Wednesday was the best day so far, they'd gotten there on Monday morning, Tuesday had been a training day for her and Logan. He'd put her through her paces, run her through the grounds, hunted her, stalked her and finally she'd turned the tables on him when they'd been in the final moments of their 'workout'. She'd turned her skin on to 'full', she'd dropped him in seconds, as if her anger and rage had honed her skin's appetite. Scared when she didn't feel him move away she shut her skin down, holding his shuddering form to her. His breathing steadying out soon after and his growl making her tears flow and her voice whispering her hurried apologies into his skin.
He hadn't reprimanded her, he hadn't gotten angry, he'd just thrown himself away from her, pulling his naked skin away from hers. Leaving her alone in the forest, naked, resting on the ground wondering why the hell she'd done it. While inside she could feel Wolverine calming down, that she'd still proved that she could hurt him while he was controlling her reactions. She didn't like to be controlled, neither did Logan but at the moment they had to work as a team and she'd been angry and struck out at him.
She'd been resting in front of the fire when he'd walked in smelling of whiskey, good whiskey at that. Unconsciously she'd searched his scent for another female but found nothing but alcohol oozing from his skin. She'd wrapped herself back up in the robe she'd used that morning after her shower. She didn't apologise for her behaviour there wasn't any point, she'd meant it, she'd wanted to show him she didn't like being told what to do, treated less than she *was*. Logan sat on the floor across from her, resting his head on the seat of the sofa, he looked as if he'd been torn in two. She didn't move toward him she just let him stew.
Finally he looked at her, wiping his hand down his face he sighed, "Look this isn't easy....I'm expecting a lot out of ya without too much information I know. It's just that...." He looked at the end of his rope and Marie had to shift toward him a little and his eyes caught her movement. When he looked back at her his eyes were sparkling, the wetness something she hadn't expected to see. "Look ever since Pete came here....Jesus this isn't easy....." he pulled out a small bottle from his pocket, lifting it and draining all the liquid from it before continuing. "You wanna know what we were talkin about?" Marie nodded, her mind throwing all sorts of scenario's up into her view. Logan opened his arm to her and she got off the chair seating herself so he could hold her to him while he spoke.
"He came with Kitty because he wanted me to see proof of what he'd been thinkin. I smelled her in the dinin' room.... Jesus Marie I don't know what to think anymore, what to do? At the moment the best I think we could do is just get the hell out of here, deal with what he sends after us when it gets to us." She felt his breath hitch as he struggled to talk and not let his emotions overwhelm him. "I *NEED* you *safe* and this place isn't SAFE!" His hands tightened on her an it was then she realised just how much he'd been quashing himself to appear calm, to appear 'normal'. He'd been blocking everything and everyone out because he'd *had* to, so when Kitty had approached them....
She gripped his head and pulled herself into him, kneeling up so he could rest himself against her. The bottle was still in his hand, pressing against her back, the weakness he was showing her, the doubt something he'd never have let her see before. She'd shown him she didn't need him anymore, she could kill, survive on her own and he was wondering why she was still there with him. Why she was still letting him near her, when he was ordering her around and telling her what she can and can't do.
Thing was he was keeping her alive here, there were things in play that she didn't know about and until she did she couldn't act, *they* couldn't act. His breath was hot on her skin and his whiskers rasped against her reminding her that he was human, frail, weak, just because he healed didn't mean he didn't *feel*.
They were back where he'd been treated and used like an animal and he was still trying to get out of the mindset Xavier had trained into him. They were both fighting for control here, her over her own mind and him over his own life.
"Logan, Logan, look at me..." she pulled his face away from her skin his eyes red-rimmed and glassy his lips forming words that she knew would form 'I'm sorry'. She stopped the words with her bare finger, "Ah'm not, we came back so we could finish this Logan, you said it wouldn't be easy an it ain't but it's worth doin sugar. We'll be free, both of us an maybe some others too." Stroking his hair she saw the doubt fade in him and the usual steel refill his eyes, the grip he had on her changing from fearful to possessive. "So tell me what did Pete say?"
Wiping his face again with her robe this time he sighed, his voice rumbling over her skin as he played with the ends of the robe in front of his face. "He told me about the day we left, how Kitty told him she didn't know how she ended up there on the corridor. She thinks that Xavier made her go there." He found her gaze matching his own, they both knew he did but for someone else to come to that conclusion was good too.
