bond

noun

1. something that restrains or imprisons: fetters; shackles

2. a thing used to tie something or to fasten things together

3. a strong feeling of friendship, love, or shared experiences and beliefs that unite people

I've had dreams about falling from great heights before.  The kind where your stomach flies into your throat, and your whole body zings with the horrible thrill that only comes with the sensation of sudden and rapid descent.

Some people say that in their dreams of falling, they suddenly develop the ability to fly.  Gliding across the sky like a bird, they experience a freedom like they've never known before.  Others say that moments before impact, they wake up with a jerk, gasping for breath, but relieved to realize that they were dreaming.

Me?  I'm not so lucky.  In my dreams, I hit the ground hard, and I feel everything.  If my bones could break, they would; but they don't, thanks to a hundred pounds of adamantium fused to my skeleton, so all the damage is done to the soft tissue.  Torn ligaments and scrambled organs, punctured lungs and internal bleeding for me, woohoo.

I don't know how I know what hitting the ground from a thousand feet feels like, but I suspect that it's more than just my imagination that comes up with the details.  Something tells me that I know what it's like to be dropped from a plane over foreign lands during times of war, and that I also know what it's like to have a parachute malfunction.

The worst part isn't even the impact.  It's the healing afterward that gets me, because fuck, I have to lay there on the ground for half a day while I wait for everything to stitch back together and it burns like a mother.  Meanwhile, I gotta fight off the scavengers coming around, just waiting for me to die so they can have their dinner. 

Now as I fall from the sky at a break-neck speed, all of these things pass through my head in the blink of an eye...and yet somehow, none of it scares me.  The only thought that matters, that keeps pulsing through my mind is the fact that I could lose Rogue.  I could lose her.  I could lose her.  You'll be out of commission long enough for us to take off without a trace.  You will never see her again, I swear it.

Carol's words ring through my ears as I fall helplessly to the earth, waiting for impact.  Wake up.  Wake up, you sorry bastard!  No such luck.

This is it.  I wait for it, eyes wide open as the ground rises to meet me.  3, 2, 1...

"Gotcha!" I hear a voice say as I'm plucked from the air and swooped up into the sky like a soaring eagle.

"Shit," I mutter with an explosive breath, looking over my shoulder at--Rogue?  Carol?

"What's the matter, bub?  Don't like flying?"  Carol.

"Took ya long enough," I grouse.  "Nothin' like waiting until the last second."

She shrugs.  "Hey, you're just lucky I'm a fast thinker and an even faster flyer.  The longest part was deciding whether to give you a second chance or not."

She ignores me as I glare up at her, swinging around to the rooftop and setting me down.

"Thanks," I grumble, feeling pissed, yet extremely grateful that Carol decided to give me a second chance.

"Don't mention it," she says with a smirk.  She saunters over to the ledge and sits, crossing her arms, eyes following me as I snatch up a beer and gulp it down.

Finishing it off, I grab another as she watches in amusement.  "What?" I growl.

"Nothing," she says, still smirking.

I pop off the top and take another long swallow.  "Hate flying," I mumble before downing the rest.

"I can tell.  That's too bad; flying really is like pure freedom.  There's nothing like it."

"I'm happy to keep both feet on the ground, thank you," I grumble, to which she scoffs.

"Why do you even bother?" she asks, nodding at what's left of the six-pack in the picnic basket. "I thought you couldn't get drunk, what with the healing factor and all."

I pick up another bottle and roll it in my hand for a moment, swiping my thumb over the condensation.  "I can't...at least not very easily.  It takes a few bottles of the really strong stuff, and even then it doesn't last long."

"Hmm.  So why even bother with the Molsen?" she asks, tilting her head.

I pause and turn it over in my mind for a moment or two.  "Consider it something like...comfort food," I say finally.  "Tastes good.  Fills me up.  Reminds me of the good things in life."

She nods.  "Makes sense.  We all have our vices, don't we?  Mine's chocolate, the really good stuff."

