“Logan!”
Marie barely registered the sound of Sabretooth’s footsteps as he lumbered away, still chuckling. Her eye was pressed to the seam in the paneled wall, her trembling fingers reaching futilely through the narrow gap.
“Logan. God, Logan. Can you hear me?”
His body remained kneeling, slumped in a parody of a prayer, his forearms bolted firmly to the wall, his head hanging limply between them. The dim gleam of light off his sweaty, bloodied back was too faint to let her see if he was even breathing.
“Number 39! Hands in the cell!”
She didn’t react quickly enough and the shock hit her while her hand was still partially through the gap, wrenching her fingers painfully as her spine arced against the jolt.
The shock faded slowly, leaving her ears ringing and her head spinning. She was as close to passing out as she had ever been, and for fuck’s sake she couldn’t afford that right now.
Pull yourself together, Marie. Be smart. The suppression collar had taken away all the other voices, but not this one -- the part of her mind that came out in a crisis, that stayed steely and detached even as she was falling apart. Rogue.
She forced herself to turn around, pulling her knees up to her chest and sinking her head between them, trying to take slow deep breaths.
In one, two, three...hold it...out, one, two, three.
She forced herself to count in her head, trying to keep at bay the panic creeping in around the edges of her mind.
Oh my god, Logan Logan Logan Logan...no, don’t think of that, don’t think of that...In one, two, three...hold it...out, one, two, three...
Ten minutes. You know the system, Marie. Wait it out.
Ten minutes seemed like an eternity, and then she added one more, worried that she had messed up the counting in her frantic state.
Finally she turned around, pressing her eye back to the gap.
“Logan?” Anxiety made her voice come out unbearably louder than she had intended.
Goddammit, Marie, he’s got heightened senses. Pull yourself together. Whisper.
“Logan?” This time the word was whispered, the barest breath. Was it her imagination? Had the slumped head turned just a fraction? Was it a trick of the dim light, or had the muscles in his back tightened for just a moment?
She bit back a sob -- of relief or despair, she didn’t even know. Almost against her will, her hand crept through the gap again, futilely straining toward him even though he was chained several yards away.
“Logan...I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Why are you here? I thought you’d be safe...I thought if I left you, I could keep you safe -- keep us both safe.”
She saw no perceptible reaction from him. Her head spun wildly, her thoughts scattered. Was he unconscious still? She couldn’t see the shine of a suppression collar at his neck...what could they have done to him, to keep him out even with his healing factor? Or...was he just ignoring her? She had left him, after all -- left him while he was still unconscious, without an explanation, knowing nothing she said would suffice. Was he kneeling there, hating her, wishing he had been put in any cell but this one?
How had he even gotten here? Had they picked him up randomly like the others? Or...
She thought about when she had him strong in her mind. The unyielding devotion she had sensed toward her, the overwhelming need to both possess and protect her. Even potentially hating her for what she had done, had he -- god forbid -- come here looking for her?
Something told her that the latter was true, and despair clenched her heart so tightly she thought it might stop.
“What have I done?” She was talking mostly to herself now. “I’ve fucked things up so bad, Logan. I thought...I thought if I could get away...just disappear...I could stop what I saw comin’.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I saw it all in Lehnsherr’s head. He has a machine, Logan. Somethin’ that he thinks will make humans into mutants. Except he can’t get it to work. He needed Forge. That’s why he was trackin’ down the black marketeers, tryin’ to figure out where this facility was. He knew the new Weapon X program had Forge, an’ he wanted him. That was his original plan, but then he saw what I could do, an’...”
She wiped her eyes, gulping in another breath. “I became part of his plan too. He didn’t want to power the machine himself, it woulda used up his power so bad...maybe even killed him.”
She was babbling, the thoughts spilling out of her head in a jumble, but she couldn’t stop the torrent of words.
“That’s why he forced me to absorb him, at the boat. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t jus’ somethin’ about your mutation -- that I could take in any mutation, his mutation. And once he knew that I could...you don’t know what it was like, Logan, havin’ him in my mind. He’s merciless. If he wanted me, he woulda come to the mansion for me. He wouldn’ta cared about the kids, or even Xavier. And you...I already saw what he could do to you. An’ you woulda tried...there woulda been no stoppin’ you from tryin’ to protect me. He woulda torn you apart jus’ because he could.”
She curled into herself, her back against the wall, her head in her crossed arms. To the camera it likely looked like she was sleeping, but the words continued to spill out, a whispered confession. Her deathbed confession, she supposed, because she knew now what Sabretooth had planned and she was going to make damned sure that he would have to kill her first.
“At least that’s what I told myself. I’ve had a lotta time to think, Logan, stuck here in this cell, waitin’ to see what they have planned for me. An’ I think some of what I told myself about leavin’ was truth...but some of it was lies.”
