16: Clear as mud
Scott gritted his teeth. The man knew how to fight. He'd give him that. And all those years in the cut-throat business probably meant he had some tactical nous. He glowered, watching Wolverine strut the floor and bark orders to the team. His team. Didn't mean he had to fucking like it.
“No, yella, I want to see you roll. Strike, shift your weight, ROLL,” the hairy man was saying, “You don't stop, you don't change legs, you don't look at the ground and think about it. You ROLL!”
Jubilee, he noted absently, was about to blow a gasket. Steam coming out of her ears. Push her a little harder, Wolverine, he thought smugly. Deal with her then. We'll see what sort of teacher you are when your students mount an all-out revolt.
Rogue was holding up surprisingly well. She'd snapped a few times, raised an eyebrow at his tone, but she'd jumped when he said jump, and seemed more amused than annoyed. He'd never have believed it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Scott thought ruefully. But then, she'd also managed all of the ridiculous manoeuvres, nailing them with an aplomb that had left everyone gaping. And jealous, he admitted, as he rubbed his aching arm, trapped underneath him during a takedown gone badly wrong.
Nothing he'd been able to serve up had phased her, and her form had improved as they ran through exercise after exercise, testing her limits. Rogue had moved from tense, to focused, to actually having a smile on her beautiful face, and the Wolverine – unexpected, he had to admit. He thought an ego like that would be threatened, but instead, the guy seemed to glory in her proficiency, pushing her harder and faster until they were both breathing hard, then signalling an end with a low bow.
“Impressive work, Rogue,” he had said. “You're way ahead of the others. We'll need to train one on one – you'd just be wasting your time in this class.” Scott had opened his mouth to protest – the team needed to train as a team – but Wolverine pre-empted him. Again.
“Tactical stuff with the team, and I'll work up a physical element with your instructor so that you don't forget how to fight together. But anything else – you're way out of their league.” Bastard had actually smiled at that, a shit-eating grin that had actually made Jubilee sigh. Scott ground his teeth. Maybe she deserved to get her ass kicked.
“Hey! Wolverine, dude. My bruises have bruises, here! I need a break,” she announced, crumpling on the mat in a woebegone heap. He loomed over her, mouth twitching with annoyance. Tut, tut, tut, Scott thought triumphantly. Not the way to deal with an exhausted student.
And fuck it if he didn't take a long look at her, and decide to go easy on them.
“Catch your breath, yella, then run it through a couple more times before ya hit the showers. I want it perfect by next week, though, so ya all better practice,” he glared around the group.
“It's just three freaking combinations. Get Rogue to run you through them if you need to. But next Tuesday, I want to see every one of you do it first time, no hesitation. You can't win a friggin' fight if you are thinking about this stuff – your body just needs to know to do it. Automatic like.”
Scott desperately wanted to disagree with the man, wanted to speak up and correct him. But he had seen Rogue in a fight, dancing through it with a mindless abandon that was nonetheless horrifyingly effective. She kept her eye on the goal, and worked towards it with a ruthless efficiency that discarded all comers along the way. And her body twisted and spun in the black leather, and it was fucking beautiful to behold. Scary, but beautiful.
He was breathing hard, now, remembering the way she got. Remembering being bailed up in the Blackbird, once, after a mission that had gone spectacularly badly, and Rogue had been buzzing with something. She'd come up behind him after the others had left the plane, stroked her deadly fingers along his shoulder, and down his arm as she came around to slide into his lap.
“Oh, I so bet Red's gonna get lucky, real soon,” she had crooned, rocking herself against him. “Gotta say, I can't wait that long, and here you are and here I am,” and he was hard, now, and her fingers had traced him through the leather, the tantalising witch, “and since I'm an unprincipled slut and all, what say we take the edge off?”
