Running, running. Just a few more yards and they would be outside, he could smell it!
Wolverine looked down at his mate, her shoulder still bleeding from his claws and he could barely hold back the agonized whine at the sight. He did this to her; he had hurt her. Just what kind of mate was he? He had to take her to safety, make sure their cub would be alright. He didn’t dare think of what might happen to the cub if the bleeding didn’t stop. So he ran, hardly noticing the group running with him, next to him.
The gyrating orange lights above them scared him, put him on edge jumping every time one of the cubs around him moved in too close, almost skewering them on his claws; damn those things anyway!
Heavy footsteps hit the floor in the distance and the whine in Wolverine’s throat steadily turning into a threatening growl forcing the group to a halt.
No one dared make a sound; listening carefully, anxious to get out but sensing trouble. Now fangs were bared as the footsteps got closer, the distinctive click of weapons echoing in with them. He has to do something! Looking at the other male, Wolverine held out his mate's body to him, his eyes pleading for him to understand that he now has to look out for his mate for him, even though he himself found the idea absolutely revolting. But there was no other choice, no time to lose. He knew whatever will happen, he will heal, but not them, not his beloved mate and their cub. Yes, he can do this. His mate is pregnant with his cub, she won’t look twice at the other male, he can trust her; he can do this.
The other male was stunned for a few moments but then regained his composure and enfolded the young female’s body in his arms.
“Logan, what are you doing? Logan, no!”
He could hear her, but he also knew that he wouldn't turn back. He was doing it for her, for their cub, so that they had a chance to get out of here alive. So he ran, leaving her behind, his heart torn in two, ran as fast as he could towards the enemy.
******************************
“Find him and kill him!”
“Yes sir. But sir, he heals from everything we’ve dished at him in the simulations, even tanks…”
“Oh, but this time, he’ll stay down, believe me! You know what you have to do?”
“Yes sir.”
Colonel Montgomery held his gun tighter, enjoying the feel of warm steel against his palm, the adrenaline pumping in his bloodstream making him almost giddy at the perspective ahead of him. He was a hunter, and there was going to be a killing, soon. He almost salivated at the thought of his soon to be victim, his prey: the Wolverine.
He could almost feel him, he knew he was close. Oh, yes… The head of the Safety Department never questioned this primitive knowledge in him, how he could be able to sense the beast in the huge complex, but he did, inexplicably; always have. Just killer instinct maybe?
A growl. There he was. It would be over soon.
Montgomery geared his gun, taking aim even before seeing anything of his prey. His men imitated him, their guns at the ready and he smiled a sinister smile knowing what the ammo was. This would kill the mighty beast, this would be the only thing able to finally terminate this freak of nature once and for all.
At his signal, Collins, his most prized sniper, rounded the corner, took aim at where the growling came from and fired two grenades. The hissing of a gas being released came to Montgomery’s sensitive ears and he gestured to the two other men with him, shooting at the slumped form of the Wolverine, their bullets digging black holes in his broad back, his side.
The beast was choking on its own breath, gasping for air, pitiful helpless whines coming from its throat, its claws shooting in and out of its paws. The Colonel smiled broadly at the sight, not stopping his shooting, advancing on the battered body with unfaltering steps until all he saw was just the misshapen form of what used to be wolverine. There was a black pool forming around the body, bits of flesh and internal organs splattered on the floor. The body twitched once, twice and then went still. Only then did Montgomery stop shooting.
He knelt down, grasped a fistful of blood matted hair and yanked so hard that he heard the distinctive pop of bones shifting in Wolverine’s neck. The face was slack, mouth slightly open to reveal fangs shaper than he thought they would be. Other than that, it looked human; well almost. Hearing footsteps approaching quickly, the grey haired man spat at the lifeless body and ordered a retreat.
*****************************
He had looked in horror, unable to move or breathe.
First, the two grenades of alpha-gas, the bullets rain that befell the prisoner. The black holes and the black liquid pouring from the fresh wounds were unmistakable. Dr Steve Matheson had participated in the elaboration of this serum when he first arrived, knew how hazardous the combination of chemicals was and mutant blood. The poor man was probably dead now, healing factor notwithstanding. But he had to make sure. He couldn’t die now, not so close to finally getting out of there. The doctor had run at the first blare of sirens, gun in hand, with only one thing in mind: finding Montgomery before he found the two prisoners.
He had spent weeks trying to find names, data, just about anything he could to send to this Xavier guy again and finally put an end to this museum of torture, and he had. Three names came back regularly: Stryker, Mann and Montgomery. In his search, Matheson found a program developed in parallel of Revival. Well, if the compilation of tortures and rapes could be called a “scientific program”, that is. Each and every prisoner that came through the complex had been tortured and abused by the Colonel Montgomery, assisted by the devious Dr Mann. Reading the notes, he had been sick to his stomach countless times, and he discovered one thing about the good Colonel: he hated the main test subject with unholy passion. Almost every reports were about him, records of procedures performed when no one was watching, taking what they called “samples”: a kidney, a lung, an eye… There even were pictures. God! Montgomery wanted the Wolverine destroyed at all costs, but first, he wanted to have his fun with him.
