to look at them. Logan was surprised at the man’s control. The amount of the Cure running through his veins should have stalled the return of his powers. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought of this, the X-Men had contemplated it in whispers that spoke of their fear. Based on the amount of the Cure he’d been injected with, Hank had reasoned it’d be another three months before he’d even begin to get his powers back, but if what Logan had seen so far was any indication, Magneto wasn’t only back to full strength, he’d progressed.
“Heartattack,” Magneto’s voice echoed in the hallway, and Logan looked up in time to see an elderly woman with salt and pepper hair that leaned a little heavily towards the salt side, come out of one of the rooms, closing the door solidly behind her. She appeared to be in her sixties, with a slight slump of her shoulders, but her face was kind, and her eyes seemed to light up as she approached them. The master of magnetism nodded his head at the older woman in a courteous greeting, “I have a new patient for you.” He turned, indicating Marie. “She is comatose and is in need of nourishment.” Magneto turned his eyes on Logan’s, “How long has she been off the feeding tube?”
Logan glanced back at the matronly eyes of the approaching mutant and shrugged, remembering he was still carrying around all their worldly possessions in a simple canvas duffle, “About five days.”
That answer obviously caused concern as elderly feet moved quicker, and a concerned expression fell across weathered features. “Five days? That’s too long, far, far too long. She’ll be dehydrated.” Her voice was aged and motherly, and Logan found her at once comforting in that ancient way of grandmas.
He shook his head as he held Marie’s body out for her wrinkled hands to inspect. “I was able to get her to drink some water, so I think she’s ok.”
Aged eyes locked with his before they nodded, and Logan took note that there were obvious signs of cataracts building in those learned orbs. “Good. Good. Let’s get her inside young man, I need to get a good look at her.” She turned, raised her right hand over her shoulder and ushered him forward. She opened a door on the right, the forth room on the right—the same number of doorways to Marie’s room at Xavier’s—before she turned on the overhead lights.
The first thing Logan noticed was that this was a much nicer room than he’d expected. Heartattack moved to the far side of the bed which was located against the far wall from the door, and he followed. Aged hands turned down the bed as Logan looked around the room. The bed was slightly larger than a single, ready to accommodate even the largest of mutants; and despite this being an obvious hospital room complete with flashing monitors and equipment he’d never know how to pronounce, the blankets looked plush, and the soft shade of pink paint gave it a comforting look. Against the right wall was a large gray couch, and to either side end tables with cream colored lamps. A picture window covered in frosted glass sat just to the right of the couch, and gave the room natural light that seemed to ease the humming of the medical equipment. Two plush chairs in coordinating gray sat to the right and the left of the bed, and a pleasant picture of a summer cottage in full bloom hung by itself on the left wall. It was a nice room, for a nice long stay.
When Heartattack pulled down the last of the cream colored blankets, Logan shifted Marie and laid her out on the bed. Without preamble Logan sat on the edge, arranging Marie’s limbs more comfortably. His hands went to the back of her neck and lifted slightly. With practice he parted her long, rich locks to either side of her neck, and smoothed them over her shoulders. Lowering her head back down, he shifted her pillow and then gently nudged her head just a little to the right so she could look at the comfortable atmosphere of the room if she’d only just open her eyes to see it.
Finished with what he could do, he turned his eyes to the doctor. “What do ya need me to do?”
The smile she gave him was warm and friendly. “Just make sure you’re not touching her. I’m going to scan her so I can see how she’s doing, and if you’re touching her it gets this old woman all confused as to who’s who.” He nodded and stood, giving the woman room to work. He watched her opened the top three buttons on Marie’s sundress, exposing the smooth swell of the top portion of her breasts before those knowing hands settled, one over Marie’s heart, the other on her forehead. Heartattack took a deep breath, exhaled, and then closed her eyes.
For his part, Logan just stared. It appeared to be such a caring scene, an old grandmother nursing her sick granddaughter. It was comforting and real, and something he ached to give Marie. He decided that he’d share it with her as soon as she woke up. She’d probably look at him like he’d gone all sappy, and maybe he had, but it was delicate, and he knew she appreciated delicate things.
For a few moments it was quiet, and then Heartattack opened her eyes, and what had once been brown orbs were now filmy and white, “Are you ready, Miss Frost?”
