He slept. And while he slept, he dreamed. There were no images, just disjointed sounds and scents that pressed against the thin barrier between dreams and consciousness until Logan felt that he actually was awake while dreaming. He heard the murmured conversations between Kurt, Todd, and Rachel. For a while he was certain Kitty was there. The muffled conversations with Hank and the professor via the laptop. And the children. Always trying to be brave and show the adults that they could handle what was happening, but underneath it all, he heard the thin quality of their voices and the rapid fluttering of their heartbeats whenever Rogue’s name was mentioned.
At times he could smell her. Rogue. The soft strawberry scent of her shampoo still lingering in their bed, the warm vanilla musk of her skin that used to cling to him like an embrace at the start of each day. He wondered if she might catch hints of his scent on her own skin and immediately dismissed the notion as fanciful and impossible. But he liked the idea.
* * *
Rachel gasped when Logan stumbled into the kitchen. She hadn’t heard him at all despite his unsteady feet. He stopped and stared at her, his face frantic, before speaking.
“How long?” he rasped, his voice so rough from sleep and disuse that it took her a moment to recognize the words.
“Six days.”
Rachel was amazed to see the effect relief had on Logan’s face and body. Everything seemed to ease and uncoil from his very center until the underlying current of danger she had been feeling evaporated like fog meeting a sunny morning.
After a moment, Logan grunted. “Food,” he demanded as he shuffled to the table.
An uncharacteristic urge to laugh bubbled in Rachel’s throat. She had never appreciated being ordered around, but she had to admit that she was relived Logan was acting in his usual rude manner. She whirled to the fridge and pulled out last night’s leftovers. Logan didn’t wait for a fork and dug into the chicken parmesan with his fingers. Rachel couldn’t even muster the desire to reprimand him. The man was still much too thin and looked exhausted even after sleeping for days. She felt something in her chest soften as she considered him, wondered what it would be like to have somebody care about her so much that he would let himself get in such a state as he tried to save her.
“I could make you some eggs,” she ventured. Her own surprise at the offer was mirrored on Logan’s face as he glanced at her briefly.
“Thanks,” he said around a mouthful of chicken.
Without thinking about it, Rachel cracked a half dozen eggs into a pan, something in her telling her the gruff man behind her would want them whole, the yolks barely cooked. She popped a few slices of bread into the toaster beside the stove, figuring he’d have to have a way to get the runny, protein rich food to his mouth. She flipped the eggs once, letting them cook only long enough to hold the yolks more or less in place before sliding them out of the pan onto the waiting slices of toast. Rachel put the plate in front of Logan just as he was lifting the last bit of cheese from the casserole dish. He grunted softly as he switched to the new food without missing a beat.
“What did I miss?” he mumbled after finishing two slices of toast and egg.
“Not a whole lot. At least not that I know about. You want me to get Kitty so she can fill you in?”
“You mean she is here?”
The sudden suspicion in his voice made Rachel nervous. “Um. Yeah. Kurt went and got her about two days after you fell asleep. You know, you made Todd really worried for a while. He thought you were in a coma until Kurt and Kitty got back with some medical equipment to check you out.”
“Why would I be in a coma?”
“Starvation ketosis. From depleting all the fat stores in your body.”
Logan grunted again. “Get Kitty.”
* * *
“So that’s where we stand right now,” Kitty finished, watching with slight awe as Logan’s frame seemed to fill out as she watched. He was on his tenth glass of water and doing his best to ignore Todd’s poking, prodding, measuring, and mumbling.
“Amazing,” Todd breathed again. “Just amazing. Less than an hour and your muscle tone is back and your skin elasticity is normal. I wish we had been recording this. It would be amazing to watch with a high speed camera.” He scratched some notes onto a clipboard. “Your hair still looks quite brittle. Undoubtedly not the body’s top priority when getting nutrients to where they’re needed most.” He tapped his pen against his lips. “I wonder if we can try this again with before and after samples?”
Kitty scoffed. “You into torture now, kid”?
Todd looked up, blinking owlishly. “Torture? No, of course not.”
“Then what do you call starving somebody just so you can get samples to study?”
