Hey! I don't own this! Please don't sue!
Puddles of Blood at My Feet.
"Uhhh…" Logan groans as he slowly wakens into a fog. He can barely concentrate while he looks around him. He feels the pain in the back of his skull, and the warm trickling of blood running along his down turned face, he also feels the aching in his arms as they are shackled above his head on ether side of his bruised body. He must have been hanging here for hours. But, where is here, and why isn't his healing factor working as well as it should? He sees someone to his left, he thinks it's Jean, she accompanied him up here, but the woman is so dirty and messed up, he can't be sure. She doesn't look as though she's breathing and Logan is worried until she finally takes a rasping breath. She sounds as if she's got a collapsed lung and you don't live long with that.
"Can you hear me?" He tentatively asks and he gets a very pain filled and almost silent "Yes"
"What happened?" He asks as he tries to free his hands. Her answer shocks him "Creed got free. He came for us" She quietly replied between heavy breaths.
"Where are we?" He wonders aloud" "In… the… basement" She wheezes as she sputters up another lungful of blood. Logan manages to get his hand free as the cuffs give way. Whoever put them here didn't want to keep them here forever, or they'd checked the cuffs. Instantly, his healing factor kicks into overdrive, healing his every wound. The cuffs must have been inhibiters. The love of his life isn't so lucky, at least one of her legs is broken, he finds upon inspecting her, as well as a rib or two, who knows what else.
"I'll get you out of here!" He promises. "Have you been able to telepathically call anyone?"
"Rogue and Gambit…. I tried.." She tries to speak as her whole body heaves as she draws in one, long breath, unable to finish her sentence. Then she collapses in a heap on the cold, dirt floor.
"Jeannie! Jeannie!" He cries out desperately, still unsure if they had a prayer of getting out of here. "Stay with me girl!" He knows why Creed did this, to take the one person that meant most in life away from him. Creed let him live just to see this, just to see what he could do to another person, just to make him suffer. He starts checking her signs and finds that they're weak, and getting weaker, but there. He notices a window about six feet off the ground across the room and looks out. He sees nothing but dense forest and recognizes where he is. He's in his vacation cabin near the laurels, The one he built by himself . They were tied up in his own basement. He had hoped that he and his new wife would raise kids here during the mild Canadian summers.
He and Jean had come to Canada to seek out Sabretooth, catch him and bring him to justice in America; he had killed a few dozen people in Soho and savagely brutalized Betsy and Warren, seemingly out of pure blood sport. Victor, Sabretooth, had not only brutalized Betsy, he had taken her in every way possible, right there in front of Warren, before Victor took Warren's eyes. Warren keeps describing the screaming in his therapy sessions, and Betsy won't talk at all.
Logan really has himself to blame, as it was him that gave Victor the injury that made him immune to all telepathy. He kicks himself every single day for popping that claw into Victor's brain, even though it was done at the time to keep Victor from doing such things, all it did was make him impervious to his prey. That's why Betsy was no match for Victor, and Jean lays broken at Logan's feet now. Jean was a warning for Logan. He's sure Victor didn't subject Jean to the same savagery he had for Betsy, not yet at least, simply because Logan was not conscience to watch.
He hears the familiar roar of the X-Jet a ways off, Rogue and Gambit should be here in a moment, and for once, Logan is glad to have somebody come to his home. He knows that aboard that Jet, they have transfusion supplies, and if he can get some of his blood into the crumpled woman at his feet, she'll probably heal, not all the way, but enough to get her some real treatment. He takes her limp body up the stairs, as he notes that his house looks untouched, except his pantry, which looks like Creed ate everything that was there, including the deer jerky. Probably the first meal he'd had in days. He lays Jean on his old couch and waits because that's all he can do, that and pray.
On his wall, he sees a wedding photo that the two took in Walhalla, way down south. They did it on a spur of the moment, after a night of chasing a new mutant energy signature. They'd come up here two weeks later, as part of their honeymoon and never even told anyone they'd married, no one had even suspected until Scott found the marriage certificate and caught the two looking in the newspaper for housing a month later. Scott had found it when looking for luggage to borrow.
