We're only taking turns holding this world
It's how it's always been, when you're older you will understand
The Fray
Winter 2010
Logan takes the chair Wraith, seated at a small table, kicks out for him. As they leave, the two Marines who led him in shut the door on the bass echoing in from the packed bar. Wraith nudges a Stout toward Logan, picking up his own to drink.
“Little bold, wouldn’t you say? Sellin’ America’s most wanted mutant right under the noses of a bunch of drunk patriots.” Logan props his forearms on the edge of the table. “I make a fuss, how many of your friends out there would turn on you?”
Marie was actually the one to point out this was a military bar, on the phone to Storm. The kid refused to speak to him for the entire five-hour stakeout. It’s been a long damn time since being alone with his thoughts hasn’t left Logan irritable. He even tried to pick a fight with her, but she didn’t bite, content to stay in the car to hang on every word over surveillance.
Wraith puts down his beer as Logan picks up his. “Nothin’ drains the red, white, and blue out of a man faster than a whole lot of green. How much did the goddess authorize?”
“A whole lot. But you’re not gettin’ a cent. Now, you agreed to do a job out of gratitude to a dead man it sounds like you respected. That money sees to it that a lot of mutant kids don’t grow up to be like us. Assassins.”
“Naw, just X-Men.” Wraith props his feet up. “Is it the black leather that turns you into a hero? Or was it Charles pattin’ you on the head, tellin’ you, ‘Good boy’? Didn’t it piss you off, what I said about the Yashida mission? He told me you were gonna be there. You had to be there. You’re the only person on this continent the Yashida Clan would’ve let walk away from that kind of insult. He lied to you.”
Logan takes a long gulp of beer, waiting for Wraith to get around to telling him why.
Seeing that he’s not going to get a rise out of him, Wraith laughs. “So it’s trust, then. You trusted Charles. Logan. Big, bad rogue mercenary. Trustin’ somebody.” He toasts him with a dip of his bottle. “I have truly lived to see everything.”
“You said somebody wanted to bring me in, and Xavier wouldn’t let ‘em. Same people who’ve got you wearin’ that wire?” He can see the end of it sticking out of the lapel of Wraith’s sheepskin jacket.
Half-teleporting, he lunges at Logan over the table. The two of them go down as the chair splinters under their weight. Logan’s claws shoot out, impaling Wraith’s shoulder.
Shouting in pain, Wraith teleports off him, leaving Logan with a sliced wire wrapped around one claw and not a clue. “What happened to no violent bullshit?”
In the corner of the room, Wraith groans as he eases his jacket off his shoulder. “Saw an opportunity to get that wire off without them gettin’ suspicious.”
“Won’t they come bargin’ in any second now it’s dead?”
“If you were that high on their priority list, you wouldn’t be talkin’ to me right now.”
Logan kicks aside the broken chair and takes Wraith’s. “’Their,’ ’them,’ ‘they’ – The Man from fuckin’ UNCLE?”
“You’re not far off. Try SHIELD,” Wraith says. He pokes three fingers through the holes in his jacket. “Ah, hell. Stacy’s never gonna let me hear the end of this.”
There’s blood on the lining, but not nearly what there should be. “You ain’t just a teleport.”
Wraith winces as he rolls his shoulder. “Give it five minutes, and it’ll better than new. A lot of us got ‘upgraded’ with your healing factor. Brought me back from the brink of death once. I’d thank you, but it was sorta your fault I got killed in the first place. Victor Creed. You’re downright fortunate to have no memory of that sick son-of-bitch.”
‘Victor Creed’ wasn’t in the dossier, but there’s something loathsome about the name. Something like the metallic stink of sweat, blood, and fear. Logan has to slam down on a rush of garbled memories that normally only torment him in his sleep.
He chooses a different line of questioning. “SHIELD. I take it it’s a military thing?”
“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, these days. Stood for somethin’-somethin’-Espionage back when you used to loan yourself out to ‘em.”
“You tellin’ me I was a spy, too?”
“No. I’m tellin’ you were their favorite spy. And when you walked, come to find out after you disappeared you gave them my name.” Wraith salutes him, his middle finger coming off the brim of his hat. “Thank you, Cpt. Logan, sir, for eighteen motherfuckin’ years of bein’ Fury’s bitch. No sick leave, neither.”
“If you hate me so damn much, why aren’t you still wearin’ that wire?”
“’Cause I did respect Charles Xavier. He couldn’t do much for me, in the end, but he was a good man. He vouched for you, and he kept SHIELD from knockin’ at his door after you showed up at the White House. Now he’s dead, figure you at least got the right to know who’s comin’ for ya.”
Logan grimaces. “I’ll tell ‘em to take a hike. What’s the big fat deal?”
