Scott Summers curled his nose as he picked through the remains of the small cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Even a mutant without hefty sense enhancements could easily pick out the scent of death permeating the ruins. Something, or someone, had demolished the entire open area of the home by either blasting, or throwing someone clean through the four foot thick stone fireplace.
His first thought was Juggernaut, but there were no other signs of damage in the forest immediately surrounding the area. Juggernaut, as strong as he was, still needed a hell of a lot of steam to shove someone that hard. He would’ve had to have been charging in from a hundred yards out -- there was no entrance hole either. Which left the team leader of the X-men puzzled.
Nightcrawler had been on recognizance for this particular mission, and had been following the young female mutant and her male, feral mutant companion for some weeks. Having captured Toad poking his nose around the Pentagon, as well as the information they had procured from the now deceased Senator Kelley, they had had reason to compile quite the dossier on the chocolate-haired nubile beauty and the cage-fighting superhealer. Nightcrawler, with the help of Shadowcat, could even tell them exactly where they had stashed their vehicle for retrieval after the spring thaw, what provisions they had taken with them to the cabin, and that the two of them seemed to be in an amicable relationship before they had retreated from their observations due to inclement weather.
They had thought that waiting through the whiteout was the safest course of action. Even Storm, as powerful as she was, wasn’t capable of holding back nature’s worst for days on end, and he had been very sure that convincing the feral to let them take Marie, even if it was for her own good, wouldn’t have ended well. Hell, just look at the disaster zone around him. That was now painfully obvious.
That his students hadn’t been caught by a mutant as well renowned as the ‘Wolverine,’ of whom Scott had heard quite a bit, and not all of it good, impressed him greatly. His training methods must be superb, either that or the Wolverine had been hyperbolized like some immortal Paul Bunyan, fucking up the Canadian wilderness for all eternity.
“Scott!” Jean called from where she crouched inside.
Signs of a struggle, ruined furniture, dents in walls, as well as blood spatter were difficult to avoid. He almost lost his lunch when he caught a glimpse of what Jean was holding in her hands.
“I take it the Wolverine is KIA?” he gulped, hand over his mouth. At least she couldn’t see him shut his eyes behind his ruby-quartz glasses.
“It would seem likely,” Jean whispered, “Have Nightcrawler transport the body onto the Blackbird, I’d like to give him a proper burial. It seemed like everything was going well between them.”
“Were you able to get anything?” Scott asked, nodding to where her fingertips gently touched the Wolverine’s temples.
“His consciousness seems to be non-existent at this point, but I’m sure the Professor will want to check him on our return.”
“Any sign of the girl?” Scott hummed, bile rising in his throat again as he caught a glimpse of the Wolverine’s hand beneath a pile of rock, adamantium claws still extended.
Jean lifted up one eyebrow and nodded towards the hole in the ceiling, the crater in the fireplace, and the literally demolished cabin. “Looks like our super strength gravity defier sent someone packing, at least for temporary.”
“Cyclops!” Shadowcat called, phasing through the front door. Scott could hear Jubilee cursing up a storm as she fumbled with the frozen knob.
“Can’t open the damn door for anybody!” Jubilee snarled, and a shock of electricity shot the door clean off its hinges.
“That tickled,” Shadowcat said, beginning to giggle. Her eyes suddenly caught a glimpse of the deceased Wolverine and she swallowed her laughter abruptly. “Oh, dear.”
“Did you have something to report?” Jean asked, slightly peeved at Shadowcat’s behavior.
“Tracks, leading from the cabin to a clearing two miles east. Left print deeper than right, indicating an added weight on that side, possibly that of a body or large parcel. The swept nature of the snow in the clearing seems to indicate helicopter pickup, drifts are concurrent with snow movement due to heavy winds.” Shadowcat recited methodically.
“Very good, Shadowcat.” Jean said, slightly mollified.
“I was the one who figured it out.” Jubilee grumbled.
The two girls gently helped Scott and Jean clear the rubble from atop the Wolverine’s body, then assisted Nightcrawler in transporting him to the plane. It took all five of them to lift his body due to the added weight of adamantium bones. Scott took charge of the arm with claws extended. He knew very little about adamantium, but something told him it could easily compromise the outer hull of the Blackbird with little effort or a minute mistake on the handlers part.