He'd frozen then, or at least, the thinking part of him had. Payback. Jean and her patronising, holier than thou shtick. “Really, Rogue, we don't expect you to play the unprincipled slut ...” she'd sneered, managing to ignore the fact the younger woman had effectively neutralised the guards without anything more than a few slow smiles. He'd seen fury flare in her eyes, and had braced himself for a comeback, but they'd been on a mission. Rogue just gritted her teeth and glared. Jean had sneered some more, and Rogue must have decided then and there that she'd be guilty as charged, thank you very much. Anyone else would have seen it coming, but Jean protected herself too thoroughly from human emotions to expect this – and Jean didn't know, either. She couldn't know that her husband had a hard-on for Rogue that was rapidly taking him to the point of no return. Fuck up, give in, take what she was offering, and may the divorce courts be kind.
Even Rogue hadn't known. She'd expected him to turn her down, and her 'oh fuck' moment when he clutched at her hips and rocked her tightly against him – just one minute more before he pushed her away, just one minute – made him hate himself just that little bit more. But he still ran his hand up her back, and dragged her head back to bury his face in her breasts, and just breathe her in for a moment. Or two. He'd pushed her away with a smile, then, knowing she didn't really want this, and was thankful. He loved his wife, but Rogue was every dark dream he'd ever had, and resisting that, resisting her, was beyond him.
So he had to make sure he never had to. He had to push her far, far away, and erect a wall between them, and keep it cool and professional. He had started with the truth.
“No one thinks you're a slut, Rogue. Not even Jean. She just ...” he paused, the words refusing to come.
“Hates my guts? Thinks I'm a piece of dogshit on her shoe? Doesn't trust me?” Her mouth was sour, and eyes sad.
Truth, he reminded himself.
“Maybe a bit of all that. But you threaten her because she would like to be you. Uninhibited and free. But she can't, because she's Jean Grey ….”
“The whole destroy the world with a stray thought thing?”
“Yeah. She's scared of that, and sometimes, you … you don't seem scared of anything.”
A rueful half smile had crept over her face, and suddenly, she was heartbreakingly young. Maybe even as young as some of his students, he realised with a shock.
“Oh, I'm scared, alright. All the stuff normal people get scared about, that's normal for me, but … other stuff is hard.” She looked up at him, then, huge brown eyes apprehensive. “I'm scared of fucking up, Scott. You took me in, and gave me a home, and something worthwhile to do for people, and sometimes it even feels like a family here, and maybe one day I'll get that too … that's what scares me, Scott.”
“Being part of that. Feeling normal again. Forgetting that I'm toxic and untouchable and fucking dangerous to the people who love me.”
He'd pulled her into a hug, then, her heartbreak making it safe. He'd murmured comfort, and reassurance, and belonging, and from then on, she'd been happier. She'd relaxed, and smiled, and even laughed sometimes. She had become a part of their family, he told himself.
She had.
Even if the past seemed to be reaching out for her. Even if the lies were about to choke him.
“You're done for today. Outta here.” Scott saw the moment the class ceased for exist for the Wolverine, and his focus returned exclusively to Rogue. He didn't say a word, the bastard, but his heavy-lidded gaze was practically shouting the details of what he wanted to do to her, sliding over her legs and belly and breasts with an avarice he didn't even bother to conceal.
He expected Rogue to revolt, but instead, she held his gaze for a long moment, before wandering over to where she'd dumped her things at the beginning of the class. Slid her jacket on, then wove a long length of red silk about her neck, eyes returning to the new instructor as she did.
His mouth went dry at the electricity that crackled between them, but no one said a word.
Gooseflesh rose on the back of his neck. Here be secrets, his instincts shouted.
*
Logan stood in the centre of the room and took stock. Bed. Check. Fireplace. Check. A place to hang the punching bag, and enough room to spar. He thought for a moment of the old claw-foot tub at his cabin in the mountains, and the hours Marie used to spend in it, then shrugged. Shower would have to do. One more night in that hive and he might turn axe-murderer.
