Logan lay awake in his bed, his mind restlessly turning over the interaction with Rogue so he could examine it from every angle. She had seemed to be opening up to him, and then suddenly...
Don’t touch me, she had said. The acute sense of rejection he had felt when she had flinched away from his touch had blindsided him with its intensity. Of course she doesn’t want you to touch her, he had thought. She knows what you are. The ever-present shame and fury he felt regarding his animal nature had welled up, causing the blood to roar in his ears and the claws to itch in his forearms.
But then she had seemed so inexplicably sad afterwards, the dejection and loneliness so clear on her face that without thinking he had caught the horse’s bridle. He couldn’t let her go like that, had been unable to let her leave before she promised to meet him again. And she had -- she promised to meet him again, even knowing what he was.
Now that he was able to think back about it more calmly, he felt like he was missing something important. Don’t touch me, she had said, but something else too, something he had been too hurt and angry to think about at the time. What was it?
No one can touch me. That was it. No one can touch me. Logan turned over in his bed, kicking at the sheets in aggravation as her words replayed in his mind. No one can touch me. What the hell did that mean?
___________________________________
Rogue lay awake in bed. She wished that she could just turn her mind off and sleep, but her thoughts drifted again and again to her meeting with the Wolverine. He had taken a big risk, trusting her with his confidences, and she had been unable to help him at all. Was he right about Sebastian -- could he be the kind of man who would actually kidnap someone, or hurt them?
She thought about the visceral reaction she had to Sebastian -- how she hated his nearness, how she looked at the photographs and could not believe that she had once loved and married him. Then she thought of the Wolverine. The strange juddering of her heart when he asked to meet her again. That feeling he kindled in her belly, of heat and safety and something more that she couldn’t even identify. And most of all his hazel eyes, warm with concern, as he asked the question that seemed to put into words everything that she suspected, and feared, and hoped. What has he done to you, Rogue?
Before now she had hardly dared to allow the thought in the privacy of her own mind, but the memory of Wolverine’s calm, steady presence seemed to have given her the strength. She thought it. Then she whispered it. Then she said it out loud, her voice hesitant at first, trying out the feel of the words, but gaining certainty with every repetition of the mantra.
“I’m not crazy. He did this to me. I’m not crazy. He did this to me...”
___________________________________
“Rogue?”
Rogue ducked her head, trying to hide the involuntary smile that spread across her face at the sound of his voice. She finally looked up as the horse came to a halt, and found him smiling too.
She saw his hands twitching at his sides, but he stayed a few paces away as she slid from the saddle. She started walking and he fell into step beside her again. She felt unaccountably light-hearted, her mood buoyant for the first time she could remember even despite her restless night.
“So what’s his name?” A gesture at the horse accompanied his words.
“Snowball,” she managed to say seriously. She watched the look of horror cross his expression, managing to hold out for a good ten seconds before the laughter got the better of her.
He chuckled as well. “Okay, you got me. What is it really?”
She sighed. “Sebastian named him. Bonaparte.” The Wolverine made another face, and she found herself smothering a giggle. “I know, I know. And the mare is Josephine.” She ran an affectionate hand over the grey’s nose, and he snuffled in appreciation. “I call him Bonny. You’re my bonny laddie, aren’t you boy?”
Wolverine snorted. “I think lasses are bonny, and laddies are braw. But I won’t tell him.”
She smiled again. “Better not.”
This time she tied the lead rope to a branch, giving the gray some apples to keep him occupied. Rogue and Logan walked in silence for a little while longer as she screwed up her courage to ask him.
“You asked...” she finally said.
“You said...” he started at the same time.
They both stopped awkwardly. Wolverine stopped walking, taking a step closer to her, and she fought the instinct to step back at his nearness. The warm bulk of him filled her vision, his gaze intent on her face. His voice was rumbly and deep when he spoke. “You said that no one can touch you. What did you mean?”
She ducked her head, fiddling with her gloves. She knew she had to tell him. He had already trusted her with so much. She took a deep breath. “It’s my mutation.” She managed a quick glance to his face, and the warmth and concern she saw there gave her courage to continue. The rest came out in a rush. “It’s my skin...I can’t let anyone’s skin touch mine. If I do...something really bad happens. I don’t know, I hurt them. Maybe even kill them.”
