Toad noted the raven-haired woman strolling toward him, and would have know that near-feline stride anywhere. Smiling, she sat at his table and ordered chai.
“God, I’ve missed you, lady,” he smiled at her, speaking softly beneath the background chatter in the cafe.
“It’s good to catch up, Mortie. After the Island, and we all got scattered, I really thought you were dead. It tore a hole in me; well, one more hole, since I already had three from Wolverine.”
“Is that okay, all healed?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Dandy. I’m finer than frog hair.”
“That’s pretty damned fine, brother,” they laughed in unison at their old patter and chatted happily through a round of mugs, catching up. Finally, she broached the unmentioned topic, “Does he ever talk about me?”
“There’s the occasional reminiscence, that’s about it.”
“Nothing about mistakes or regrets, then?”
“No, love, sorry. You know the old man: damn the torpedoes.”
“Damn him,” she quipped into her mug, then placed it back on the table with a trembling hand. “I gave him everything I had and more. Damn him to hell,” she hissed. Mystique rolled her currently-pale blue eyes up to meet Toad’s. “Mortie, don’t let him fuck you over, use you the way he did me. Don’t allow him to have that much power over you. Promise me, because I ‘never’ want you to be hurt like that. You know,” her hand rested lightly over his on the tabletop as her fingers gracefully stroked his, “the pawns have to stick together sometimes, to keep from getting slaughtered.” She stifled a smile of victory as he turned his hand palm-up to her touch - she had him. She discreetly slid a scrap of paper toward him with the cell phone number on it. “If you ever need me, just call. Fuck Eric. I’ll always be there for you, regardless.”
“Same here, Raven. We’ve both got lives outside the Brotherhood. You need me, you call me. I kept the same number. The one ‘he’ doesn’t know about.”
“Never forgot it. It’s chiseled inside my brain,” she tapped one temple and grinned at him. “You suppose he has any rules about you ‘fraternizing’? It’s been a long time...” the lifting of her sleekly arched brows spoke what her lips didn’t.
Toad smiled broadly at her, and was hopelessly lost. “Fuck Eric and his rules. There’s a nice, quiet little motel about two blocks over. Want to talk a stroll with me?” He tossed a few bills on the table and stood, offering his hand toward her.
Accepting his hand graciously, she rose with a slither and slid within the curve of his arm, tight against his side. “Lead the way. Hope you aren’t too offended by this human meat sack I’m stuck with now,” she spoke hesitantly. “I’m not the girls I used to be.”
“Baby, you’ve always been gorgeous, and you still are. I’ll show you just how gorgeous you are, if we can make it to that motel before I jump you. We’d better hurry,” he tugged her out the door and they ran down the street, hand in hand, laughing.
*
“We got this, Storm; Kitty dug up a ton of stuff on the Net,” Jubilee flipped the file folder open on Storm’s desk and Kitty settled onto the edge, dangling her sprained ankle. The three women huddled over the file’s contents as Jubilee flipped pages and pointed out highlighted paragraphs from web sites, newspaper articles, reports, photos and odd documents.
“Shelly Hanson of Lubbock, Texas, entered a string of beauty pageants across the South starting from junior high school through about two years ago. She became a pro at the whole game: the grooming, diplomacy, schmoozing, the practiced responses to generic questions, and was working toward a big-bucks career as a spokesmodel.” Another page was flipped, and a sensational headline was highlighted, “About 15 months ago, during a routine drug test, the pageant authorities also ran DNA tests for mutations, figuring that some contestants might use physically-manifesting mutations or telepathic abilities to sway the judges’ findings in their favor and win more money and prizes, making their advantage legally unfair. Shelly was outed as a mutant, and from that point every application she made into pageants, contests, and modeling agencies was either ignored, lost, or denied. She even made the local news in Lubbock when protestors started gathering, both in her favor and opposed.” Jubilee flipped another page, commenting, “She eventually stopped giving interviews to the newscasters because they were dragging her through the mud, asking if she had used her mutation in any unlawful way to win favor with judges or employers. It became a media circus.”
Kitty interjected, “In a way, I can understand her being distraught over all that. I mean, it’s one thing to have everyone know you’re a mutant even if you don’t ‘look’ like a mutant. But to have it thrust into the media’s attention and then have protestors on your lawn and at your job and cameras in your face? That’s gotta hurt.”
“Absolutely,” Storm agreed. “It’s awful, and it ruined what was probably going to be a very lucrative career for her. But it doesn’t give us the proof we need. Is there a solid connection between her and Magneto?” Storm frowned over the pages.