As the girls cleaned up in the front of the plane and cleared it for take off, Scott placed the Wolverine’s head back where it was supposed to be. Jean gently wrapped the two pieces of what had once been a living, breathing being back together with a neck cast and adhesive bandages, then tugged the soiled flannel shirt from his gaping stomach wound. Out of respect, she covered the wound with a gauze pad and tape. Finally satisfied, she tugged a white sheet over the body and returned to her co-pilots seat. Scott always worried her when he flew the plane.
~~@~~@~~
Marie opened bleary eyes, bright, white light shining down into her face through what seemed to be a sheer veil. She strained to turn her head, memories jumping and bouncing around her pounding skull. Her hearing was muffled. She could hear her heart beating in her head, could feel the vibrations as someone’s footsteps clumped across the floor towards her.
She drew on her memories of Logan, trying to access his enhanced senses. Only a small twinge of him came back. It felt like she was dragging herself through quicksand to use his powers, and what little strength she had drained out of her as militarized, heightened senses alerted her to the physical attributes of the man who approached her.
She could smell his expensive cologne. It made her nose hurt. He was elderly, approximately six feet tall, one hundred and seventy pounds, in fairly good health - she could tell from the way he breathed, the more sluggish beat of his heart opposed to the rapid, youthful beating of her own, as well as the smell of gold bond powder and glucosamine joint supplements. His shoes were leather, expensive leather, they didn’t squeak on the industrial tile floors. He shuffled slightly on his right foot, indicating a weakness in the hip or knee, perhaps ankle, possibly due to an old injury? Who knew? It could also be age. Fabric flapped around his neck, most like a cape. These super villain types always seemed likely to don capes.
She wasn’t as good at identifying emotions, but the overwhelming smell of lust -- not lust of the flesh, but lust at having something one has coveted for some time well within one’s reach -- that kind of Christmas morning surprise lust overwhelmed her senses. Combined with that lust, however, was anger.
Rolling, thunderous, anger. Anger that made the hands now clenching the rails of the cot she lay on tremble.
“Daken,” he murmured, a thin European accent accompanying his vocalization, “I cease to understand exactly how you could bring me someone in this condition for the amount of money I offered you on this particular contract.”
Marie slowed her breathing. Her face throbbed agonizingly. Suddenly, she realized that there was no blindfold on her face, only a bandage obscuring her sight. Bile rose violently in her throat, but she refused to move. She couldn’t.
“You didn’t specify.” Daken snarled. Marie could hear him lean against the nearest wall. God she was itching to rip him a new asshole...
“It was implied explicitly that I wanted this one to come to no harm. She is of the utmost importance, you imbecile!” the elderly man snarled.
“Look, Mags, I really can’t tell you how sorry I actually am,” Daken purred. Marie could almost hear the sneer smeared across his face, “But what are you going to do about it now? You got what you wanted, now keep your end of the bargain, 1.5 million.”
“I owe you nothing, Daken, you have had the pleasure of disposing of your father, and therefore can be of no further use to me.” the man, Mags, apparently, stated, then lifted one hand away from the bed rails.
The metallic click of Daken’s sword being unsheathed and the wet squelch it made when slammed home into flesh made Marie want to cry. She didn’t want to remember what Logan looked like when she left the cabin. Couldn’t bear to think of him that way.
Now it was Daken gasping in a puddle of blood and innards on the floor, she could hear him flailing, feet scrabbling. Something shifted in the air around her, everything in the room magnetized as she managed to make out the shape of the feral mutant rising off the floor to dangle in the air, sword blade entering from behind the shoulder blade and protruding from the hip. How was this happening? Her vaguely enhanced senses could smell the metal of the sword resonate with the man next to her. Perhaps that was his power?
“Fu...fuck, Magneto,” Daken gasped, “Please, put me down.”
“No, I think not.” Mags, no, Magneto said austerely, “I believe you owe this young lady an apology.”
She felt Daken floating over her, the tips of his boots hitting her bare stomach. Blood dripped down and ran across her chest, so much for the cheap soap smell from the sponge bath she had apparently been given some hours before. Frozen in the air, Daken’s hand brushed against her stomach, then lay against it, palm down, fingers splayed.
