1. Non-violence

Cap suspected he'd hear from Wolverine when it was all over. He knew that if what he'd heard was true, that the former Jim Howlett had no memory at all of his past, he'd want to hear what Cap knew.

What he didn't expect was that Howlett would show up at the Triskelion, and he didn't expect everyone in the place to start crapping their pants and running around like idiots.

The amusement factor was high. He had to thank him for that.

It would have been more amusing if Fury hadn't been Somewhere Classified, leaving Cap to deal with the computer jockey in full fight-or-flight mode who burst into his office, mouth running a mile a minute. Cap guessed they'd never covered this scenario in all those simulations they were so fond of these days.

"Wolverine is here, sir, and he says he wants to see Fury--actually he says he *better* see Fury--and we don't know how he got here because security didn't pick him up until he was in the building. Sir."

"Didn't pick him up until he wanted you to, probably."

"Probably, sir." The computer jockey actually *gulped*. "When we informed him the General was unavailable, he said he wanted to talk to you."

Cap sighed. This was just what he didn't need. But he knew well enough what it was like to lose years of a lifetime. At least Howlett had actually *lived* his, even if he couldn't remember them. He'd help him out.

"Let him in."

---

Howlett sat down in the visitor's chair, gave Cap a once over that felt a little bit like he was being sized up for a body bag, and then lifted a skeptical eyebrow at him.

"What?"

"You really sit around here all day in that costume?"

"It's not a costume. It's a uniform. You have one yourself, if I recall."

"Not in those colors, thank God."

"You come here to discuss fashion choices?" He had no intention of having this conversation with someone who looked like he'd found his clothes in a Dumpster at a rodeo.

"No. I want something."

Cap leaned back in his chair, smugly certain he knew what it was.

That didn't mean he was going to make it easy for him.

"You've got balls the size of cement trucks if you think you're in any position to come in here and ask for favors," he said.

Howlett somehow managed to look both completely relaxed and completely prepared to kill him at the same time when he said, "The way I see it, you're lucky we don't wipe you guys out one at a time."

"Xavier would never allow it."

"He wouldn't have to." He smiled a humorless smile that called forth the memory of the inside of a helicopter filled with what was left of some damn fine soldiers.

"Unless I give you what you want. Isn't that right?" He remembered that about Jim Howlett, that he liked to let you know right up front where you stood with him. "So tell me what you want."

He already knew the man wanted his past, but he was going to make him ask for it. All those dead soldiers.

He was wrong again.

"The girl. Rogue."

Cap sat up so fast his chair rocked against the desk. "What?" There was no time to hide his reaction, and Howlett's jaw twitched just enough to tell him it didn't go unnoticed. Cap felt the power distribution in the room shift, ever so slightly and not in his favor.

"The girl who came in with the rest of the Brotherhood. I want her."

This was unexpected. And interesting. Very, very interesting.

Cap picked up the paperweight on his desk--a solid chunk of crystal with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on it--and hefted it in his hand a few times, considering. "And what makes you think she wants to go with you?" He was genuinely curious about that.

"I don't particularly give a shit if she does." That humorless smile again. "But she will."

"Just for the sake of my conscience, maybe you could give me a reason why I should do this. A reason that won't land you in prison, preferably."

"I know her."

He thought for a second, trying to call up what he knew about the girl. Something about the way Howlett said he knew her…

Ah. Of course. The Weapon X program. "Then you know she's a very dangerous young woman."

"I’m a very dangerous man." Howlett tapped his knuckles on the arm of his chair. "And I'm losing my patience."

The posturing was starting to annoy him, but he ignored it. "You think you can bring her around? Put her to work for Xavier?"

Howlett nodded.

"You telling me what you think I want to hear?"

Another nod, with the uptick of one corner of his mouth, suggesting a smile that might actually have some humor in it if it weren't on the face of a cold-blooded killer.

He set the paperweight down carefully, taking his time, considering. "I'll see what I can do. Come back tomorrow."

"No. Today. Right now."

"That's not going to happen." It was amusing as hell that he'd expected it, though.

"I’m taking her with me, one way or another." Tapped his knuckles again. A blatant threat.

Cap was hardly impressed. He doubted Howlett would willingly kill the only man alive who had known him way back when. Maybe he wasn't acting interested in the details now, but sooner or later he'd want to hear them. Of that Cap was certain.

Intriguing, though, how dead-set he was on having the girl.

As for her, she'd probably be better off with Xavier, Cap thought. God knew they hadn't been able to get far with her here. Too unstable, too pissed off. But if Xavier could keep Wolverine--who was, by all accounts, one synapse away from being an out-and-out psychopath--somewhere in the vicinity of the straight and narrow, he might be able to do the same with the girl.