“That’s why you always wear the gloves.”
It wasn’t really a question, but she nodded. She started walking again, still reluctant to meet his gaze. “Sebastian says that I had control of it once. That I could stop it. But now it’s uncontrollable. He says I have to keep away from people. That I’m dangerous. And I know he’s right, but...” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he’s right about that.”
“What do you mean, he says that you had control of it once? Wouldn’t you know?”
She took another deep breath, shaking her head. “It sounds crazy,” she said. “It is crazy. But I don’t remember anything, not before a few months ago. Sebastian says that I’m traumatized. That I was in the city and someone tried to...to hurt me. Tried to...touch me, and my mutation...”
She felt the tears rising, and swallowed them down, wiping a hand across her face. “He says I killed him with my skin. And that when I did...I don’t know, that I couldn’t handle it and that’s why I don’t remember. The doctors say I blocked it out, and everything that happened before it.”
She stopped, taking another deep, shuddering breath. “All I remember is being in the hospital. And I was...messed up. Sebastian brought me here. He thinks he can make me better. And I should be grateful, I mean I am grateful, I hated it there in the hospital, but...”
She felt the long-suppressed anger welling up in her, bracing her. “I hate him.” The bitterness in her voice surprised her, and she clenched her fists, trying to get her emotions under control. “When he comes near me, I feel sick. I look at the pictures of us...when we were dating, at our wedding, and I can’t believe that I ever felt that way about him. It just feels so … wrong. But he’s taking care of me, and he’s been patient with me, and he’s trying to make me better, and I just don’t understand how it could have been so different before...”
She stopped, feeling self-conscious. “I’m babbling. You must think...I don’t know what you must think.”
He took a step forward, and she drew her breath in in shock as he took her gloved hand in his large, warm palm, clasping it tightly as she instinctively tried to jerk it away. His other hand came up, brushing her hair gently back from her face. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
She felt something in her chest unclench. She had to close her eyes against the rush of relief. It felt so damn good to hear someone say that. To hear him say that. If only it could be true...but he didn’t know it all.
“I wish I could believe that. Sometimes I hope...but...” He squeezed her hand, his silent support helping her say the rest of it.
“I hear voices.” She laughed bitterly. “I know how that sounds...I know what that means. There’s no explanation for that that’s okay. It means something is wrong. That my mind is broken, like Sebastian says. And he does help, he makes it better. It just feels so wrong.”
Wolverine pulled her up against his side in a rough half-hug, before releasing her abruptly. She barely had time to process it -- how good it felt to be held by someone, pressed up against the solid heat of his body -- before he started walking again, still holding her hand. His brow was furrowed in thought.
“I can’t claim to know much about it,” he finally said. “But it seems to me that if you were really crazy, you wouldn’t know. You’d be too out of it to know that something was wrong. I don’t know why you’re hearing voices, or what it means. Or why you can’t remember. But I don’t think you’re crazy.”
Again, the relief washed over her, almost weakening her knees, causing her to stumble to keep up with his pace.
“You had asked me, yesterday...you asked what he had done to me. Do you think Sebastian could have done this to me?”
She heard a low rumble start in his chest as he considered her question, and she looked at him in surprise. “If he did, I’ll make him pay for it,” he growled.
She shouldn’t like to hear that as much as she did. That warm feeling Wolverine seemed to cause in her belly with his very presence flared higher. He was on her side, and that made everything seem less hopeless than it had felt for as long as she could remember.
“Wolverine...”
He interrupted her. “Logan,” he said.
She felt the smile spread across her face. It suited him as much as Wolverine did, and she could tell it was a mark of his trust that he shared it with her. “Logan. Thank you.”
He smiled back at her, raising a hand to her face before remembering and pulling it back. He cleared his throat and shrugged. “Haven’t done anything yet. But I’ll try. And I think I know who can help.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Sebastian brought several doctors to see me. None of them had any solutions. They said the more I tried to force the memories, the worse it would get. They just kept prescribing pills that Sebastian wants me to take to calm me down, but I hate them. They make my head fuzzy. I’ve been flushing them when I can, and I feel so much better without them.”
