Title : One foot in Hell.
Author: SacredMacha
Rating : PG13
Summary : Companion piece to "Hand out of Nowhere" for a certain someone. Logan faces his personal hell to retrieve his angel.
Category : X3/AU
Genre : Songfic
Archive : Yes please, just notify me?
Disclaimer : I do not own any of the characters created by Marvel, or the song/lyrics by Queensryche/Geoff Tate.

~~ Song lyrics~~


He'd seen it coming. Back when he'd first met the X-geeks, he knew. He'd said as much to Ororo, he could scent it on the wind like a wolf scents a deer. He'd been debating the best way of surviving the war. Survival was what he did best, after all, even when it reduced him to half man and half animal. But when it came down to it, he had no choice, no side to pick, no way to run back to the wilderness and lose himself. He made a promise, and bound himself to a blossoming Southern belle with intentions stronger than the adamantium on his bones.Jean or no Jean, without Marie he would have been off into the night like the predator he was, and never coming back.

It was one of the reasons he pushed so hard, especially after Jean's resurrection and his hand in ending her rebirth, before it ended the world as they knew it, imperfect and fucked up or not. He needed to believe he was doing something, teaching those kids something that would help them survive. Wolverine wasn't one for praise and gold stars, he grunted and made them do it again. Especially Rogue, until she kept refining her powers, her fighting skills, assimilating what the him in her head had left there into her movements with that fluid grace that was pure poetry.

He'd almost gutted and castrated Ice Prick when her skin came alive again and he broke it off. Claws were used to express just what would happen to anyone sniffing around Marie. The Rogue was Wolverine's girl, even if the Logan side wasin denial, claiming to be just close friends to Marie. There was no doubt to anyone who watched and paid attention that someday Logan would end up opening the cage, the Wolverine would be out, and it would be over, likely with a lot of noise and property damage. Some of the older students even had a betting pool, which of course had to be kept in the strictest confidence, before Logan whipped them all in their Danger Room sessions for it.

Then it came. The war exploded, and all he could do was all but kill himself, to make sure the kids he'd tried to train had time to get seasoned without being filleted. Rogue held her own, though it bothered him more than once how many voices she sometimes had fighting in her head. It was then he longed for the days where his knuckles itched, and he wanted to snarl with bored frustration, and sit on the couch with her while some stupid movie had her entertained. Those days were too long gone, and his luck just couldn't hold. He heard her call for him, dispatching another with a thrust of twenty seven inches of claw, before he was turning hazel eyes over the field of battle. Just in time to see a soldier lob some sort of concussion grenade, and send her to the ground with a thump. He had to be told later how he had howled like an animal seeking blood, and how he had lost all rationale.They'd been afraid for a while, healing factor or no, that he would die, dragging him back to the medbay after the fight ended. Still, he couldn't get there in time, and it ate at him. He'd promised, and whether she was a kid who needed protecting or not, she was gone, and he was alone again.

It made him edgy, even bitter. The kids who had once, despite his driving tactics, looked forward to his classes, now watched him warily, as though he might spring his claws on an innocent. That just made him more itchy, more angry, and more depressed. No one knew who took her, and for two weeks, he waited patiently, waiting for some signal on the line, someone to find some clue. Finding none... he did it himself. Hit the streets, trying to find her so he could erase the images that haunted him. Her smile, her drawl, the scent of green apple shampoo in her hair when she cuddled close for a movie. The nightmares were worse, picturing her in a lab, beaten, used... broken in spirit and body, bleeding in some concrete cell while they tested and tore at her skin. Afraid of what they were doing to her inside of herself, the part he held like precious treasure, more than what they were doing to her body. Her body could be healed... the soul... not so much. Not like she had for him....