Scott was pissed, no doubt about that, and even more so when the two found the perfect house about two miles from the school. The house was an old fix –it- up, but it had a yard perfect for children, a full basement and four bedrooms. The best part was, it was affordable, probably because someone had died horribly in that house and it had lain empty for years.
Jean's mother was over the moon that Jean had moved on from "that cheating bastard, Scott." Even though Logan had to convince Jean's father that he only had the best of intentions for his daughter. John Grey had heard it all before, and maybe, of all he had suffered for his daughter's sake, Scott was the hardest. So while Jean's mother was shoving oatmeal cookie after cookie into Logan's mouth, her dad just stared him down with the same piercing green eyes that had led Logan to fall in love with Jean. The whole thing was confusing.
The squeal of the landing gears on the Blackbird brings Logan to attention, and he focuses again of his wife's shallow breathing and seconds later, they're both on a plane headed to what she calls home, Salem, New York. As they work on her, Gambit hooks an I.V. line to Logan and the other end to Jean, and almost like a miracle, her wounds began to melt away and underneath the dirt, she starts to look like herself, even her breathing becomes less labored. Soon, her eyes flutter open, and she asks for a kiss, and after wiping her pretty face clean, he obliges.
Scott calls in on the communicom to see the two in passionate embrace and gives a look of disapproval. "I trust the rescue went well?" He asks.
"All went well, O cheerless leader." Gambit quips as he clamps the I.V. line. "She was in pretty bad shape, but Logan's blood donation took care of that well."
"Good thing that they're the same type." Scott says sharply before barking orders about the Blackbird's return.
"I'm going to snatch Scott bald when I get in." Rogue said as she starts the jet's engines. "He told us that we were crazy for thinking you two were out this far, or that you'd even called. And he threatened to make us pay for the jet fuel!"
"Much obliged Rogue." Logan replies as he tips his hat. "I need a change of clothes when I get home." And he did! His white t-shirt was covered in mud, blood, tissue bits, and what looked like some of Creeds fur. He was beginning to recall pieces of the fight, Victor pinning Logan to the ground outside the cabin, Jean's telekinetic field giving way as Creed struggled hard against it, and her punching Victor clear across the nose to get him off of Logan. After that, Logan must have gone berserk, there was no telling whether Logan did the damage to her, Creed, or a mixture of both, but then there was how he got chained in inhibiters and where the cuffs came from.
"What about me? Eh?" Gambit joked. "Don't I get a thank you?"
"No." Logan ribbed back, but a feeble "Thank you" wafted from the back of the plane.
"At least somebody respect Gambit." Gambit said as he pretended to be miffed.
"We should be landing in under forty-five minutes." Rogue cut in. "Beast will be waiting on the tarp with Dr. Reyes to look you both over. Jean, I'd recommend you didn't move too much with that leg being busted and all."
"I don't think I'll be doing that!" She joked between gasps of air. They could tell that she was using her telekinesis to shut known her pain receptors, even just to make the pain tolerable.
"Jeannie," Logan whispered, hoping that the Mississippi mud rat and the Cajun couldn't hear, "Did I do any of this to you?"
She just smiles weakly at him as she raises her left hand to his face. "You were just trying to protect me. Don't even think about this."
"How did we get to that basement? The last thing I remember was Creed smashing you into that tree." Logan looks at her as he holds her hand lovingly against his face. "And where did the cuffs come from?"
"The cuffs, I brought to keep Creed in line." She explained through coughs. "And we got into the basement because I flew us down there. I put you in the inhibiters to save you from Creed, but you got a few good licks in when you kicked my legs."
"And Creed?" He asks. "How did we get away from him?"
"You broke his neck." She sputtered into a napkin. "It took him awhile to regenerate it." She groaned as she moved her leg. "I just put a bubble around you that he couldn't get through."
"Oh, Jeannie!" He sighed softly to her. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be! At least he ate everything in the house and not me!" She attempts to lighten his mood. "I think you got me pretty good!" She kids as she tries to sit up and something makes a popping sound.
