Marie woke slowly, in degrees. First, she was aware of the softness of her pillow beneath her cheek. Next, the cool rush of air over her naked skin. Finally, the the feeling of a warm, hairy arm slung over her hip, whose hand was slowly moving in circles tracing invisible patterns on her skin. A heavy, delicious feeling of warmth and belonging crept over her and she almost surrendered herself to the addictive pull of sleep. Had it not been for the slow pulsing of longing between her thighs, she might have succumbed to the feeling of languorous relaxation and drifted off back to oblivion.
A muffled rumbling met her ears as she turned to face Logan.
“Mornin’, darlin,’” he said as she looked up at him.
“Morning, yourself,” she said smiling. He looked entirely disreputable. His eyes were half-closed, with either lust or sleepiness, Marie couldn’t tell. His jaw was darkened with the stubble of his beard, the prickliness of which he demonstrated by rubbing his face down the side of her neck. Her body broke out in goosebumps and she shivered at the feeling. “Ooh! Hey, that tickles.”
He grinned at her reaction and did it again.
“Logan!” Marie laughed as he captured her wrists in his hands and he continued to wrasp his beard down her throat and across the delicate skin of her breasts. His eyes were back to their normal hazel and she smiled as she took in the sight. “It’s good to see you.”
“Mmm,” he said as he leaned forward and nuzzled her neck. “I missed you, Marie.”
Marie sighed as he tugged her against the warmth of his body. “God, Logan. I’m sorry,” She still felt the relief of Wolverine’s forgiveness warming her insides, but felt she needed to talk to Logan, to explain herself to him too.
He stopped his slow journey down her neck with his lips and lifted his head to look her in the eye.
“There’s nothin’ for you to apologize for. I don’t ever wanna hear you say you’re sorry for what happened again,” he said, his voice suddenly stern. “You’re safe, I’m safe, and we’re together. None of that other shit matters.”
Marie nodded and raised her lips to his. After a long, deep kiss, Logan rolled on to his back and in one swift motion and lifted Marie so that she straddled the hard length of erection.
“Mmm,” she moaned, as she felt him slip inside her. He gripped her hips and began to rock her back and forth.
“God, Marie,” Logan growled. “Promise me.”
She couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. She was too busy enjoying the slow deep pleasure beginning to build with the movement of her body against his. “Hmm?”
“Promise me,” Logan said, his breathing becoming ragged. “No more apologizing.” He abruptly stopped her hips with his hands and she moaned as the friction she’d been so focused on building began to ebb away.
She tried to rock against him, but he dug in his fingers to stop her, even as he gritted his teeth against the pleasure of her tight slickness.
She finally understood what he was saying and looked into his eyes. A warm feeling of contentment washed over her as she realized, finally, what she wanted to say to him. It was something she had known for so many years, but had been sure he wouldn’t reciprocate, sure that he still looked at her as that helpless kid back on the Statue of Liberty, whom he’d promised to protect, no matter what. But now she knew. While he’d still do anything to protect her, would do anything to keep her safe, his actions weren’t based on a spur-of-the-moment vow to a 17 year old girl. It was because he loved her. “I love you, Logan.”
His hazel eyes were overcome with gold flecks for a moment and a low rumble sounded in his chest. “And you’re mine, Marie,” Logan said, reaching up to brush a thumb over her lips. “Promise me.”
She smiled at his words and moaned as he slid deeper inside her. “I promise.”
______________
Early the next morning, Marie headed down to the kitchen to grab a quick bite to eat. She had dressed for a lengthy session in the Danger Room, finally feeling ready to continue her physical training. She had a lot of new powers to learn to control, and she needed to quit picking out a random thread of power within her, every time she felt too stressed out to deal with the situation at hand.
