This one is a little longer, and split POV, but necessary. All the usual disclaimers, don't own them, wish I did. Next Chappy - PARTY!
Breakfast was a tortured affair of trying to talk without someone knocking the furniture to hell and back. Afterward Logan packed a few of his things to take back to the mansion with him. She watched him leave, and he looked so lost. She knew he was dazed and confused, memories washing over him without pause or concern for his mental welbeing. She wanted to run after him, beg him to stay, but somehow she knew Victor would not accept that he was just a friend.
"Ya didn't have ta make him leave." She sulked.
"He'll be fine...from the smell of things the firecracker'll help him more than anything." Victor slipped his arms around her, but she moved away. "Marie, come here." It wasn't a request.
She turned to look at him and realized his eyes were feral black.
"Ah'm allowed ta have my own friends, and be worried about them." She snapped at him. An' if you knew Jube's was with Logan last night, why'd ya tell her not ta tell him..."
"Come. Here." It was soft and low, a snarling growl that set off her sense of self preservation. She walked slowly across the room and his hand moved faster than she'd ever seen. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her close against him. He pulled her head back, and she could feel the tendons stretching and her eyes well up from the pain.
"I don't give a shit if you give a rats ass about my idiot brother, or who he's bedding, when I tell you to come here, you do it." He snarled. "Tonight's not exactly going to be safe for either of us and I need to know you are going to listen first and argue later." She tried to nod but it hurt too much to try to move her head in his grip.
"Now to take care of that eye, I don't need the reputation of being abusive." He leaned down and kissed her and she felt his life force over power her as the bruised tissue under her eye healed. She was stunned by his surface thoughts, how protective and concerned he was for her, how tender his intentions were against the raw controlled violence of the grip in her hair. The barely contained animal surging just under the surface, wanting something from her, something she wasn't quite ready to give.
He pulled back quickly, and she just nodded.
"There all good as new." He stroked his clawed thumb over the newly healed skin. She leaned on his hand, not sure when or how she'd realized she needed his touch, not any touch, just his. She leaned against him as his fingers loosened in her hair and she slipped her arms around his waist. There was definitely more to Victor than met the eye and she wondered if she was up to the challenge of finding all the pieces to his puzzle.
"Mr. Creed?" They both turned at the sound of a woman's voice at the door.
"Carol, just a little fight with Jimmy Boy, he'll replace the doors." Victor said as he moved her to his side, facing the women in the broken doorway. "This is Marie, she's living with me."
"Living...Victor, oh I'm so pleased you're finally settling down." Carol beamed at him. She was an older woman, her blonde hair mostly grey with deep trouble and frown lines in her face. She moved slowly as the younger woman started picking up the pieces of the broken door.
"Mr. Howlett certainly had one of his temper tantrums again." Maggie said, a slight blush on her face. "Is he still here?"
"No, Magpie, he left, he's living someplace else but I have a feeling he'll be in and out a lot." The woman in her thirties blushed again and Marie smiled a little, another one of Logan's crushes still carrying a torch
"We're gonna leave and get out of your way." Victor said nudging Marie toward the open doorway. "Carol, you send me those bills we were talking about, you don't need to worry about anything right now except getting better."
"I doubt I'll get better, Victor, but thank you again." The older woman said as she swept up splinters of wood in the entry. "The doctor doesn't see any improvement, even after six months of treatment."
"Then we'll get you another doctor." Victor said firmly as the elevator door opened. "We'll beat this Carol, I promise."
"Thank you for the hope, Victor." Carol said as the door slid closed.
"So where're we going?" Marie asked.
Victor grinned. "Central Park."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
They climbed into a cab and he gave directions to the Central Park Zoo. He loved being able to sit quietly among the animals, watching people go by, listening to the unspoken language the animals gave off with their scent. It was like a second language and sometimes could be more amusing than listening to humans prattle on all day. His favorite spot was near the large cats, he felt more at home among other predators than surrounded by prey that had him ready to hunt.
She was quiet in the cab. He worried that maybe she'd picked up too much with the brief contact to heal her eye. He wasn't going to let her go, not now, not ever. She was his, she was just going to have to get used to the idea.