Matheson had put some data from those secret files in his last SOS message to Xavier, hoping against hope that this time, the man would react, do something for one of his own kind. And if the sudden commotion was anything to go by, he had finally heard him. So the doctor had run, gun in hand, trying to find the Colonel first, and his stomach had dropped as he watched, powerless, as all he had fought to avoid happened under his very eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Matheson summoned all his strength and courage, giving chase to Montgomery and his men. This was right. He would avenge this poor man, . Yes, this man. Not a beast, not a test subject, this man. He would absolve himself
“Forgive me Helen…” breathed the doctor in the heavy silence around him.
Soon, there was a blur of gunshots and screams, the surprise effect playing in the doctor’s favor for a few precious seconds. And then there was only silence.
***********************
“What was that?” Marie exclaimed, breathless.
“Gunshots…”
“Logan!”
With a strength she didn’t know she had, Marie rose to her feet and went in the direction of the sounds at a dead run, her injuries completely forgotten.
“One minute and thirty seconds before destruction…”
“Rogue!!”
She didn’t care about anything else, her mate might be hurt, she had to do something, anything. She couldn’t remember ever running that fast in her entire life, everything was covered in a hazy layer of grey, even hazier in the corners of her vision.
Marie heard the howl of pain, heard the loud thud of a body hitting the ground, gunshots still filling the air. She was still so far, but she kept running.
The guns had turned silent when she arrived. There was no one. No one but her Logan lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, unmoving. It took everything she had in her not to collapse where she was. Marie kept running, stopping abruptly next to her lover, refusing to think the unthinkable, and started to turn him. Still inhabited by an unearthly strength, she grabbed Logan’s body under the armpits and started to drag him. She heard her friends gathering around her, their horrified gasps at the sight that greeted them, but she decided to ignore them, none of this was important; Logan was.
Without a word, Colossus, took one arm and dragged with her. In one instant, the young X-team was helping her carrying her mate out of the complex. The young woman, didn’t notice the snow, or the coldness of the air. She didn’t hear Storm landing next to them, didn’t see the jet or the blue beast rushing towards them to help.
Her whole body was hurting, her heart was in pieces, and it’s only when she felt the ground shift under her that Marie realized that she was the Blackbird, and that they were leaving, that the orange light she saw wasn’t that of the corridors of the complex but that of the gigantic explosion in the growing distance. Only then did she start to realize, only then did she start to scream and kick and completely lose her mind.
The young girl barely recognized Jean who was trying to tend to the wounds on her shoulder, almost scratching a chunk out of the read haired doctor’s face, a howl filling her throat at the sight of the man she loved, lying on a gurney still unmoving. It took Iceman and Scott to finally get her to lie down on the other gurney, took this new guy to strap her to it so that Jean could insert a needle in her arm.
Marie wanted to scream once more, but she was all of a sudden too tired to move, too tired to think and then everything went black.
**********
“How is she?” Xavier asked, his voice tight.
“She’s stable” answered Jean, “Just press this to her shoulder Kitty…”
“Jean, I need your help here!”
“Hank! What do we have?”
“He’s unresponsive, his healing factor seems to be completely off.”
“Damn it! What happened out there?”
Kitty Pryde, still holding a pack of gauze to Rogue’s shoulder answered in a shaking voice.
“I don’t know. He just started to growl, and the next moment he was gone, and then there were gunshots and Rogue went after him, and…”
Unable to continue, the young girl burst into tears, shaking under the power of her sobs. Ink, who had remained very silent up until now started to speak in hushed tones, eyes looking at nothing. She was mumbling that it was her fault, everything was her fault.
“Reese, dear, whatever are you talking about? None of this is your fault!” Professor Xavier said calmly but firmly, his had slowly reaching to the young woman sitting next to him.
The gesture seemed to shake Reese Parker out of her stupor and she stood up, heading for the makeshift medical wing of the jet. Without hesitation, she took a pair of scissors and slit her wrist, a black liquid slowly pooling against the cut, thick like tar.
“Ink! What in Heaven’s name are you doing?” Exclaimed Hank McCoy, still busy trying to bring Wolverine back to life.
“You’ll understand…” came the whispered reply of the young beauty, her grey eyes filled with unshed tears.
She extended her injured wrist next to the man lying on the gurney black liquid oozing from every wound. All the eyes widened as they witnessed the shiny essence slowly moving from Logan’s body to Reese’s slit wrist. There was an audible gasp coming from her as more of the liquid went inside of her, leaving deep wounds in their wake.