"Cigars," I nod, taking a swig of my beer.

"Tequila," she says with a grin.

"Uh uh, bourbon," I counter.

"Flying," she says with a wave her hand in the air, then brings her arm down with a fist, "and kicking ass."

"Heh.  Fighting and f--" I stop myself and she raises her eyebrows.  "Fighting."

She snorts at that.  "Fighting and fighting, huh?  Don't worry, loverboy.  I wasn't born yesterday, you know."

I clear my throat and drink some more beer without answering.

"I have been pretty impressed with your ability to stick with the bet, though," she says breezily.

My eyes snap to hers.  "That's between me and Rogue," I say with a low growl.  "What we do in private is none of your damn business."

It's really fucking with my head to say that to Carol when she is speaking with Rogue's body.  Then a disturbing thought crosses my mind.  Is Carol there all the time, listening to our conversations?  Is she there when Rogue and I are getting intimate?  That's a fucked up way to have a three-way when you think about it.  I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that one.

She stands up and stalks over to me.  "Let me see your hands."

"What for?"

"Just give them to me, you big baby."

I growl, but she ignores me as she reaches out and takes my hands, turning them palms down.  Sweeping her thumbs gently over the skin of my knuckles, she looks at them thoughtfully for a moment.  "Interesting," she murmurs.  "No scars."

"Healing factor, remember?"

"I know.  But just because you heal fast it doesn't necessarily mean no scars.  Everybody heals after a cut, but the mark usually remains."

Her words give me pause.  "Fair enough." 

"Let me see them," she says.

"What?"

"The claws.  Let me see them."

I stare at her with a glint of suspicion, and she raises an eyebrow expectantly.

"Don't give me that look, bub."  She puts a hand on her waist, cocking her hip to one side.  "If there is anyone here who has a right to be suspicious, it's me, and it's Rogue.  You haven't exactly been lying to her, but you haven't been telling the whole story, either."

I stare at her for a long moment, then look away, taking a gulp of my beer.  For a moment there I thought she was referring to everything that happened between us in the old timeline.  Impossible, of course; she was obviously talking about my time at Weapon X.

I haven't been withholding that knowledge from Rogue on purpose; I was just waiting for the right time.  Now that I know that Rogue was also a prisoner of Weapon X, I'm beginning to think that it wasn't just me who had been waiting for the right time.  Truthfully, I don't know if she ever intended on telling me; but now that the cat's out of the bag, I need to let her know that it's safe to talk about it.  And I have to convince Carol of the same.

"Fine, I'll show them to you.  But if I talk...you talk."

"Excuse me?" she huffs, narrowing her eyes.  "You know, just because I caught you from falling doesn't mean I've completely made up my mind about you.  What makes you think I have to talk about anything, bub?"

I look her directly in the eye.  "You don't," I reply simply.  "You definitely hold all the cards here, Carol."

She pauses, taken aback by my admission.

"I could sit here and say that I won't talk unless you talk.  And then you could tell me to go fuck myself.  Take off and disappear, you and Rogue, and I'd never see her again."

She continues watching me, saying nothing.

"Or, I could talk, tell you anything you want to know, "I continue, "and you could still take off.  There would be nothing I could do to stop you."

"I could..." she agrees, a note of skepticism in her voice.

"You could," I say quietly.

She studies me for a moment, trying to figure out my angle.  "So if you know that we could take off either way, why say anything at all?  It doesn't seem very Wolverine-like to admit a weakness."

"Because we both care for her."

Carol's eyes fall for a moment, a stab of conscience crossing her face.

I take a step closer.  "I only have one weakness.  And it's for Rogue."

Slowly, I release my claws, careful to point them across my body so that the blunt sides of the blades are facing her.  "She needs this; to be able to trust someone again.  To feel like she has a home, right here.  And she needs to know that she is not alone in this.  Don't take that from her, Carol."

