The Girl: Chapter Three
Logan surveyed the room grimly. Tables were overturned, clothes were strewn about, and blood dripped from nearly every surface. He nodded slowly. It was a job well done.
He had interrupted their card game; later Logan would find the ace of diamonds stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He'd managed to interrogate and kill six men at the same time in one hour, collect the addresses of twelve members who had previously been well hidden. He had obtained five new names (they offered many that Logan had already heard), and a bottle of Molson from their fridge--a lucky find. It wasn't a personal record, but well worth the thousand Xavier paid him per head.
When the last of the men's double chins had ceased to jiggle, Logan wiped off his arms and zipped his jacket over the bloodstains. He used their sink to clean his face, his neck, his hair. Controlled movements, slow. No need to hurry yet, no reason not to be calm. Strips of flesh--like tan, gooey shreds of tire--covered the floor. His footsteps made loud squelching sounds.
Yesterday he had cut the chains binding thirteen women and two seven year olds to rails in a warehouse. He had a list (unwritten, of course) of similar prisons to give to the Xmen when he returned. And Logan told himself, that makes up for this. It does. It does.
He played with the burners of their kitchen stove--gas, not electric,--placed four cans of cooking spray and one of butane and near the flames. Then Logan slipped out, discreetly and, more importantly, quickly.
It took a long time for the fire department to put out the flames.
Nobody in the tenement appeared to notice that he reeked of smoke and death--not that they would speak up if they had. If anything, it helped Logan to blend in with the other residents. Nevertheless, thoughts of a shower (and only that, he told himself) consumed him, made his strides quicker and longer. The smell wouldn't go away--not for him, not for months. But a lengthy scrubbing could make it bearable, could turn the night into something he could pretend to forget.
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The raised peaks of her shoulder blades touched the plaster behind her. She looked like the subject of an old portrait--a peasant in rags, plucked from the fields and made to stand for an eccentric artist's whim. Logan looked at her and saw a glow, clarity, a strange vividness of her frame and her eyes and that little v-shaped indent of her upper lip. It did not seem to fit inside the real world, or at least not anywhere that wasn't under special lights and protective guards 27/7. You could even pretend that that discolored, stained wallpaper was a deliberately abstract background. Swirls and bumps to compliment, direct the viewers focus to her.
God, he must have drunk alot more than he thought tonight. Why hadn't the alcohol worn off yet?
Logan swallowed, tested the adamantium in his jaw by clenching it as tight as he could.
The portrait stared at Logan with worried eyes and a lip that quivered. What kind of trick or bribe was this? Was he crazy? Was the food he held drugged? Was he going to beat her? Rape her? Worse? She'd known girls (plenty of them), girls raised on curse words instead of lullabies, girls who couldn't read but whose eyes had learned too much before they were six years old. Girls tempted into service simply because the pimp had offered them a meal--and they considered it a good deal.
Was it her turn?
Was it good or bad for her that this man had sought her out, instead of her fa--
"Goddammit, Kid. I don't have all fucking day. Just take it."
Hands as white and smooth as frozen milk accepted the burger.
It was wrapped in greasy wax paper that she would later lick clean of any crumbs, thick with onions and pickles. The burger sat heavily in her hands, appeared twice as large to her as it probably was. Anything is mouth-watering to the starved.
Eating that pizza (which had had no medically-induced side effects that she'd noticed, but you never knew) had been bad enough. It was dangerous to owe anybody anything--especially here. Hadn't she grown up with that knowledge? But....but it wasn't like she had asked for it. Right? And now here he was, with a second unprompted, unrequested meal. As terrifying as it was tempting.
But she was hungry.
God, she was so hungry.
And the man was just standing there. Large and grizzled and glaring. A threat even compared to everyone else here. Just looking at him provided answers to questions before anybody asked them: No, you could not run fast enough; No, you did not have a chance.
He stared at her as he had been doing for weeks now. Expression irritated but otherwise unreadable, eyes challenging and intense. He made he want to turn her head, curl up into a shielding ball. But she already knew that answer. No, that would not help.
The man did not walk away, seemed to be waiting with some strange expectation of her. She thought for a moment that he wanted her to open the wax paper now, here, and start eating--but that couldn't be right. He--he must be waiting for thanks.
Verbal or physical?
She looked at his angry jaw, the tight shoulders and tight arms that ended in tighter fists, just waiting to hit somebody. Her gaze fell to the floor and his boots, which were caked in some sort of black mud.
She was so hungry.
Three doors down a woman could be heard crying as she paid her dealer his fee. Money was not involved in the transaction.