~~Back streets... oh hell,
Back where I started from
There's not a thing... but you.
When they took you, when they took you from me and left you
Bleeding on that concrete floor.
One man's obsession is another man's trash,
And Mary was more than a whore.~~

He prowled the streets, using the mutants that had all gone sort of underground as a connection. Spreading word of his girl, his Marie, any direction he could. He didn't know what else to do, other than stew and worry and give himself nightmares. So he spoke of the girl with the honey drawl, lethal ivory skin, dark coffee eyes, and dark auburn hair with a bolt of white that framed her face. He had started to lose hope, no one new of any Southern belle with that description. Then one day, while picking up some fine cubans from a friend who just happened to be coming back from a visit to relatives in Cuba, one of the mutants, a guy they called Stoner, because he could induce a relaxing, almost drugged state with his mutation, told him he'd seen a girl like he'd been looking for. Poor Stoner, for trying to help, he was shoved up against an unforgiving brick wall, forearm to his throat, and interrogated with the promise of three claws that hovered just under his chin. The guy sputtered and stuttered, but told the Wolverine where he'd seen her. That she hadn't had an accent, or any sort of gloves on, which only made the man holding him growl, before he suddenly let go. Stoner slid to the ground, coughing, as Logan jerked his coat on tighter, trying to deal with the idea Marie had been in a lab... they'd found a way to turn off her skin.. she hadn't called, hadn't done anything to find him... was she happy as she was... or did she just no longer know? Had they taken her past, as they had his? Had they taken away everything he was fighting for, the fire in his soul that kept him patched together, kept him whole?

~~I've got this number burned in my brain,
A walking nightmare, only slightly insane.
They tried to take my fight, almost took my life.
They took my truth from me.
But when they left me, they didn't know me,
'cause I'm like a lion that's about to roar.
Mistakes you make, you take to your grave.
And now I'm gonna even the score.~~

The leads grew cold, even with the less obvious mutants of the X-men searching for Rogue. Logan would get a call, they'd head out, he'd rush around barely holding the Wolverine in check, and when they found nothing, he'd bury himself in the Danger Room again, until the next call came. Sure that if he could make the pain outside, match the pain inside, everything would be all right. He had started hating it, teaching the kids what they would need to know, now more than ever. Hated waiting, hoping for some sign, some glimmer of the girl they knew as Rogue, that was his Marie. His, the Wolverine's it didn't matter anymore. She was his, and he knew now he belonged to her, with her, in a way he never had with Jean. Jean had been Logan's lust, the Wolverine enjoying the hunt of the Phoenix that lay beneath, never true love. Marie knew the man and the beast, and found a way to keep them balanced and both happy. Logan's girl, and the Wolverine's mate, all wrapped up in one soft, strong, pretty package. A package he wanted delivered back to the mansion, before the place drove him mad. Scenting her from her room, seeing her in his mind's eye, on the couch, playing foosball, helping tutor the younger kids in the library...it was going to turn him inside out.

He got a tip, about a place just inside the city, where they were taking mutants, and then somehow disabling the mutations, and returning them to society. The X-men went as a team, emptied the place of captured mutants who had no idea what had happened. Finding records of a woman, a mutant, a telepath, who was wiping the minds of those brought there. Logan understood survival, while the Wolverine howled inside his head, that Marie would not, may not, ever remember him or the others who loved her. Barely a trace of a scent that might have been hers.Logan questioned, battered, and tortured... before taking the head of one stubborn man who had the keys to all the doors, knew all the names on the files, Doctor Adam Jackson. Still pissed that he couldn't find the file on Marie, even a shred among those they had been disposing of when they knew the X-men had come...he encountered a bunch of jerks who helped the place, and hated mutants, hated that they had powers the regular humans did not. Between the Wolverine, Cyclops, and Storm, they hadn't stood a chance, even with superior numbers... then a scent, a hint of that familiar green apple, even in the middle of a fight stilled him. Voice erupting in a scream, that familiar figure huddled and hurrying away. "MARIE!" Shoved down and hit with a metal bat from behind, his eyes still on that silohuette that moved like no one else, watching her pause. Howling as someone laid hand to the Wolverine's mate, battering her. Seeing her helpless, unable it seemed, to defend herself, and that bat was in pieces, and a kidney punctured. Leaping over anything in his path, a fist to a windpipe before he was kneeling over her, her scent filling his nose like the most precious of perfumes. He saw the metal around her wrist, negating his touch from helping her. " Oh Marie.. " Hands along her arms, he could feel none of that desired connection. "I'm sorry kid, I promised.. I'm sorry they got you baby, I'll fix it. " Touch of adamantium against her skin, just nicking that bracelet enough to break the connection that had held her mutation in check with some sort of built in electro magnetic waves. He laid hands on her again, that pull hungry against his touch, stealing his breath before he jerked back. She was safe now, happy enough in her rebuilt life. She shouldn't be his anymore.. she should .. The Wolverinr howled and tried to claw his way out, but the man was in charge. A kiss to her forehead. " Live a good life, kid. " sighing, finger tracing that white. Scott helped drag him back to the waiting car, before Logan stopped him from going back. Marie was safe now, they wouldn't kill her, they thought she was one of them now. She hadn't known them, known his voice. He couldn't take that from her, that safety. He'd have to wait and see. He would wait and see, the Wolverine would stalk his mate, protecting her even as he couldn't mark her as his.

