Chapter Twenty Five: Never Give Up
Their trip to the bar was exactly what K had figured it would be. Her old friends were trying very hard to be welcoming to Logan, though they were still somewhat cautious of him at the same time. Bill had kept to his word, and hadn't busted him out, but it didn't matter. A few of the older men who watched the news all the time recognized him right out of the gate. After all, it wasn't like he worried overly much when he'd lost his cowl God only knows how often. Or the many many times he flat didn't bother trying to hide who he was.
And once the jig was up, the conversation quickly turned to what Logan did then took a turn, picking on K for 'needing' to find herself a superhero instead of a regular guy. Clearly a few of them were a little bitter at not being given a chance – but that whole line of picking ended quickly when Logan put his foot down. They could pick on him if they had the stones, but he wasn't going to listen to anyone try to get after her, lighthearted teasing was one thing, but the second he thought it was a hair too far, he wasn't having it.
The two of them stuck around for a while. It gave him the chance to see what kind of crowd she picked for herself - or at least the kind of crowd she and Bill ran with, and the truth of it was that he liked most of those guys there. It was rare, he knew, to find a group of guys that were alright with having a woman in their midst when most of the time, the whole point of guys getting together was to get away from women. Though, he had to wonder if those that were married knew they were hanging around her when they were at the bar or the hunting camps. Likely not.
When Logan had more than enough of being social, he simply grabbed K's arm and led her out while the festivities continued in the background. It was clear that all those in attendance, outside of the little couple, were feeling no pain. They slipped out of the bar and he helped her into the Jeep to skedaddle on out. But he didn't want to go all the way to the cabin before he got to covering the bar stink on her with his own scent. When he turned the opposite direction of the cottage, she looked at him questioningly, but the smoldering look he gave her in response just kicked her off and she caught on quick to what he had in mind
"Turn here," she said quietly. His smile widened and he followed her direction, turning down the little half hidden dirt road that he quickly found out led to a little used spot near the big lake. The lake was fairly calm, and the waves were rolling onto shore quietly in the background. He barely got the Jeep parked when she jumped out, already leading him down the rocky beach to a spot that she'd always liked, but never shown anyone. He didn't bother asking where they were, he just took a hold of her, and rushed out to let the chilly October air bite into their skin while they headed out to let out a little wildness.
Hours later they watched the sunrise right there at the lake before taking one more romp and making their way back to the Jeep where K quietly directed him on where to go for coffee. He'd kept her plenty warm throughout the night, but both of them really needed some hot coffee and a few hours curled up in bed, of all places. When it was all said and done, they didn't take more than another day at the cottage. Although the quick break was nice, they were headed back to reality where their little ones were cheerfully awaiting them.
The return to Westchester was quiet, unheralded. Of course, they had a debrief waiting for them when they got there - which really just meant that Logan would spend a few hours after Fury left going over the Jeep to see where exactly the bugs were that he'd used to track them.
Fury was pleased with how the little mission had ended, but for the record, he notified the powers that be that K didn't follow orders well, and was as unpredictable as her husband – recommending that she'd need a longer record with the X-Men before he could green light her for Avengers duty. Which got him a little closer to Logan's good side again.
The weeks passed quickly from October to November and before they knew it, Logan was into his old habit of glancing at the calendar.
"Please relax," K said one afternoon, just before she landed a tender kiss on his Adams apple.
"He's gonna make a move on you or the kids. I just know it," he replied. It wasn't even his usual level of anticipation - his tension had been slowly mounting since the mission they ran with Creed.
"And I'm just supposed to play the damsel in distress? Come on, sweetheart. I got your back," she replied easily. "If you're nervous though, we can see if there's a place for us in the house for a while, see how that goes. The kids would be closer to help if they needed it, and we wouldn't have such a target on us if we were already there – no second chance for a sniper."