“Yes mam.” Logan turned his head and saw Emma holding a chart. Whatever had been affecting her still was because even as she stood there she wasn’t looking at Marie. Her head was down, and her hands were shaking, but she looked all business, and Logan held his tongue. Instead he looked at the room, and saw Magneto standing in front of the closed door regarding the situation, while Pyro stood to this right, his eyes fixed on Marie’s pale face. The room was cramped, but Logan didn’t care, he turned back to listen as Heartattack spoke once again.
“Good. Good.” She took a deep breath, “Definitely hungry. We’ll need to start her back on the feeding tube right away. A little dehydrated, but it would have been much worse had her young man not been smart enough to get her to drink that water. We’ll start her on fluids as well. We need to change the catheter bag, there’s a slight infection brewing, but I think we’ll catch it early, yes I think we’ll get it just in time.” She paused, “Right then, a little history. It’s hard to tell, but it’s there. Broken ribs, some breaks newer than others. The poor dear has had her right wrist broken along with a fractured left thumb. Both ankles have been fractured too. There’s some residual damage in her lungs from inhalants, and if I’m not mistaken some less than savory recreational drug use. Dear me, can you really say recreational? Cannabis for sure, not good but nothing we haven’t seen before. Her body chemistry is off a bit, but it’s subtle. Sexually active, though not recently, and old scar tissue that doesn’t bode well, no not at all.” The hand at Marie’s forehead moved down to her wrist and the long thick scar, “Attempted suicide, serious attempt, both wrists weren’t just slashed, they were sliced clean through to the bone. Poor thing, I wish these particular injuries were less common, but perhaps we should simply be grateful that she’s alive. Now her hair, that’s an interesting one, not part of her mutation but a physical anomaly. Loss of pigmentation, strange, this type of loss is associated with advance age, as if the hair cells were sixty years old.”
“Seventy three actually.” Magneto smirked from the doorway and Logan couldn’t help the low growl that tore from his throat as the memory of the Statue of Liberty came back to him.
But Heartattack was moving on, “Oh yes that makes perfect sense then, seventy-three, I see. Well, besides all that, she’s had the standard number of colds, flu, and even a mild case of the Chickenpox.” She turned her gaze on Logan, “I’m surprised not to see more atrophy in her muscles. Have you been working with her?”
He nodded, “Yeah, everyday for about a half an hour.”
She nodded her head in approval, “Good. Good. I’m glad to hear it. We’ll need to refocus to some of the other muscle groups to reverse some of the early signs of muscle degradation, but we’ve caught it early. Very good, a most well cared for patient. Very healthy despite the broken bones and scars. How old is she?”
He’d been ready to answer, even opened his mouth, but Johnny beat him to it. “She just turned twenty one on the sixth.” Logan caught the kid’s eye and nodded.
“Hmmmm.” Heartattack muttered, her gnarled hands undoing the rest of the buttons on Marie’s dress but not parting the fabric. “She looks younger, but I suppose that’s to be expected. How long has she been like this?” She paused and then seemed to remember herself as she looked at Logan. Her hand went to her cheek, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she colored just a bit. “I’m so sorry young man, how rude of me. I can get a bit carried away with my patients you see. I’m Dr. Evelin Cross, though most just call me Heartattack. And you are?”
“Logan mam. Just Logan, though I go by Wolverine.”
She smiled kindly to him, “And your young sweetheart?”
Logan thought about correcting her and then changed his mind, “Rogue.”
“Do you know her given name?”
Logan nodded but dug his heels in, “Yeah, but it ain’t for no chart. Hope you understand.”
A sad look passed over Heartattack’s face as if she understood why anonymity would be first on his mind, but then Magneto’s cultured voice cut across the room. “Her given name is Marie Anna D’Ancanto; born September 6 in Meridian, Mississippi. The broken bones are, no doubt, a product of her rather hard years growing up in the system, before she was adopted at age eight. I understand one of her foster families was charged, but not prosecuted, for molestation and abuse.” The sound of hot metal sliding through broken skin caused frost blue eyes to lock on his, as Logan popped his claws and stared him down, a snarl on his lips. Instantly those blue eyes turned hard and mocking, “I see you yet again did not bother to look at what was right in front of you, Wolverine. Did you even bother to ask the girl a single question about her life before her mutation?”
Of course he had. And just like her, Marie had painted him a perfect picture of loving parents, a white picket fence, and a dog named Max. She’d told him plenty of stories, but he quickly realized as he went over them in his mind that none of them were from her early childhood, and if he had to take a guess, he’d wager they were all from after she turned eight.
