Sabretooth lifted his shaggy head, canine teeth gleaming. “Miss me, Frail?”
With a roar, Logan smashed his head up into Sabretooth’s nose. Marie heard the bone snap under the force of his blow. He threw Sabretooth off him and snicked out his claws, circling protectively in front of Marie.
Sabretooth looked at the claws and chuckled. “Well, Jimmy, if you’re gonna play it that way...”
His hand darted to the small of his back, coming back up with a vicious-looking knife. The long curved blade, serrated at the tip, gleamed in the dim light.
“This started out as just a job,” Sabretooth taunted. “But now it’s turned into a goddamned privilege. I finally get to put an end to you, runt. But first you get to watch me havin’ some fun with this tasty frail of yours. I’m gonna make her scream so good...”
Logan sprang, his claws slicing towards Sabretooth’s belly. Sabretooth feinted to the side, the claws only grazing him as he reached out, deeply slashing Logan’s arm. Marie heard Logan’s roar of pain as he drew away, blood coursing down his sleeve until it trickled to a stop as his healing kicked in.
They circled again. This time Sabretooth pounced. Logan got the claws deep in his chest and twisted but Sabretooth hardly seemed to feel it, lifting Logan up and smashing his head against the wall with two sickening crunches.
Marie’s frozen shock lifted. She pulled her gloves off. Sabretooth was gloved and covered from neck to toe. She’d have to get to the exposed skin of his face and neck, but he was damn tall.
She leaped toward him but he seemed to sense it, dropping Logan and turning just in time. She scrabbled for his face but he caught her away easily, holding her at arm’s length, dangling from his massive hands.
“Eager, aren’t you Frail?” he smirked. “But I gotta take care of the runt first.”
He threw her roughly back and she toppled over the back of the couch, crashing to the floor on the other side, the breath knocked from her lungs.
She heard another roar from Logan and then more sounds of furniture being smashed as she struggled to her hands and knees behind the couch, trying to squeeze air into her spasming chest.
“Marie...gun...” she heard Logan rasp urgently, and then his words were choked off.
Gun...gun...
She tried to push aside the panic and concentrate, fumbling frantically through his memories. Then she was scrambling, half on her hands and knees, toward the kitchen.
She heard a crash behind her and then Sabretooth’s heavy footsteps were pounding her way.
She yanked open the cellar door, pulling the shotgun from the mounted rack, knowing now that Logan always kept one in the chamber.
She wheeled around, lifting the shotgun and...
At first she thought he had punched her. She felt herself being slammed back against the cellar door, a cold ache in her belly.
Then she looked down and saw it. The knife was buried in her gut, almost to the hilt, pinning her to the door.
“Now, see what you made me do, Frail?” Sabretooth snarled, mild irritation in his voice. He twisted the knife a bit, trying to free it, and this time she felt it, the pain tearing through her, sending fire along every nerve and muscle. In her head she screamed, but nothing came out of her mouth except a shaky wheeze.
As if in slow motion she saw Logan pulling himself to his feet, wiping blood from his eyes as he moved toward Sabretooth, ferocity in his gaze. And she saw the moment he took in what had happened -- his eyes widening in his suddenly pale face, his expression turning to abject horror.
“No.” The word was hushed, almost whispered. A flat denial.
She tried to pull in another breath, whimpering in pain. She saw the full realization move across his face, his inhaled breath shuddering his whole body.
“No!” he roared. “Marie!”
Sabretooth turned to face him, smiling evilly.
“We both know how bad gut wounds can be, huh Jimmy? Remember that...”
Feeling like she was moving through quicksand, like her arm weighed a thousand pounds, Marie tilted the barrel of the shotgun toward Sabretooth’s head and pulled the trigger.
Some instinct must have warned him. He turned slightly at the last minute, but the shot still blew off half of his face. He screamed in agony, his limbs flailing wildly for a moment, and then he crashed through the back door and out into the night.
Marie watched dazedly, back pressed up against the door, the gun falling from her hand, as a moth fluttered in the open door, circling the kitchen light. Then Logan was there, his teeth gritted in anguish. He carefully freed the knife from the door, trying to hold it in place and put his hand over the bleeding, lowering her gingerly to the floor.
