Disclaimer: X-Men is yet another thing that is not mine. I'm just here to poke dubiously at established plot, shred it into itsy bitsy pieces, and disregard said pieces entirely whilst finding new and exciting ways irritate and/or torture this pair of unlikely companions.
Reading Order (Optional):
Boo: Takes place just prior to this story. Victor POV. Not strictly necessary, but events from this one-shot are referenced in Stuck.
Stuck in the Middle with You
Bite Sized: Post-Stuck in the Middle with You flash fics
A quick note on setting/timeline: So, the movieverse is a mess these days. I'm going to call this "Movieverse: X1 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine compliant" and AU after X1. Some elements (but not direct story lines) from the other movies/comics/general Marvel universe will come into play and be reworked to suit my own nefarious purposes.
Prologue
Victor Creed was having yet another shitty day in a long line of shitty days. This would definitely be the last time he free-lanced for Magneto; that man's batshit crazy agenda just wasn't worth it when you ended up effectively dead and defenseless. No matter how temporarily.
Boats didn't exactly make for a soft landing, but with being blasted off of the head of the Statue of Liberty, the water would have been like smashing into concrete, too. Plus there would've been the whole drowning factor, which was a bitch to come back from.
And then they showed up while his spine was fucked, and he couldn't lift a damned paw against them. The fuckers jabbed him with something before packing him up on a gurney and driving off under the guise of an ambulance. Victor passed in and out of consciousness during the transport, his healing factor now working over time on two fronts. He felt fairly lucid by the time they stopped less than an hour later.
The entire way through the sterile facility, Victor memorized the route, working out his plan of escape. They made it too easy. Sloppy. No effort to blindfold him or nothing.
He was mere seconds away from ripping out the throat of the nearest tech wheeling the gurney. From there, eviscerate a few scientists, take out a few guards, and he was home free.
Victor's fingers twitched to life an instant before the damning ring of metal snapped closed around his neck.
Chapter 1
Three Mile Island, Six years later
Marie bolted through the door of the abandoned facility as shots rang out overhead. In retrospect, this might have been a stupid idea, especially carrying it out at night.
Alone.
But this defunct base had been her best lead- Now, however, her pursuers were hot on her tail, and she would just have to bemoan the fact that she never got the chance to nose around as intended later. If she made it out, that is. She needed to get back outside, but several wrong turns found her further underground than before in a room filled with cages. Or what was left of them. If those slashes told her anything, it confirmed that Logan had definitely been here once upon a time.
The figure dropped down in front of her so swiftly that Rogue almost did not have time to divert her course. She swerved, managing to land a kick to the hulking man's midsection before she found herself jerked up to his eye-level by her collar.
"A week of surveillance and you manage to fuck everything up in one night. I'm starting to sense a pattern," Sabretooth growled at her.
Legitimately growled.
His hair was shorn in a cropped, militaryesque style. He'd ditched the furs she remembered for fatigues and a long, dark coat. Perhaps the most notable change, aside from the fact that his pupils weren't blown, and his eyes were a steely blue, was the collar around his neck. Funny, she hadn't noticed it in their brief run-in a few weeks prior.
"Nice necklace ya got there, Sabretooth."
It probably was not best opening line to throw at her once captor and current knight-in-a-big-black-duster. And in a more sane universe, she would have turned tail and run straight for the people shooting at her. But Rogue's universe was not precisely sane, and by all accounts, the feral man was her best bet of getting out of this little mess alive and unincarcerated.
Marie knew it was beyond presumptuous to think he would help her, but fortunately, he seemed come to a similar let's-work-together conclusion. Or, more likely, the giant of a man figured that he could deal with her after their mutual enemy was neutralized.
The ensuing action was brief, and they worked together surprisingly well. It was almost like having Logan at her back-
She drew away from the painful thought as she finally managed to incapacitate her enemy without getting any particularly nasty wounds or additional personalities for her trouble.
Ultimately, Sabretooth took down three of the soldiers to her one. But then, he had not exactly needed to dodge bullets if he didn't feel like it. She thought she was doing good to get off with only a few scrapes. Plus, her target was merely unconscious whereas his were rather graphically eviscerated.
And just like that, it was over.
Marie stood awkwardly for a moment while Sabretooth picked at the remains and swore.
'How to properly form a temporary alliance with an enemy and subsequently dissolve that alliance without getting yourself killed' was not exactly covered in the X-Men training field guide. The Logan in her head eloquently told her to 'just get the fuck out of there while he's distracted, kid.' But he had essentially been saying that from the moment she set foot on the property, so, the woman didn't count that personality as especially helpful at the moment. Aside from that, she was pretty sure that there was blood spatter on her clothes from the feral's less than clinical takedown methods.
Ick.
But those soldiers couldn't have been the only ones on patrol. Marie knew she had stumbled onto something bigger than just a defunct base that Logan once went to looking for answers.
The Wolverine was missing and one of the places he'd been in the past few years was under what appeared to be fairly recent military surveillance.
Mental Logan was right. She needed to get out of here, but maybe this would be enough evidence for the Professor to send a team out to help her.
Before she followed that line of thought further, Marie's eye was drawn back to the metal ring around Sabretooth's neck. Rogue had never been one to let matters drop, especially when she felt she could do something about it. And her assistance might make them even in his eyes.