~~Yeah I'm like a ghost back from the dead.
I need revenge. Gonna have his head.
I'm gonna finish this and X marks the spot.
I'm gonna find him give him all that I got.

And every day I breathe I remember more.
I ain't coming at you with something to sell,
But you better believe,

I'm back with one foot in hell.
I'm back.~~
Time dragged on, and slowly Logan started disappearing from the mansion more and more. Watching his girl, as she went about her new, normal life. He soon realized she knew she wasn't normal. Covering up more, avoiding crowds, casual contact. He knew he'd turned her skin back on, had taken freedom from it again, no better than the failed cure. But she knew it now too.. but would it be enough to undo what they had done, for her to remember? He tracked her making wider and wider circles, blazing new trails in parts of the city she'd avoided before. Was she looking for her past.. seeking something... him? He could see she'd taken up to working out again, even from afar, how she'd regained that sway to her hips when she walked. Did she know he was watching? Waiting to take her away from this life, to steal her back for himself?

A mission into the Ozarks had only been supposed to take a few hours. The jet had been hit by lightning, of all things, the resident weather witch not on board to stop it. Days had gone by, days of not seeing Rogue, not watching his Marie coming back to herself. Barely landed, he was on the motorcycle and burning rubber into the city. His girl needed him, 'Ro had started telling them of unusual attacks on anti mutant groups, of mutants saved from them. Fire, ice, metal... drained unconcious. That was his girl, and he just followed the instinct she was in a world of trouble. Following tracks from that building she lived in, Wolverine howling when he almost lost her scent. A shout catching his ear after he parked the bike behind some dumpsters, running as he caught that scent on the wind. Barely clearing the corner, a hellish sight from nightmares. His girl, battered, face dirtied, the faint scent of blood, all but crawling along the alley. Angry voices, a small mob, and a melting wall of ice starting to come apart. His hands reached out, grabbing her and holding her tight to him. "Damnit Marie, what the hell are ya thinkin'?" Smell of green apple in her hair, hint of vanilla on her skin, breathed deep as he was carrying her as quickly as he could back to the bike. " Was just waitin' on ya, sugar. Ah knew ya'd come". He had, and had come too close to his own personal hell, remembering to thank god for the angel now on the bike behind him as they sped back towards home through the streets. He might not be a white knight some girls dreamed of, but he had the luck to meet the one girl who loved him, leather, adamantium and all.

Song/Lyrics by Queensryche/Geoff Tate

Back streets... oh hell,
Back where I started from
There's not a thing... but you.
When they took you, when they took you from me and left you
Bleeding on that concrete floor.
One man's obsession is another man's trash,
And Mary was more than a whore.

And every day I breathe I remember more.
I've become something you wouldn't believe!

I've got this number burned in my brain,
A walking nightmare, only slightly insane.
They tried to take my fight, almost took my life.
They took my truth from me.
But when they left me, they didn't know me,
'cause I'm like a lion that's about to roar.
Mistakes you make, you take to your grave.
And now I'm gonna even the score.

And every day I live I remember more.
I ain't got nothing to sell,
But it's time to pay attention,

I'm back with one foot in hell.
I'm back.

There's nothing left but memories here
Of something that I didn't begin with.
You wanted to believe in something until the end.

Yeah I'm like a ghost back from the dead.
I need revenge. Gonna have his head.
I'm gonna finish this and X marks the spot.
I'm gonna find him give him all that I got.

And every day I breathe I remember more.
I ain't coming at you with something to sell,
But you better believe,

I'm back with one foot in hell.
I'm back.