The banging on the door had him up on his feet, claws ready, before he was even fully awake. “Housekeeping!” a way-too-chipper voice called out. Christ.
“Come back later,” Logan barked, listening carefully until the cart rumbled on. When he turned around Marie was already sitting up on the edge of the bed, facing away from him, shyly slipping out of the remains of her bra and buttoning her shirt up over her bare chest. She seemed to be at a loss once she hit the buttons he had ripped off and stopped, looking down, the fall of her hair hiding her face.
Logan regarded her uncertainly. Looking at the curve of her spine and the delicate planes of her shoulder blades under the thin shirt, he realized for the first time just how frail and vulnerable she really was. He started to reach out to touch her, and then pulled his hand back. “You -- you mad at me, darlin’?” She shook her head, but still wouldn’t meet his eyes.
He felt suddenly large and out of place, not sure what he could do to make things better. “Regrets?” he asked gruffly. She nodded her head, closing her eyes to hide the gleam of tears, and he felt a coldness spreading inside his chest. She may not blame him, but she hadn’t wanted to be with someone like him. He sat down beside her and looked down at his own hands awkwardly. “I’m sorry baby,” he said. “I shouldnt’a -- I shoulda known you wouldn’ta wanted...”
She hung her head more. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, so softly he could barely make it out. Logan interrupted his ramblings, confused.
“What are you sorry for, darlin’?”
She looked down at her feet again, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I scratched you,” she said ruefully. “I rubbed against you like a cat in heat. I asked you -- begged you -- for...things, and I didn’t give you anything in return. It’s...embarrassing.”
Logan’s eyes snapped to hers. Christ, is that all? She was just embarrassed? He gathered her up into his lap. “Hey, don’t do that,” he said, wishing he were someone for whom reassuring words came easily. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. You were beautiful.” She looked down again, and he tipped her chin up, his hazel eyes honest and clear. “I’m serious.”
It was more than that, though. He could feel the tension in her body. He hadn’t realized how naturally in the past she would just relax into him when he was close to her, but now he felt a fine trembling in her muscles, as if she were suppressing the urge to spring free of his grasp. He slackened his arms a bit and sure enough she was up, carefully keeping her back to him, her spine stiff but her head bowed.
“I really need a shower,” she said, and he could hear her efforts to keep her voice steady, and how much she failed to do so. “Would you be up for getting us some new clothes?” Logan didn’t need his heightened senses to know that as much as she might want a change of clothes, what she wanted most was to have some time away from him. The coldness was back in his chest.
She didn’t even wait for his rumbled answer before she was in the bathroom, turning the shower on. He reached down and picked up her torn bra, telling himself he needed it for the size, but knowing the animal deep inside him just wanted something that smelled like her to hold on to. He was losing her, and he didn’t know exactly why.
Any other man wouldn’t have even heard her muffled sobs or smelled the salt of her tears underneath the sound of the shower and the flowery smell of the cheap hotel soap, but he wasn’t any other man. The sound and scent of her sorrow followed him as he stepped outside and shut the hotel door softly behind him.
Marie let the hot water wash over her, and the sobs shake her body. She knew that Logan was concerned, and that she was pushing him away, but she couldn’t help it. She felt like a little more kindness right now would make her shatter. The wall in her head seemed tissue-thin, and behind it Sabretooth scrabbled and growled.
She pressed her cheek against the cool tile of the shower wall, trying to ground herself in the real world. She felt him throw the hulking form of his consciousness against the flimsy barrier as his snarled words snaked through her mind. Scream for me, Marie. I’m going to make you scream.
Logan returned with clothes and supplies for them both, and a good stock of food and water. Marie continued to avoid his eyes, getting dressed in the bathroom while he set out a breakfast for her. When he got out of his shower, emerging from the bathroom steamy and ruffled but dressed as well, she had barely picked at her meal. He thought about pressing her for answers. He thought about kissing her senseless. “Let’s hit the road,” is all he said.
For lack of another way to help her, Logan decided to get as much distance as he could between them and what was hopefully Sabretooth’s rotting corpse. They drove west and south, the empty highways lined with gold and green fields, hypnotic in their unceasing sameness. In the warm close confines of the car, Logan found himself acutely attuned to the woman beside him.
She sat with her head turned away from him, staring blankly at the fields outside her window. He clenched his jaw hard around the question he most wanted answered but could not bring himself to ask. Who broke you, honey? Was it Sabretooth -- or was it me? Instead he found himself gauging her every reaction -- trying to read her emotion in her scent, the hitch of her breathing, the minute fluctuations of her temperature. He felt as though if he closed his eyes and concentrated he would be able to see the pattern of electrical impulses in her brain, waves and starbursts of ice blue and white and green like the Northern lights. His body was tense with the impulse to do something, fight something, take some action to make it better.
