PART TWO
.The Girl: Chapter Eleven
He closed the door to the apartment behind them. Muffled click, one of the last times he'd ever hear it. Red spots on his knuckles, his wrist, probably on his face too, though he'd ducked the spray. Carotid arteries were messy.
The girl was standing in the center of the room, where the so-called "kitchen" met the equally laughable "living room", wiping something invisible off her hands. Forcefully, desperately. As if it were she who had killed a man. Her heartbeat struck Logan's eardrums like a tribal drum, summoning the panic of war without providing him an enemy. He watched her brush at her arm, watched an untrimmed nail dig a pink path down her skin. A shovel through a snow-coated lawn.
Logan tried to hold her but she tore away, stumbled back into the wall. Swaying on her feet with too-red cheeks and eyes bright with an energy that couldn't possibly last. Those feverish eyes stared at him--at him, too terrified for the avoidance the girl cultivated over the last two weeks.
She was babbling something, jumping between subjects between the meaning of one could be determined. She said, "Don't touch me--going to wash--I didn't--stay--it's so loud--didn't mean to--he--I did--you can't--kill--killed--God--I'm--"
Her heart. Jesus, her heart was beating too fast, too loud.The bass rhythm running under a particularly harsh, incomprehensible song. It made Logan sick to his stomach in a way nothing else ever had. "Kid, calm down. Kid--calm down, honey."
He took a step toward her. Nice and easy. Another. Slow, slow. Frightened animals don't like those who move fast. You have to trick them into thinking the distance between you isn't decreasing, that they still have plenty of time to bolt.
"I can't--he--he wasn't blinking and I--I can't--my--hurts so--I didn't mean--don't touch me!"
Logan seized her arm--she wrenched back, tried to slide away toward the kitchen--and tugged her to him with all the gentleness one can afford the struggling.
It happened quickly, almost instantly--though perhaps that wasn't right. Time and it's measurements would aways baffle him. It felt like she was only pressed against his chest for a second, half a second. Logan was shushing her, looking down into hazel eyes made almost grey by their tearful flood. Convincing himself that he could help her without harming anyone else--it was possible; others could do it, why not him? Then his teeth were cracking together, locked against a strangely familiar burn. Dizzying pain, like forty kicks to his crotch. No. No, on second thought, he'd take the kicks. Logan grunted, fought not vomit all the organs that appeared to be rising to his throat with that very intention.
The girl was screaming again. Not words, but a single cry. An endless shriek that kept reverberating in his skull and the room even after--how odd--he saw her lips close. She was trying to pull away but Logan's hands had clamped down with all the strength of an adamantium-laced reflex. The kind of grip that would add bruises to those other's had made. Black welts with finger-shaped dips, even if the bone was lucky enough not to fracture.
It hurt. Jesus fucking Christ, it hurt. Wet growls, whines, half-roars broke past his teeth.
Logan saw, with the sort of mild curiosity that minds are so fond of when they're attempting to disconnect--absent wonder that cuts through the deepest agony--that the veins in his arms, his hands, were swollen. Bulging as if they would pop through the grey-tinted flesh. Pulsing, throbbing so fiercely that he could see the path the blood was taking--upward to his fingertips, toward--
He let her go. Fell back without even noticing he was moving. Standing, but barely, just barely. Bones felt like runny Jello, hardly recognizable as those things that were supposed to hold him up. His eyelids worked furiously to blink away the fuzzy scarlets dots, stuck to his vision like Velcro. Logan swallowed convulsively. He reminded himself that he was strong; he was The Wolverine; he didn't do pussy shit like faint.
The sensation faded slowly. The pain clung soggily to his nerves and refused to be wiped away by his healing factor or his sense of manly integrity. There was blood in his mouth, which he gulped down rather than spit. Cuts that took their time to re-knit themselves, on the inside of his cheeks. Lingering weakness like--no, he had no analogy for this. Nothing was comparable.
The girl was on the floor, her arms over her head. A student in a tornado drill. A devout practitioner worshiping some obscure god. He thought she was unconscious, but she gave a low whimper, a shudder. Logan bent down to pick her up, then reconsidered. (Not-so-dull pain in his head that had planted it's flag and seemed determined to live there forever).
He dove his hands into his jacket's pockets. You can always count on murderers and motorcyclists to keep a pair of gloves handy. Logan slipped them on and, just in case, grabbed up the rumpled quilt from the couch. He draped it over her huddled form (he wobbled, regained his balance at the last moment) and gathered her into an unsteady cradle. The thick fabric contained her struggles--fortunately, because otherwise he might have dropped her. Her pink little mouth moved with a string of untranslatable half-syllables, spread out amongst whimpers and hitching breaths. Her voice was soft now, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Logan sat down with her heavily, the couch's thick leather pressing against the back of his neck. Sweat making the rubbery cloth squeak.
He stared at the black screen of the TV, at the wall, at nothing. Letting time dribble away as he thought, or tried to think. Girl-weight on his lap, in his arms. Heavier than a boulder, then less so, then a pressure that was next to nothing as his strength decided reluctantly to come home. Breathing still took a bit more effort than it should. No particular urge to get up, to do anything but watch the spots disappear.
"Jesus," he muttered.
The quilt wasn't wrapped tightly. Logan could see the dip of her collar bone, the little half-moons of her her nipples under her shirt--pink, with a pair of glittery ballet slippers--the line of skin where the shirt had bunched up. He was thankful, suddenly, for his preference of layered clothing.
The girl wriggled, her still too-thin hip bone poking into his stomach, despite the numerous fabrics. Her on his thighs, her against his chest, squirming. Thoughts he shouldn't, couldn't possibly be having. Not now.