Her future here was bleak, that much he knew. Too many scientists with too much money and curiosity, doing unspeakable things in the name of national security. Telling each other that they were trying to help those poor souls in the holding cells, when all they wanted to do was get their hands on them and play Dr. Frankenstein.

And didn't he know firsthand what that was like.

As did the man sitting across from him. And maybe Howlett didn't remember him, but he was still a part of the past, damn it. A part that hadn't sprouted gray hair and dentures while he'd been gone. They could be, well, not friends, but *something*, maybe, if Howlett could find it in him to give a shit.

On the other hand, he obviously gave a shit about the girl. Enough to come here and get her, even though he had to know the chances were just as good that he'd end up down there in one of those cells himself.

If they could catch him.

And if they could keep him.

He set the paperweight down, adjusted it. Drummed his fingers on his desk. Decided.

"Tell you what. I'll give you ten minutes. If you can find her, she's yours." Fury was going to shit nickels when he found out about this. Just the thought of it cheered Cap immensely.

Howlett nodded. "All right."

"But if you kill anyone, the deal's off."

The killer's smile turned into a smirk. "That's no fun."

"You've already had a lifetime's worth of fun with our men."

"All right. Ten minutes." He pushed himself up out of the chair. "Starting when?"

Cap automatically stood when Howlett stood, old-fashioned manners that hadn't gone away, and looked at the clock on his desk. "Starting forty seconds ago."

Howlett stepped up and extended a hand, which surprised Cap a little. He shook it, and then walked him to the door. More quaint behavior that stood out like a sore thumb in this day and age.

"Behave yourself," he called after him.

"Wouldn't dream of anything else," he said over his shoulder, ambling away with his hands in his pockets as if he didn't have a care in the world, or a clock ticking against him.

Howlett disappeared into the elevator, and when Cap looked around him, every pale face in the room was staring at him as if he'd just played a game of chess with Death and somehow won.

When he sat back down at his desk, he noticed his paperweight was gone.

End

2. Self-Control

She knew it was him, just from the knock. The sound was *him* in a way she couldn't possibly describe, but recognized every time.

He didn't ask to come in, just did, and even though seeing him still made her skin crawl, she thought he looked good. Like he was less than thirty minutes out of the shower, standing there in a jacket that probably cost more than everything in the apartment combined. She could live for a week on the money from one of those stupid X insignias alone.

"I didn't say you could come in." She sounded like a petulant child, but she couldn't help it. Why couldn't he just leave her alone?

He looked around. "Nice place ya got here."

"No, it isn't." It was a pit, actually. A new low, even for her.

"I know."

"And it's not mine." It belonged to a guy named Stu, who was probably a drug dealer, and used the place to fuck his mistress.

"I know that, too."

"I already told you I'm not joining your band of merry do-gooders." How many weeks in a row was this, now?

"Yeah, I remember." He shrugged. "I'm persistent. You can hold it against me."

"Among other things."

The words hit him dead-center. His face was devoid of expression, as if he had no reaction at all, but he suddenly loomed a little taller as his relaxed posture vanished.

"I didn't have a choice," he said, just before the silence stopped being awkward and became unbearable.

That was the most he'd ever said on the matter, and she was surprised to hear that much.

"Neither did I." Petulant again. God, hadn't she grown up at all?

"Yeah, you did. It was either me or Creed. You know if I hadn't done it, he would've. And he woulda liked it."

---

The first time, it had taken eight men to get the job done. Six to hold him still, and two to hold her down and make her touch him long enough to get it to work.

The next time, they just threw them in the same cell. She hadn't been able to move, and he wouldn't come near her. Not until Wraith showed up with the tranq gun and the cordless drill.

That had been the worst one, because those long minutes with Wraith had been front and center in his mind when they spread her hand over his bloodied face. She'd lived with that image for days, the way the drill bit looked as it got closer and closer to his eye.

The next time, they used the drill on her.

After that, he did what he was supposed to do, and she knew that he didn't like to look at her as he did it, because he hated her fear of him, and the way she resented him so goddamn much.

She couldn't help it, though. Of all the horrible things about that place, he was the worst. His memories were gruesome, his rage overwhelming. And because he existed, they could beat her again and again and again, send her into the most unthinkably dangerous situations, and she couldn't even hope she would die.

Then they wiped his mind again, and the next time they put them together he didn't understand what was going to happen. But she remembered the drill, so she did what she was supposed to do.