Logan didn't think too long about it before he nodded. The truth was that he hadn't felt that his little family was safe at all since she'd been shot. It just shouldn't have happened. The fact that it did still made him sick when they walked past the spot where she went down. He thought the uneasiness would fade, but he found himself staring at the spot where it happened every time he walked past it. He couldn't find the words that quite fit what he was thinking, though and every time he tried to it only felt like someone was whispering 'weakness' over his shoulder.
The thought of something like that happening again, or one of the kids catching it was too horrible, and too real. And as for Domino? He still hadn't gotten a chance to let her know where he stood. Domino knew he was pissed off, and frankly she was avoiding him like the plague, which might have been the worst thing she could have done to herself because now, Logan had a slow burn in the back of his mind on how he wanted to make her pay.
K had little to no recollection of the event itself. She knew it happened outside the mansion, but she didn't know where or how it went down. She did know who had done it, and had been planning for a while on going to introduce herself to the woman that shot her. Domino was going to have more than her luck broken when K got a hold of her. She didn't care that the woman had a past with Logan, or that she was hired for the job. K took it very personal when someone believed lies without checking facts first then turned around to shoot her in the eye - and K wasn't going to be happy until blood was shed. Maybe even take Domino down a notch and cut her vision in half as a lesson. It was truly rare for her to get an axe to grind like this, and she could only remember handful of times in her long life that she really had held a grudge, but this was at the top of it.
Charles breathed a sigh of relief several days after the return from the cottage when K asked him over tea if he thought it would be alright for them to find a place in the mansion. Had he the ability, he would have picked her up and spun her around. Instead, he beckoned her to follow him, leading her down a little used section of the mansion where, at the end of the hall lay what could only be likened to suites that were equivalent to small apartments.
"It wasn't originally built this way, but I had it changed after one of our impromptu remodeling efforts. I believe you can actually thank the Juggernaut for this particular wing, though honestly, I thought it would be Jean and Scott as it's first occupants," Charles told her as she walked around the room in shock. "When the team began to shift - and when they got married so young, I was sure they'd be expanding their family quickly. But … with all the trouble Jean had getting started, I couldn't bear to show her this place and let that hang over her head. She's been through so much getting to where she is now, but with Rachel getting bigger, I'm sure you won't be the only ones down this wing for long."
K had been slowly walking around the room as Charles spoke wondering how she missed this in the years she'd been there.
"No one ever comes down here," Charles said. "I scarcely think that Scott even remembers what's here."
K dropped her shoulders as she approached him, then leaned down to kiss his cheek before wrapping him up in a hug. "You really don't get credit for all that you do, Charles," K told him before giving him another kiss on the cheek. "Of course, this is perfect. I just don't understand why you didn't mention it sooner."
"To be honest, when the two of you were married, you needed the distance to be together, just the two of you, and the boathouse was a much more fitting option, but … this …"
"You really are a wonder, Charles," K said, watching him with a fond smile. "Thank you for this."
She didn't know how to properly wrap her head around it. He'd handed them a way to keep their little ones safe and close, so of course, they began moving into it immediately.
The little family settled into the new space, and the Summers family had even started their own move to the same wing when the predictable happened. The whole institute had been on high alert and no one argued with Logan when he was insisting that Creed would be making an appearance on or near their designated date.
So when the alarms went off mid afternoon one day in late November - just a few days before Logan's birthday - everyone in the school knew that they were to stay in place as the team neutralized the intruder. Logan and the little ones were in the house when it happened, as was most of the staff and kids, but K and her class were in the barn getting ready for class. The kids there had just gathered up all their tack and had been chatting with an excited tone since they were going to go on a trail ride … and then the alarm went off. It was a silent one in the barn, but the lights all dimmed and then switched to red - so not to alarm the horses if someone was handling them.
K sighed heavily and told the group to put the tack away, then went to close and lock the doors to the barn, instructing the students to head up into the loft. She'd barely turned her back to the door after locking it when someone bashed into it, startling her. For a moment, K stared at the door with a frown, knowing there were only so many possibilites, and none of them were good. For a moment, she simply took a few steps back and was ready to stand her ground, but then when the intruder bashed the door again, she heard one of the kids in the loft squeak out of fear. She rushed up to the students, all of them upper level, all of them in fairly good control of their abilities as well. K held her hands open as she tried to calm them and they nervously tried to see who or what was attempting to get in with them.
