1. A Cunning Plan: (Marie)

She'd just hit the next guy when he came in. That was it, it was perfect, hit him in the head, then get the key off of his belt. Yes! Hit him in the head, get the key off his belt, and open the cell door. Marie was excited, happy even. This was much better than yesterdays plan, 'trip him and bash his head on the ground' was obviously the worst plan ever. That was a terrible plan. Worse even that the 'Touch Him' plan when she had forgotten she was wearing the collar. She hadn't even managed to trip him, he just stumbled. And after that his head was way too far from the floor for bashing. This plan was much much better.

Hit him in the head, get the key off his belt, open the cell door, and run. Much better. Hit him in the head, get the key off his belt, open the cell door, run, and get out. She looked around for something to hit him in the head with. Her plate was much to flimsy for knocking over the head. And if she didn't succeed, they might not give it back. There wasn't anything else that wasn't bolted down. The sink and toilet seemed as if they'd been melded to the wall. If the cot hadn't been bolted down, the legs would have been too short anyway. And she didn't know how to remove them anyway.

Her excitement plummeted. This was a stupid plan. She didn't even have anything to hit him with? How was she supposed to knock him out if she didn't have anything to hit him with? What a stupid stupid plan. That was ridiculous. Just stupid. That wasn't a good plan at all. Now… maybe if she could just find a way to knock him down…

2. In the Line of Fire: (Logan)

Logan dodged between two buildings, aiming for an alley that would allow him some cover but still give him maneuverability and a firing point. Generally it was his practice to forgo the use of firearms or any kind of long range weapon, unless it was him and Pitor and the Fastball Special, but picking bullets out of his body really fucking hurt.

Besides, he was a really fucking awesome shot. He took down quite a few of them before someone got lucky. He knew right away that it was some serious tranquilizers, because he could taste the chemical in the air around him. Either someone was sloppy loading it, or they weren't that great a shot and some had burst on the wall behind him. Regardless it was self injecting and quick release, so by the time he pulled the dart from his skin, it was already way to fucking late.

He made the best of his last few moments, radioing Scott to get the fuck outta Dodge, he'd catch up later, and killing five more of the fuckers before his eyelids closed. He lashed out with his claws in a dramatic Last Stand before unconsciousness claimed him.

3. When it Rains: (Marie)

Marie startled and jumped when they swung the door to her cell open. She was so distracted that she completely forgot her plan to sneak the keys from the guard and wait until he was gone to run away. She glowered at the heap of man they'd tossed onto her floor before they pulled the door closed again. His clothes were nice, and his hair was pretty. But it was his fault she hadn't been able to execute her escape plan. Stupid man. She eyes the leather outfit the man wore. The yellow lines running along the seams were pretty. She wanted one. It was the least he could do for spoiling her escape plans.

Carefully she inched closer. Closer. Closer. Her fingers touched the yellow line and he jerked unexpectedly under her touch. She scrambled back across the room, cowering between the end of the cot and the wall, staring at him. She healed him! She healed him? Surely that wasn't what had happened. It never worked that way before. She reached up to make sure that she was still wearing the collar. She was. She looked, and he was too.

He groaned ad pushed himself up onto his hands and knees before rolling over to sit up and survey the room. He was nice to look at. His eyes were a pretty hazel.

"What a shithole." His mouth needed some washing out. She wasn't sure how to talk to him. It had been so long, she tried or form coherent natural speech, instead of the erratic rapid speech she was accustomed to in her own brain.

"Who are you?" She asked. When he turned those hazel eyes to meet hers, she knew that she was getting way more than she needed.

4. Fool's Gold: (Logan)

He looked at the girl across from him. Dirty and wearing what looked like a threadbare pair of hospital scrubs, she reminded him of every other mutant he'd ever come across in a place like this. "Logan."

"What are you doing here?" She said with a glare. He gave her a look and wondered how long she'd been trapped in this hellhole.

"Same as you, darlin'. I'm not here for my health. Look, what are their routines?" She shot him another hostile look and crawled forward on her hands and knees.

"Routines?" She reached out and touched the yellow trim on his uniform. "Breakfast in the morning, planning until lunch. Exercises in the afternoon and examinations after dinner. During the night is when I when I come up with the best plans; sometimes the ones in the mornings aren't very good. Sometimes the good ones are spoiled."

She was very close to his face now, her brows drawn together in concentration as she tried her best to pull the trim from his uniform. He caught her hands and pulled him from their work. "Times, girl. I need times."

"Times? I don't seem to have my blackberry on my right now, but if you give me a minute I'll have my secretary pull up a list of tomorrows activities and you can pour over them to your heart's content." She leveled a bright eyed stare at him. "Does it look like I've got a window? My internal clock runs on 24 hours of dimness. They like it when the bright lights make you blink and squint, it's easier not to see them coming."

