The next two months were both happy and rough for the newlyweds. On the one hand, they were in love and obscenely pleased about that. On the other hand, Logan was pulling both their weight on missions with the team and Marie had to experience the hell of morning sickness that didn’t know how to tell time. Also, Logan was teaching classes and Marie was taking college courses by correspondence and acting as Storm’s teaching assistant in history and literature.
They did get a kick out of witnessing the bickering (aka mutual attraction) of Remy and Jubilee. The pair had begun arguing almost immediately upon meeting and Logan and Marie found it humorous as hell. Logan was happy about it because it meant the damned Cajun stopped hitting on his wife. How he’d managed to keep from gutting the little bastard since he’d started staying in their guest room was beyond him. He couldn’t wait till they moved to the cabin. There were still a lot of things he needed to get done to it, though. He had been working on it with Pete and some of the others since he bought it from the Professor.
This afternoon was Marie’s ten week appointment with Dr. Sawyer. So far everything had been going great. They were gonna do a new ultrasound today and get an updated picture of the baby, and a movie of it on DVD too. The last one they had was just a photo of the baby at six weeks and they had it pinned on their fridge. Logan had showed it off to everybody he met and all the students and staff at the school when they first brought it home. Marie had scanned it on their computer and set it as her FB photo. No expectant parents could have been more excited about their first baby than the two of them. So they were looking pretty forward to their appointment today.
As luck would have it, though, while they were getting ready to go in their room the X-Men got an emergency mission. Logan had just gotten dressed after showering when the Professor called him telepathically to let him know. He cursed and looked over at Marie getting her purse together.
“Darlin,” he began in a regretful tone and she knew the moment she looked at him what it was.
“Damn it, Logan,” Marie huffed. “You’re kidding.”
“No, Chuck just paged me,” Logan answered tapping the side of his head. “I gotta go, baby. He said the FOH are burning people at the stake in Arkansas. We have to hurry.”
“Fine, I’ll get Jubes to go with me or something,” she nodded and kissed him goodbye. “Love you, sugar.”
“I love you too, baby,” he smiled and with a strange nagging, uneasy feeling took one last look at her before he left. He had the oddest feeling something bad was about to happen. No, he thought shaking it off as he made his way down to the X-Level to change into his uniform and meet up with the others, he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. They’d get down there and do the mission then get home and he’d get to watch the movie of his kid from Marie’s ultrasound. Everything was gonna be fine.
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Marie had ended up having to go to the appointment alone. Jubes was out shopping with Kitty and Remy had gone out with Logan and the team on the mission. She was already on the table in the exam room and they had just finished recording the ultrasound of her very healthy ten week old baby when the boom of an explosion shook the building.
“What in the world,” Dr. Sawyer got up and walked to the door to go and see what was going on when the door burst open and three men in black ops uniforms and masks entered carrying guns and pointed them at the doctor and Marie. A fourth man entered also in uniform but he was unmasked and looked oddly familiar.
“Hello, Mrs. Howlett,” the man told her with a shark-like smile. “I’m Captain Richard Stryker, the late Colonel’s nephew. You do remember him, don’t you?”
“He’s the one who was in charge of the Weapon X program that put the adamantium in Logan and made him lose his memories,” Marie answered placing a protective hand over her belly.
“That’s right, dear,” Richard Stryker replied. “I’m pleased to tell you I’ve restarted the program and you have been selected as a participant. Your baby is of particular interest to me. Now, we don’t want to cause you or the child any harm. And you don’t want that, either, do you? The first twelve weeks are critical and you wouldn’t want to risk the baby’s safety. So you’re going to be a good girl and come along with us and no one will get hurt, aren’t you?”
Marie’s blood had run cold the moment the man had opened his mouth. She had no idea what to do. She was outnumbered. There was no telling what kind of ammo they had in those guns, and she didn’t take him for a moron to come unprepared for her gifts either. They were all covered up and gloved. And he was right. If she did attack them and they had to subdue her it would put the baby in distress. Logan was gonna be so pissed. He would find them, though. She knew he would. That gave her the strength to get off the table and walk over to them.
“I won’t put up a fight,” she said in a resigned, angry tone. “Just don’t hurt my baby. You should know, though; Logan will hunt you all down and kill you for this.”
“I look forward to meeting him, dear,” Richard told her before stepping forward and placing adamantium cuffs around her wrist that had a built-in suppressor for her powers. The green light turned red on them when they were locked and Marie was now defenseless. Then he looked at his men. “Leave the doctor alive but knock her out. I want her to tell the Wolverine exactly what happened here.” The men nodded, one of them hit Dr. Sawyer over the head to render her unconscious, and then they escorted Marie out with Richard following to a van parked outside before driving off.
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Logan was just coming out of the Blackbird with the team six hours later when the Professor, Hank, Jubilee, Kitty and Dr. Sawyer met them in the hanger. He knew right away something was wrong. That bad feeling had been nagging at him since he’d left and all during the mission. And suddenly it all made sense. It wasn’t about him. It had been about Marie and the baby.
“What happened?” he asked in a tight, angry voice. Inside of course, he was terrified.
“Rogue was taken by a Captain Richard Stryker, the late Colonel’s nephew, during her appointment at Dr. Sawyer’s office,” Charles explained calmly. “Apparently the Weapon X program was reopened and Rogue and the baby have become the new selections for whatever this Stryker has in mind. I was able to track her with Cerebro into Maine but I lost her two hours ago which makes me believe they’ve gone somewhere fortified against my special abilities.”
“Why didn’t you alert us when we were still in the air?! We could have gone after them?!” Logan demanded as he began pacing angrily. “They could have her anywhere by now and she can’t fight back because of the baby!”
“Logan, we will find Rogue and get her and the baby back safely,” Charles told him trying to calm him down. “I’m going back to Cerebro now to continue to try and pinpoint her location. You must remain calm, Logan. They’ll need you to be strong and have your wits about you when we are able to rescue them.”
The Professor left them then. Logan went straight over to the equipment lockers on the wall and began dismantling them to vent some of the impotent rage he was feeling at the moment at not being able to go and get his wife back. Those mother fuckers had done it again. They just wouldn’t leave him alone. Now they’d gone after Marie and their baby. He’d kill them all. They would beg for death before he was through with them. When he thought of everything that Marie must be going through, how scared she must be – and all because he hadn’t been there to protect her, he wanted to die. He let out feral roar of rage when he ran out of things to destroy and fell to his knees there in the hanger, shaking with sobs.
It was Scott who went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder in comfort. “We won’t rest till we get her back, Logan. I swear it,” he promised in a determined voice. Then he added quietly, “You’ve got to get it together, though. Go get showered, changed and try and eat something then meet us in the War Room. We’ll find her.”
Logan took a deep steadying breath then let it out and nodded as he stood up. He gave Scott a pat on the back and walked silently out of the hanger. The others stood there in mild shock after witnessing the Wolverine’s breakdown.
“Dudes, if anything bad happens to Rogue, besides being kidnapped I mean, or that baby, then you know we’ll lose Wolvie too,” Jubilee stated in a worried tone. She looked over at Remy who just nodded in agreement.
“I know, Jubilee,” Scott said with a concerned frown. “I want everyone in the War Room in an hour. We’ve got work to do. I meant what I said. We’re not resting till we find Rogue and get her back.”
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