3. So fucking bad
“Hello, darlin’. Wondered when you were going to drop in.”
The others would have heard nothing but gentle amusement, she realised. A half smile on his lips, and he hadn’t so much as flickered an eyelid when she landed in front of him. Maybe women fell from the sky every day in Wolverine’s world.
The real story lay in his eyes. Their slight dilation as he studied leather-clad curves. Calculation as he eyed the insignia she wore. Anger, burning hot with this new complication, and cold with remembered agony. Desire. Fury. Desire squared. Gratifying, in a way. But Rogue had no illusions where this man was concerned. He might want to fuck her, but he’d still kill her afterwards.
Might even be worth it, she found herself thinking as her senses drank him in. She tried not to stare, or breathe too deeply, or look like a parched woman crawling towards the only water in the desert. Speak, dammit!
“Figured you might need rescuing from the happy hookers over there.” She wondered if Jean and Ororo heard. Hoped she hadn’t hurt Ro’s feelings.
His lips took on a vicious slant. “Worried they might drag me off and leave me chained to a wall somewhere?”
Her conscience howled. She told it to shut the fuck up, and focus on the now. She donned Rogue like a mask.
“Nah. The redhead’s a ‘path. She’d know you’d enjoy it too much.”
His lips quirked, and she saw him fight the urge to smile. The flash of humour hurt more than death itself. Sprawled in a sweaty heap after sparring, she had fallen on his chest in a giggling mess. His belly laugh rumbled out of him and vibrated through her, jangling her nerve endings and making her squirm closer. “Nobody makes me laugh the way you do, kid,” he said, when he could speak. And for once, instead of pushing her away, he wrapped her in his arms as they lay there, hilarity subsiding into peace.
Stupid girl. Dead girl. So weak and wanting, it made her sick. Rogue sucked in the hatred and threw it at him – a roundhouse, her steel-toed boot flying through the air like blurred death. Connecting hard with the side of his head, the numbing shock of it delaying her recovery for a moment. He grabbed for the ankle, but she knew what was coming, and pushed past his grip, forcing him to release her or fall backwards under her assault. Once, his strength and skills had been unassailable, but she had taken his memories and instincts, and begun to build. Lessons, freely given, a voice reminded her, but she ignored it to sink deeper into the red haze. Another roundhouse, a punch to his unguarded spleen, and a vicious knuckle stomp as he faltered and fell.
All hail the apprentice, she thought savagely as she knocked her ancient sensei to the ground. Pinning him with one knee on the back of his neck, she pulled her elbow back and channelled everything she had into the killing strike, because this bastard was awful hard to kill …
“ROGUE!” The shout echoed off the rooftops and Cyclops punctuated it with a blast that tore into the ground two inches from her foot. She was suddenly aware of being surrounded, the ashen faces of her teammates suggesting they might have stopped her, if only they dared.
The hatred coiled inside, demanding his death. No Logan, no feelings, it insisted. No vulnerability. She lifted her fist again, even as she felt it icing over under Bobby’s frosty glare. She threw a fireball at his face while willing some of the heat to her extremities, and even as her focus switched elsewhere, knew she had made a mistake.
Wolverine flipped her, then, pulling the half frozen arm underneath him, and rolling neatly to pin her beneath him. Blood was still dripping from his nose as he pushed it into the nape of her neck and smeared it across her skin. He tightened her arms into an agonizing cross on her lower back as he worked his way round to her ear, and bit down hard.
“If you want to kill me so fucking bad, why don’t you turn your skin on, kid? Huh?”
She pondered that question as she waited for the blades to end her life.
*
Scott Summers spent way too much time watching Rogue. He knew it, and he knew Jean knew it too. But his eyes were incapable of ignoring the way she moved, or the beauty of her body as threw herself into combat. Usually, he told himself it was professional admiration. This time, it was pure horror.
“Rogue, what the?”
She had leapt from the beam like an avenging angel, landing in front of him in a crouch. Hadn’t she read the brief? This man was dangerous and she was crouched at his fucking feet! Cyclops watched as she straightened up, her spine unfolding in a sinuous roll until she stood in front of the Wolverine, staring up into his face.
She wasn’t even in fighting stance, for God’s sake!
It was the look on Rogue’s face that told him something weird was going on. Her eyes were fixed on the stranger with an intensity he had never seen. She looked … hungry, he realised. Every line in her body was taut, as if she was desperate to throw herself into battle. With the supermutant killing machine.
Cyclops moved out into the open, readying his beam as he went. Neither of them even glanced in his direction, so the honey of her drawl nearly stopped him in his tracks.
“Hello, sugar.”
“Hello, darlin’. Wondering when you were going to drop in.”
Scott felt his jaw drop and slammed it shut in pique. They knew each other? One of his teammates KNEW the target? And hadn’t thought to tell him? He was still analysing just what that meant to the mission when Rogue attacked.