“Oh.” Wraith laughs. “Oh, you’ll just tell Col. Nick Fury to ‘take a hike’ and go on your merry way. I see. And when SHIELD goes after the goddess you been fuckin’ or maybe that sweet little thing follows you around, are you gonna stay to see that? ‘Cause the old you would’ve walked away without a look back. You always had women. Easy enough to trade ‘em out.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Logan snarls, too well aware Marie must’ve heard that.
“All right. So you’ll watch ‘em suffer. What d’you think this Magneto thing is? It’s a trap. SHIELD wants dirt on the X-Men. They already tried to catch y’all with your pants down at Thanksgiving, lettin’ some two-bit terrorists think they’d escaped, but you won out. Now the plan’s Magneto. Few false allegations, threaten to shut down the school, bam. They own you and the X-Men.”
“Fantastic.” The very last two things Logan can stomach more of – bullshit political maneuvers and people who knew him when. “Thanks for tellin’ me. Now what do we do about it?”
“We don’t do a damn thing. You keep Charles’ name clean by goin’ quiet to Fury, and I walk free. If that ain’t good enough for you…” Wraith motions that he’s open for Logan to say so.
By the end of their brawl, Logan’s eyes are stinging, his nose throbbing because he just slammed it into a wall. Not the one he and Wraith wrestled through on a teleport. This wall is air made solid by the overpowering scent of lust. And Marie.
With Stacy X. On top of the bar. All but holding Marie up as the two of them grind to the stereo’s thudding beat, hands on each other’s thighs. Stacy gathers Marie’s hair into an old man knit cap, the better to lick salt off her neck for her shot. Marie’s head goes limp, eyes closed, mouth open for more. Stacy X smiles that Cheshire leer, no reason in the world not to swoop in and take what she wants where it’s offered.
No good damn deed goes unpunished.
Heightened senses more dazed with pheromones than the wolf-whistling jackasses pushing closer to the bar, minutes from whipping their dicks out – Logan has to watch.
He barely notices getting to his feet, or Wraith teleporting to the front. Ringing ears make it hard to concentrate on anything but the little noises Marie’s making as she licks her way across Stacy X’s collarbone. Wraith remarks something about the heat being way too thick in here. The reply he hears plain enough: “I was celebratin’ our release, baby. I thought you’d like her, too.”
Surging forward, hands splayed wide to keep in the instinct to gouge some eyes out, Logan shoves past the slack-jawed sacks of testosterone standing between him and Marie.
“Ease up on her,” Wraith is saying. “She’ll OD.”
Stacy X grabs a handful of ass, making Marie shriek a laugh and Logan about chip a molar. “Who says no to a Southern belle?” She cradles Marie’s face against her shoulder, listening to whatever Marie is slurring. Stacy X finds him in crowd. Laughs at his face. “Oh, that’s just sad.”
The pressure in the bar thins out, and Logan can almost breathe again. “The hell you mean OD?” he growls at Wraith, knocking aside a tank of a guy swaying on his feet. “You all right, kid?”
“She’ll be fine, just get her some fresh air.” Wraith wisely turns his back on Marie shimmying up his woman. “Maybe hose her down.”
Logan smacks the bar, too on edge to break her out of Stacy X’s trance gentle. “Rogue!”
Marie turns with her fingers locked above Stacy X’s head and stamps her heel. “Wolverine!” A stoned-looking grin spreads across her face. “I don’t know why you’re yellin’. I feel great.”
“Your ‘kid’ can handle it.” Stacy X’s hand, growing scales, snakes down Marie’s midriff, into the band of her skirt. “It’s you who can’t, hero.”
Logan yanks Marie over his shoulder and grabs Wraith by the collar in the same motion. “SHIELD can stick Magneto in a hole and let him rot, I don’t give two shits. But they try to sabotage the X-Men again, tell ‘em they better not expect me to play nice.”
Wraith tips his hat. “There’s the old Logan.” To Marie he says, “Take care, sweetheart,” his voice chalk full of pity.
Logan resists the urge to ram his fist in Wraith’s face, striding toward the exit instead.
“’Bye, Stacy,” Marie calls out, squirming down his torso until she’s got her knees locked around his waist. “Hi, Logan.”
When she kisses him, Logan clamps a hand on the back of her head and mashes their faces together so hard their teeth click. It’s supposed to be too rough. Shock her. Marie digs her fingers into his hair and makes a sound like she’ll never let go.
Logan drops her to her feet and uses her elbow to march her the rest of the way to the door. The disgust on the bouncer’s face makes Logan see red, but it has Marie in stitches.
“Guarantee what he thinks ain’t flatterin’ to you either, little girl, so quit laughin’,” he barks. He hauls her out the door and around to the open alley beside the building, following the awning to keep her out of the freezing rain.