And as she sat there, straddling his hips and picking at the trim on his leather uniform, Logan found little help in the divided attention of a bat-shit girl disgruntled about her fate.

5. Temptation: (Marie)

As an avid appreciator of beautiful things, and given her present isolated state, she was in a mood to be gracious with the Man (Logan she reminded herself) and forgive him his untimely interruption. She was having a minor difference of opinion with herself on not viewing him as the 'despoiler of her plans'. It was a disconcerting situation to say the least.

She was insanely drawn to the yellow trim and needed it beyond all that was measurable.

"Girl, what are you doing?" the Man asked. She looked from where her fingers worked to his pretty hazel eyes again.

"I have a name. And I need this ribbon."

"That's not ribbon. It's trim. What did you need it for?"

She returned her attention to the trim. "I need it because I need it. It's drawing me in." She added the pleading look to her face, the one that was sure to gain his assistance and smiled brilliantly when she saw that he was going to give her the pretty stripe. He lifted his hand and knives shot out of his hand.

He grunted violently and his hands started to bleed. Something passed over his eyes and he lifted his hand left hand to his neck, fingered the collar carefully. He groaned.

"Let me look at yours." He told her. She leaned back wary, those were big knives sticking out of his hands. And knives hurt. A lot. But he was like her, a mutant, and he probably wouldn't hurt her, hopefully. Throwing caution to the wind, which was something she had only a partial grip on anyway, she leaned forward and exposed the graceful line of her bruised neck to him.

6. And Now for Something Completely Different: (Logan)

Even with the burning pain of cut and torn tendons and muscles in his forearm, he could feel that smug primal part of him grin in menace when the girl bared her neck to him. He couldn't even bring himself to feel bad about it, he doubted this girl, crazy as she was, followed any commands. And it was common knowledge that Logan was controlled by his instinct. Maybe she was too?

He shook his head to clear the thoughts and brought his good hand up to her throat, carefully he spun the collar along her chaffed skin. "How long you been here?"

"Long time." She replied. "Lost track of the moons ages ago." He paused in his examination and looked her over again.

"How old are you?"

"24. I think. At least, I was 22. Before." She replied, like age is something they can change along with your body and mind.

"What were you like before?" He gave the collar another twirl and sighed in relief when he noticed the hinge holding the piece together with a pin. Obviously, they didn't know anything about him other than that he was a mutant. They assumed he wouldn't pop his claws without his healing.

Another calm and disconcerting bright eyed look from the girl, madness glimmered there in the chocolate brown depths.

"Better. Better than my bad days, better than my good days. Not like this." He knew she was suddenly having a moment of clarity and fought for something to say to hold onto it. Her gaze stayed level with his.

"I need your help. If I don't get this collar off, you're going to watch me bleed to death all over your floor. See this hinge you've got one of your collar here? I need you to maneuver my arm and use my claws to cut that off of mine."

She regarded him with some trepidation before nodding her head in agreement. Logan was infinitely thankful that the people who ran this lab were funded by fuckers like the Friends of Humanity, instead of some secret government program, because it was likely the only stroke of luck he'd get in this shithole.

7. Slow Burn: (Marie)

With trepidation and a wary eye, she took his bleeding sharpened hand into hers. Marie was careful not to touch the blades. Certain as she was that her own skin could be deadly, Mare knew something so beautiful couldn't be touched without a price to be paid.

She was sober as a babe, clear minded and calculating when she reached out to spin his collar around. She positioned it so that part of his leather collar was wedged between the metal and his skin. Carefully and quickly, aware that her sense of self was vanishing she gripped his hand with her own.

She met his eyes briefly over their joined hands; her gaze scorched a path along his jaw to his eyes. "Marie."

Without any further thought of the slow agonizing invasion of the voices that sneak in and claim her sanity, she forced her hands to guide his toward the collar. It was a delicate and awkward procedure that made a clean slice through the metal hinge of his collar, the tough leather of his uniform, and the soft dirty white flesh of her skin.

She ignored the pain as she watched him remove the remains of the collar. Still barely clinging to the last few strings of her sanity, she stared in amazement when his wounds closed before her eyes and marveled at how enjoyable it would be to just heal.

She reached out slowly, so slowly, and touched the smooth skin between his knuckles where the metal knives had appeared. She stared at her own hand, her fingers making contact with someone or the first time in a long time without causing pain and ripping and tearing and sucking and… pretty yellow trim. It pulled her attention to it while she focused another part of her brain on calming the voices, locked it up tight with the rest of her psyche, to keep her safe from herself.