“Marie...baby...” His voice was thick and raspy.
He reached out for one of her bare hands, pressing it hard against his face.
“Logan...” She shook her head. He was hurt, and Sabretooth might be coming back. If she took his healing now they might both die.
His eyes blazed into hers, his grip not wavering for a second.
“Come on...come on...” he ground out the words under his breath, as if to himself. He ran a blood-covered hand through her hair, his voice breaking. “God...Marie...stay with me.”
She closed her eyes briefly in resignation. Seconds ticked by as they both waited for her mutation to start. And then more seconds. Marie watched, her own mind clouded with bewilderment, as Logan’s resolute gaze turned to confusion and then panic.
“Marie...what’s happening? Turn it on, dammit!”
She looked at him helplessly, feeling her eyelids flutter as sleepiness overtook her. Turn it on? She couldn’t turn the damn thing off.
“No! Marie! Marie....don’t leave me, darlin’. Stay with me!” His voice was desperate, pleading, and her heart was pierced with sorrow that she couldn’t do what he wanted. She would stay with him if she could. She would do anything to stay with him.
As if from a distance, she heard his roar of grief, and then she heard nothing.
______________________
Logan stared in numb disbelief at Marie’s small body, crumpled on the floor. Dead. She was dead. He had heard her heartbeat grow sluggish and then stop, her last breath sighing from her body. He felt as if his heart had stopped with hers.
His stray thought from the day before rang through his head.
Nothing this good could possibly last. Not for someone like him.
He roared out his grief again, burying his claws deep in the cabin’s wall. He snicked them back in again, his hands shaking, his mind still frozen in shock and disbelief.
“Marie,” he mumbled helplessly. He cradled her small blood-soaked body against him, whimpering, pressing his cheek to her forehead. “My Marie.”
He lifted her body up, stumbling to the couch, his boots crunching over the wreckage of the coffee table.
He lay her down on the soft leather couch, gently pulling the knife from her belly. He kissed each eyelid, running his hand along her pale, blood-streaked cheek. “Marie,” he said again, helplessly, brokenly, as the Wolverine howled and keened in his head.
He heard a scuffling sound from the kitchen. The shocked numbness started to fade as a deep, scalding rage boiled through him, sending his blood roaring through his ears and hazing his vision with red.
Sabretooth.
_________________
Marie felt herself being inexorably pulled to the surface.
Wake up. Wake up, goddammit!
Rogue’s voice, in her head, uncharacteristically frantic.
Wake UP!
She pulled in a gasping, heaving breath, feeling blood bubble in her throat. She curled onto her side, spitting the blood from her mouth, feeling pain slice through her as she took in another breath.
Where was she? What had happened?
She felt the smoothness of leather underneath her cheek. She pried open sticky eyes, her mind taking in a rush of irrelevant details. Cabin. Furniture smashed to kindling. A gleam of metal on the floor amongst the wreckage.
In the next moment sound rushed into her ears -- the din of fighting. Bodies slamming together. The smack of flesh against flesh, the crunch of bone against bone, and an occasional hissing, metallic sound.
She looked down. Her hands were clasped against her belly, her shirt sopping with blood. Suddenly she remembered it all -- Sabretooth. The knife. Logan’s hand against her cheek, his panic as they both realized her mutation was unresponsive, inert. Logan...
Get up! Rogue’s voice was impatient now, frustrated. Don’t you understand?
She shook her head reflexively. She didn’t understand, not at all. As if they belonged to someone else, her hands pulled at her shirt. She looked down at the knife wound, watching it slowly knit together.
You couldn’t take his mutation because you still had it, Marie. You never lost it.
Her mind spinning dizzily, she pulled herself upright on the couch. Through blurred vision, she could see flashes of Sabretooth and Logan, fighting in the kitchen. She saw the knife lying beside her on the couch, and wrapped numb fingers around the hilt.
Not that! Listen to me, Marie.
Like a recording playing in her head, she suddenly heard the voice of Dr. Cornelius and the other doctor from the experimentation facility.