"If anyone outside of the staff tries to come up these steps, blast them into next week,"K said calmly and deadly serious. "I'm headed down to keep him away from you."
"Him?" One of the students said, wide eyed and terrified.
K tipped her head. "Probably, yeah. Him. Just ... " she looked over to the more calm kids. "Keep him safe, would you?"
"On it," several agreed as several more protested the fact that K was leaving them. But she didn't have the luxury of time to argue it, so she simply turned around and descended the stairway to the sound of the barn door cracking as Sabretooth pounded it open.
When K turned the corner at the bottom of the loft steps, it was clear that door wasn't long for this world. Steeling herself and taking a deep breath, she slid her claws out slowly, bracing herself for what was to come. She stood halfway down the alley between stalls watching as the door splintered and cracked. When Creed finally did breach the door, he looked around for a moment before his gaze finally landed on her and the grin stretched out slowly.
"Long time no see, girlie. Ya miss me?" Creed crooned. K shook her head slowly, refusing to blink or look away. "Oh, you just going to try to wait for the cavalry, frail? I can be done here before they shut the system down."
"That's not the kind of thing most guys would brag about," K replied, unable to let that slide when she knew what his plans always entailed. He snarled at that, but she kept her cool, waiting for him to come to her as he sized her up, confident she could at the least keep him at bay. "You got a real obsession with my husband. You know, that's unnatural for a guy to worry that much about what another guy does. Do you want to talk about it while we wait for them to scrape you up?"
K wasn't afraid of him like this. Sure, the quarters were a little tighter than she'd like, but she thought that might help her a bit. A man that size needed room to really do damage right. It wasn't too different than getting kicked by a horse, after all. If you're right there tight to them, they don't get near the momentum out to do you damage, but if they get the full swing in …
But as K squared up with Creed, her focus shifted a bit as she realized the guns were still firing outside. He laughed at the slight change in her expression. "You didn't think I'd come to the party alone, did you?" he chuckled, stalking toward her slowly, his stance going lower as he crept up toward her, readying to spring. But K kept her ground, locking her jaw as she braced herself to launch at him as soon as he made a quick move. Just as he was ready to leap, the barn door on the other end of the aisle was bashed hard.
K jumped, her concentration cracking with the wood of the door as Creed continued to chuckle low, enjoying the expression on her face. He knew he had the upper hand but he gave her the chance to see how much trouble she was in first as Daken stepped through the door behind her – both of them wanted her to panic before they attacked. They wanted her to know exactly how deeply she was in trouble before what was sure to be quick fight ended.
"K," Daken said evenly. "You know I tried to go easy on you last time. I thought it would be mostly painless to let you freeze to death, but now I guess I'm going to have to make it hurt."
She wasn't sure who to watch. Creed was merciless, reveling in dealing out pain, but Daken was much faster, and just as cruel. In every simulation, she could handle either one of them alone, but for as close as those fights were, she'd never even tried both together, and to turn her back on either was akin to signing her own death warrant. She knew she was royally screwed. She couldn't help it when a nearly silent 'fuck' slipped past her lips as Daken readied himself to attack.
Creed was too close – much too close to not pay attention to. Daken was closing the gap too. Before she could start to analyze it, Creed lunged when her gaze slid to Daken. She blocked him, only to have him grab her arm and pull her close enough to rip a chunk of her shoulder out with his teeth. She pushed herself away from him with a scream and bumped right into Daken, who stabbed her through the kidneys, dropping her to her knees before she could lunge forward. Both of them were barely giving her enough room for the other to move, let alone letting her have a prayer of fighting back.