Logan growled again. “I wouldn’t trust any doctor that Shaw comes up with. I know another doc that I trust, but the guy I’m thinking of is not a doctor. He’s a telepath.”
She stepped back instinctively. “I don’t want...like Emma?”
“Not like Emma,” he said emphatically. “That evil bitch? Don’t let her anywhere near you.”
She couldn’t help smiling again. Even from a distance she had noticed that most of the mutants in the house seemed to be lusting after Emma Frost. It was nice to hear that Logan wasn’t one of them.
“This guy...he’s a good guy. He’s helping me too. I used to not remember anything before about fifteen years ago. Just bits and pieces here and there, and nightmares.”
She looked at him in shock. “Really?”
He nodded. His mouth quirked. “I may be the only other mutant on earth who knows what that’s like. Just lucky, I guess.”
“And this guy helped you?”
“He’s been working with me. Some of it I’ll probably never get back. Some of it I kind of think I don’t want to know. But he’s helping. And maybe he can help you too.”
“I could pay him. Sebastian controls all the money, but I have jewelry...”
Logan snorted. “He’s richer than God. Don’t worry about it. And he’d want to help you.”
She felt dizzy with the possibilities. Knowing who she was, after all this time. Remembering how she had gotten into this relationship with Shaw. Maybe even how she could get out of it.
“I would like that. A lot.”
He nodded. “We’ll figure out a way to at least meet up and see what he can do. Will Shaw let you out of here?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I tried to go out once. Just got fed up, and told him I was going, and he let me...but I didn’t even get past the gate. The voices came on, stronger than ever before, so strong I couldn’t even think. I had to pull over, and Sebastian came and brought me back. He said it’s too much strain on me to try again. All the doctors come here to see me.”
“He’s controlling you. You see that, don’t you?”
She closed her eyes in despair. “I know. He treats me like a child. But why? Why would he do all this for me if he wasn’t trying to help me? He could have just left me there in the hospital. Cut his losses, and divorced me. I’m not rich, or beautiful, or...anything. He doesn’t even...” She stopped, embarrassed, but forced herself to continue. “He doesn’t even try to -- to sleep with me. He says I just need to heal, and continue with the treatments.”
“Treatments?”
She sighed. There was another thing that made no sense. Why would Sebastian be helping her, at the risk to himself? “You know Sebastian’s mutation? That he absorbs energy?”
Logan nodded. “Makes him damn near invulnerable, from what I hear.”
“He says it’ll make me stronger, to take energy from him with my mutation. But it’s dangerous. He has to absorb a lot of energy first, almost more than he can handle, so that I can take from him without killing him. And he’s really weak afterwards, and it feels awful for me too. But it does help, the longer I go without it the more the voices come. And the treatments make them stop.”
She felt frustration wash over her, she had thought about this over and over and was never any closer to an answer. “Why would he be doing all this for me if he doesn’t mean well? I worry...I worry that I’m paranoid, that’s it’s part of my illness. I mean...what is the alternative? That it’s some elaborate conspiracy? The pictures, and all? I even forced him to show me the news clipping about the man I killed. He had...raped...other women. To say...to hope...that Sebastian made it all up -- that none of it is real? That sounds crazier than anything.”
Logan ran a hand over her hair again. She struggled not to press up into his touch as the warmth flared inside her. She had gotten used to it so quickly, craved these casual touches. He probably didn’t even mean anything by it.
“We’d better get back,” he rumbled. They started walking back. He appeared deep in thought again, and she liked that he didn’t just try to reassure her with platitudes. He really seemed to be trying to figure it out.
“I can’t explain it either,” he finally said. “But if I have to put my money on you being crazy or Shaw being up to something, I’d bet my life that he’s up to something. And we’ll figure out what it is.”
We, she thought, feeling foolish but liking the sound of that so much that she couldn’t help replaying it in her head. We.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to my equestrian expert, DarkDragonfly! Any remaining horse-related errors are due to my laziness alone. :-)
Chapter End Notes:
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