"No, really. It's some kind of inhibitor, isn't it? I've never seen a metal one before. Do you need help getting it of-"
"This goddamn collar's the only thing standin' between me and ripping out your throat!" Sabretooth snarled and lunged at her before collapsing back with a roar.
"What the hell!?" The young woman jumped back into a defensive stance and worked off one of her gloves. If it came down to it, she was reasonably sure she could drop him before he could make good on that threat.
"Still so eager to get me out of it, sweetheart?" His tone was bitter. He rose, shaking his head as it to clear it.
Okay. No more talking about Mr. Kitty's necklace. No-ted.
Marie eyed the large feral warily and the moment passed. His limitations obviously did not extend to his enemies; he took out those soldiers without any adverse effects, but Rogue thought it best not to test her tentative safety.
"I was just trying to return the favor since, well, you know." She gestured vaguely to their former enemies. "And nobody deserves that," she pointed to the device. "Not even you."
"Maybe I like you owing me. Now, scram, frail." Dismissal. He accentuated his point by breaking the neck of the one soldier she had neutralized.
Despite her vague abhorrence at his ease with act, Marie found room for blossoming irritation.
"Didn't wanna thank you anyway, asshole." She muttered under her breath. He undoubtedly heard her, but he did not deign to acknowledge it as she turned heel and made her way back toward the exit.
She wished she had time to do a bit more snooping, but the longer she stayed, the more likely it was that she would have more soldiers breathing down her neck. This being an unsanctioned, self-imposed mission meant zero chance for getting timely back up.
Her whole case was circumstantial, but this little trip was enough for her to believe that her suspicions were confirmed: Logan hadn't just gone off for some more soul searching without telling anyone. He had been taken.
She turned the handle of the door, or rather, she attempted to- the construction did not budge. Marie narrowly resisted the urge to bang her head against it.
Without a word, Sabretooth strode over and wrenched the door off its hinges. Marie couldn't decide if it was chivalry or a keen desire to be rid of her.
Not the time to look a gift horse in the mouth, she thought.
Rather than return to his task, the man fell in step beside her.
"Shouldn't we do something about them?" Rogue asked, in reference to the slain soldiers they were leaving behind.
She caught the clench of his jaw out of the corner of her eye.
"No point, now. We got ten minutes tops before the cavalry comes in. Might wanna put some pep in your step, kid."
She followed the man only because he seemed to have a better idea of the layout than she did. He could be leading her into a trap, but she didn't think so. He had as much motivation to get out of there as she did, if not more. Within two minutes, he had her back at the main door to outside and freedom.
Marie didn't think she would be able to make it off the island and back to her car within the estimated eight-minute time frame, though. And she really did not feel like a swim in the river.
Sabretooth spoke, jerking her from her musings over polluted river water and how nice it would be to have a useful mutation, like the ability to fly.
"What're you doin' out here all alone without the GeekSquad, anyway?"
"What are you doing here, yourself?" Marie countered stubbornly.
"My job. Now you, on the other hand-"
What was she doing in an old, half-destroyed nuclear power plant that had obviously once served as a cover for some government facility? If his senses were anything like Logan's he'd smell if she was lying. Sabretooth was a feral, after all.
And Logan, well, it was all his fault she was out trying to find him with only half a clue where to start looking in the first place.
Wolverine had been gone from the mansion for nearly a month. That in itself was not so unusual for a man near constantly searching for clues about his past. The unusual part came from the complete lack of contact from him for the past three, going on four, weeks.
He'd never quite condescended to get a cell phone, but he kept the X-Communicator handy, and even occasionally remembered to check in and let her know he was alive. Now the device was dead and untraceable.
But then he had never checked in this time to begin with.
No one else seemed to be worried about that fact. Jean just told her that the batteries had probably run out or he had otherwise damaged it. He was not the most careful of creatures when it came to technology after all. Logan would come back eventually and Marie would see that she had worried for nothing.
But Rogue had a feeling in her gut that they were all wrong. And she trusted her gut more than she trusted the team when it came to the Wolverine. Normally, Marie could read when he was getting ill-at-ease with X-mansion life, and this time, he had shown none of his usual tells that he was about to cut and run.
They all just woke up one day and he was gone.
Kind of like how the team didn't exactly know she was gone looking for him. Or they might by now, but that was a secondary point.
Anyway, she didn't think her erstwhile enemy needed to know anything that specific.
Marie slowed down a bit, starting to feel a stitch in her side.
Their brisk pace had them covering the expanse of the parking lot. Unlike her, the feral was apparently ballsy enough to park on the property.
"Logan's gone, and I'm-" Marie stumbled forward; her vision blurred, "I'm-"
Sabretooth's brow furrowed as he reached to steady her. She was having trouble focusing and her own labored breathing seemed abruptly loud to her ears.
"You get hit?"
"I- Uh- Oh," Marie replied intelligibly, as everything went black.
A/N: There is a tangential one-shot related to this story called, "Boo," which you can find on my profile. It's not terribly necessary to this fic, but it's there if anyone wants a bit more elaboration on their previous, recent encounter. And the events occurring in it may be referenced again later.