“What? No!” Todd protested in sudden realization. He risked a quick look at Logan, relieved to see that the man was relatively unconcerned with the conversation as he continued guzzling water. “I just meant that it would be useful to establish a metabolic baseline for Logan in varying states of health. Obviously, he wasn’t in a coma before, but anybody else would have been. And he continued sleeping without getting any additional sustenance. I’m just amazed. Think about what we could learn from Logan. I mean, we could potentially cure diabetes and a host of other dietary and metabolic disorders.”
“Salt,” Logan interrupted. “And some bananas.”
“What?” Todd and Kitty asked together.
Logan shrugged. “I want bananas and something salty.”
Sudden understanding made Todd’s face glow. “Your body’s telling you its electrolyte balance is out of whack after drinking so much water.”
“So? Doesn’t everybody’s?” Logan asked, pulling Kitty’s laptop closer for a better look at the various satellite images she had cycling on its screen. When Todd didn’t answer him, he glanced at the younger man quickly. “Everybody has food cravings, right? Happens for a reason, so listen to them.”
Todd huffed in amusement. “I don’t think my constant cravings for bacon cheeseburgers and beer would be healthy to indulge.”
Logan shook his head. “Naw, I’m not talkin’ about the things your head tells you you want. But that’s not what we need to be thinkin’ ‘bout right now.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Rachel agreed, putting a bowl of salted peanuts and a banana in front of Logan. “You need to concentrate on finding Rogue.”
“Mr. Logan?” Elizaveta’s voice came from the doorway behind them. “It’s not that one,” she said, pointing to the image on the laptop display.
Logan whirled around, his eyebrow winging up. “How do you know, munchkin?” He was slightly alarmed by the girl’s pale face and shallow, rapid breathing. He wondered briefly why he hadn’t sensed her there before she spoke.
“Because I can see them all,” Elizaveta said, her voice thin and reedy. She swayed once before Max’s clawed hand cupped her small shoulder in support. “Not that one,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the images rotating on the screen. “Not that one.”
Nobody else spoke. The stayed silent, their eyes fixed on the little girl’s face as it was illuminated and dimmed by the light from the laptop.
“No…no…no.” Elizaveta gulped a breath on the last ‘no’ and her eyes briefly rolled up into her skull before she blinked and refocused them. “No,” she continued. “No…no….That one!” she gasped and slumped onto the floor unconscious.
Kitty quickly stopped the slideshow on the image Elizaveta chose. “It’s small,” she murmured, studying the picture. “So much smaller than the other ones that I almost didn’t consider it,” she confessed.
“The right thing isn’t always the biggest or most obvious thing,” Logan murmured, his eyes tender as he watched Elizaveta’s limp form held close in Max’s arms.
* * *
Waiting was the most frustrating part. Logan knew where Rogue was now. He knew, but still he had to wait. Had to wait for information. Had to wait for surveillance to come back. Had to wait a few nail biting weeks while Kitty unsuccessfully tried to remotely hijack an imaging satellite. She had more luck with the communications satellite, though, and that’s when the real planning began.
* * *
“The entrance is ten fuckin’ miles away?” Logan questioned in disbelief.
“Eleven point two, to be precise,” Kitty corrected. “And all of it’s monitored with radar, heat sensing technology. Hell, even the terrain is monitored for changes in ground pressure.”
“Meaning we can’t fly, teleport, or sneak in.”
“Right,” Kitty confirmed, slumping in her chair.
“Fuck,” Logan growled, roughly knuckling his eyes until the pressure threatened to pop his eyes from their sockets. He felt like he was no more than a mass of repressed energy; for months he had been ready to go, like an arrow held steady on a drawn bowstring waiting for release.
The living room had been turned into a functional command center while life in the cabin and dorms continued around Logan, Kitty, and Kurt as they pored over information, formulated and scrapped plans.
“Logan,” Hank soothed via the webcam, “we know she’s safe for the time being. Those files Kitty was able to hack prove that.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Logan argued tiredly, as he did each time Hank brought it up. “They were encrypted and there’s no way to know that Rogue really is ‘subject X751.’”
“Logan, the DNA profile fit.”
“98%. You said it was a 98% match to Rogue’s X-gene. A two percent genetic variance is huge in the mutant world, Hank. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you of all people.”
“And the other two percent was a match to your X-gene, Logan!” Hank shouted in frustration.
“I have to admit I have some doubts, too, my friend,” Xavier confessed. “The discussion of ‘subject X752’ in conjunction with what we believe to be Rogue’s data is confusing at best.”