8. Bare Bones: (Logan)

Logan breathed slowly through the pain of his arm healing. His eyes tuned to the girl, who was leaned closely toward him, examining the yellow trim on his uniform, blood running own her forearm from where she'd cut herself on his claw. Why hadn't she cried out? Why hadn't she said anything?

He reached out and plucked her cut hand from his uniform. She ignored him and continued with her right hand, picking and pulling at the trim with her fingers.

"You cut yourself." He said with a scowl. She brought her bright gaze to his briefly.

"Doesn't hurt." She shrugged, giving it little thought.

"Listen Ki-" Logan stopped, remembering the look on her face when she'd told him her name. "Marie, listen to me." He reached out and snagged the sheet from her cot. He tore a long strip from it as he spoke.

"We're gonna get out of here, and it's gonna be dangerous. But I can't take you with me if you can't listen to me. This is important. You have to do what I tell you." He finished tying the makeshift bandage and looked up at her. She studied him intently for a moment.

"Give me the ribbon." He sighed and cut a long line of it from where it adorned his shoulder and held out hope that he'd still be in the leathers when the X-Men found him. He placed the trim in the flat of her hand and watched as she gingerly and carefully wrapped her fingers around the prize.

Then she looked him square in the eyes and told him all about her plan.

9. Face to Face: (Marie)

Marie cowered in the corner, humming to herself and guarding her treasure as if any moment Man would saunter over and snatch it back. He didn't. He just sat slumped against the wall next to the door. She didn't concern herself with him. He was fine, all sleepy looking over there across the chamber.

Steps. She could hear them in the hallway. Coming. She wedged herself deeper into the space between the cot and the wall and clutched the end of the ribbon in her palm. It was yellow and pretty and hers. Man had said so. He'd helped her to tie it around her wrist. She'd watched him the whole time. Made sure he wouldn't steal it.

Man had a name, she knew, he'd told it to her. A part of her brain stayed focused and tried to remember his name while she listened to the steps. She was pressed against the wall now, the fingers of her cut hand frantically twisting and clutching the yellow ribbon.

The door clanged open and one of the Uglies came in. She knew that's what he was by the wicked black stick that he carried and the card hanging around his neck. His eyes were hard and black and it made her press even further into the wall as he nudged Man with his boot, the bolt securing the cot to the cement blocks dug painfully into her shoulder through her thin shirt.

Satisfied he turned his attention back to Marie and a terrible grin split his face. Her face turned away from the Ugly as he crouched down near her. Hot fat tears rolled down her cheeks but she kept her eyes open as she strained against the unyielding wall. The Ugly leaned so close she could practically smell his too sweet and sharply accented skin and reached out to touch her. His fingers grazed her cheek and tore a path through the tracks of clean skin left behind in their wake. She imagined she could feel each molecule of the dirt dragging across her flesh. It was terrible.

Suddenly that segmented part of her brain that had been solely focused on Man and his name and her job and what he could do clicked into place with an abrupt force.

"Logan!" The Ugly never saw him coming.

10. Showing off: (Logan)

It had been a force of will for Logan to wait until she'd called his name. Their signal that the guard wasn't paying attention. He leapt to his feet and, with a smooth fluidity he yanked the guy backward and against the wall behind the door. A quick release of smooth deadly metal into his neck severed both his windpipe and his brain stem with little mess.

Quickly he wrapped the sheet around the guard's neck, stemming the blood flow. It wasn't like the movies, where a spray of blood covered everything and soaked your clothing and the splattered the walls. It just bleeds, it's not slow like molasses, or fast like a leap from a garden hose. Things are theatrical. It isn't pretty or artistic. You just bleed.

And when you're a bad person, nobody cares when you die. A few moments later, the guard has lost his boots and socks and was a little more presentable as a sleeping convict in the corner if any of his guard buddies looked for him.

The Keycard he held was stamped 'Kyle Rutledge Security: 3rd floor Genetics Research'. Logan grabbed it and took another quick moment to survey his handy work, quite proud of his accomplishment. He turned to Marie and tamped down the absurd inclination to boast. To show her he could hold up his end of the bargain.

The words he didn't plan on speaking died in his throat. She wouldn't have associated them with anything anyway. She was still huddled in the corner, wedged between the wall and the end of the cot, pressed so close to the cement he imagined that if she could she would melt right into the blocks.

Suddenly he was aware of how much he'd forgotten. This girl, this woman, was as much a lab rat as he had once been. For two years she'd had to deal with whatever it was they'd done to her. Nothing good judging by the scars that littered her skin.

His eyes took in details, the tracks her tears had made in the dirt on her face, the clean porcelain colored skin, her bandaged hand bloody from clutching the metal bar of the cot, her fingers working frantically on the yellow trim he'd tied to her good wrist, and look of complete fear on her face.