I See a Darkness

-An X-men: Evolution Fanfic-

By Gale (Magdaleina on DA)

Author's Note: If you like this, I beg you not to read my other Evo fics, because I was much younger and a much worse writer back then. This is for the 'I Never' Contest from the Evo-Obsessed Club on DA. I decided Sabretooth needed some lovin, because nobody'd really used him much in the contests yet. This story includes another Marvel character, Birdy, who was one of my favorites in the comics and worked off of ol' Vic really well till she went and got herself stabbed by his son. The title is taken from the Johnny Cash song, I See A Darkness, which I just thought was right fitting for the two of them. Used without permission -- but I'm a poor college kid, so no suing, mkay? Also Note: Because it's Sabretooth-centered, there's obviously going to be some language and violence in here. You know the drill. Don't read it to your five year-old.

Enjoy.

---

I never shoulda got outta bed this mornin.

Rarely was there ever a situation that Victor Creed found himself unprepared. Sure, these instances tended to lump into the time between now and when he first started working for Magneto. But now? Now things were different. He was on his own, working freelance, which suited the feral just fine. After that whole deal with Apocalypse and Magneto being blown up then turning up again, he really didn't care much for maintaining his position with the Acolytes anymore. For one, he'd gotten right tired of that faggot Gambit butting in on things that didn't concern anybody but him and the runt. For another, Magneto was just fucked up now, and there were no two ways about it. It was all that quality time with those two stupid kids of his. Had to be.

At one point in time, Victor supposed he bought into Magneto's idea of a war between mutants and humans. He'd fought the runt for a place in Avalon, but largely because he was still on Magneto's payroll and it was expected of him. Not that he complained at all -- a chance to pound Wolverine into chunks of bone and blood was always worth the extra effort. But Victor hung around and allowed Magneto to pay him, meagerly, knowing that he'd be seeing some action.

In the months before he left, however, there simply was not any action, of i any /i kind, to be found. And that was bullshit. He had a pretty sweet setup going on before then. Took the jobs as he liked them, had plenty of time to harrass the runt. Things were going perfectly, in fact, until Wolverine's pet cripple brainraped him and dropped him in the North Pole.

So now that he was free from the giant refrigerator Magneto liked to call a "base", Victor was back to doing what he liked best: Bashing things for fun and profit. He'd been away from it almost two years, and now was more and glad to be back in the saddle.

...Well, that's how he felt until now, while on a night "run" as he called it, he came face to exrutiatingly painful face with a spark net. Whoever it was that'd been following him knew how to do it. He didn't even realize someone was on him until just before the trap was sprung.

Bands of metal wrapped around his heavy torso, his limbs, cutting into the bare sections of his flesh before buzzing to sudden life with electricity. Blue light rose up in the dark as he roared, held prone by the blast, the smell of burning hair and flesh filling his nostrils. He had no awareness of the time that passed before the power died and he collapsed, the net still covering him and twisting his arms behind him as he lay on his stomach, face full of dirt, smoke faintly rising up off his body. Body still humming with the recent shock, he didn't move much, waiting for his healing factor to hurry the hell up and kick in, but he was fully aware that whoever the fuck had attacked him was coming up on him at a bored saunter. Their steps were purposeful, like now they wanted him to hear them.

He growled low but listened.

Whoever it was, they were light, likely female, with a kind of callous cool in their step that he thought he recognized, but his brain was just as cooked as everything else. He opened his eyes to watch a pair of booted heels stroll within his line of vision. Damn broad merc types. Always out for some prom queen vengeance for killing their daddy or never getting a pony or some shit. He didn't care; as soon as he could move he was going to make her eat that --

A hard kick to his face stopped that train of thought fairly quick, and his head rolled with the impact; he was too heavy to turn over completely, but now he at least had a chance to look at her face. He noted then that the smell of himself burning intermingled with the scent of tobacco as well, shown as a cigarette butt dropped to the ground just next to them to be stamped out. His gaze followed the foot upward, over smoothely curved leather-clad legs, a nice and familiar rack, and then a pair of pursed, cocky lips beneath a set of night vision goggles.