"What do I have to do?"
A whisper, but at least her voice did not shake.
"Excuse me?"
"For this. What do you want?"
You're voice did not shake, she told herself. That's good. That's good.
Goddammit.
The girls words set loose a rage--or an emotion similar--that swirled up like a tornado with all of it's restraint. Logan could feel tendrils of horror and something else that he did not examine closely enough to call disappointment spinning, twisting inside him. It must have shown in his expression, because the girl flinched a little. What fucking right did she have to say stuff like that to him? To do things like that?
"Nothing," he snapped at her with disgust. "Jesus fucking Christ, Kid."
And as habit dictated, he stomped away from her and the musty hall. Back to his apartment where he would smoke and cuss and ask himself what right she had.
It was not a spark, not what Logan would remember as the thing that started it all.
It was merely another tumbling pebble before a landslide.
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"Here," he snapped at her. A bag of pretzels in the laundry room.
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"Here," he grumbled. A turkey sandwich in the staircase.
That morning, Logan had drowned a man in a drainage ditch.
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"Here," he grunted. An apple tossed to her on the stoop. Small and bruised, but the grocer had charged five dollars.
The girl was walking with a limp.
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"Here," Logan said. Another burger, another hall.
She might have smiled timidly at him. He didn't know, he didn't look back.
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"Here," he told the girl. Chicken strips and onion rings.
She said thank you, quietly.
--And that was it. That was the extent of their contact. There was certainly no reason for Logan to wake up one morning and think, you’re training her. Those words were meaningless. They made no sense at all.
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It was something else for Logan to ignore. A solution to the distracting presence of the girl, even better than money. Her hungry face no longer popped into his head at random; he didn't think about her skeletal soldiers while he was stalking members on his hit list. He could tell himself that he was helping enough, that it wasn't his job to take care of the brat. She had no right to expect anything else. His frustration was tampered down to something barely worth mention.
And if none of that was true, who was around to disagree?
He noticed, but did not acknowledge the improved tint of her skin.
He noticed, but did not acknowledge the healthier rhythm of her internal organs.
He noticed, but did not acknowledge that her eyes were brighter, that the girl did not seem unhappy when she saw him coming.
He noticed, but did not acknowledge that she became easier to find, sometimes appeared to be waiting for Logan and his odd gifts.
He noticed, but did not acknowledge when that waiting began to take place in the door outside his hall.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Alright, so my cat woke me up at six oclock this morning and I'm a little jittery from exhaustion and those two of coffee (which I have only recently discovered. I always thought it was disgusting, but I had never tried it with the heaps of sugar and cream that I use now. One more sip and I'll be bouncing off the walls, so bare with me.)
I'm so glad I managed to get this typed up this early. I have an hour before I'm supposed to meet a friend of mine for a long-planned shopping trip. (I get my first paycheck from my new job today! I'm so scared that something is going to go wrong, and I have no idea why. Like the bank will laugh and say, "What? Nine hours a day for two weeks and you expect to be paid?")
Credit goes to the person at Nanowrimo, who provided the first line of this chapter and got my pen moving on a Tuesday night. (There's always that one bastard day a week when the words Just Won't Come. Tuesdays are it for me.)
This chapter is dedicated to vanilla wafers, the people crazy enough to let me have coffe, Hugh Jackman video clips, inappropriatepictures and, as always, the reviewers and reviews that help keep me going. I'm running out of ways to say how much I appreciate you and your amazingly kind feedback.
Please enjoy!
I'm so glad I managed to get this typed up this early. I have an hour before I'm supposed to meet a friend of mine for a long-planned shopping trip. (I get my first paycheck from my new job today! I'm so scared that something is going to go wrong, and I have no idea why. Like the bank will laugh and say, "What? Nine hours a day for two weeks and you expect to be paid?")
Credit goes to the person at Nanowrimo, who provided the first line of this chapter and got my pen moving on a Tuesday night. (There's always that one bastard day a week when the words Just Won't Come. Tuesdays are it for me.)
This chapter is dedicated to vanilla wafers, the people crazy enough to let me have coffe, Hugh Jackman video clips, inappropriatepictures and, as always, the reviewers and reviews that help keep me going. I'm running out of ways to say how much I appreciate you and your amazingly kind feedback.
Please enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecofeecoffeecoffeecoffeecofffecoffee.....Oh, you're finished already? Sorry. My chapters have been rather short lately. I really hope you liked it. Thank you for reading, and if I may direct your eyes and your mouse to that great little button down below...it says review...yeah, that's it.