The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
A wonderful story midwife has been helping me rediscover what I loved about this story, and get it finished already. So ... put your hands together for the return of backstory! Three cheers for the wonderful Bancainte, who dealt to my first draft mercilessly, and will no doubt do so again for the forthcoming chapters!
20: …gonna get bit
The fucking atmosphere was torturing him. He didn't fly a lot, and he'd managed to forget a few things. No air. No windows. And it was absolutely fucking impossible to escape the cocktail of emotion that was threatening to split his head in half.
Rogue was crying. No one else would see anything, or hear a whimper from her, but he could smell the salt, and the hot stench of her fury.
She'd automatically assumed the worst. Of course, the truth could be even worse than whatever his girl had dreamt up. How was he to know? In his business, it was better not to know, and rule one, since the beginning, had been to never, ever ask. Marie knew that – and she wasn't to know that he'd taken this job for reasons of his own.
Stupid reasons. Concern, and curiosity. A need to know how she was getting on, and who she was turning into. Bit of thought, bit of fucking objectivity, and surely he would have seen this for the clusterfuck it was becoming.
The words “Mystique” and “plan” should have been warning enough. Too fucking convoluted, and he had known that, but he'd jumped at the chance to kill the fucker anyway. Would have done it for free, truth be told. Magneto, dead at the hands of the newest member of the X-men – a short, sharp end to fifty years of mutant civil war, Mystique had preached. He'd been so busy ignoring the bitch he hadn't stopped to think what it might mean for her. Marie.
Now, he didn't give a damn about Chuck Xavier and his other recruits, but Marie was his, and she was an X-man. Not just one of the team – a team leader. And she cared about that place. He'd watched her with some of the kids in her combat class, and she was good, and she loved it – and the kids mattered to her. The people mattered.
He had thought he'd be able to control all the factors. Attack one enemy, while in the employ of another. Look after her. Maybe even “do the right thing” - just to see what it was like. Then get to leave town, $500k and one luscious girl richer. Some plan.
He'd forgotten one thing. He was the Wolverine. And she, better than anyone, knew what that meant. Remorseless. Ruthless. Single-minded. No room for emotion, or compassion, or regret. Marie wasn't going anywhere. Not with him.
His claws began to itch inside his fists and he used the pain as a reminder. Once, anger meant claws and claws meant death to anyone stupid enough to get in his way. No more. She didn't know the battles he'd fought since she was taken from him. Couldn't see how she had begun to change him.
The job in Boston had taken two days instead of the four he'd allotted, and he'd found himself driving south before he'd even thought her name. He never stayed local after a job, he told himself, it was one of the rules that had kept them safe for years – get in, get done, get out. Losing himself in the big city was the smart thing to do.
And if his bolthole happened to be close to the Brotherhood headquarters, so be it. Those fuckers would need killing one day, and the more he knew, the quicker it would be. But for now, he needed to be sure he'd be getting Marie.
Two years, it had been. He had a skinny street rat 'path keep tabs on her, and the kid had looked at him with pity those first few reports, when she still couldn't speak without growling, and slept on a discarded coat in the corner of Sabretooth's room. Six months before she even sounded like a girl again, a year before her eyes filtered back to green. Last report he'd had, her voice had changed - “like she's southern, or something,” his informer had said – and he'd had to stop himself from charging in, then.
But the memory of black, hate-filled eyes pulled him up short. Black, hate-filled eyes that exulted in his pain and suffering, that smiled as his blood dripped down to her fingers and then smeared her mouth. His worst enemy, staring out of her face.
If she had died, he could have mourned her. If she had left him, he could have hated her. Instead, her soul had been stolen, and he could do nothing. Nothing but wait, as his worst enemies made her one of their own. Watch, as his damaged girl turned vicious, and cruel, and capricious. Suffer, as his perfectly honed weapon was used as a blunt cudgel, aimed at the innocent and guilty alike.
And if he became more choosy with his jobs, refusing to kill anyone who didn't need killing? Only because too many people were dying because of him. If he ran interference on the Brotherhood's worst atrocities? It was only to keep her safe. If he ached, and shuddered with guilt, and dreamed of atonement?
It was only what he deserved.
“Wolverine!”
Ororo's voice trembled, even as it snapped his name to retrieve him from his memories. She stank of despair, he realised with a shock. How had he missed that earlier?
“You haven't heard.” Her monotone startled him, and alarm bells began to ring.
“Mutants are killing people. Everywhere. Thousands of people. The government is moving against us.”
He went cold. Every hair on his body stood on end. Someone had started the war – the war that every mutant had known was coming.
But … the mutants had started it? When they had everything to lose?
“Nah, it doesn't make sense. Why? Surely Xavier knows why?” he asked angrily, wanting to shake her from her torpor. Shake himself free of the horror.
“Professor Xavier was an early victim. Something … incapacitated him, this morning. He is in a coma.”
“But we're going to pick someone up. Who knows something, and can stop it. Right?”
That's what the X-men did, Wolverine knew. Even lurking in the shadows, he had known that, heard about their exploits and their heroism, brave warriors setting out to protect the innocent and all that. He'd scoffed and he'd mocked, and he still reckoned those high-falutin ideals were a crock of shit, but when it came down to it, they'd won a few games in their day. Lotsa points on the board.