Carol looks at my claws, turning my words over in her mind.  She lifts a hand and slowly, delicately touches a blade with her finger. Closing her eyes, she lets out a soft sigh.  Suddenly she turns to walk over to the ledge and sits down, swinging her legs over to face out.  Her hands grasp the edge as she hangs her head, sitting in silence.

Several moments pass by until, finally, she speaks.

"It's just been me and Rogue for a long time," she says quietly.  "Well...me and her, and the  others they forced her to absorb.  But they're just echoes.  Here, but not completely here...not like me."

I walk over to the ledge and sit beside her.  Her eyes are fixed on the ground below, unfocused, lost in a memory.

"You were both prisoners of Weapon X," I say gently.

"Yeah."  She nods, still looking off into the distance.

She falls silent again.  The sound of birds singing all around us fills the air, but it feels off.  It's too happy, like some kind of strange contrast to the somber mood; it doesn't sound right, when I can smell the sadness in the air.

"I had already been there for two years before Rogue came.  Two long years.  The things they did to me...I can't even..."  She shakes her head.  "Not just imprisonment, but forced labor.  Experimentation.  Torture.  The worst part is, the torture wasn't even physical; it was mental.  See, because of my mutation, they couldn't penetrate my skin with their drugs, so they used some kind of telepath to get to me.  That's how they made me do what they wanted; if I tried to refuse, or escape, they'd fuck with my head.  They'd show my parents being tortured, crying and begging me to cooperate so they could live.  Or they'd make me believe I was on fire or something."

"Shit."

She nods.  "Shit indeed."

For a moment, her description stirs a distant ghost of a memory; not quite fully formed, but I can still feel it...the mental anguish.  Flashes of excruciating pain, even when no one was touching me.

"Same," I manage to force out.  "I don't remember everything, but a lot if it comes back to me in my dreams.  They wanted to turn me into some kind of ultimate weapon.  They had to break me first, though.  They wiped all my memories...tortured me endlessly...and then to make me indestructible, they poured molten hot metal onto my bones.  I know I was fully awake for that, because I still feel it in my nightmares."

"Jesus.  That's why your claws are metal?" she whispers.  "You weren't born that way..."

I spring the claws.  "Nothin' natural about this."  I study them for a moment, then snap them back in.  "By the time they were through with me, I was reduced to a completely feral state; nothing but a killing machine.  A monster."

"Shit," she exhales, looking at me with sympathetic eyes.

"Shit indeed," I mutter.

We both fall into silence, steeped in dark memories, lost in a shared misery.

The wind picks up a little, and I look around us; clouds have started moving in and it looks like it might rain today.  The birds have stopped singing, and for a moment, it's like mother nature is reflecting our mood.

"I think that was what they wanted to do with me at first; to make me into some kind of perfect soldier," Carol says thoughtfully.  "Can you imagine?  Super strength, ability to fly, near invulnerability?  I was quite the catch."  She huffs and shakes her head.  "I was hard to control, though.  Even when the telepath had me in his grips, they still couldn't get me to completely obey them all the time."

"Heh.  Me neither."  We exchange a small smile at that one.

"I was so stupid," she whispers.  "I brought it all on myself."

"No you didn't."  I give her a stern look.  "Nobody ever asks for that shit.  Don't talk like that."

"I did," she insists.  "I brought it on myself.  I was young and naive, and a little too cocky for my own good.  My head filled with a little bit of idealism and a whole lot of ambition.  So ready to serve my country and 'fight the bad guys', just like my granddaddy did back in the day.  And in the process of trying to prove myself, I walked right into their hands."

She sighs and lays down, her body balanced on the ledge as she stares up at the sky.

"My dream was to get into Air Force Special Ops someday.  Ironic that I joined the Air Force, I know, given that I could already fly," she says with a wave of her hand, "but I wasn't exactly going to be able to make a career out of flying around my own 'unique' way, without an airplane.  I figured, this would be the closest thing, without giving away what I really was.  Because even though I was a mutant, I could still pass for "normal".  Don't ask, don't tell, right?" she says with a small, bitter laugh.