Her voice was growing hoarse, thick with tears and rusty from whispering after weeks of barely speaking. “I wish I coulda explained to you what it was like...bein’ jus’ a kid, thinkin’ I knew how my whole life was gonna be, an’ then suddenly havin’ it all ripped away in a moment. One minute wonderin’ if Cody was gonna ask me to junior prom an’ the next minute bein’ out on the street, not knowin’ if I had killed him. One night goin’ to sleep in my own bedroom an’ the next not knowin’ if tonight was gonna be the night I died from bein’ so cold an’ hungry I couldn’t stand it anymore. Findin’ out all at once that I was mutant and toxic and crazy, and so damned unlovable that my own parents couldn’t even stand to be near me...”
She lapsed into silence for awhile, her mind caught up in the past. Not just that one horrible day, but the series of horrible days that stretched into months and years, until Logan had come into her life. Wandering aimlessly, confused and alone, the voices in her head driving her nearly to madness until she had figured out how to clamp down on them.
“Ev’ry time I found a place that I thought might be okay...where I thought I might be able to stay for awhile, somethin’ would go wrong and I’d hafta run again. Ev’ry person I touched -- ones who tried to help me, ones who tried to hurt me -- it didn’t matter. Even when someone was bein’ kind to me, no matter how careful I tried to be, somethin’ would happen. I’d slip up an’ end up hurtin’ us both.”
Her whisper was full of self-mockery as she repeated the familiar words. “‘It’s better for everyone if you’re on your own.’ That’s what my parents said to me, that night they kicked me outta the house, and I started to believe it. I finally figured that the only way to be safe -- to keep ev’ryone else safe -- was to jus’ stay apart from ev’ryone. Not let anyone really know me, or get close to me. An’ I was doin’ okay with that. Or at least I thought I was. Lookin’ back, I can see how lonely an’ sad I was.”
She felt a numb exhaustion falling over her, her voice growing slow and meditative as she put into words for the first time all that she had realized over the past weeks, stuck in this cell with nothing to do but rethink all her bad decisions.
“I was so stupid, Logan. That person I became -- the one who didn’t care about anyone, and didn’t mind that nobody cared about her -- Rogue...”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I thought she was strong, and tough. But I was so wrong. I had it all backwards. She was the fuckin’ coward, Logan. I thought I was bein’ tough but I was jus’ bein’ scared. Too scared to have somethin’ that might be ripped away from me again. I thought Marie was weak, wantin’ to be with you, wantin’ to trust you. But I don’t think that anymore, Logan. That’s not weakness. It takes courage to want somethin’, to let it get close enough to hurt you. To let you get close enough to hurt it.”
She shook her head despairingly. “I told myself I was leavin’ to protect us all from Lehnsherr, but truth is I was already plannin’ to leave as soon as you found those girls. I was already scared to death by how much I was feelin’ for you, an’ how much I wanted to stay. Findin’ out what Lehnsherr would do to get me was jus’ another push in that direction. I was already plannin’ on runnin’.”
The regret welled up so strongly -- twisting her guts, choking her. “I don’t even know what I would do if I could take it back, Logan. I only know I woulda done somethin’ -- anythin’ -- diff’rent. Even if my worst fears had come true -- if you had looked at me one day and saw what ev’rybody else sees -- decided that I wasn’t worth havin’. At least I woulda tried. I coulda trusted you, like you kept askin’ me to, and told you about Lehnsherr. I coulda told you how I felt about you. But I didn’t. I missed my chance. I let it all go, an’ now I’m gonna die regrettin’ it.”
She felt the sadness overtake her, too deep for tears. She had squandered her life, and she couldn’t even bear to think of what she might have done to Logan’s life. Would Sabretooth put the collar back on him and kill him? Or even worse, would they keep him alive -- take him back to his nightmares, back to that time of experimentation and mind control? Death would be a mercy in comparison...
The horrific images were so vivid in her head that at first she barely registered the sound of his voice.
“Marie.”
Her heart jolted, and she scrambled around, pressing her eye to the seam in the wall.
“Logan!”
His head was turned toward her, his eyes dark and unreadable.
“Marie,” he said, his voice rusty but firm. “Get down.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Yippee! My big deadline has passed, and so hopefully did I! I'll find out in ten days, but in the meantime I hope to go back to at least weekly updates on this story, and maybe more. That's if Syrin gives me a moment between beta-ing...damn but that girl writes fast! If you're not already reading her story, "Class 4," get on it. I highly recommend it. This chapter is a lot of talky-talky, but we've got some good action and smut coming up, so stay tuned!
Chapter End Notes:
Please review! :-D