“Stop it? There's no stopping it, Wolverine. The bill is passed. They are readying the camps – mutants are to be separated from non-mutants in the jails, and hospitals and schools from today, and then they will come for the rest of us.”
“So what the fuck are we doing now?” (Camps. Camps? He wouldn't think about camps. Couldn't.)
“We are collecting someone who is close to the President. He can help us prepare … as best we can. He will know what's coming.”
And we will run like rats, her quiet passivity suggested.
“NO!” he roared. “NO!”
“I didn't give her up for this. I let you take her, let her go to you, because you were what she needed. You fight, and make it right, and help the helpless and all that shit! You do not give up!”
Storm stared at him, mouth gaping, and Gambit had leapt across the aisle as if to protect her from the madman. But it was Rogue who his eyes were fixed on, Rogue who spat fire as she twisted in the pilot's seat to glare at him.
“Let me? You let me? I chose!”
She had known, he realised. She had known all along he was there – and she had chosen them.
The Brotherhood, he'd heard, were mounting a strike on Xavier's school. Magneto was hoping to use his favourite weapon – the Rogue – to harness the old man's limitless mental powers, and they were planning to take the youngest children hostage to ensure Xavier's cooperation. The plan couldn't fail, his informant had cackled.
He'd left for Westchester the next day. He wasn't concerned about Xavier or his kids, he'd told himself – he was simply going to get Rogue out of there. She wasn't even herself yet – add a world-renowned telepath to the mix, and she wouldn't be able to cope. She'd never recover. Better to step in now, and stop it. She'd fight him, sure, but one day she'd understand, he'd told himself.
He'd been riding hard over rough roads when the phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He didn't think to check it until it buzzed again, just after he'd stopped for lunch. Attack moved up, it said. Noon, today.
He smelt the smoke, first. One whole wing of the mansion, he realised when he crept close enough to see. No dazed kids wandering about, though, or screams of pain and loss, so they'd acted on the anonymous tip. Good.
A terrified scream split the air.
He'd bolted towards the noise, only to pull up in the shadow of the building.
Sabretooth had a small girl plastered to his front, his claws scrabbling obscenely over her tiny body. She was too frightened to cry, or even beg … but Rogue was calm. Rogue was freakin negotiating, telling the feral to stand down, to let the girl go. Not what they were here for, she said.
The beast man was past hearing, however. He was already lapping at the trickles of blood, slurping up her fear and hurting the child just to hear her whimpers escalate. Logan felt his own feral heart beat faster at the scent – fear, pain, blood – and had never hated himself more.
Rogue was feeling it too, he realised as he watched her. Pupils blown black, eyes shining gold. But her voice stayed calm, talking, talking. Even as she stepped in close, and laid a restraining hand on the huge feral's arm. Even as the veins began to pop in his face. Even as he slumped down, dead, and the girl stumbled into her waiting arms.
He saw her eyes blaze yellow, but then settle to amber as she cradled the child. Her voice was rough when she called out for help, but it was Rogue's voice, not Sabretooth's.
“This child needs help!” she called across the empty forecourt.
Two women emerged from the building, cautious and reeking of fear, even as Rogue soothed the little girl.
“Zara, come to me,” the redhead called, but the child would not step out of Rogue's arms.
The other woman, dark skinned and white-haired, was braver, walking slowly up to Rogue and squatting down to open her own arms to the child. “Come, darling,” she said, and the girl allowed herself to be pulled away from Rogue.
Rogue had turned away, and was walking towards the gate, when the dark woman called after her.
“The Brotherhood won't take you back after you have killed one of their own, Rogue. You must know that.”
Rogue stopped, but didn't turn. The woman kept talking anyway.
“You saved an innocent child, at great risk to yourself. You have chosen a new path. Walk with us, please,” she urged, voice thick with compassion.
Rogue's place was with him, Logan wanted to howl. She wasn't about to throw her life away on high-minded missions and useless dreams – she was going to come home, to him!
But her face. Full of longing, and desperate hope. She hadn't turned yet, though. She was still leaving.
“Know you are welcome here,” the woman said, face taut with sadness. "But it is your choice, of course."
It was as if she had flicked a switch. Rogue's head came up, and no sign of Sabretooth remained. Instead, her whiskey-brown eyes glowed with pride and determination as she turned to walk towards the Mansion.
Her voice drifted back to him, even as he was sinking deeper into the trees, losing himself in her past.
“Why, thank you, Storm. I might just take you up on that. Since it's my choice and all.”
*
The late afternoon sun shone warm on his head, and the smell of the newly cut hay was incredibly comforting, Gil Pryor thought. Nothing bad could happen on a day like this. His beloved President, the human rights crusader, would never disenfranchise his people, on a day like this.
But then, any other day, Gil wouldn't be standing in a field, clutching a file, waiting for a secret para-military organisation to collect him.
He refused to believe it was inevitable, the way so many had said. He still refused.
So Gil Pryor, who hadn't slept in 48 hours, opened the files again, and opened his mind to the patterns in the data.
When his eyes drifted shut, he dreamed of diamonds.
***
Chapter End Notes:
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