Marie had kissed Logan softly enough to rouse him from sleep and whispered for him to join her when he got up. An absurd smile was plastered on her face as she relived a particularly interesting position she’d found herself in with Logan last night, when Bobby turned the corner ahead of her and stopped her in her tracks. The smile abruptly left her face and she swallowed past the lump in her throat at his sudden appearance. Much like she had Logan, Kitty, and Storm, Marie had done her best to avoid Bobby after she’d regained control of her mind. At the time, Marie had been too wracked with guilt to be able to speak to him, let alone any of the others. She’d barely left her room, and took pains to avoid any of the common areas of the mansion. Bobby, though, had been particularly persistent in trying to seek her out and discuss their time in the lab, and before her confrontation with Logan yesterday, she’d taken to only leaving her room at odd hours, determined to keep avoiding her friends. She’d suspected that Logan may have been helping to keep the others away from her, even as he’d done his best to seek her out on several occasions.
“Rogue, we need to talk,” Bobby said, his normally good natured face deathly serious.
“Bobby, what’s wrong?” She asked, suddenly concerned at the tortured look she saw in his blue eyes.
“Not here,” he replied in a hushed voice, motioning toward the closed bedroom doors of the staff wing. “It’s early, I don’t want to wake anyone up. Looks like you were headed to the Danger Room,” he said, taking in her attire.
“Yes,” she said hesitantly. She would have liked to get something in her stomach before heading down for a training session, but decided to hurry up and rip this band-aid off. Better to get this over with, she thought to herself. She would be able to apologize for torturing Bobby and Kitty, and would be able to resume a normal schedule of walking around the mansion. Besides, ever since she’d made her peace with Logan, and Wolverine the day before, she no longer felt the crushing guilt of having been made to torture her closest friends.
“Can we head down there and talk?” he asked quietly. “I need to tell you a few things.”
Marie frowned slightly at this. She’d expected for her to be the one doing the talking. But, knowing Bobby, he would probably give some big speech about how nothing had been her fault and he understood what had happened to her and him wasn’t her doing, etcetera, etcetera. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Bobby nodded and turned to head down the stairs to the Danger Room, Marie following close behind.
_____________
Logan hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after Marie had woken him with a kiss and the promise of violence down in the Danger Room. His imagination had quickly gone into overdrive, imagining all the different things he could teach her now that she had a personal arsenal of mutant powers in her belt. As he approached the Danger Room, he could hear the sounds of an intense fighting scenario taking place. A loud crash followed by a muffled, “Fuck!” met his ears as he turned the corner to the entryway. He grinned to himself as he thought of Marie all decked out in her gear, gettin’ all sweaty with the efforts of whatever she had programmed in to fight. The sounds of fighting intensified and her heard Marie grunt following another banging noise. She must have programmed in one hell of a scenario if she was taking a beating this bad. He entered the access code at the electronic keypad by the doorway and the grin slid off his face as the scent of Marie’s blood met him.
“What the fuck?” he asked taking in the sight of the Iceprick straddling Marie, both ice-encased hands closed around her throat, crushing her airway. She was choking and gasping for breath, her face turning an alarming red, her hands desperately seeking a weakness in the solid ice that covered Bobby’s entire body. Logan was able to process the small cut on her cheek, the blood dripping from her forearm before Wolverine let loose a bellow of rage and exploded from the chains in which he was normally kept.
With a roar, Wolverine charged forward, claws unleashed, and raised one arm as he prepared to part Icebrain’s head from his body. As he was about to strike, a quick look at Marie’s panicked eyes and the minuscule shaking of her head forced him to jerk back his claws, launch himself over Marie, and tackle the prick instead of sinking his claws through the icy armor that shielded Bobby. Wolverine let out an internal sigh of relief as he heard Marie coughing and sputtering as she gulped in air.
Wolverine and Bobby landed on the floor with a loud icy clang, and before Bobby could react, Wolverine repeatedly crashed the Icedick’s face into the hard floor. Shards of ice chipped away as Wolverine continued his assault until suddenly Bobby ceased struggling and his body went limp with unconsciousness. Breathing hard, Wolverine had to force himself to step back and refrain from gutting the boy’s now unconscious body, as it appeared his mate wanted him alive. He sheathed his claws and ran to where she was sitting, her face slowly returning to a normal shade of pink.
“Talk to me darlin’. What the hell happened down here?” Logan’s voice was dangerously low. Violence and fear was pouring off him, and Marie shuddered as she absorbed the waves of feeling he was projecting before she forced herself to concentrate and shut out the thread of the telepath that had risen to the surface of her mind.