Slowly, oh so slowly, as Daken groaned above her, Marie felt her skin begin to inexorably pull him in.
And it was so slow. He died so slowly that Marie felt as if she had lived an entire life time -- he was sixty years old. Sixty! How old was Logan then? Eighty? A hundred?
Slowly, her face healed, the throbbing deteriorating and returning to a dull ache.
And Daken screamed inside of her head, the Wolverine roared. The two clashed all over again inside her mind, and it was too much, too much.
Daken breathed his last as Marie fell into unconsciousness once more, and Magneto?
Magneto laughed.
~~@~~@~~
Jean, assisted by Hank, pulled on her latex gloves as the two of them prepared to autopsy the body of Codename: Wolverine. His file lay open next to them, and the body lay in the chilly, three body mortuary in the mansion’s lower levels. Together, they walked through the double doors. Bespectacled Hank reached into a drawer for a tape recorder, and Jean smiled, the furry doctor was proud of his meticulous record keeping.
“Codename: Wolverine, approximate age at death, unknown, suspected at a minimum of thirty years.” Jean began, lifting her gloved hands and pulling the white sheet down to the man’s waist. “Weight, approximately 350 to 400 pounds, skeletal structure, adamantium coated bone.”
“Known mutations, feral adaptation and rapid healing. Cause of death, decapitation.” Hank supplied as Jean moved her hand gently down to lift the gauze pad from the stomach wound below. She would sew the wound back together before burial and preservation.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Jean gasped, and Hank raised an eyebrow as she peeled the rest of the dressing back.
The wound was gone. Unmarred, rippling abdominal muscles tensed under her fingertips.
“Holy shit, did he just breathe?” she gulped.
“Oh my stars and garters,” Hank whispered, glancing at the post-mortem photos in the file. “Jean, what exactly is going on here?”
A thick, muscled hand caught Jean’s wrist. She fought the urge not to scream.
A dead man. A clinically dead man was holding her hand.
“M’rie, that tickles...” he mumbled, eyes closed.
A clinically dead man was holding her arm and talking to her.
Jean tried not to hyperventilate.
Hank tried not to panic.
The undead Wolverine inhaled deeply, the hand not holding her arm coming up to scratch the edge of his face and tug at the neck brace. “Marie, shee-it it’s cold in here, fire go out overnight?” he mumbled.
“Yeah, fire went out.” Jean whispered, hoping that she sounded enough like this “Marie,” to keep him calm.
His eyes shot open and stared straight at her.
A dead man was staring at her. A dead alive man. Six adamantium claws sprung from their sheathes.
No dice. She was not a convincing impostor.
“Who the hell are you and where the fuck is Marie?”
Jean couldn’t answer that.
She fainted.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
A/N: Soooo Superhealers (according to most comic versions of them - Deadpool, Wolverine, Sabretooth, Daken) can reattach amputated limbs as long as they are placed back together. Cases have had Wolvie lose an arm, pick it up, stick it back on, and it will reattach itself, it happens to Deadpool all the time from what I hear - but he picks some nasty fights as well. The way I would explain it is that the cells are almost magnetically attracted to each other, in the way that they can’t be apart for long periods of time, so even in the instance of something like decapitation (cough) there is hope!!!
Do not fear, this chapter will fix everything, or at least get it going back towards finding home :) think of this as the incredible journey part ;) but I promise a Rogantastic happy ending!!!
Suggested listening: "I Will Always Return" by Bryan Adams
I hear the wind call your name
It calls me back home again
It sparks up the fire - a flame that still burns
Oh it's to you I'll always return
I still feel your breath on my skin
I hear your voice deep within
The sound of my lover - a feeling so strong
It's to you - I'll always belong
Do not fear, this chapter will fix everything, or at least get it going back towards finding home :) think of this as the incredible journey part ;) but I promise a Rogantastic happy ending!!!
Suggested listening: "I Will Always Return" by Bryan Adams
I hear the wind call your name
It calls me back home again
It sparks up the fire - a flame that still burns
Oh it's to you I'll always return
I still feel your breath on my skin
I hear your voice deep within
The sound of my lover - a feeling so strong
It's to you - I'll always belong
Chapter End Notes:
Let me know what you think!! :)