The woman reached up, with a gloved hand pulling them off and dropping a mass of soft blonde hair onto her shoulders that looked blue in the meager moonlight. If she hadn't looked so obviously pissed off, he imagined she might have been smirking at the little feat she'd just performed. Wasn't everyday someone got the drop on the Sabretooth.

"Hey boss," she said.

It almost felt wrong not to reply. "Hey Birdy," he said. Though pained he still managed a toothy grin. "How's tricks?" He might have managed something a little more biting if another kick, this time reserved for his gut, hadn't driven the wind from his lungs. Short of that he could feel his body closing up the welts in his flesh, pushing the dead skin off of his body. Feeling was returning to his fingers. She could keep doing that, but all she was doing now was pissing him off and slugging her didn't sound all that bad at the moment.

"You'd be back in a day, huh?" she demanded.

...Th'fuck is she talking about?

Birdy brought her other hand up, holding an odd little blinking remote there. His eye followed her movement closely, like a caged lion waiting for the exact moment the keepers would unlock the cage. Her thumb brushed over a shining blue button, and what followed instead of freedom was another sudden blasting shock. When it stopped, Victor tasted copper, realizing in a daze that he'd bitten down on his own tongue.

"I'm talkin' about the job, you stupid sack of shit," the blonde answered, and for a moment he wondered if he'd asked anything out loud before he remembered she could hear inside his head. Always could without trying. "Y'weren't there, and I had ta go on with-" another kick, and he grunted, "- out you!"

Inhaling hard, through his nostrils, he tried thinking. Yeah, that government facility. Fat take on that, too, but he'd decided to stop off in Bayville and have a good tussle with the runt to get himself fired up. And then he woke up in snow. "You hit me again and I'm gonna tear your goddamn head off," he ground out between spits of his own blood.

"Spent a year gettin' prodded by S.H.I.E.L.D. thanks to your sorry ass! I ought to tear yours off!"

Victor managed a tired guffaw at that, rechecking that tiny frame of hers to confirm what she was suggesting was in so many ways utterly impossible. There were few things in the world that mattered that were smaller than Birdy, in his opinion. "Baby, you're welcome to try." Her finger moved over that button again and his eyes widened. "Don't you d--!"

Too late.

He at least had time enough to remind himself to feel pissed off when it was all over. Therefore, the minute the current was cut off again, he came back to consciousness, throat aching like the rest of him and roars coming out rough like he were shouting through crushed glass. All the while though he cursed her, her parents, the sperm and egg that made her, even her dog, letting the force of his anger be what fueled the still slow work of his healing factor. "--fuckin kill you, you stupid bitch!"

He uttered an alarmed "neh --" before Birdy pressed the button, for barely a second this time, just enough to make him jump.

"Then get up and do it, boss," she chided. The feral's voicebox had been on a constant rumble for the last few minutes now, and he glared death at her. It wasn't at all a smart thing, goading him like that. Making fun of him. Girl musta gone crazy in the last couple years because she never woulda done that within scratching distance of him. He twisted his wrists, feeling the metal tendrils of the net giving with the force, but not enough to fully release him.

"Soon's I get loose, you're gonna be real sorry about all this, Birdy," he muttered low.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh don't make no promises yet, boss. I can do this all night."

And she would, too. The bitch. In any case, while two seconds ago Victor might have thought ripping her throat out would be the best conclusion to what was turning out to be one shitty evening, he started to realize that a living Birdy still had something he wanted which he couldn't get from a dead one. He heard her "hmph" and knew she'd picked up on that thought.