"I was good, too.  I quickly advanced through the ranks, earning the respect of my peers and superiors.  In fact, I did so well that they advanced me to a special new unit, where they said I'd get to do some important, classified stuff.  I was so damn proud of myself."

"What kind of special unit?" I say with suspicion.

She gives me a sardonic smile.  "A special unit that utilized mutants."

"Weapon X..." I mutter.

"Weapon fucking X," she nods.  "And to think, I was actually grateful in the beginning.  Grateful to those assholes, can you believe it?"

I stare at her, with no words; I can only offer her understanding in response to the bitterness and betrayal in her eyes.

"They pulled me into the General's office one day and said, 'We know you're a mutant'.  I was sure that I was screwed.  I don't know how they knew, but they did.  And I was prepared for the worst.  They're going to kick me out, I thought, probably with a dishonorable discharge.  I wish now that they had," she huffs.  "Instead they offered me a promotion.  They said that they were starting a new mutant task force, strictly classified, and they wanted me to be team leader.  And I thought, hell yeah!  Finally, I could be myself and really show what I could do."  She shakes her head.  "I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker."

"Hey.  Don't beat yourself up, Carol.  There's no way you could have known."

She looks at me with sad eyes.  "No, I guess not.  But it still kills me that I went into the program willingly."

"I'm sure you weren't the first," I tell her.  "Those fuckers are masters of manipulation."

She nods sadly.  "Yeah, they got me good.  Some people were captured with weapons and drugs, but not me.  I was lured in with promises, like a fool.  I was their puppet, carrying out all their orders with a smile on my face.  Going on missions and doing things that seemed...questionable at times, but telling myself that they were necessary for the greater good.  But things became progressively worse, my orders increasingly questionable, increasingly...amoral..."  She closes her eyes and rakes her hands through her hair.  "By the time I came to my senses and told them I wouldn't follow their orders any more, it was too late.  They had that telepath cocked and ready to control any rebellions, and I was trapped."

She sits up and pulls her knees to her chest, burying her face in her arms.  I wish I knew what to say to make things better; but really there's not much you can say to something like that.  I walk over to her and place a hand on her shoulder.  Sometimes a touch is better at conveying things than words.

"The things I did, Logan...I can't even bring myself to say them out loud."

"No judgment here, Carol.  I'm no angel myself."

"I know, Bub."  She looks at me with a sad smile.  "Thanks."

She places her hand over mine and gives it a squeeze before turning to hang her legs over the edge.

As we sit in silence, I mull her words over in my head.  Her remark about being able to pass for normal give me pause.  Up until this point, I've only known her as a personality inside Rogue's mind; but she's not just an anomaly, or some kind of quirk that shows up at random times.  She's a real person, who once had her own body.  It only seems right to acknowledge that.

"So...you could pass for normal, huh?  What'd you look like?" I ask, hoping to lighten the mood a little.

She looks up, surprised.  Her eyes light up and she smirks.  "Better than normal.  I was a real hottie in my day.  Gorgeous blonde hair, piercing green eyes, legs that went on for miles...and one hell of a rack," she says proudly.  "Definitely too much for you to handle, bub."

"Oh is that so?" I say with a grin.

"That's so, loverboy."

We both chuckle at that.  Even though it kind of grated on my nerves at first, her little nicknames that she has assigned to me, 'loverboy' and 'bub' are kind of growing on me.  She's the only one who's allowed to call me those, though; anyone else who tries it is going to get their ass clawed.  I'm talking to you, Cyke.           

"I never thought I'd be living in someone else's body," she says, suddenly wistful again.  "Rogue has been very kind to share hers with me."

My smile fades and my ears prick up at the mention of Rogue's name.