"An when they woke up together naked he kind of freaked. Didn't beleive it at first but when Kitty told him she was carryin' he just accepted it. He knows Kitty ain't the sort to go wanderin; besides she spends all her time with him, when she ain't out collecting more brats." Logan's face became strained then as he tried to find the right words to describe what he was thinking, how to make it sound plausable and not a paranoid fantasy.
"Pete told me he's been out nearly every day, takin the truck an pickin up stray's. Some o' kids he's picked up stay here for a while then just go, he asked Scott about it and he just told him that they'd gone to the West Coast. That there's a second school out there, or startin to be...An that's the thing as far as I'm aware there never was a school out there. He tried lookin but he's not sure if he's bein stupid."
"So you think Xaiver's doing what? Sellin' em? Keepin em somewhere off the radar what?" Logan looked frustrated, angry almost as he held her.
"Marie, I've been to the places out there on the West Coast, been *sent* there to 'clean house'. Xavier has houses out there sure, but if they're his they sure ain't schools, they're test beds, trainin' places."
Marie's mind was racing, trying to remember the maps in the archive, she knew there was a line between the two factions, a sort of Mason/Dixie line that was crossed constantly by both sides. But she was out of the loop, what she remembered at the moment wasn't enough, looking to Logan she went to him for the names of the places he'd been to. "Where did you last visit?"
"Barstock, southern end of California, found a 'house', cleaned it and reported in." He sounded detached from the thing as if he was reading it from a sheet like a newsreader.
"How many were there?"
"Adults?"
"In total?"
"Fifteen, several adults, ten kids; teenagers really, a cook, that was all. Burnt the place to the ground afterward, I got in through the roof and hid in the crawlspace till everyone was asleep. There were some empty beds there but it didn't look like a school, there were weapons stored there." Marie's face must have asked for her because he filled her in, "Guns, knives, mainly handguns, a few mines, bags and webbin', a couple of shotguns. Stuff you could train a kid to use without a problem."
Marie looked at him, her eyes searching the face of the man she loved, his memory might not be great but he had good direction sense.
"Think you could direct me there using landmarks?" He looked through her for a second then he nodded.
"Why?"
"Because tomorrow I'm going to go diggin in the archive and we'll see just where Xavier sent you and how he knew what would be there."
"You think he...." he never finished the thought but if he was correct then Xavier had more in common with his so called enemy than he did with anyone else.
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So thats how she'd ended up back in the archive with one of the secretary's watching her every move. She'd started on the reports about Magneto, about his exploits since she'd been off team and away. There were several incursions that they could have done with Logan's expertise but he'd been training her.
Magneto seemed to be pulling his resources south, going toward the borders of Mexico, his attacks had been centred on the south. The worst at a facility at Portalis New Mexico, a place where several hundred mutants had been rescued but over a hundred workers and military were killed. The place was a research centre, according to the file, it was looking at the genome that caused mutation. The head of research there was a mutant himself if the picture was anything to go by, the blue face wasn't human and neither was the fur that covered it. She took note of the name and the place he was last listed as living, if the X-Men had done him a favour he might be more open to sharing information with one of the people working for them, mainly her. Doctor Hank McCoy would be getting a request through the post soon and she hoped it wouldn't be ignored.
Digging through the stacks of reports she did notice the file on Emma, it was thicker than she remembered it to be. Pulling it out she opened the file under the gaze of the secretary, smiling at her she spoke to her icy gaze. "Gotta keep up if ah'm gonna be any use to anyone, mind if ah take a few bits back home with me? It was never a problem before as long as ah returned them to their right places?" The woman seemed to mull it over for a moment then answered her.
"As long as you return them to where you find them I'm sure it won't matter. You'll be taking the archiving over of these reports anyway won't you? So feel free to take as many as you like, I've enough to do already without people under my feet all day." The tone she used grated on her nerves and made her knuckles itch, the self centred smugness of it made her insides crawl and she forced a smile on her face as she collected the pile of documentation in front of her. It showed everything that Magneto had been upto, Emma Frost and several other factions in the mutant world.
Taking her booty she left the sour faced woman behind, not realising the woman who'd just let her leave shifted her skin for a second. Turning from a middle aged woman into a younger woman with dark hair and violet eyes, a tiny smile on her face as she watched the door where she'd gone out. Her voice dripping with laughter as she let herself out of the window, "Good luck, your gonna need it." With that she shifted again, a large black bird beating it's wings together as it climbed for height, home was miles away and she had a report to give. Emma would want news and what she'd left out for her would move things along nicely.....
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Marie does some digging and Logan gets round to telling her his feelings on what she finds.....