“Yeah, it's good, Charlie,” he thought towards the Professor, and then wondered about his range. Could they be lucky enough to escape the brain phone out here?
They. Vague alarm skittered across his nerve endings as he recognised his easy use of the word. Too easy. This hadn't been his intention, coming here.
He'd known she was here, for over a year now. He knew he wanted to see her, be sure she was OK. Hadn't expected this thing to erupt all over them. Yet, he was thinking of them as 'they'. And his own place. Why did he need that? This thing might only take a week. Month at most. Then he'd be gone.
Wouldn't he?
She'd want to stay. Even as the X-men fell down around her ears, she'd insist on being here. She was one of them, now. Where the fuck did that leave him – the assassin? The destroyer of mutant dreams? Ridiculously contemplating how much time he could steal with her before it all fell down around his ears, that's where.
Chuck's reply came loud and clear, dammit, urging him to pocket the key and consider the place his own.
Logan snorted and stomped out of the cottage. Work to do. Gotta focus on the work.
And what the fuck was in his eye?
*
“Yeah, it's good, Charlie.” Logan's mental shout jerked the Professor out of his struggle with his correspondence pile, which refused to get any smaller. Easy answers, how he loved them. The thought of anything about the Wolverine being easy made him sigh, and he hoped his fears weren't
tangible as he told the man to make himself at home.
He was pre-occupied with something emotionally challenging, Charles noted as he withdrew from his new colleague's consciousness. Something he was struggling with, searching for a path forward. He couldn't make out precisely what – those impressive mental walls might well have been topped with snarling guard dogs – but his thoughts gave off a general miasma of turbulence. Any other mutant, and Charles would have invited him to talk it through, to share the burden. But this was Wolverine, the notorious assassin, and Charles reminded himself sternly not to forget that.
For the umpteenth time that day, he reached for the anonymous envelope sitting at the bottom of his incoming mail. So few photographs, to spawn so many questions.
Two were obviously culled from security footage, grainy black and white, and curious camera angles. They were dated nearly a year apart, and even now, after looking at them long and hard, desperately hoping he was wrong, those dates still broke his heart.
4.34pm, 2004. A battered camper van parked on the apron of a gas station, a scowling, flannel-clad man filling up the tank while a girl leaned against the side of the vehicle, gesticulating wildly, mouth open as if in midsentence. He wondered what she had sounded like then, whether her voice had been soft and shy, or sharp like it was now. She looked thin – too thin, cheekbones so sharp she looked frail – but most of all, she looked young. Very young.
By 2005 – 2.25am, to be precise – she'd filled out. Impressively, he recognised, even as his conscience tweaked at the admission. They were silhouetted in an alley, both in head-to-toe black.
She had hitched up one leg to catch the lowest rung of an emergency ladder; he was lifting her, hands full of her buttocks and obviously whispering something suggestive in her ear.
The final photo was a colour print, obviously taken through a long telephoto lens. He tried to look at it objectively, and calculate how much time had elapsed, but the raw sensuality of it kept stealing his concentration. Her hair was longer, cascading down her nearly bare back. Her skin was glowing, obviously tanned, and she seemed taller, endless brown legs folded either side of his as she sat in his lap. She was sprawled forward, kissing him, and being kissed, her hands tangled in his hair as his clasped her hips. It was a glimpse of total abandonment. Beautiful liars.
Enemies didn't look at each other like that. Strangers were too wary of each other to leave themselves so vulnerable. Whatever they were, it wasn't what they pretended to be.
Charles sighed and returned the photographs to their envelope, reaching down to lock them away in the under-desk safe. Massaging his temples, he teased at the edges of the problem, looking for the best path forward. He needed to know more - not only was his file on Wolverine incomplete, it seemed he needed to look more deeply into Rogue's background as well. How had they met? How had they parted? And was his appearance here, now, an innocent coincidence, or something more sinister?
And the question remained – who had sent the photographs in the first place? And why?
***
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