"I remember the day they brought her in.  She was beaten pretty badly.  They dragged her into my cell and tossed her on the floor in a crumpled heap.  'You have a new roommate now,' they said with a snicker."

My jaw clenches and I have to fight the urge to pop the claws.  "You got names on the sons of bitches who beat her?" I growl before I can stop myself.

She gives me an understanding look.  "Sorry, Bub.  I don't."  She turns away and murmurs under her breath. "Doesn't matter anyway; they're dead now."

I try to calm down so I can hear the rest of her story, but the thought of someone putting their hands on Rogue like that makes me seethe in anger.  If they weren't dead already, I would be hunting them down and giving them a slow, painful death.

"I have to hand it to her, though.  She didn't give them what they wanted."

My eyes snap to hers.  "And what was that?"

"Her name."

I sit there, speechless, completely taken aback by her answer. 

"They wanted her name for their files, which they kept on each of us; but she refused to tell them.  Rogue.  That was the only name she would give them.  The guards did just about everything they could do to a person; probably would have killed her if they could have, but her mutation was too valuable according to the scientists, so they had to let her live.  Rogue was all they could get from her.  And Rogue was the name they put on her dog tags."

I stare at her, still unable to speak.  And suddenly, I realize just how much Rogue was giving me when she told me her name.  It didn't just mean something.  It meant everything.

"Tough as nails, that girl is," Carol says.

"Always was," I murmur as memories of Rogue from the old timeline dance before my eyes.

Carol looks at me strangely.  "What?"

I clear my throat.  "Uh, why didn't they use their drugs on her, or have the telepath make her talk?"

Carol nods.  "I wondered the same thing.  Turns out that the night she was captured, Rogue had accidentally touched a girl who had the ability to shield herself from telepaths.  The guards had stripped her naked and shoved her into a holding cell with the girl, and the two made contact.  Poor thing ended up in a coma.  But thanks to her, Rogue was immune to "The Great Illusionist," she says with a sarcastic wave of her hands, "and the mind control drugs didn't work, either, because they were derived from his spinal fluid.  Would you believe it?  I seriously can't make this stuff up."

"I believe it."

I've seen the lengths that they will go to for their own sick agenda.  Nothing is too perverse, too inhumane.  I'm just glad that Rogue was immune to their telepathic assaults.

"I initially thought they put us together as a way to punish us," Carol says, shaking her head.  "And maybe that was part of it.  We were given one ration of food to share between us at mealtime.  There was only one cot in the cell, so we were either going to have to take turns sleeping on the cold, concrete floor, or try to both sleep in the cot together somehow without touching.  They loved treating us like animals.  But that wasn't the only reason they put us together."

"You think there was more to it than that?"

Carol says nothing for a moment, her eyes staring off into the distance, as a few scattered rain drops patter on our skin.

"You know, sometimes the way to hurt someone the most, isn't by hurting them at all," she says in a low voice.

I look at her, but she doesn't look back, her eyes still focused on the horizon.  "What do you mean?" I prompt her, though the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach grows.  "Carol?"

"We made the best of things, Rogue and I, whatever they threw our way.  Right off the bat we got along.  We were like...kindred spirits.  Many sleepless nights were spent whispering to each other in the dark, talking into the wee hours of the morning.  We comforted each other, looked out for each other...grew to care for each other like sisters.  And that's where they got us."

She lifts her head and turns to look at me with haunted green eyes.

"After that they didn't need to use their telepath to make me obey their commands, and they didn't need to torture Rogue to make her cooperate with their sick experiments."

She watches me and waits as it all finally dawns on me.

"They used you against each other, didn't they?" I breathe.  "Neither of you wanted to see the other get hurt.  That's how they got you to cooperate."

Carol nods slowly.  "Ain't that a son of a bitch? 

She gets up and walks over to the picnic basket, grabbing my beer and finishing it off with a sigh.  She picks up the flower I brought for Rogue, looking at it thoughtfully as she walks back to the ledge and sits down, swinging her legs over to face out.