She opened her eyes and stared at him with a distress he couldn't diminish with promises of safety. And Logan pushed those other ideas back, far enough to be deniable.
A fat tear pushed it's way over her lower lid, fell halfway down her cheek and lingered there, by her nose. Logan shifted, freed one of his hands. He wiped the salty drop away. The girl flinched.
"Don't--"
"It's okay."
"They're so loud", she whimpered up at him, with a foggy beseeching in her face.
"I know," he told her, though of course he didn't. "I know, Darlin'."
The girl gave up eventually, hiccuped herself to stillness. While she dozed off--fitfully-- Logan continued to gaze down at her. Deep in a rare sort of contemplation, though they had very little time to waste. He had wanted to be out of here by noon, even before the new problem of the dead body downstairs. Logan wasn't too worried about that; the police probably wouldn't arrive for hours--would only be called when the residents grew tired of stepping through blood. But you could never be too careful, even in a place like this.
He sat until the heated red of her cheeks dulled to a softer pigment, until her eyelids stopped fluttering in an attempt to wake. Waiting. Deep, slow breaths. Considering. (Not how he had known and held many women more beautiful than the girl, but none so...so...something. Well, it didn't matter. He wasn't thinking it anyway.) He loosened the cover a bit more--to make her more comfortable, he told himself, to check those raw contusions on her arm.
But no such bruises could be found. Creamy, smooth flesh, with not even the smallest blemish to mar it. The limb--and the rest of her, Logan noted belatedly, with no small jolt of shock--appeared healthier than it had in weeks.
Slowly, with an irresistible curiosity--the kind that makes cats paw at knives and sniff the insides of washing machines--he brought his gloved hand to his mouth. He tugged it up and off with his teeth. The need to know overpowering all better judgement, all hesitance, Logan touched her. Ran his fingertips down from the curved line of her armpit to the blue veins of the girl's wrist. And he felt--
Nothing. Nothing but the wet silk of her skin.
But as he was about to grunt, about to begin a search for other rationalizations for the bizarre morning, there it was. A tickle, then a sharp, static, pull.
He took his hand away. Swallowed.
So, he thought, with an understated bluntness akin to a huh.
So. She's a mutant too.
:::::::::::::::::::
Logan put her in the pickup, closed the side door with a grunt and a tired sigh. Finally.
Retrieving their clothes and fetching the pickup from the parking garage had never seemed such time consuming chores to him before. But leaving her when he knew she was a flight risk made them torture.
After an inestimable time spent agonizing, Logan had locked her in the bedroom. Pushed the couch in front of the door and spent every second outside the tenement worrying that someone might come in and...
He told himself that trapping her, scaring her a little bit more was less important than keeping her safe. And a half hour later, when he found her in the same position on his bed, the sandwich he'd made for her just-in-case beside her untouched--Logan told himself that guilt wasn't necessary.
He'd brought her downstairs, tried to keep her quiet as he led (then carried) her through the third floor hall, around the corpse where rats were already swarming, a hideous, hairy blanket. She'd pushed her face against his jacket hard enough to give herself a bloody lip. He glowered at everyone who dared to be present, growled when anyone looked their way. All while telling the girl they were going to a good place, somewhere she'd be taken care of, it was okay, it was okay, stop crying, it was okay....
It was a different morning than the one he'd expected when he was laying there beside her. Different than what he'd prepared for as he made her breakfast. Now he was itching for a beer and a few hours of peace, his old life, just a little testosterone-packed indifference. Problems pushed into someone else's infinitely more capable hands.
Logan settled for a cigar--chewing the end of it because smoke would bother her. The cold drizzle outside prevented him from rolling down the window. He didn't want her to get sick.
The lights of the city were icy, more blue that night than yellow. A dim sky and the constant glimmer of neon signs. Grey slush on the roads, rainbows made by spilled gasoline and street lamps. Shine on the windows of buildings, falsely promising warmth within, this place has nothing to conceal. All but the most drunk and desperate would trust that the reflection of the moon on a skyscraper, forget that everything was hidden here; windows that weren't worth tinting were covered in bedsheets or tinfoil.
Yet these were the lights the girl stared at as they left the world she'd been born into. Her eyes were pinned on them, and did not turn to Logan for a long, long time.
.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank all of those who shared your thoughts on the previous chapters/the format of this story. You're support is overwhelming; you're kind words are what I think of every time I have a bad day. It means the world to me.
By (quite overwhelming) majority of vote, Long-Fic wins over Series. I'm honestly a little relieved, if only because I couldn't think of a good title for the "sequel".
I'm sorry that this is late again (perhaps I should start promising updates every two weeks, so that when they're 'earlier' ya'll are pleasantly surprised), and sorry that this chapter is shorter. There were two other scenes, but I decided to hold those until I could get them right. But, after four revisions, I'm actually happy with how this one turned out.
This chapter is dedicated to the resident where I work, who got away with stealing my cookie because she hissed, "I need sustenance!" ; to Chinese food and to Wanderlust, for that 'haiku' comment.
By (quite overwhelming) majority of vote, Long-Fic wins over Series. I'm honestly a little relieved, if only because I couldn't think of a good title for the "sequel".
I'm sorry that this is late again (perhaps I should start promising updates every two weeks, so that when they're 'earlier' ya'll are pleasantly surprised), and sorry that this chapter is shorter. There were two other scenes, but I decided to hold those until I could get them right. But, after four revisions, I'm actually happy with how this one turned out.
This chapter is dedicated to the resident where I work, who got away with stealing my cookie because she hissed, "I need sustenance!" ; to Chinese food and to Wanderlust, for that 'haiku' comment.
Chapter End Notes:
Thank you, thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Please have a wonderful evening and drive home safe--and don't forget to tip your waitress. You'll find the exit right below, through that door that says "Review".