Finally, he could stand it no longer. He heard his voice, low and pressured, harsher than he had intended it to sound. “Are you sorry I touched you?” That seemed to shock her out of her daze.
“No!” she said, her eyes wide, and he knew her surprise was genuine. She turned her head away and swallowed. “I’m sorry I let you think that for even a minute. That’s not what’s going on. I’ve messed things up so badly. I wish I could explain to you...”
“Just try,” he growled. “Anything you can say to me will be better than what I’m imagining is going on in your head.”
Marie shook her head as if to clear it. “Did you know I grew up in Mississippi?” she said, seemingly out of nowhere. Logan shook his head. “My parents were really strict, really religious. I was an only child, and I was pretty lonely. I guess I didn’t really know that it could be any other way until I got older. I saw other parents hugging and kissing their children, or each other. It was never like that in my family. We never touched. I kept dreamin' of the day when I would break out of that cold house. It was going to be like it was in movies. I would find someone, and fall in love, and hug and kiss and hold on to him, and I’d never be lonely again.”
She seemed to be talking more to herself now, her voice slow and meditative, her drawl coming to the forefront as her mind turned back to the past. “David was the first boy to show an interest in me. Just a neighbor boy, but I thought he was the answer to all my dreams. I would tell him that I was goin’ to run away, up to Alaska, but really I was hopin’ that he’d say he’d run with me. And then one day, he kissed me, and that was it. My skin sucked him in, and put him in a coma. And nothin’ was ever the same again. Everythin' I thought would get better -- it just got worse. I was never alone in my head again, but that was the only place. My parents kicked me out the next week. I was sixteen. I was on the streets for almost a year before the lab got me.”
Logan was seeing it all too clearly -- Marie, but younger, more vulnerable, confused, friendless. He thought of that young girl in a lab and his claws burned in his arms, helpless fury gathering in his chest. Marie’s voice was still dreamy as she continued, though.
“The lab was -- well, you know what the lab was. They were too scared of my skin to risk raping me outright, but they still made me do things. With my hands, with my mouth.” Logan felt the rumbling in his chest and suppressed the growl before it could become a roar.
“They would make me watch them, or tie me down and touch me, their squeaky gloved hands everywhere. I got really good at just disconnecting myself from it. It’s hard to describe, but I would just go away for awhile. The one thing I couldn’t block out, though, was this voice in my head. Not one of the people they made me take in -- it was my voice, but different. It was Rogue. And she would talk to me. She wasn’t mean, she was just brutally honest. She would tell me the things Marie was trying hard not to know. And what she’d tell me was that this was it -- I was gonna die in that lab. Once they got all they needed from me they were gonna kill me. And this was the only kind of touch I was ever gonna know.”
Logan pulled to the side of the road, and cut the engine. He reached out -- slowly, like he was gentling a wild animal -- and smoothed her hair, and Marie shuddered and leaned into him. He closed his eyes in relief, gathering her in against his body. “I didn’t tell you this for sympathy, or anything,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt, her breath heating his skin through the fabric. “When the X-Men got me out of the lab, it was a long time spent putting my head back together, and then getting control of my skin. Once I had it, I thought about trying to...be with someone, but it just seemed easier not to try. I guess what I’m saying, is that I never thought I’d be able to touch someone, or have them touch me, like we did last night. You gave that to me, and it was really important. I could never regret it. Never.”
Logan smoothed her hair again, taking comfort in the feel and scent of her against him. “Then what is it, baby?” he asked. “This morning -- it seemed like you couldn’t stand to be around me.”
She sat up, wiping her eyes, and nodded to him to start driving again. She looked out the window again, gathering her thoughts and her courage. “Taking someone into my mind -- it’s always hard,” she said. “The others I’ve taken in -- they were mostly terrified, and I thought it was the worst thing ever, to have their terror inside me. Their thoughts, and memories -- even their likes and dislikes -- I didn’t want them, but they didn’t try to destroy me. Sabretooth was different.”
She took another deep breath, and he sensed that fine trembling start in her body, as if her slim frame was not strong enough to contain the emotion inside it. “He was a monster,” she said flatly. “He liked to hurt women. Not just hurt them, even.” She paused, and the trembling increased. “He drank in their screams. He licked up their pain. He loved it. And when I remember it, so do I.”
Finally, the sobs broke through. Logan reached out for her, but she shied away. “I don’t know what to do,” she managed. “Last night -- when I scratched you, and taunted you -- that was me, but that was him also. I wanted you, and he wanted to hurt you, and somehow we were all mixed up. You helped me separate us again, but I don’t know how long it will last. He’s strong, and he’s still with me, just waiting for a moment of weakness. And I don’t want him to be part of me, but I especially don’t want him to be a part of us. The things he likes to do -- and that I can like them too, remembering -- it makes me sick and ashamed. And I guess I didn’t want you to know that I have this monster inside me. I just wanted to run away and hide from you, so that you couldn’t see what I’ve turned into. But there’s nowhere to go, and I don’t want to leave. I don’t know what to do. I’m so messed up.”