"I've done some things I'm not proud of, Logan.  Hurt and killed innocent people."  She stares at the flower, turning it slowly and studying the petals.  "They made me choose.  Her or them."

She plucks a petal and tosses it into the wind.

"They made Rogue choose, too.  We both swore to each other that we could take the pain, that we wouldn't give in...but all it took was them making one of us watch what they did to the other, and it was over."

She continues plucking flower petals, one by one.

"You both did what you had to do to survive, Carol.  What you had to do to protect each other."

"I know.  We did what we had to do, time heals all wounds and all that bullshit, right?  I know."  She plucks the last petal and tosses the mangled flower over the edge, watching it fall to the ground below.  "The scar still remains, though."

We sit in silence.  Here and there, little droplets of rain begin to fall, making gentle ticking and tapping sounds as they land.

"Rogue said that she..." I hesitate.  "That she touched you until she absorbed you completely.  How did they make her do that?"

"They didn't."  Carol turns and looks at me then.  "I did."

"You..." I shake my head, trying to find my voice.  "You made her do it?  I don't understand."

"It was the only way."

"The only way to what?"

Carol stares at me, saying nothing.  The smattering of raindrops has become a steady drizzle now, falling from a cold, grey sky.

"The only way to what?" I ask again.

Carol stands up.  "I...I don't think it's my place to say any more, Logan.  I've already said too much, I think."

"Wait," I say, standing up and reaching my hand out to stop her.

"I'm not going anywhere, Bub," she reassures me, touching a hand gently to the side of my face.  "I promise.  But Rogue is the one you should be asking.  It's her right to decide how much to tell and when to tell it."

I reluctantly nod my head in understanding, knowing she is right, but still...what if Rogue never tells me?

"She'll tell you, eventually," she answers softly, as if she just read my mind.  "Be patient.  Keep doing what you're doing...and don't give up on her."

"Patience isn't my strong suit," I say, which makes Carol smirk a little.  "But I'll never give up on her."

Carol nods.  "Good."  She closes her eyes and lets out a soft breath.  "Rogue, honey, come on out," she whispers.

"Carol...before you go, I just want to say...thanks.  For everything.  For being there for Rogue, and looking out for her.  For giving me a chance to be there for her, too."

Carol opens her eyes and smiles softly.  "Don't mention it, Bub."

She closes her eyes again and her smile fades as she turns her attention inward. 

After a moment, her dark eyelashes flutter open to reveal a pair of sweet, brown eyes.

"Logan?"

I touch a lock of white hair and tuck it behind her ear.

"Yeah, baby.  I'm here."

She searches my face, looking for a sign.  "You and Carol had a talk."

"Yeah, we did."

"And you're still here," she says with a note of surprise.

I pull her close to me and look into her eyes.  "Not goin' anywhere, darlin'."

We stand there together for several moments, not speaking, just looking at each other while the steady, soft rain falls around us.

Somehow, she manages to look both vulnerable and strong, fragile yet fierce, all at the same time.  The knowledge of what she went through at Weapon X...what she endured and yet came out a survivor, still fighting the good fight, afraid but still willing to give so much of herself to an undeserving bastard like me...maybe that is what is coloring my vision.  But no.  She has always looked this way to me.

"Logan, I...I know that there is so much more that you want to know...that I need to tell you.  And I will.  I just--"

"Shhh, darlin' it's ok.  Whenever you are ready, you'll tell me.  All that matters to me right now is that you're not going anywhere either."

She lets out a soft sigh, grateful and relieved.  "I'm not going anywhere."

I caress her cheek softly, wiping away the drops of rain that have gathered on her skin.  Taking her face gently in my hands, I bend down and touch my lips to hers, kissing her tenderly.

"Good," I murmur.  "Now, how about we both not go anywhere together, and get inside," I say, looking up at the sky.

A soft smile touches her lips.  "Ok, Logan.  Let's not go anywhere, together."

. . .

. . .