Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing you recognize.

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Pain. Pain everywhere. His whole body. Oh God, his mouth!

"Hey, come here and look at this!" Someone poked his back. "I think this guy's dead! Look at his hand, it's green! He musta drowned in the water. Prolly been dead for awhile. Bodies turn colors when they they're dead. Saw it on that TV show, you know, CSI?"

"No way! Lemme see!" Someone crouched down beside him. "Help me turn 'em over."

Two sets of hands grasped him roughly and rolled him onto his back. He struggled to open his eyes. So much pain.

"Whoa, he ain't dead. Lookit his chest, he's still breathin'." A whistle. "Good Lord, he's ugly. Must be a mutant."

"What do we do with him? He looks like he's gonna die."

"Call 911, I guess. They'll send an ambulance. Or the cops. Whatever they do with hurt mutants."

He had to get up! He had to get away! He had to--he couldn't move. He wanted to attack. He wanted to get away, to go home. But he couldn't move. Not at all. God, what happened?

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A week after the incident at Ellis Island Sabertooth's wounds had completely healed, but his pride hadn't. He had never been defeated before and it was eating at him. He grew more agitated by the day and began drinking to compensate. But the more he drank, more his rage built. And the more his rage built, the more he drank to sooth it. It took a lot of alcohol to sooth the rage of a man his size and he quickly depleted the base's supply of liquor. He heaved himself out of his easy chair.

"Going out for booze."

Krystal stuck her head in the den and frowned. "Again? Didn't you just go to the liquor store this morning?"

He grunted. "Going to a bar."

Krystal shrugged. "Ok, enjoy yourself, I guess."

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And he did. For several hours. By last call the bar was deserted, but then, it had been for quite some time. A seven-foot-tall feral commanded quite a lot of personal space.

"H-hey. We're closing up," stuttered the nervous bartender. He had been serving the huge man drinks all night with no problem, but he was afraid of what would happen when he tried to cut him off for the night. Sabertooth didn't answer, only pushed his empty mug toward the bartender, motioning for him to fill it up. The bartender exhaled forcefully and filled the mug. "O-ok, just one more. But that's all, ok? I gotta close up, get home, you know? Got kids I wanna see."

Sabertooth snorted. He didn't care about this man's kids. He just wanted a beer. He picked up the mug and headed for the door.

"Hey! You can't take-oh, never mind. Just keep it."

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Sabertooth steered the speedboat lazily back to base. It was much slower getting home by boat than by helicopter, but he had never bothered to learn to fly. Mystique or Toad always did it for him. Not that it mattered, he had no idea what became of their helicopter anyway. His healing factor had sobered him up about halfway through the trip. Too bad, he had had a pretty good buzz going when he left the bar. He supposed constant sobriety was a small price to pay for being nearly immortal.

When he finally arrived back to the base he found Krystal still awake, but of course, she was always awake. She was sitting on the couch, knees drawn up to her chest, hugging a pillow. Sabertooth's eyes drifted to the television. The local news. He suppressed a sigh; he knew what she was watching for. He never considered Toad a friend, 'comrade' was even a stretch, but now Sabertooth almost felt bad for the girl on the couch. She really seemed to like Toad, and Toad genuinely liked her, Sabertooth could tell.

"Hey," he started.

Krystal turned her head and gave him a small smile. "Hey, glad to see you made it back. You've been gone awhile, I kinda thought you crashed the boat."

He smirked. "Gotta love my healing factor. Don't stay drunk for long."

Krystal turned her attention back to the television. "Mmm, lucky you. Doesn't look like anyone has spotted Mystique or Mort, at least if they did they're keeping it quiet."

"Listen, kid…"

Krystal turned back to him. "What is it?"

What should he tell her? He didn't want to make her mad, she could tell him to rip his own head off and he would do it. He was almost indestructible. Almost. He was pretty sure even he couldn't survive decapitation. "You haven't seen Wolverine fight," he started, scowling at the memory. "He would have had to have gone through Mystique and Toad to get to me."

Krystal's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?" she demanded.

Sabertooth shrugged. "The frog might be dead."

Krystal stood up and threw the pillow forcefully to the ground. "Don't say that! He's fine, he'll come back!"

Sabertooth waved her off. "You keep thinking that if it makes you feel better. I'm just saying, don't get your hopes up."

Krystal's face contorted in anger. "What do you know? You didn't even see them fight! You don't know what happened."

"Suck it up and get over it, kiddo. People die, they do that."

"Shut up! God damn it, why are you doing this?"

"Look at you, you're not cut out for this kind of work. You're too damn emotional. That's your problem. I'm just trying to help."

"Some help," she bent over and picked up the pillow. "I'm going to bed."

Sabertooth watched, mildly amused, and she stormed off to Toad's room. Well, at least he had kept his head.

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As the weeks passed Krystal grew more and more distant as it became apparent Mort wasn't coming back. For the first couple of weeks she was hopeful, but as the days rolled by her optimism declined. And Krystal wasn't the only one growing distant: Sabertooth spent more and more time out at night at bars and God only knew what else. He frequently came back to the base in the late hours of the morning. Then, one day he didn't come back at all.

Although Sabertooth never was her favorite form of company, Krystal missed him. Without him the base was lonely, no better than her storage garage. Without the Brotherhood Krystal had no job, no purpose. She sighed as she sat on the couch flipping idly through television channels. She supposed she could always go back to changing the minds of politicians. But that somehow didn't seem big enough anymore. If Magneto had taught her anything, it was to go big. Honestly, he had tried to mutate world leaders! Her efforts seemed so trivial in comparison. She stopped on the local news channel, where Senator Kelly was apologizing for his previous actions against mutants. She turned off the TV and grinned. Of course, why didn't she think of it before? The Senator was a mutant now! Magneto said that was how he had escaped. Maybe she could join Kelly and his new fight for mutant rights! Between the two of them they could change a lot of minds, do a lot of good for mutants. Perfect, she had a plan.

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Author's Note: From this point in the story on I'll be using parts from the original script for X2, which included Toad. You don't need to read the script to enjoy this fanfic, but if you're interested, I'll try to put a link to the script on my profile page. Enjoy!

Also, a great big thank you to Animelover210, who contributed many excellent ideas for this chapter!