“You have to take it all out, otherwise he won’t heal.” She said, the tears finally flowing free.
“How did you…?”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise.” Said the woman known as ink, her face stained with tear tracks, her eyes soft, almost tender resting on Wolverine’s form.
Ever so slowly, the wounds started to close one after the other, free of the black poison, they were red and angry looking. There would probably leave scars. When all of the black substance was clear of all the wounds, Ink stepped back; hand on her wrist to stop the bleeding, apologies flowing from her mouth, barely understandable under her choked sobs.
The X-men were too shocked to react to that last development, and the two doctors went back to tend to their patient who had just taken his much awaited first gulp of air since being brought inside the jet.
Charles Xavier tried to make sense of what he’d just witnessed, a million thoughts running through his mind. One of them struck him harder than the others, though: was it possible that Ink could be involved in Logan’s abduction, and if yes, in what ways? This thought didn’t leave him during all the time it took the Blackbird to fly back to the mansion. Keeping all this to himself, he couldn’t help but casting intrigued glances at the grey eyed young woman, still crying in a corner, far from everyone else, the grief and guilt pouring from her enough to almost choke him. There would be things to discuss at their arrival.
*****************
Marie woke with a start, Logan’s name on her lips. Shaking the dream off, she glanced around at the space around her and almost burst into tears of relief. She was home, she was at the mansion. But her relief was short lived as the last events played back in her mind, remembering the sirens, the gunshots, oh my God, Logan!
She stood on wobbly legs heading out the door but crumbled two steps away from the bed. She felt weak, terribly so and her shoulder hurt like fire. Doing her best to stand back up again, she almost jumped out of her skin when the door opened to reveal the form of her former teacher Ororo Munroe.
“Here, let me help you?” she white haired woman said softly.
“Where’s Logan?” She couldn’t help it, she had to know, now!
“He’s alright.”
“Please Storm, take me to him, I want to see him!”
“He’s alright Rogue, you need to rest, you’ve been through a lot.”
“If he’s alright, then why isn’t he here with me?”
When the question took one too long second to be answered, Rogue knew that there was something wrong. Unable to hold back her tears anymore, she begged the weather goddess to take her to her mate. She had no memory of how they arrived at the mansion, and that worried her a great deal. Maybe, just maybe…she had to make sure.
Ororo helped the young woman in the wheelchair by the bed and took upon herself to wheel her former student to the med bay, all the while remaining anxiously silent. Rogue didn’t mind, all that mattered was to see for herself that her Logan was fine. When they arrived on the sublevel, something struck Rogue as wrong, it was dark, and…deserted. Shouldn’t there be someone to tend to Logan? He was injured rather badly, the last time she saw him, he needed someone to take care of him! She utterly panicked when Storm wheeled her past the medical wing to stop by a heavily sealed door. She entered a code in a panel on her right and another door slid open. The place was extremely bright compared to the corridors, one of the walls was an immense window, revealing what must have been the room behind the sealed door. What she saw inside made the young girl’s blood freeze in her veins. Lying on a cot in a corner of the room was Logan, his hair long and greasy, a beard covering his face. He was lying on his side, shaking slightly, an IV steadily dripping a clear liquid into his bloodstream. He had his eyes open, full of pain, so much of it that it caused Rogue’s eyes to suddenly sting with tears again.
“Why do you keep him here? He needs help! Can’t you see that he’s hurt? That he’s scared?”
“Rogue, please…” Replied the woman kneeling next to her.
“How can you do this to him? How can You?!! You’re no better than the people back there, you disgust…”
And she froze, seeing the open grieve and pain in the blue eyes of the goddess.
“He couldn’t recognize any of us… He tried to kill Hank, Jean and the Professor. He’s not himself right now, Rogue. We had to sedate him and put him here. No one has been able to make contact with him since. We had no choice.”
“Yes you had. But you still chose to hurt him. How long?”
“It’s been two weeks now…”
“Oh Logan… Storm, please, I want to see him. He needs me. Please.”
“Rogue, I can’t, he could hurt you!”
“No he won’t. When we were at the lab, he came looking for me. He was wild, Storm, but he came looking for me, to get me out of there. He won’t hurt me.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I know what you're thinking...
Second part of "Cross roads" is up.
Sorry for the long wait, but I've been, err...busy. My body has a hard time keeping up with my mind. Sometimes I want to do a lot of things, but my body, burden that it is, just won't cooperate!
Sorry again, enjoy!! Warning: Violence...Ye be warned...
Second part of "Cross roads" is up.
Sorry for the long wait, but I've been, err...busy. My body has a hard time keeping up with my mind. Sometimes I want to do a lot of things, but my body, burden that it is, just won't cooperate!
Sorry again, enjoy!! Warning: Violence...Ye be warned...