"Has Logan always been lonely?" She asked finally. He almost growled. She'd been thinking about his idiot brother, not about him.
"No, he's actually the more sociable of us." He growled. "Been married at least three times that I know of, maybe more."
"Married? LOGAN!" She looked at him in shock.
"Yeah. As I said, he's the more sociable of us."
"So you've never been married?" Sometimes trying to follow how her mind worked was confusing, how'd they end up talking about him.
"No, lived with a woman for a few years, about a decade back. Never really had much use for females except for fuckin and killin, till now." He growled.
"Victor!" She was actually laughing, catching his subtle dig at himself, which surprised him. She understood his humor. "Seriously."
"Okay, there was a woman when I was young, a farmer's widow that Jimmy and I lived with for a while, she taught me what life was about. I've had a few lovers, not just victims, over the years. I have one son, a piece of shit, but he's got my name so I claim him even if he won't claim me. You know his mother too, Mystique."
"You and BLUEBUTT!"
"She wasn't herself, well she was, but I didn't meet her in her regular form. She was disguised as a double agent in Germany just after World War II. I was her contact, and things got - well interesting. She got pregnant, said she'd take care of it, then left the kid at an orphanage with my name as the father on the birth certificate when she found out it was human."
"Somehow Ah really don't like her." Marie said softly. He wanted to laugh, but she wasn't ready for that harsh truth, not yet. He'd wait a few years, and a few cubs, before he told her he'd had a son with her own mother.
"Not many people do, mutants either for that matter. She's a cold, heartless, calculating bitch, and that's on a good day." He said instead.
"Glad Ah aint the only one that thinks so." She said as the cab pulled to a stop.
"Be back in two hours." He told the cabbie as he opened the door.
They walked quietly to the Zoo entrance and he paid their admission. He heard cameras snapping behind him and knew their pictures would be in tonight's paper, probably with the headline "Creed's Mystery Girl." Well the mystery would be solved tonight, and hopefully put to rest.
They walked slowly through the early Saturday afternoon crowds and found a spot near the tiger pens to just sit. He thought it might be a good day to teach her the finer points of that sense of smell she'd inherited.
"Why're we here?"
"I like to listen to the animals talk." He said.
"Animals don't talk."
"Close your eyes. Filter out all the smells you know, and then tell me what you can pick up from the tigers." He said softly. He watched her eyes close and nose twitch. He closed his eyes and did the same. The female tiger was in heat, the male in the pen next to her was pacing, putting off rutting pheromones, but she was ignoring him. Her attention was on the older male across from her. That was her mate, the one she wanted to sire her cubs, not the young upstart next door. He could smell the second female, her heat just ended, belly full of growing cubs contentedly munching on a piece of meat the keepers had left her. Under the soap opera of mating season he could smell their restlessness, their longing for open spaces to roam, their stale need to hunt stunted by years of captivity. At times he wanted to rip the cages open and let them free, other times he felt the same way they did, stunted, unable to reach his potential while caged by humanity's stupidity.
"The female closest is in heat and wants the male across, the male next to her wants her but she doesn't want anything to do with him. The other female is pregnant." She whispered as her nose picked up the scents.
"Good, little grasshopper." He laughed. He didn't expect her to pick up the subtle under scents, not yet.
"Is this how you learned to use it?"
"No, I learned in the wild, had to learn to use it to hunt and kill to survive, how an animal uses it." he didn't try to hide the pain in his voice, not from her. He was going to have to open up to her, have to show her vulnerabilities, to earn her trust - and his place as her mate. He felt a little like the young tiger, trying to prove himself to her and not sure she'd chosen him.
"That had ta be lonely, although Ah understand now what you mean about listening to them talk...at least ya had that for company."
"And Jimmy, I had to provide for him too, he was just a kid, and we were alone."
"Do you really hate him?" She asked quietly as she shifted on the retaining wall they were sitting on, her head suddenly resting in his lap. He leaned back, his hands on the ground behind him, trying to avoid the temptation of stroking her hair.
"No...Yes...No. It's complicated."
She laughed. "That's family Ah suppose."
"You suppose?"