K pushed herself up, doing what she could to keep from allowing the hits to be all as heavy as they'd intended, but she was slowly making her way to her feet. These two weren't playing around. Panicking and breathing quick and shallow, she held her wounded side with one hand as she tried to get her bearings, blood poured down her chest where Creed had torn out a piece of her shoulder. She couldn't help but panic when she was so clearly stuck … she hadn't even gotten in a good hit. Her gaze was darting between the two of them and as she tried to find a way to even fight back, she could hear one of the students upstairs crying.
Daken lunged and slashed at K and instinctively, she tried to move away from him, only to run right into Creed who slashed her from behind. By that time, she was slipping already and her clothes were in tatters. Still, she found the tiny bit of middle ground they were allowing her smack dab between them. "Is this a kidnapping, or a straight up killing? I need to know," K said suddenly, causing both of them to pause for just a moment – and the split second Creed's attack stance weakened the tiniest bit K lunged at him in a desperate shot to get away from them. She dropped down as she got far too close and slid right between Creed's legs as Daken shouted at him to grab her. Creed only ended up with a handful of hair by the finest of margins when she used her momentum to get on her feet, digging into her run hard as she darted out of the barn, though the two of them were hot on her tail.
Daken passed Creed and was closing on her fast to the sounds of gunfire erupting from the turrets around them. Unfortunately, K hit one of the netting land mines and ended up tangled up with Daken as he tackled her. But so close together, it was a bit too close for him to do the damage he wanted, so instead, he settled on trying to pin her down and strangle the life out of her. She fought him hard, not letting up the fight even when he got a hold of both of her hands, jockeying himself so he sat on her chest, his weight made it harder to breathe right; her ribcage unable to expand under his weight as he secured her hands beneath his shins.
"You're going with us," he told her as she struggled under him, her breaths coming quick and shallow. "You know how this will end. Quit fighting me and I'll make it easy on you. As a favor to you."
K was shaking from struggling so hard, yet still refused to give him the satisfaction of showing any weakness. As she was bleeding, her vision blurred from the blood between the hits Daken was nailing her with, she made a last ditch effort. She was ready to pass out, and she knew a few more hits would do the trick - so she lifted her head as far forward as she could, and she did the only thing presented to her in the situation. She bit him as hard as she could, catching a bit of anatomy that was very dear to him - and refusing to let go, determined to make her teeth meet. He screamed as he tried to stab her in an attempt to get her off of him - anything to get some space between the two of them, but he too, was hung up on the netting. Daken was in a bad way as a large explosion echoed behind them, flinging Creed past them and into a fresh netting mine that snared him easily as he lay there unconscious. Daken turned his head, expecting to see the X-Men, shocked to find that instead, it was K's class that had snuck down from the hay loft and were trying to figure out a way to hit Daken without hitting K with their combined abilities.
The students looked terrified. And K was struggling for a big enough breath as Daken renewed his efforts, finally getting her to let him go as he tried to smother her, calling her a whole string of horrible things in Japanese that no one understood, but all of them caught the gist of.
"Hit us with all you've got!" K shouted to the students. "NOW!"
And to Daken's shock - they did. Two telepaths reached out with a dose of solid pain toward Daken while the oxygen was sucked from the air around them. Daken's eyes widened in shock as K simply closed hers, waiting for the full attack, well aware that it wasn't over yet. Daken tried to scramble away from her, unable to make any distance from the net, especially with his claws tangled in it as he tried to cut his way free. Air slipped in close to K - the student responsible was terrified of killing his favorite teacher as she lay limp while Daken struggled to breathe above her. He dropped down low when he realized K was breathing shallowly, greedily trying to catch a breath, his face next to hers when suddenly the air returned, only to be followed by a blast of fire, engulfing the both of them. The netting around them burned before a concussive blast knocked them both out and the whole net with both K and Daken inside of it tumbled across the lawn. When they finally came to a stop, Daken was passed out and half crushing her.
K barely heard one of the students stop another from using his electrical abilities, before the students rushed toward the two charred ferals. They only barely beat the X-Men by a fine margin. Logan dropped down next to them and quickly cut the net away while Scott and Hank rushed over with restraints for both Daken and Sabretooth.
