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Story Notes:
Logan never made it back to the mansion after he left for Alkali Lake... Marie went looking for him...

This is what happened.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This little bunny showed up while I was sitting quietly at my desk between two classes like the good teacher that I am; and it whined and wailed until I wrote it.

It's not pretty. It's mostly inspired by the awesome Terri, Soullesslover, and many others who have written about the very dark and angsty topic of labs. Other inspirational material has a lot to do with too much Oscar Wilde's 'De Profundis', Charles Baudelaire's 'Les Fleurs du Mal', and only God knows what else...

A big thank you to all those of you who've been following my other story "Only time will tell". Next chapter in preparation!!!

Enjoy!!
How long had it been, he had no earthly idea.

He was just there half sitting, half slumped on the metal platform that served him as a resting place, since the origin of times it seemed. Scents and sounds had long died down and blended in a horror filled illusion of a lightless world, the only thing real being the pain and suffering bountifully poured on him every single day.

There had been a time when he wondered why things were how they were, why he was there, but no answer ever came so he just assumed that this was what being alive meant. It was pointless to hope for something else, simply because there was nothing else, other than this pain, other than drowning, burning and bleeding, being at the mercy of others and never having any right whatsoever.


He didn’t know what he was, or what he looked like. When his eyes would occasionally roam his own naked form, he would notice that he looked like Them somehow; he had arms and hands, legs and feet, just like Them. When he would touch his face, he would notice that he had two eyes, one long, straight nose and a mouth. He had hair and skin too, though he didn’t really know why it grew back every time they skinned him, burned him alive or God knew what. But he didn’t talk… Never…So maybe that was what made him so different from Them. So he tried speaking or more likely whispering sometimes, tried to articulate words he’d heard Them say, the few times they bothered to speak at all. Words like “filth”, “worthless” or “monster”. He didn’t really know what they meant, but the edge in them made something tighten in his chest, and then spread out thickly through his bones like tar.

The day’s activities had changed lately. Of course, he still woke up to the sound of his own screams, but somehow, the pain dulled much faster than before, only to cease moments later when darkness claimed him again.
That’s when the new scent came in. It was faint, but it was still there… Different...

Whatever it was, it had the power to sooth something in him he didn’t even know hurt. The scent was deep and rich, free from the stench of chemicals, plastic or blood. If anything, the scent was pleasant yet completely unidentifiable. There rarely was anything new around here, and when novelty happened, it only meant more pain for him, so he just waited the moment he would pay whatever price he had to pay this time.




He was in his cell again, waiting for today’s special assortment of torture. The grays and blacks in the corners of his cell seemed to be waiting too. Time passed by but still nothing. Stillness never lasts very long, calmness is not to be trusted, he thought, and he started to shake uncontrollably in fear and anticipation. When Their heavily booted feet stomped the floor of the corridor he was held in without stopping, he hyperventilated, his dismantled thoughts crashing one against the other, trying to figure out what was going on. He thought he had lost the ability to fear or crumble in outright horror a long time ago, but God, was he ever wrong! Silence came again until the pathetic excuse of a light that peeked from the hole under the thick metal door of his cell was turned out, signaling the end of the day. He rarely slept, but that night, he couldn’t. Even when he would have begged for it, sleep was ripped away from him as someone esles's screams were heard somewhere beyond the walls of his metal and concrete world; screams so high pitched they were barely human. And then the stench of blood was so overpowering that it made his stomach lurch, making him rush to one of the corners of the room to heave his gut out against a wall. He never had to `witness’ anybody else’s pain, he wasn’t used or prepared to hear something other than the heavy footsteps, occasional gunshots, or his own personal brand of screams. That night and for the first time, he wished he was dead, wished that somebody would set him free from this place. That night and for the first time, he felt water well up in his eyes and run down his burning face, deep unforgiving sobs making it hard to breathe. It had a name, he suddenly remembered: crying.

The following day, the boots came again and this time stopped in front of his cell. There was something different today too; the boots weren’t alone, there were feet gliding over the hard surface too, barely audible, whispering like his. The feet stopped too, hesitating, and there was the scent again, the pleasant scent, so, he thought, the time had come to pay. Reverently, he stood up from the platform he was slumped over, gathered what little courage he had left after last night’s torrents of tears overflowing from the very darkness of his soul, to face the new comer and the world of hurt and pain they were bringing with them. The boots didn’t speak, they hardly did, but the feet started to whimper, and he would swear they were crying too. There, a plaintive childlike voice rang in the dimness, making the good scent suddenly run away, leaving a trail of all consuming terror in its wake.