"Well Ah was an only child, didn't have any siblings ta play with, or fight with, and mah parents, well they were the religious type, church every Sunday, no loud voices. Mah momma raised me how she thought a good Southern Lady should be. 'Keep your voice down, Marie, no one likes a loud girl. Keep your eyes down, Marie, men don't like a girl who's too fresh. You can't go there, that girl's parents aren't married and are livin' in sin."
He chuckled at her imitation of her mother. "Guess we're livin in sin, huh?"
"Yep, and after what they did when mah mutation started, Ah hope they choke on it." She hissed with venom. That's when he realized that she understood exactly how he felt about his brother. She loved them, her parents, but hated them too. He didn't think she had it in her to hate, but maybe he was wrong.
"What'd they do?"
"Nothin...actually. They didn't speak to me, they didn't look at me. One day Ah came home from a walk, Ah couldn't go back to school because of mah skin so Ah mostly walked the woods durin the day. Ah came home and the back door was locked, all mah things were packed in my daddy's old duffle bag, there was an envelope with five hundred dollars in it, and that was it. No note, no explanation, just all mah things on the back porch and an envelope with money." His claws dug into the grass behind him. He wanted to rip them to shreds. He knew, of course what happened but hearing her tell it, watching the tears slide silently from her eyes, he wanted to rip them apart.
"As soon as Ah could I got rid of that old bag...bought a new one so I didn't have anything left that belonged to them, and took off. In the bottom of the bag was mah old map, with the route to Anchorage in it and Ah just started following it, Ah didn't know where else ta go. Ah met some good people, but mostly just people that didn't care one way or the other. Ah even met a few sleeze balls, but Ah either got away, or added a new headache to the ones already inside mah head."
"You were protecting yourself." He said softly, one hand leaving the grass to stroke her hair. He hadn't expected her to open up like this.
"Yeah, but Ah hated that Ah killed them." She whispered. That he didn't know either. He thought she'd only ever touched people, not killed them. He didn't know she'd come that far into his world.
"Self defense is self defense, you did what you had to do."
"Ah threw up the first time, he was still ragin at me in mah head while Ah heaved all over his dead body. Ah could still feel his hands on me for days, rippin at mah clothes. Ah don't know if he was ever missed, but Ah ran. The second time Ah was just too hungry ta care that the guy was creepy. Ah was campin in that woods and he offered me food. After Ah ate he demanded Ah give in to him. He hit me, had me pinned on mah stomach, a knife ta mah throat, when he wasn't usin it ta cut mah clothes off. Ah left him in the woods for the animals to get. After that, Ah avoided people that gave me the creeps. The third seemed like a nice guy, him and his wife, but they weren't. They offered ta let me sleep in a barn on their place, offered me food. They drugged it. Ah didn't even know Ah'd killed them till Ah woke up naked and both of them were in mah head." He gagged a little on that one. "Ah went to the cops on that one. They had eight girls buried in that barn, then Ah ran again."
He'd been worried about her being able to accept the darkness inside him, now he realized she had more than enough of her own.
"You call yourself Rogue for a reason." He stated softly.
"Yeah." He looked at his watch. They were going to have to hurry to catch the cab back to the apartment, and they still hadn't had lunch.
"Why don't we grab a pizza on the way back, we can eat then get ready for tonight." He said as he pushed against her head to get her to move. She jumped and sat up, straightening her hair, and he stood and pulled her close. "No one is ever going to hurt you like that again, Marie. No matter what happens...I WILL protect you." He looked into her eyes as he made the promise. She was his, he wouldn't ever let anyone hurt her, not what belonged to him. He leaned down and kissed her, hard, he tasted blood on her lips and growled.
"Pizza first, Ahm starved." He pulled back as she whispered it against his lips. "Then we might have time." Her hips ground against his, and he realized she was molded to his body like a second skin.
"Then move it, Woman." He growled, his body cold for a second as she pulled away. She laughed a little and moved in front of him and he watched her walk away, her ass swaying in the skin tight jeans. He wasn't sure he was going to make it back to the apartment with out taking her, much less get and eat pizza, but if she made the torture worthwhile later, he'd try.