Goddamnit! How could he not have known? It made perfect sense, her mutation, her fear of closets. The way her eyes always flicked around a room searching for the places to hide. He’d been an idiot, just like Magneto was saying, he’d assumed it was his instincts in her head giving her that fight or flight mentality, but he’d been wrong. Why hadn’t he figured it out? Had Xavier known? Had Marie been holding it all inside? Why hadn’t she told him? Was she afraid he’d shrug his shoulders in indifference, or was she afraid he’d track down the ones that had hurt her? Marie had a gentle soul, had she been afraid for her abusers? How far had it gone exactly? What did molestation really mean; what kind of abuse?
The growl was guttural, possessive, and uncompromisingly protective, “How the hell did you know all that shit about her? And what do you mean they molested her?”
Magneto smirked and Logan saw red, “Unlike you, Wolverine, I do my research before I kidnap a child.” He waved his right hand and Logan’s claws slide against the muscles in his arms, until they were nestled back within his body. “You’re temper will not serve your cause, here. I suggest you control yourself, or I will be forced to do it for you.”
“You son of a bi—“
“Mr. Logan,” and that warm, wrinkled hand was upon his arm, restraining, “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain, Ms. D’Ancanto’s mutation.”
He wanted to rip, to tear, to sunder. He wanted to draw blood and screams, and deliver justice. But that rational part of his mind, which always sounded so much like Marie’s patient voice was telling him now wasn’t the time. One day though, he’d take a trip, and when he got home, he’d take Marie into his arms and tell her without words that she never had to be afraid again.
Taking a deep breath, he turned away from the infuriating look of Magneto’s ever smirking face and addressed the doctor, his voice gruff, his mind distracted. “If you’re a mutant and she touches your skin she steals your powers, and mutant or not, she knocks you out.”
Behind him, Magneto let out a disgusted sound of irritation. “Do not tell me, that after three years of staying at Charles’ school, the best you can explain a complex mutation like young Rogue’s is to say she “steals your powers” and “knocks you out.”
He did growl then, and his body tucked into a crouch as he spun around and again popped his claws. “You’re really starting to piss me off, Bub.”
Without so much as a movement, Magneto’s powers flew out across the distance that separated them and pushed against the metal laced bones of Logan’s skeleton. The force threw him across the room until he slammed against the far wall, snarling and spitting as Magneto moved from his place to stand at Marie’s bedside. His gloved fingers rose and brushed at the lock of white hair against Marie’s cheek, and Logan saw red.
“Why she allowed her hair to stay this way, has been a curiosity of mine. Perhaps you’ll provide me the answer, Wolverine.” He spared a glance at Logan, who was struggling against the solid wall of metal to lift his arm away and slash the magnetic psycho to ribbons. “Or perhaps you have no answers yourself. A pity, you continuously underestimated the child.” Then he turned back to address Heartattack. “Her mutation is complex. At approximately one second of contact with the skin of another human or mutant, the cells of her body begin to copy or imprint the psyche of the unfortunate individual to come into physical contact with Rogue. If the individual is a mutant, her body also imprint’s their mutation. The ratio of contact to retention is approximately 1:60, meaning that for every second of contact she retains the imprint of the individual for sixty seconds.”
At Logan’s mocking, bark of laugher the room turned to look at him. His eyes grew dark at the memory, and for a moment the humanity that ran through his veins was replaced by the wild savagery of the Canadian outback. His growl was deep and rich, full and robust, menacing with a promise of pain, and he stopped struggling and locked his eyes with Marie’s would be killer. “Might have been 1:60 before, but it ain’t now. Rogue ain’t the meek little girl you tangled with the last time you tried to fuck her over. If she were awake now, you wouldn’t get within ten feet of her unless she wanted you too. Something happened to her,” he paused, pain filling his eyes as he looked at Marie, “something happened.” Suddenly his murderous gaze went back to Magneto, “But whatever happened to her ain’t her fault. I know her, and she didn’t want to do what she was doing. Something….something was making her do it.”
Silence filled the room for a moment, a second in time that seemed to stretch forever and yet be over in an instant. In the end, it was Johnny that ended the silent standoff, “What happened to her, Logan?”
He looked over at the young man, poised on the brink of manhood. In his eyes, lived a mirrored pain to Logan’s, and he felt his heart ache at their combined loss.
“It started with the Cure.”
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