The door to his cell opened to reveal the owners of the boots and feet. He knew the owners of the boots, so he didn’t spend too long eyeing them, but the feet were small, like their voice, and lead up to two ghostly white legs that kept going until they were stopped by greenish half clean, half soiled hospital scrubs. His eyes resumed their investigation of the pain bringer, considering its strangely delicate features and long dark and white hair that partially hid it from his gaze. The pain bringer looked up from its position between the booted men, its eyes big and scared, and lips trembling in silent request for mercy. He almost snorted at that: he was the one who should ask for mercy, but he knew better. Why would the pain bringer ask for it anyway? He was sure that they had come for him, come to torture him, fortunately one last time before it all blissfully ended. So he waited.

The boots shuffled forward like one and only man, dragging the pain bringer and its destructive potential in their midst. He was too bewildered to fully comprehend what was occurring before his very eyes. The boots left without a sound this time, the feet disappeared under a curtain of dark and white hair and dirty clothing, crying in the corner of his cell, begging him to finish them quick. When he finally came to, the heavy door was closed again, and an eerie silence reigned in the suddenly crowded space of the only place he’d known as a home. He was torn; what should he do? What did they expect from him this time? Was it the latest torture they thought of? When he took a closer look at the form huddled in the corner, another word came to his mind, the pain bringer was a victim too and her soft features, her long, dual hair, triggered an emotion so strong that it almost made him keel over: it was a woman, very young, but a woman still.



The day passed at an alarmingly slow pace. The woman on the floor hadn’t moved an inch, still crying silently, sniffing from time to time. He had paced the confines of the room, trying to figure out what to do with her, how to make her scent pleasant again, because now he was sure: the scent was hers, it had to be. Ever so slowly, he tried to approach her then, try to make the crying cease, but he didn’t know how to go about that. Suddenly, he wanted to talk, try to communicate with her, but the few words he could remember or phrase seemed frightening in their coldness; if They used it, these words couldn’t be good enough to tell her, now could they. Half squatting half crawling towards her shaking form, he extended one arm in her direction, hand in a semi fist, making to touch her, see if she was hurt. Her shoulder was warm to the touch, soft and inviting in a way he couldn’t clearly remember. The quaking of her body temporarily ceased, her face snapping up to his, and a breath hitched in her throat. Without him realizing it, a soft purr coming from his chest could be heard in the dimly lit space, and the young woman’s crying stopped at once. The sound echoed through her by the hand that was resting on her shoulder, hand that ever so slowly crept up to brush her jaw line and finally cup her tear stained cheek in its calloused palm. He saw that it took a lot from her, but she leaned in, her eyes never leaving his, and for just a few moments, all the shadows in them seamed to vanish.

The scent progressively came back, enfolding him in its softness and his hand on her face relaxed, as a thumb brushed the side of her brow. This was right, he thought, this was right, and the comforting sound of his grumbling purr soothed the girls even more, finally making her dozy. When her body slightly slumped over to his, he caught her easily in his arms and brought her to the metal platform on the other side of the cell.



Then the lights went out as suddenly as they had come in the morning, but he kept a silent vigil over his new cellmate as she dreamlessly slept in his arms. He spent the whole night sitting, his back propped against the wall, his left knee bent and his elbow leaning on it as a makeshift pillow under the young woman’s neck, and there she was, face partially nestled against his chest, the rest of her body lying between his legs. As he had nothing to shield her from the coldness of the night, he decided it was best he stayed with her like that, and this too was right somehow; familiar.



The young woman tried to talk to him the following day, as soon as she opened her eyes, finding herself securely held in her cellmate’s arms. She didn’t smell scared, though, just slightly agitated.


She tried to speak again and again, but he couldn't decipher the meaning of the bi-syllable word she’d been voicing for a few moments now. Looking at her face while she spoke this word was something he couldn’t help himself from doing. The feeling he had yesterday was multiplied a thousand times even as the soft sound of her voice echoed in the dark room. The way she looked at him while saying it, all the emotions and desperation it held bore a hole in his chest where his heart should have been, but he had none, that much he knew. He tried to whisper the word too, see if it would feel the same on his lips as on hers. Lowering his face to hers, he did just that, brushed his lips against hers to take a sip of the cryptic and enigmatic sound and then push it back against her mouth for her to appraise his doing.


“Looo-gn”, he breathed.


Her reaction was so strong that it threatened to make him wail like a newborn child then and there. She was indeed crying, quaking uncontrollably, hands clutching at his shoulders and face buried in the crook of his neck. At loss as to what to do with the shaking and sobbing piece of woman in his arms, he resumed his purr from the night before, and once again, the crying stopped and the only thing heard in their cell was the occasional sniffing of the soft spoken creature now limply resting in his arms, mingled with other more elaborate and incomprehensible words, which underlying meaning didn’t faze him completely; and that in itself was a complete mystery to him.
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