“No,” Hank argued stubbornly. “It makes perfect sense. Remember the section where they discussed X752’s ability to suppress X751’s mutation? They obviously found a mutant like Leech in anticipation of obtaining Rogue. They needed some way to control her mutation for their own safety.”
“Then why does so much of the file seem like they’re confused by the interaction?” Logan growled. “If they did it, why are they surprised by the result and why are the only entries lately ‘continuing observations for any changes in suppression from X752?’”
“Maybe it’s a long term experiment, Logan. Whatever the case, we know they stopped the tissue sampling when they weren’t getting any different results. We know that Rogue is being fed, and fed well. They have detailed notes on caloric consumption.”
“There’s still X752’s file,” Kitty reminded them all. “I finally located the source file, but it’s got a different decryption key than Rogue’s.”
“Forget all that,” Logan growled. “Just focus on how to get in. And find out how big the damn place actually is. You said it was small and now you’re telling me it’s got a ten mile entrance tunnel and higher energy usage than all the rest.” He stalked toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going, Logan?” Hank’s voice calling after him from the computer made Logan gnash his teeth.
“For a walk!” he snarled without turning around.
* * *
For a moment, just a moment, Logan felt like he couldn’t get a breath into his starved lungs. His heart pounded hard against his ribs and his vision started graying at the edges, and while he was aware he had hands and feet, they felt curiously detached. The first time it had happened almost three months ago had scared him enough to call Hank.
After listening to the symptoms, Hank had been silent for several long seconds. Long enough that Logan began wondering if there was something wrong with him, something, finally, that could kill him.
“It was a panic attack, Logan,” Hank finally said quietly.
“I don’t panic,” Logan returned automatically.
“No, you don’t,” Hank agreed. “You react. You’ve always been able to react before when faced with an obstacle, threat, or opponent. What have you been able to do this time?” Hank questioned simply.
“Nothing,” Logan rasped bitterly. “Not a damn thing. She’s alone and scared and I haven’t been able to do anything.”
“But you want to.”
“Of course I want to!” Logan roared. “I want to find every single son of a bitch that had anything to do with this and slice their hearts out and crush them in my hands while they’re still beating!”
“But you can’t.”
The words, a counterpoint to each beat of his heart, echoed in Logan’s mind now as he struggled to calm down, to focus on thoughts of Rogue. He sank down on the steps of the dorm, thinking about the day everything had come to a head between them, the last day Wolverine had been a separate entity in his mind. Right now, he missed him fiercely. Wolverine would have been able to carry on and allow Logan to fall quietly to pieces like he wanted to. Frowning, Logan considered that maybe his panic attacks were a combination of inactivity and his psyche trying to manifest the Wolverine again.
What would happen if he were to succumb to the greyness that crept in at the edges? Would he wake with Wolverine beside him again? For a moment Logan wished for that possibility almost as strongly as he wished for Rogue to be safe in his arms again. Despite being surrounded by people he cared about and who cared about him in return, Logan had never felt so alone in all the time he could remember. Heaving a sigh that caught awkwardly on a sob, Logan braced his elbows on his knees and cradled his head. He closed his eyes tightly against the tears he could feel building, but they leaked through anyway and soaked his lashes.
“Mr. Logan?” The tentative voice reached him at the same time as the small hand on his flannel-clad shoulder. “Mr. Logan?” Elizaveta continued. “You’ll be happy again. I promise. I’ve seen it.”
Logan froze, part of him horrified to be caught in such a moment of weakness by a child and embarrassed that that child was trying to comfort him. But a larger part of him leapt at the hope the girl’s words offered.
He turned to face Elizaveta, aware that the hope was showing on his face, aware that putting that hope on the child’s thin shoulders was a shameless thing to do.
“Rogue will be safe then? You’ve seen it?”
Elizaveta’s face twisted in sadness and apology. “I don’t know for sure, Mr. Logan. All I see is you. But you’re smiling. Just like you used to smile at Miss Rogue.”
A degree of certainty settled in Logan’s chest. Of course he would get Rogue back. He knew how he smiled at Rogue. It was soft and full of love. He knew the way it looked because it was the same smile Rogue saved just for him. And he would never love anybody else the way he loved Rogue.