They stabbed him over and over. Making a cut, watching it knit its self back together and then cutting again. His shouts of pain echoing off the walls and reverberating in her head, and all she could do was watch as they hurt him again and again.
“Rogue! Rogue!" Jubilee tried to wake Marie without scaring her and setting off her skin. “Wake up you lazy whore!”
“There’s no need to be rude. I’m up, I’m up.” Rogue stretched and tried to shake the images of her nightmare out of her head. It was the same nightmare every night; different scenes of how the could be torturing him, but always the same feelings of horror and helplessness. She thought she would be used to it by that point, but every morning she woke shaking and her skin cool with a sheen of sweat. For 18 months she always woke the same way.
She looked confusingly at Jubilee as she noticed it was still dark outside. “What’s up? Is there something wrong?”
“They found him!” Jubilee was practically vibrating with excitement.
“What? Who?” wiping sleep out of her eyes, Marie sat up in bed, thinking Jubilee might have finally gone mad.
“You know Scott and Peter went out to check out that compound the professor sent them out too?” Jubilee didn’t give her time to answer. “Well they found it and it was pretty much abandoned apart from a few scientists and guards and one mutant.” She was talking so quickly now Marie was having a hard time deciphering what she was saying. “They bought him back here!”
“Who!” She said it a bit harsher than was necessary, but she was tired.
“Your wild man, Wolverine!”
Marie went totally still and jubilee stepped toward her, concern written all over her face. A yelp slipped out of her as Marie bolted out of her bed almost knocking her down as she ran, at full speed out of her room.
“At least the think it’s him… Rogue, Rogue!”
Sprinting down the corridors to the lifts that would take her down to the lower levels her heart began to palpate, she couldn’t breath. A million thoughts rushed through her head; what had they done to him? What if they had finally broken him? Had he forgiven her for leaving him there? She couldn’t stop the rush of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.
The lift was too slow; she paced in the small space and tried to arrange her thoughts and emotions. Too much was running through her brain at once. Finally the doors slid open to the familiar metallic walls and she bolted down the cold hallway toward the med lab, hoping it would be where they took him first.
Pushing the doors open with too much force, they slammed against the walls and broke the silence that had settled over the room. Everyone turned to face her, everyone apart from Wolverine who was lying unconscious with what looked like a blast mark in the front of his shirt, exposing his chest.
“What did you do?” As she spoke the words, anger dripping off each one, she went straight for Scott, hitting him in the face before anyone knew what was going on.
“Rogue!” Jean ran to her husband whilst Marie ran to Wolverine’s side.
He looked so still, if it weren’t for the quietly beeping of the machines above him she would have thought he was dead. She placed her hand gently on his exposed chest and felt his steady heartbeat under his fingers.
He was there, really there, after 18 months he was with her again and she couldn’t comprehend it. She could feel him, the heat of his skin soaking into her, the rise and fall of his chest, but after all that time she couldn’t quite believe she had found him again.
The singed edge of his ruined shirt scratched against her hand and anger pulled her back to the people standing around her.
Marie looked up at the others surrounding her with cold eyes.
“We had to immobilise him.” Scott, with his hand still cradling him face, tried to sound like the leader of the x-men and not like a gut who had just been hit by a girl half his size. “He was going to kill us if we didn’t slow him down.
She shot an angry look at Scott. “You, don’t talk to me.”
Everyone stilled at the hate in her voice.
Seeing Wolverine like that, her protector and saviour so still, so helpless, bought back all of the memories and feeling of that place. The place that almost destroyed her, that she thought had destroyed him. It had her sick to think what could have happened to him after she left him alone with those people for so many months.
Suddenly there was an unexpected movement next her and before anyone knew what was going on Wolverine had Marie’s throat held tightly in his hand and the blades of his other pointed towards the rest.
It seemed like forever that everyone just stood there waiting, waiting for him to kill her.
But she knew him better than that, knew that as soon as he realised who she was he would calm down. He just needed to recognise her.
“Wolverine.” She said it so quietly that the others just saw her mouth curve around the name, but she knew he had heard. That he was listening.
*-*-*-*-*
And he was. His focus shifted abruptly from the people in front of him who had attacked and captured him earlier to the woman in his grasp.
He looked down at the girl confused, she had said his name with kindness, not hatred as he was used to. He searched her face for something, anything that could explain why she looked up at him with hope and reassurance swimming in her brown eyes.
“Wolverine.”
And there it was again. There was sweetness, a fondness in the way she said his name, the only information he had about himself. He studied her face, trying to figure out the trick they were playing on him, how they were torturing him now.
He loosened his grip on her throat, but instead of trying to struggle the rest of the way out of his grasp and running away from him, she turned fully toward him and stared him straight in his eyes, waiting.
Looking down at the strong woman in front of him a niggling feeling pulled at him. There was something familiar about her, something he should remember.
“Rogue.” Someone spoke behind her, his grip tightened again and his focus was back on his attackers.
As he tried to calculate how to escape from his new room a soft hand touched the side of his face and once again he relaxed. Something about this girl cooled the heat of his anger. She pulled his focus again until she was the only one he was concerned with.
He leaned forward slightly and breathed her in. The smell of the sterile medical lab they were in was all he could concentrate on, the feeling it evoked mad him choke on fear, but as the scent of her cut through the disinfected stench he was confused how she smelt of warmth, safety and it was so familiar to him. Searching her face for any answers she just looked up at him with open ease. He tried to think, tried to remember why she was so recognizable.
She touched him again and he then didn’t care about the others in the room at all, he just knew this person in front of him was important and he would never let go.
*-*-*-*-*
Marie smiled slightly as he completely released his grip on her throat. He looked down at her, his dark eyes searching her face for something, she didn’t know what he was looking for, but she could tell he at least recognised her.
Too quickly for everyone else’s comfort he reached for her again, but instead of grabbing her throat, his thick arms coiled around her, pulling her into his solid chest. He pressed his face into her neck and breathed her in as he slumped to the floor, dragging her down with him.
She curled up in his lap, fitting herself into his unyielding form, letting him hold her close to his body. It felt like hours they were sitting there like that, his arms so comfortable surrounding her, so safe, she wondered how she had made it through the past months without that feeling. They stayed like that until his weight slumped against her. Pulling away slightly she saw a needle jabbed into the side of his neck. She turned toward Jean, glaring at her.
“He has to be sedated for us to move him.” Jean said apologetically.
“He would have gone willingly if you’d lust let me talk to him.” Anger seeping back into her voice as she spoke.
“We couldn’t take the risk.” Scott moved toward her, but he stopped as her cold eyes once again rested on him. A smug thought flittered across her mind as she noticed the red welt forming over his cheek bone.
“You don’t go near him.” She knew they were right, he was unpredictable, but she was still annoyed at the way they were treating him. She looked back at Wolverine, even in sleep he looked fierce. “Where are you taking him?” Her fingers gently traced his furrowed brow.
“To one of the holding cells until the professor come back to talk to him.”
Even though she hated the thought of locking him up again, she knew it was the only way to deal with him. Even though he recognised her, she didn’t think that he remembered her or understood that they were trying to help him, that they were the good guys.
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