"Don't move, Jeannie." He cautions her. "Those punts to your legs could be worse than just a broken femur, I could have given you a massive hematoma."
"Uhhhh…" She whimpers through the pain "How'd you get so smart, short stuff?" She knows she's bad off, she knows she could die right there on that plane, but she also knows that there is no way her beloved Logan, James, would ever allow for it."
"I ain't known for being nice, Darlin'" He smiles back at her attempt at levity.
"You all buckle up back there!" A southern voice drawls from the front. " We'll be landing in ten, and t'ank you for flying Air Cajun!"
"And what am Ah?" Rogue jesters with him playfully. "Just the pilot?"
"Sorry, baby!" He counters back. "Air River Rat didn't have that same charm!"
"Ah am so gonna get you when we land!" The two just banter back and forth for the next few minutes like lovers do, while the two in the back just stare and laugh to themselves.
Back on the good, hard ground
"So, What happened here?" Beast asks as he starts his examination.
"Rogue punched me." Gambit says lightheartedly.
"Ahem, yes. I see!" Beast humors him. "I was actually talking to Jean. A lovers spat?"
"Something like that." She wheezes as she tries to move herself to the wheelchair waiting on the tarmac.
"I'd rather you let us move you. Jean." Hank worries over her. "From what I overheard on the communicom, just that you can talk to me is a cause for celebration. Let me have a look at that leg." He mumbles to himself about her injuries. "Logan, when we get a chance, we need to talk." Hank moves a light, but deliberate hand over Jean's body, feeling for broken bones, swollen blood vessels, and assessing the extent of her injuries.
Later, when everyone else has set in for a night of trivia shows, they have the chance to talk. Logan still only remembers bits and pieces of the encounter, but there are other things that Beast needs to know.
"I know that in your berserker states, you don't remember much, if anything at all, but Logan there are a few things I must find out." Beast says as he puts his glasses back on.
"Shoot, go for it." Logan tells him. He's just as curious to know.
"Do you remember what set you off?" Beast queries as he fills out the report on the extent of the injuries.
"Not really. I saw Jeannie crack Victor's nose, and then there was this smell like oranges coming off his clothes, I started to loose it then, but when he had her against the tree, and had a hand on her breast, I only remember pieces afterwards. Jean told me I had broken his neck after a few minutes." Logan tells him as more bits and pieces come through. "What does she remember?"
"She won't tell me, so ether I get Charles in here and tell me what the both of you know, or I hear it from you." Beast looks at him agitated. There are things that one or the both of them can tell him, but why be so tight lipped about it, unless one is protecting the other?
"Why are you looking at me like that? I know I did some of this Beast, but what aren't you telling me?" Logan asks frustrated. "She already told me that I broke her leg. What do you want? I really can't tell you anymore!"
"I've evidence that she wasn't just beat up, Logan." Beast replies angrily. "And whoever did it, wasn't gentle. What I want you to try and remember is could you have done this, or Victor."
"What are you saying, Hank? That I went mad and not only beat my new wife half to death, but raped her too? Why would you even think that?" Logan asks, taken aback.
"We know you did some of the damage already, Creed probably did some too, but Jean, for some reason, thinks she's protecting you. There is something that happened she won't tell me about." Beast calms down and relates to Logan. "She might even be frightened that something might be done to you if she talks. Logan, there were even fingernail marks dug into her neck. You can find out, or Charles can, she's going to be strung up in that bed for at least six weeks."
"Hank, can you do a DNA test on what you found on her? I… I have to know if I did this." Logan pleads. "You know how darn hard headed she is, she'd never let me know."
"I thought of it and I already have it going, Logan." Beast admits. "What are you going to do? You know what it means if you did do this, you know what it means if you didn't."
"Damned ether way." Logan replies. "Can I go in to see her?"
"May." Beast corrects, ever the stickler for proper grammar.
"I'm not waiting until May to see my wife!" Logan retorts.
"Never mind, Logan, just go in." Beast exhaustedly slides one hand down his blue, furry face.