Marie leans into his vice-grip. “’Little girl,’ my sweet ass. I told the bouncer I was twenty-three and he believed me, but he wouldn’t let me in without ID.” She lays her accent on real thick. “So I s’plained how you was my brother just back from I-raq, and our momma, bless her cancer-stricken soul, sent me out to bring you home ‘fore you did somethin’ you’d regret.” He thinks that’s even less funny, but that doesn’t stop her from yucking it up.
“You were supposed to stay in the car, not make a damn spectacle of yourself.” He refuses look back at her as he drags her along, until her reply knocks him for a loop.
“I saw a girl I liked.” She mimics Stacy X’s leer. “Surprised? Do you know how I used to stare at Dr. Grey, mortified by all the things I couldn’t help wanting to do to my science teacher? You can pretend to be a back-achin’ Puritan, but in my head you and sex were never far apart.”
Logan stops. Listens to pure rainwater rushing through the gutter. To Marie, her heart rate still jacked up on pheromones, shuddering and panting. “Jesus Christ.” As if giving her his nightmares wasn’t punishment enough. How many more ways does the girl he swore he’d take care of have to pay for letting him be her half-assed savior? “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry!” She plasters herself to his back, her hands stroking down his chest to skim the tight front of his jeans.
Her need meets his tension, and he snaps.
Two choices. Take her against the wall or throw her on the pavement. He does the second, but he has to see the shock of hurt go off behind her eyes anyway.
She lays on her side, blood from her elbow mixing with dirty water in a pothole. Curling in on herself, her hair falls with the cap and hides her face. Rain beats on her bowed head.
He steps out from under the awning, waiting until the cold water has soaked him down, washed her scent, before he speaks. “I don’t know what you’re looking to prove. But I won’t use you like that.”
She puts her chin on one of her skinned knees, her pale legs reflecting the red and blue from a neon sign. “You use me, Logan. All that adoration.” She lifts her bitter smile. “You needed it, so I’m glad it helped you. But I can’t…act for you. I-I tried, but can’t. I’ve been through what I’ve been through, and I feel – ” Her wet eyes slant down. “The way everybody always knew I felt.” Suddenly, she’s all but glaring, straight at him. “So maybe I am trying to prove something. Like how it’s not fair that you use me, but I’m not allowed to use you right back.”
Marie’s crying, and Logan wants to put his claws through his chest again. He looks at her, and she’s so young, hugging her shivering body. On her still face he sees something of the woman he’ll be damn lucky to know, if he doesn’t fuck her up too much in the mean time.
But the passing of years is a slow build and it weighs on him. He’s only known her eight months.
It takes two tries before he opens his mouth and finds his voice. “What the hell can I do?”
“You could trust me.”
“What d’you mean? I trust you. Kid, I trust you.”
She shuts her eyes on her tears and swallows them hard. When she opens her eyes again, there’s nothing but determination in her expression.
“Then give me the benefit of the doubt.” Marie holds out her hand and lets him help her to her feet, picking up the cap as she does. “This is Magneto’s.” She shows him where ‘EL’ is stitched in the lining. “I saw Stacy with it, so I followed her inside since you weren’t getting anywhere with Wraith. I didn’t know…” Her fingers slide against Logan’s palm as she steps back. “What she’d do to me.” Not a minute ago, Marie was burning a hole through him with eyes that now she can’t lift higher than her feet.
“Hey. Her mutation is powerful. Don’t go blaming yourself.” What he really means is, Don’t go blaming me.
Marie accepts that copout with a shrug. “While Stacy was working the bartender for free shots, I took this from her purse.” Out of her bra comes a damp piece of paper ripped from a day planner. On it is an address and a Magneto-sized list of demands written in runny cursive.
“This is good work kid,” he says, hating that he has to disappoint her. “Real good. But it’s the government that’s got Magneto. If we take him, they’re gonna trump up some conspiracy.”
“It might not matter to you if Erik never sees the inside of a courtroom, but it matters to me. The last time they brushed him under the rug, he made himself a martyr. Mutants need to know that he’s anything but. I say we hand him over to IMRI and let them tar and feather him like they’ve been wanting to since that poor girl died up on the Statue of Liberty.”
That’s all Logan needs to hear. “Okay.” Storm probably won’t like the risk, but to hell with it. This is the only thing Marie’s asked of him in weeks he has the slightest chance of not fucking up. He clings to it, a man drowning in the rain. “I’ll call McCoy, have him set it up. I’ll make it happen tonight.”
“Thank you,” Marie says.
Wrapping her into his jacket, Logan is struck by how much ground she’s willing to give just to keep him from losing any.