“This is the one you wanted to see...”
“The genetic anomaly.”
“How many variants?”
“Three. But the potential is...infinite.”
Rogue’s voice rang through again, urgent and...hopeful. Three, Marie. Three X-genes. Yours. Logan’s. And Lehnsherr’s.
Lehnsherr’s.
Marie’s heart thumped wildly, her eyes widening, her breath gasping into her lungs in a sudden rush. She knew what to do.
She staggered to her feet, swaying, one hand on the couch to brace herself. Then she closed her eyes and opened her mind, feeling the metal sing to her. There was the knife, a bright hot note like the clash of a cymbal -- but that was not her goal, it was just an afterthought. She carelessly flicked it forward, guiding it unerringly, lodging it deep into Sabretooth’s shoulder with a wet thunk.
He faltered where he had been struggling with Logan, his head turning toward her, startled.
Uncertain what had caused it, Logan nonetheless took instant advantage of Sabretooth’s momentary distraction. He crashed a knee up into his groin, dropping him.
As Sabretooth fell to the ground, Logan’s eyes landed on Marie. She saw the breath leave his lungs in a rush, heard his heart stutter in his chest.
“Marie?” he breathed, his brows furrowing in confusion, wiping his sleeve across his eyes as if she were a hallucination that would suddenly disappear.
Sabretooth was pulling himself to his feet, his dark black eyes on her also. “Sonuvabitch,” he said, his voice bemused.
She looked deep into Logan’s golden hazel eyes, feeling the smile spreading on her face. She lifted up her shirt.
“I healed, sugar.” His stunned eyes flickered down to the stretch of bare skin, marked only by her blood, and then back to her face. “And look what else I can do.”
She closed her eyes again and found them, the slim broken arcs of the suppression collar, pulling them from the wreckage of the coffee table. They were like an unfinished etude -- incomplete, lacking, until she sent them flying forward, uniting them into a complete harmonious melody around Sabretooth’s neck.
She sent her stolen power singing around the circle of metal, fusing the hinges, completing the circuit as the suppression collar hummed to life.
She saw the realization dawn on Sabretooth and Logan simultaneously -- Sabretooth’s clawed hands scrabbling desperately at the collar as Logan lunged forward. He buried the claws in Sabretooth’s belly and then slashed upwards, bone and flesh parting like butter, cutting open his chest until the claws pierced his heart.
With a snarl of satisfaction he dropped his hand, letting Sabretooth slide off his claws. Marie stumbled to Logan’s side, her arm reaching out to hold him tight, her eyes fixed on Sabretooth’s last halting breaths.
“Marie!” Logan cradled her head between his hands, his eyes searching her face wonderingly, disbelievingly.
“Logan.” She smiled, drinking in the sight of him as he was her. As he crushed her into his embrace, however, she drew her arms up, reluctantly pushing back.
“Marie?”
“Your past, Logan.” She looked down at her ungloved hands, moving them down until they were tightly clasping his. “I couldn’t absorb you because I still had you -- you’re a part of me now. But Sabretooth...”
She took a deep, shaky breath. “He’s still alive. I can take him...take all his memories. You could finally know...”
Logan growled, deep and low, pulling her away from Sabretooth and back into his arms. “No way in hell, Marie.”
She looked up into his beloved face. “You’re sure? It might be your last chance...”
His hand brushed over her cheek gently, spreading warmth and joy through her chilled body. “I don’t give a damn about my past, Marie. Not enough to let you touch that bastard for even a second. All I want now is a future -- with you.”
He pulled her against his side and kicked out at Sabretooth, tumbling him fully onto his back. They both watched as the last light of life faded from the malevolent black eyes. Then Logan wrapped Marie back in his arms, burying his face in her hair, squeezing her tightly.
“All I want is you,” he repeated, breathing the words like a prayer. “Just you.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
All right, friends...I know I left you on a cliffhanger, so here's a super-fast update. Please reward me by reviewing both chapters if you're reading them both at once. One more after this, and then we're all done, so now's the time to show your love!
Chapter End Notes:
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