She curled up in her seat, pulling her head to her knees and folding her body over the regret and shame twisting her belly. Logan felt the tension rising in his body. He was used to facing problems with action, with fists or claws or the burn of his muscles. He didn’t know how to help Marie with this, couldn’t fight the battle in her head for her.
He reached out again, running a warm hand across the nape of her neck and down her back, trying to soothe in the only way he knew how. He watched his hand moving over her body with a gentleness that was unfamiliar even to him.
He drove on, eyes flicking between her and the road, thinking about what she had confessed. He had his own instincts, and at the heart of them was a rule he had never had to articulate, even to himself. The natural survival instinct of a predator. Only show your true self to those who won’t live to tell the tale. Even if telling her would help her, and not just cause her to turn away from him in disgust, he didn’t even know how to go about it. As his eyes assessed her for the hundredth time, though, he knew he had to try.
“I don’t know what your mutation is like for you, Marie,” he said. “But I know what mine is like for me. If there’s anyone who knows what it’s like to live with a monster inside them, it’s me. I’ve spent more hours than I can count wondering who put these blades in my hands, and how they did it. What I’ve never spent even a second wondering, though, is why.”
He struggled for the words, clenching his fists on the steering wheel until it creaked ominously. “I know why they picked me, and it wasn’t just for my healing. They picked me because deep down I’m an animal. A killer. The fighting, and the fucking, it’s just a shallow substitute for what the thing inside me really craves. The crunch of bone, and the spill of blood. Slicing these claws through flesh, and hearing their screams. That’s what feeds what’s inside me. That’s what I am.”
Marie raised her head, her eyes deep and unreadable. “That may be true, but that’s not all of you.”
He smiled bitterly. “When I first woke up from the drugs, you said that I would never hurt you," he said. "You seemed so damn sure. You have no idea.”
Now she reached out for him, her hand covering his on the steering wheel. “I was sure then, and I’m sure now. Whatever you may also be, you’re still the man I’ve gotten to know. That part of you is real, it’s not just a disguise for the other.”
Logan had no idea why hearing her say those words suddenly meant everything to him. “If that’s true, Marie,” he said, “Then I know that you can still be yourself even with Sabretooth inside you. You might not be able to unknow the things that you got from him, but you can decide if they are going to destroy you or not. And we’ll get you any help that you need.”
Marie looked bleakly at the gathering dusk outside. “I don’t know what will help me,” she said. Logan sighed, and rolled his shoulders. Here was something else that went completely against his instincts, trusting someone else. But he’d do it for her.
“I think it’s time we contact this Professor of yours,” he said.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
What's that you say? All I want for Christmas is a big pile of angst? Okay, here ya go. ;-)
A few warnings. There's a brief allusion to nonconsensual stuff during Marie's time in the lab, probably not a surprise with the history I've established for her, but I figured I'd warn anyway.
Also, I know some people are big Sabretooth/Victor Creed fans. I've seen the Origins movie, but honestly I don't remember much except that he and Logan are brothers and Ryan Reynolds is hotter than I remembered. In this story, Sabretooth is not a good guy, so sorry about that. But given that I cut off his head and set him on fire in the last chapter, maybe there's not much more I can do to piss off Victor Creed fans anyway. ;-)
That's it for the warnings. This chapter is mostly just talking, but you can tell me if it works or not. Reviews, good and bad, are greatly appreciated. I'll try my best to stop arguing with the bad ones. ;-) Oops, forgot my dedications. This one is for Shuttlelauncher, hopefully posting this on Christmas Eve means she won't be late for work tomorrow. Thanks also to nyclover, Phoenix, and Linda and her muse. And as always, to my writing idols, RoseSumner and sahara.
A few warnings. There's a brief allusion to nonconsensual stuff during Marie's time in the lab, probably not a surprise with the history I've established for her, but I figured I'd warn anyway.
Also, I know some people are big Sabretooth/Victor Creed fans. I've seen the Origins movie, but honestly I don't remember much except that he and Logan are brothers and Ryan Reynolds is hotter than I remembered. In this story, Sabretooth is not a good guy, so sorry about that. But given that I cut off his head and set him on fire in the last chapter, maybe there's not much more I can do to piss off Victor Creed fans anyway. ;-)
That's it for the warnings. This chapter is mostly just talking, but you can tell me if it works or not. Reviews, good and bad, are greatly appreciated. I'll try my best to stop arguing with the bad ones. ;-) Oops, forgot my dedications. This one is for Shuttlelauncher, hopefully posting this on Christmas Eve means she won't be late for work tomorrow. Thanks also to nyclover, Phoenix, and Linda and her muse. And as always, to my writing idols, RoseSumner and sahara.