She tried to speak, but coughed roughly as she tried to force the words out, her face in a grimace of pain.
“Don’t try to talk,” he said his voice slightly more gentle now. He brought up his hands to examine her neck, and he growled at the sight of the dark red marks that encircled her throat. “Can you whisper? Or does that hurt too?”
Marie tried to force air through her throat, but immediately stopped at the pain. She shook her head quickly and looked up at him as an idea came to her. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on loosening the thread of the telepath she’d felt earlier. Slowly, gently, the power came to her and she felt a thrill of satisfaction at her control. Opening her eyes, she grasped Logan’s hand in hers and mouthed the words, Trust me.
He frowned, but nodded and she let her eyelids flutter closed and recalled the last few insane minutes of her life. As the memories surged forward, she sent them rushing toward Logan’s mind. He inhaled sharply at the invasion and gripped her hand hard as he growled, but lessened his grasp as he sorted through the thoughts she’d just sent him.
After a moment, she released his hand, and calmly tucked away the line of power she’d just accessed.
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense, darlin’.” He said, confusion clouding his voice.
Marie nodded. It hadn’t made any sense to her either.
______________
Two days later, Rogue and Wolverine were strapped into two seats in the Blackbird, looking at each other from across the loading platform. They were surrounded by other members of the X-Men; Colossus, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Beast, and Jean Gray. Cyclops and Storm were piloting the jet, and the atmosphere was noticeably tense. Wolverine was popping his neck and clenching his jaw. Rogue was practicing releasing a crackling sphere of energy from her fingertips and then absorbing it back into her palms. Nightcrawler’s tail was whipping back and forth, obviously irritating Shadowcat, who had to phase out repeatedly to avoid being struck by it. Jean, Beast, and Colossus were quiet, but the tension rolling off them could have been cut with a knife.
“Touch down in ten minutes,” Cyclops said, and nearly everyone on the jet exhaled in relief. They all wanted to get this mission over with.
Ever since Bobby had attacked Marie, the mansion had been humming with activity, and the entire team was ready for action.
After the completely unexpected attack in the Danger Room, Logan and Marie had taken an unconscious Bobby’s up to the isolation chamber. There, Logan had tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Marie to absorb him to help heal her throat and the cut on her arm. She had refused, vehemently, insisting the damage was not that bad and she would mend on her own. She was never going to absorb anyone again, unless she was about to die and Logan was offering, of course.
After alerting Hank and the Professor to the situation in the Danger Room, they were stunned to learn that Bobby had been acting under the orders of one William Stryker.
Once Bobby regained consciousness, the Professor, after being denied by Bobby several times to explore his mind, had apologized and delved in despite his continued protests. Charles was determined to uncover what had caused Bobby to attack Marie unprovoked. After several moments, he had turned away from the chamber and looked up at Hank, a chilling look in his eyes that Marie had never seen before. “Hank, please prepare Mr. Drake for surgery.”
Utterly confused by this statement, Hank, Logan, and Marie had followed Charles out of the isolation area and into the med bay. There, he explained that Marie had not been the only one of them to have been implanted with a suppressor chip. Much like herself, Bobby had been subjected to two different generations of the chip, though neither of the surgeries had been documented in his lab file.
It turned out, Bobby’s first chip had been implanted nearly a year ago, when he’d had an emergency appendectomy while on vacation with Kitty in Spain. What Bobby and Kitty hadn’t known was that the surgeon who had operated on Bobby was part of a group of individuals recruited by William Stryker. As Bobby wasn’t exactly a low-profile mutant, the surgeon had easily recognized him upon first consulting with Bobby and immediately contacted Stryker for instructions. The first chip that Bobby had been implanted with was not the high-tech version later implanted into Marie, but was a step up from her first chip. This chip was able to control Bobby’s actions and speech, but not his thoughts, memories, emotions, or body chemistry. He had essentially been a prisoner in his own mind for close to a year.