Jubilee folded her arms and sighed, “We haven’t found conclusive proof yet. We’re still rooting for obscure background info, but it’s getting tougher. The next big step is reviewing video footage of the Brotherhood from every encounter we’ve had, to see if we can spot her anywhere in crowds, in their immediate company, whatever. That’s going to take days, weeks, maybe even months to cover everything. We’ve got a few more vague threads to follow before we dive into the vids, so we’re still on the job; but we thought this was enough to give you an update. Duty calls, Kit-Kat. Let’s dig more and deeper.”
“I am your slave, master. Hand me my crutch.”
“Come on, peg leg.”
The two young women left Storm to ponder the contents of the file. Hints weren’t enough to condemn someone. There had to be proof, or enough circumstantial evidence to approach her, pressure her, threaten her into a confession that she had been instrumental in setting up the attack on Logan. The last thing Storm wanted was to condemn an innocent person.
“But I’ll be damned if I let someone mess with my team!” She slammed the folder into a desk drawer and locked it.
*
The school was humming with activity. Fridays were always a bee’s nest with the weekend dangling tantalizingly within reach. Logan took advantage of arriving during routine morning classes and went directly to his room, stowed his dirty clothes, changed to fresh, and sat momentarily on the bed as a wave of nausea and weakness washed over him.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything, and didn’t feel like it now, but it was necessary. He had a finely-tuned machine to maintain in his athletic body and it required fuel. Work, sleep, food, training, focus, sex, Marie...
He dropped his head into his hands as the memories of the previous night pooled at the front of his mind. He’d come so damned close to ruining everything. He had to get straight with Marie first. The rest would come later. He could judiciously tell her ‘almost’ everything, show her the tattoo when they were in bed, and... what?
Logan felt the shame of last night’s bout of impotence. Every man was supposed to have that happen at some point in his life, or so it was alleged. Didn’t mean he was finished, washed up in the sack; it was just a temporary glitch, a way his body warned him off from taking a woman he shouldn’t have been with in the first place. It had to be just that simple: a self-established moral boundary. It wouldn’t happen again, and if it did, well, Marie would understand because she’d taken the cure, too, and she’d know how...
Logan lunged from the bed, grabbed the nearest thing within reach which happened to be the phone, and hurled it through the window, sending shards of glass tinkling into the shrubbery below. It wasn’t enough, there was more rage waiting to erupt and burn off. The bedside table went into the center of the floor, the lamp cord and phone cord ripped from the wall, the lamp sailing through the open bathroom door to crash into the tub, and before long there was little left within reach. Breathing heavily, he turned toward the next wall to continue the path of destruction when his bedroom door opened suddenly and Marie stood in shock, wide-eyed and slack-mouthed.
“Logan, what’s wrong?!?” She edged slowly into the room, eyes scanning the chaos as if expecting to see an enemy lurking within.
“Not now, Marie,” Logan panted, “not now.” He shoved his hands through his hair and turned his back to her, pacing to the shattered window. No one was below. No harm done. He’d clean up the glass later.
When he turned back, Marie was on her knees beside his bed, trying to re-assemble the junk from the drawer he’d dumped. It was scattered everywhere, even under the bed. She was pulling out paper clips and a pocket comb, pens and a smattering of small tools, then she was trying to pull something from her fingers. Holding her hand up to the light from the broken window, she stared intently at her fingers and then at him.
“Who was she, and how long ago?” she asked with a knowing smile.
Rage now apparently spent, he frowned and walked closer. There were a few long blonde hairs tangled around her fingertips. “I don’t bring women back here, inside the school. Never have, never will, it’s too risky,” he muttered as he gazed at the hairs. “I don’t know how those got there. I’m not much for vacuuming.”
“Yeah, right; Mister Libido doesn’t know where the blondie hairs came from,” Rogue quipped. “I know you haven’t been a monk, Logan, so don’t try to cover. My streaks are white, and these are yellow.”
“I’m not covering. You’re the only woman who’s been in this bed.”
“Okay, I believe you. I’ll clean this up and let’s have breakfast together, try to catch up on the news. This place has been crazed for the last two days and it doesn’t look like it’s going to ease up any time soon.”
“Leave that shit on the floor, I’ll get to it later. My mess, I’ll clean it up, and I’m not hungry,” he was standing at the window again, his back to her. “Look, Marie - there’s some stuff I gotta get straight with you.”
Rogue felt her body turn cold inside and she dropped everything she’d been holding onto the carpet. He was going to dump her! His voice dragged her awareness back, “I know the whole thing sucks; the cure, the situation here, being off the team; it’s all shitty. I’ve made some huge mistakes lately. I gotta fix them before it’s too late.”
His fingers flexed nervously, then he continued, “I just need you to understand that...” the soft swish of clothing and a choked sob brought him around as Marie fled from his door, disappearing down the hallway.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Mystique works her seductive mojo, Jubilee gets the goods in black and white, and Logan has a mid-day melt-down.