He didn't know who she was or why she was hurting him, and that was the first time she truly felt sorry for him. At the same time, she probably would have given anything to have them erase her memory, too.

And that was part of the problem. He remembered what had happened between them in there, but he didn't remember it all. Not by a long shot. He didn't remember the drill.

Maybe that was why he could still stand to be around her.

---

She hadn't been there for the end of Weapon X, hadn't seen the famous X-Men in action. She'd been in a massage parlor in Washington, waiting for a Chinese scientist to show up for his weekly handjob. The shape-shifter masquerading as the massage girl jumped when their com-links filled their ears with static and then went dead. They'd exchanged confused glances, and then bolted.

Out on the street, the car was gone.

The Weapon X agents were gone.

They were free.

She left her headset in the gutter, and never saw the shapeshifter again.

---

He'd started showing up a few months later, and her first reaction had been utter terror. Her first thought that Weapon X had sent him to bring her in. Her second thought that if she could make the two blocks to the bridge before he caught her, chances were good she could hit the water and be dead before he could use his damnable mutation on her, and she wouldn't have to go back.

But he wasn't there for Weapon X. He *was* trying to bring her into the fold, though.

He wanted her to join the Church of Charles Xavier.

She'd given up on being saved a long time ago.

---

Just the thought of Creed made her shudder, and she forced herself to sidestep the memories--both his and hers--that sprang up at the mention of his name. Like all those times before, dealing with Logan was the more pleasant option, so she went with it.

"So neither of us had a choice. Now we do. When are you going to stop trying to rescue me?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. When are you going to stop hating me?"

"Plenty of people hate you," she said. Something that might have been anger flared in his eyes before he turned away. "Why the hell should I matter so much?"

"You don't," he said, right before he slammed the door behind him.

Liar, she thought, as she stood at the window and watched him climb into an obscenely huge SUV. Double-parked, of course.

The parking lights came on, but it was a minute or two before he drove away, and she could almost picture him, hands clenched on the steering wheel, mouth a grim line. Tamping down his anger, because when he didn't, people got hurt.

---

He didn't make an appearance the following week. The week after that she saw the SUV parked down the block, but the only knock on her door was a drunken woman looking for Stu. Wife or another mistress, she had no clue, but Rogue's presence in the apartment had been treated with suspicion and disdain.

Another week went by with no sign of him, but she saw the X-Men on the news, keeping the peace in some country she'd never heard of. The footage contained one close-up shot of him, looking dirty and disheveled. It made her think of the last time she'd seen him, when he'd looked freshly showered, and smelled a little like shaving cream.

Later on, as she sat on the windowsill and smoked a cigarette, she realized that she'd seen Logan on TV, and she hadn't once thought of Weapon X.

Only of him standing in her apartment, wanting to take her home with him.

---

At the end of that week, the SUV showed up again, parked across the street.

She paced the apartment, smoking cigarette after cigarette. She checked the window every so often, not sure if she wanted to see the truck or not. An hour later her hands were shaking from the nicotine, her throat was raw from the smoke, and she was out of cigarettes.

She went to the window.

He was still there.

She needed more cigarettes.

It took way longer than it should have to find her boots, but he was still there.

Her backpack bounced against her shoulders as she bolted down the back stairs. She checked the alley first, wondering if she'd find him leaning against the Dumpster when she peeked around the door, but it was empty.

She paid for the smokes with a dollar bill and two fistfuls of change, but the terminally bland guy behind the counter showed no reaction as he counted it out into his palm. Her fingers were still shaking when she picked up the cigarettes, so she crammed her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and left them there as she walked up the block.

She came up on the SUV from behind. He jumped when she opened the passenger door, then scowled at her in what she figured was an attempt hide his embarrassment at being taken by surprise. He'd been watching her place and hadn't expected her to show up on this side of the street.

The fact that she'd snuck up on him made her feel like grinning as she climbed in and tossed her backpack into the back seat. She tapped the pack of cigarettes against the heel of her hand instead. "Fine. You win."

He looked over the seat at the backpack, and then at her. "Can't smoke in Chuck's cars," he said, gesturing toward her cigarettes with an unlit cigar. Then he stuffed the stogie into his smug grin and said, "And I knew I would."

She tossed the cigarettes on the dash, making a big show of irritation, but she didn't really need one. Her throat still hurt. "Yeah, well, I'm not gonna be your best friend or anything, so don't get too excited."

The seatbelt reminder chimed as he started the engine. She reached for hers, but he checked the side mirror and pulled away from the curb without fastening his.

He looked over at her and grinned around the cigar. "I bet I can change your mind about that, too."

End