It had been Bobby who had been under orders to keep Stryker apprised of the X-Men’s movements, particularly if they were sniffing too close to any of the two labs. After the mission to the surveil the first lab had been announced, he had contacted Stryker and relayed the details of the team members who would be on board, as well as when they were expected to arrive. It had been unfortunate that the crash had damaged the implant, but it allowed them to upgrade him to the newest model. He’d spent nearly a month of the time they’d been held in the lab recovering from the crash, as well as the additional surgery, before he’d been sent to a cell with the other prisoners.
Nobody else had realized that Stryker had been expecting them. Only Marie, who’d taken a recent hit off Wolverine’s heightened senses, had suspected that their arrival at the lab all those months ago had been anticipated. It had remained an open question, tumbling around in her mind, particularly late at night when she couldn’t sleep.
Now, Rogue caught Shadowcat’s eye and tried to smile encouragingly at her. Kitty professed her guilt to Rogue on multiple occasions in the past few days, saying it was her fault she hadn’t known anything was wrong with Bobby. Rogue had tried to explain how the chip worked; there was no disobeying the commands, no getting around the orders. It hadn’t seemed to help much, but the news that Bobby had been able to identify where the second lab was in Canada seemed to cheer her up somewhat.
The thought of revenge was on many of their minds as they slowly descended, the jet quiet as it entered stealth mode. Their goal was simple; get the mutants out, and blow the rest of the bastards to hell.
____________
Epilogue
The snowball hit Logan directly in the face, and Marie exploded with laughter at the sight of the bewildered look on his face. In the month since they’d returned from destroying the second lab, she had felt a lightness of spirit that bubbled up in the oddest ways. Ways like planning a snowball attack on an unsuspecting Logan, for instance. He wiped the remaining powdery snow off his face and turned to face her, one lip turned up in a scowl.
“You know,” he started, “I could smell you from the moment I got outta the car, Marie. So I knew you were planning somethin’. What,” he continued, taking a slow step toward her, “possessed you to throw a snowball at my face?”
She shrugged, unable to keep the grin off her face. “I don’t know, sugar. What possessed you to go on a mission without me?”
“I had to appear in front of Congress. Not exactly my idea of a fun time,” he growled, continuing his slow stride toward her. He took in her pink cheeks flushed with cold, brown eyes sparkling with mirth, and released the small amount of tension he’d held onto while absent from her. It would take more than just a month for him to relax when he was away from her. She’d been through enough in the past year, and he’d not been able to protect her from the worst of it. But the destruction of the second lab, the public exposure and subsequent arrest of Stryker and a number of corrupt government officials, and the failure of the MRA helped ease that anxiety somewhat.
His testimony in front of Congress had been part of a series of investigative hearings, all with the goal of identifying the extent of Stryker, and other government officials’ wrongdoing. Though an unpleasant experience overall, he was happy to participate if it meant that the tide of public opinion toward mutants gravitated toward one of sympathy, rather than fear. Logan’s least favorite part had taken place during his most recent testimony, in which he’d been sitting side by side with Magneto. The smug bastard had taken a plea deal, offering all the information he knew about Stryker and the other government officials, in exchange for immunity, despite his previous escape from captivity.
Turning his attention back to a pink-cheeked Marie, he grinned to himself, a feral look entering his eyes, as he thought of all the ways he could warm her up from the cold.
Smiling even more broadly at the look she saw in his eye, Marie put one hand on her hip and cocked her head to one side. “I think I know of a few other ways we could have some fun.” She held out one hand to him in invitation, and he reached forward encircling her in his arms. Despite the cold, she’d never felt so warm in her life.
The End
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Here it is! The end. Enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
I definitely struggled with how to wrap everything up here for quite some time. I think if you go back and read it again, there should be enough hints about Bobby that this revelation shouldn’t come as a complete shock. But since this was my first fic, I’m sure I could have done a better job of planning things out, now that I’m looking back.
In summary, thank you so much for making it all the way to the end with me! I am so touched by the positive response I received to this story. This will not be the end of my writing, and I have several other things brewing. I’m having so much fun with my current work on “Dimensions,” so look for more from that story soon. Cheers!
In summary, thank you so much for making it all the way to the end with me! I am so touched by the positive response I received to this story. This will not be the end of my writing, and I have several other things brewing. I’m having so much fun with my current work on “Dimensions,” so look for more from that story soon. Cheers!