Like always, it was amazing to watch. The seamlessness of her moves, each flowing perfectly in the next. Her ability to do the unexpected. She made Wolverine look like an over-muscled ape as she kicked, whirled, pushed, and then dropped down to deliver a punch to the head.
Kill punch, his brain screamed. Killing the target wasn’t good. Even as he yelled her name, Cyclops knew it wouldn’t work, and a beam was surging from his visor to create a wave of red energy that splashed in front of her feet. She glanced up, but the dismissal on her face chilled him.
Iceman had rushed out of cover and was directing a stream of cold air at Rogue’s hand; frost clouded her leather gloves and it had to hurt like a bitch, and surely that was the only thing that made her turn on her teammate, Cyclops told himself. He hadn’t even known she could MAKE fire, even Pyro hadn’t been able to do that, but somehow, Rogue had flung a fireball at Iceman.
In that moment, Wolverine had grabbed her hand, and flipped her under him. Crushed her to the ground underneath her massive frame. And what the fuck were those? Cyclops watched, mesmerised, as three wicked blades sprung the back of each hand.
Wolverine roared and plunged one set of … knives? claws? deep into the ground beside her head, while the others hovered over her chest, ready to spear up into her heart. He was speaking to her … low, angry words that no one could hear, even from just a few feet away … and then, he moved, dragging them down the front of her uniform, slicing it open with terrifying ease.
Cyclops watched in horror, expecting blood to well from the girl’s mutilated corpse. Instead, he watched Wolverine retract the claws and stalk away, leaving Rogue sprawled on the floor, her uniform hanging open from breastbone to pubis.
Note to self: make team wear underwear, Scott found himself thinking as shock set in.
*
They sat opposite each other in the rear of the Blackbird, dried blood crusting his shirt, and her uniform in ruins. His eyes were on the pale curve of her breast as it hung free of the leather, and she could see his cock straining the integrity of those expensive linen pants.
“You are one sick fuck, Wolverine. I just tried to kill you.”
“Little something like that never stopped me before, kid. What’s your excuse?” he asked, dragging in scent with an ostentatious leer.
Marie tried to adjust herself so that her assets weren’t on display, but the custom-made shackles securing her hands to the wall behind her back allowed precious little movement. Cyclops was a dick – apparently she was ‘untrustworthy’ now. No longer capable of following orders. So she’d attacked a guy the professor wanted to parlay with. She’d try to explain it was personal, but no, they’d insisted on locking her up back here, too.
Facing him. Facing her. Facing their demons.
The urbane front was gone, and the Wolverine was prowling, sniffing for weakness. “You trying to pretend that you don’t like it? When you know I can smell you drippin’ all over that leather? Must be fucking slippery in there, girl. You stink like a fucking cathouse.” He bared his teeth at her, and raised his foot to push it in between her legs, half kicking, half probing. She twisted to avoid it, but only managed to pull her arms even further out of their sockets. She ignored the pain to push herself a little further back, out of reach of his probing foot. A dislocated shoulder seemed a small price to pay for avoiding utter humiliation.
“Don’t kid yourself, kid.” His feral grin broke wide at the unintended joke. “If you weren’t locked to that bench, you’d be right over here playing cowgirl on my cock.” He thrust his hips towards her crudely as if to underline the point. She looked away, refusing to admit that it hurt. Once, he had placed her on a pedestal so fucking white, it had blinded her.
Some women, kid, they see me as nothing but an animal. Something to get off on. Like a fucking stallion. I’m not gonna pretend I don’t want to touch you, but you don’t need that from me. He had looked away then, and when he looked back, she could see nothing but sadness in his eyes. I can’t give you what you need, Marie. What you deserve.
Had it been then that her heart began to break? She had forgiven him, at the time, choosing to believe in his nobility. His love, she had told herself. After Pasadena, she discovered the truth was more complex than that. She had lain awake that night, her body healed by his near-sacrifice, and her mind irreversibly altered. She discovered her hero was an assassin. She discovered his plan for her. She discovered the pedestal wasn’t about love, or nobility. It was about restraint, and biding his time. A plot, and she was the patsy.
You don’t shit where you eat, Marie, he’d said when she confronted him. Business is business, and pleasure is every fucking other thing. Mix the two and people get dead. What he didn’t say, what she was beginning to figure out, hurt so much more.
He was binding her to him. Ropes of desire, and knots of love, but bound all the same. Marie had been tied up, once. Her mutation freshly sprung, parents freshly spooked, they had roped her hands behind her back and left her in the basement while they figured out what to do. She had forced herself to do the unthinkable, then, and now her father’s hate rattled around inside in her head.
At least her father hadn’t pretended she was special, or cherished. He hadn’t said words of kindness, or inspired loyalty. Hate was easier than this love that scalded from the inside out. He planned to turn her into a weapon, so she would stick around, and learn. But she would hate. Hate him for choosing her. Hate him for using her. Hate him for making her love him anyway.
***
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This might be taking a turn for the dark. Warning: Angry!Rogue ahead.
Chapter End Notes:
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