Of course that didn't mean he wasn't going to get her back but good. Right now his tactics just had to switch. He relaxed his body, still growling some under his breath, but at the least he appeared a little less angry. Realizing it'd been at least a full minute since she pushed the button again, a slow, fanged smile slid across his face. She was wearing her own rage down to nothing, and he had no worries for his own life being snuffed out by that little toy she was playing with. He doubted she could go all night; he could be patient, wait for her to get bored and let him loose, like he knew she would. That's how things used to work on those rare occassions where for some reason she'd have the upper hand. He'd only say it was true to himself, but he'd missed having her about; she took care of things so he wouldn't have to, actually sorta liked him when she wasn't in one of her bitchy "let's set Victor on fire because he left me to blah blah blah" moods, and on top of that was a warm body. No way in hell she'd try to kill him. She flat out didn't work right without him around. Hell -- her being picked up by S.H.I.E.L.D. was proof enough of that (and though he'd never admit it, he felt some tinge of remourse for letting it happen, but his hands had been tied -- literally).

He let that train of thought run a few stops too far, however, and he'd completely forgotten she could hear him until another grunt snapped him back to reality, sensation returning to his body almost in full force now, and he blinked as she turned and walked away from him. "Deh -- yer not just gonna leave me here!"

"Aren't I, Victor?" she asked, glancing back. She tossed the remote over her shoulder, and the cylindrical object collided with the dusty ground with a bounce before rolling to a complete stop a few feet away from him.

Thankfully it hadn't landed button first, but he couldn't be bothered with it right now. He squirmed a little against his restraints, which were still making slow work letting him back up. It'd still take another minute. "Naw, you ain't gonna do ol' Victor like that, are ya darlin?" he tried to make that sound a bit more confident. It wasn't a matter of him needing her to let him out; it was more that he just wanted her not to walk off while he was talking at her.

She'd almost disappeared at that point, but he could still hear and smell her.

"Birdy!" A sound rose up in his throat, and he tried choking it down but out it came just the same. Birdy'd always called it his 'lonely cat noise', so he hated making it. He pushed harder on the net. Bands of it were popping off behind him, making unhappy twangs each time one snapped, and he almost had his elbows out. "Damnit, Birdy!" And she was still walking, still going at that self-important little pace she always used -- which just said to him that she was waiting for him to do as she'd said earlier, to get up by himself and come, and that just pissed him off even more. He wasn't nobody's lapdog.

In half the time he'd surmised, he had his arms free, and with the help of his claws had no trouble rolling over and getting the bands off his legs. Then he pulled himself in the direction she'd gone in, first building momentum on all fours before rising onto his feet at full speed, still slightly crouched as he gained. And she could hear him coming; he knew that as soon as his ears caught her breaking into a run. Once he had her in his sights again, he pounced. They fell into a roll, him taking the first impact with the ground then easily pinning her down. Victor felt himself laughing for the first time today when he sat up to look at her, glowering at him like he'd just insulted her mother or something, like she hadn't expected it to end this way.

He pushed forward, covering with his mouth a pair of lips that were likely prepared to unleash all manner of curses on his person. She uttered some small noise of objection, thrashing under him for a moment like it was going to get him to let her up. Her teeth closed on his bottom lip, and he growled but remembered not to bite back. He did shit like that and usually woke up several days later, unable to remember how to take a leak and with the worst headache of his life, to boot. That she wasn't hitting him with all she had, now, in terms of her powers, just meant that she wasn't going to fight back for much longer anyway, and sure enough, she stopped bearing down with her teeth and shoved one of her little hands up into the tangled mess of his long hair, getting a good grip like she liked to and holding him there like he wasn't gonna be able to stop it -- not that he planned on quitting for a minute anyway. It was only cute when she thought she had some control of the situation when she didn't actually have any, after all.

In two years he'd forgotten what she tasted like, how her body felt trapped between him and the floor, even the sounds she made. And for that, he'd have to pay the runt back someday. Him and the good professor, but there wasn't much time to think on that now.

He released her, finally, smirking down at her between breaths of air. Sure, she still looked pissed, but the storm had passed at least. "You'll get over it," he mused, earning him a fresh glare. "Meantime, you got any smokes?"

"You are such an asshole."

END