When they pulled Daken up, Scott panicked openly - the two of them had been so close when the fire hit them that there was some shared burns that didn't look like they should have touched and both K and Daken were almost entirely devoid of all hair and most of their skin. K was on top of what was left of her clothes as Scott knelt next to her, waiting for the rest of the team to show with stretchers for them while Logan put the restraints on Daken. Hank and the band of students then escorted Creed to a holding cell and Forge was waiting at the front doors with a scanner.
"K, wake up – can you hear me?" Scott said as K's eyes rolled in her head. "Well, you're alive. There's that, but you sure have seen better days."
K tried to smile at that, coughing as she tried not to laugh. She was already healing, but it would be a little while still before the skin grew back across the burnt flesh.
Scott looked over to Daken, and saw that he too was healing, though not quite to the pace that K had set. Logan made his way to her, not sure where to put his hands as he looked at her burns. When Jean showed up a short while later with a blanket for Logan to wrap K up in, she was healed enough that the burned bits of skin were flaking off and she could almost sit up on her own. Jean rested her hand on K's head as she watched the hair starting to grow already. By the time Jean wrapped another blanket around her shoulders, K looked as if she was sporting a pixie cut.
"Happy Birthday, love," K coughed out as Logan pulled her a little more upright. "Hope you don't mind short hair. May take a while for this to come back."
"If it means you're breathin' I love it," Logan replied, picking her up in a bridal carry. The students from her class that had remained were in shock watching her and Logan as he gently held her. Her skin, freshly grown back was angry, red, and stretched tightly across her arm as she slipped it behind his shoulder and they started to head toward the house.
Daken was healed enough now to be covered too, but on seeing him awake, Jean simply put him to sleep so he couldn't make a play for Logan again, restrained or not, though Logan saw what had happened and turned toward Jean in silent question.
"You don't need the negativity today, Logan," Jean explained. "Though I'm sure we're all dying to hear what vitriol he's got to spread this time, you can talk to him tomorrow. He won't wake until then – I can promise you. My gift to you today."
"I'm so sorry, love," K said as Logan guided her into the shower.
"What the blazes for?" he asked, stopping dead in his tracks as he stared at her. As far as he could tell, she had no reason to apologize.
She ran her hand over her short hair and gestured to her still-healing skin. "Among other things? I have to smell terrible," she said, especially since the scent of burnt flesh and hair was sticking in her nose, too.
"It'll wash off," Logan said with a smirk, gesturing to the running water.
K smirked at that and hopped in the shower, sure to wash quickly. When she got her towel wrapped around herself, she spent a solid fifteen minutes brushing her teeth with Logan watching her from the door with his arms crossed.
"Somethin' happen out there that I need to kill one of 'em for?" Logan asked, frowning and honestly concerned that something might have gone down that the smoke and charred skin smell covered.
"Mmhmm, K said, nodding before she spit out the toothpaste and rinsed her mouth. "I bit him."
"Creed?" Logan asked, his head tipped to the side. He hadn't noticed any bite marks ... K shook her head seriously as K tipped back the bottle of whiskey that he kept on his dresser. "Well how bad could it be?"
K turned her back to him to take another swig, then wiped her mouth and sighing heavily. "I'm pretty sure I bit one of his balls off."
For a long moment, Logan simply stared back at her blankly. It was so far out of what he'd thought could be the trouble, he didn't even know how to respond for a few minutes. "How.." It was all he could manage as she rubbed the bridge of her nose as she hugged herself, her hip cocked to one side.
"I don't know. I really couldn't do anything else and it was right there in my face..." K said, shrugging her shoulders up.
But to her surprise, Logan started to chuckle. "Well – it'll heal or grow back, I guess," he said, smiling at her. "Just promise me you won't do that to me."
"I'm very sure you don't have to worry about that sweetheart," K said with a laugh as he pulled her over to steal a kiss. "Not on your birthday anyhow."