Marvel owns the X-men, no profit is to be made from this work.
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"I feel like I'm stuck in a Western, comin' on down with some fella that might o' paid me for a good time."
"Ya ain't no whore, and I know you'd have anyone spitting teeth that would go tellin' ya otherwise."
Balling her fist and punching Logan just a might bit harder than was probably for her own good, Marie shook her hand and laughed all the same. Letting herself be lead with her eyes clenched tight, she couldn't bear to catch sight of her smile just in that moment, she had to struggle and fight against it, afraid she would see someone else in the reflection.
Just maybe right then she understood how Jean couldn't tell Logan no, even as she had sworn an oath to another, he was a hard man to ignore. All his rough edges just made his passes and compliments the sweeter because he meant every word, a rustic charm all his own. Holding her borrowed dress in one hand and his arm in the other, she let herself be lead away from the boudoir to the bar and felt him stiffen.
"I know this place..."
Logan didn't gasp, he grunted, so to hear him so breathless had her feeling his shock. It was one thing to know it on up in her head after spending so much time looking at the photos as he slept, to listen to the quiet stories Rose found the strength to share, but to see him staring his own past right in the face was scarey.
"You're still running a tab from back when O'Donnell owned the place, and don't think just because I bought him out that you're free and clear!"
Rose Wu, the lady herself with curlers in her hair and a gaudy terry cloth robe that should never, ever have been in style. She had an entourage of ladies who looked as if they had all come off the very same rough night, a night of smoke and ash and blood. Some she recognized, the ones who had bandages and sweet smiles for her, waves given with their good hands.
"Mister Patch, the rumours of your demise are sorrily exaggerated. I'm still trying to decided whether that is something to be pitied or not."
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Marie recognized him from the night before, the man who Remy had singled out of the crowd yet not named. He was police alright but she didn't know just how high up the ladder he went. He wasn't no beat cop and that was sure enough, looking at him sitting off apart from the rest and enjoying a cup of coffee. She couldn't tell if he'd slept since last night, the uniform was the same, impeccable and crisp, radiating the kind of serpentine authority only a lawyer could expect for the fact he carried a gun.
"Can't say I know you, but I'm guessin' I'm this Patch fella?" Logan grunted to the cop.
It was the kind of smile a gambler wore, anted up all in and waiting on the river to decide his fate. It was the kind of subterfuge meant to snake it's way through your skull, twist everything you knew to be true and leave you guessing. If Remy was every bit the kind of street hustler Logan made him out to be, no wonder him and this cop were drawn to another. The last card hadn't come down yet, and it was anyone's game as far as they were concerned.
Of those who looked as if they should know the answer to that question, it was the first time Marie ever saw Logan tip his hand. Everything she'd known after they'd really gotten to know another as only they could just stung, he didn't know shit after walking off some island other than what his gut told him. It was just a whole mess of instinct trying to see him through one day to the next, everything else came from a pair of dog tags and what some hustler had told him.
The tension in the room was a bar fight ready to happen, all it'd take would be someone to step up and agitate the situation. Holding onto his arm and thinking she really liked this dress, Marie split her gaze between Rose and the copper finishing up some sketch on his napkin. Counting out a few coins, he laid them down on his doodle and downed his cup in one thirsty swallow. The next moment was something she only knew from the movies, watching the copper snap his hat on and head out only because he wanted to, not because he had any reason to be afraid.
"Patch?" Marie asked in the quiet that came with the copper taking his leave.
Logan just shrugged in reply, maybe the bar had struck him familiar, but Patch was still just another in all the names he collected. Logan, Wolverine, and friend. She had her own for him just as others did, Mister Grumpy Pants was always one that had Jubilee in shit six feet deep. Asshole had been the first time she ever heard Mister Summers swear, kept as a secret she'd take to the grave for all the times she had used it in his honour ever since.
"James 'Jimmy' Logan Howlett. I never took him for a Jimmy...or a James for that matter. I only ever knew him as Patch for the longest time. Sort of liked Logan myself, I always thought he looked like that kind of man. Course that was just some pillow talk one night when he was feeling low and I was the only shoulder he had to go crying on, not that he cried if anyone of you are asking." Rose rambled, the words of a woman who had too much time to think about them until the moment finally came.
"He's a bit of a prick like that." Marie croaked, dabbing at her eyes and wishing she could find the stubborn resolve to refuse her own tears.
It was one of the ladies in waiting that said that the copper had left a message behind under his tip, whatever his doodle was enough to have the poor woman freeze in fear. A night of patching people up had Marie rushing over her with a comforting hand and all her questions at her lips, but on that napkin wasn't a name, it was a face.
"Jubilee!"
All her worst fears were realized, all the unspoken questions of the copper given a voice out of her own, and she had seen it in his eyes only just the night before. A glance around the room was all it took to know she was right. Eyes avoided her and those few that found her own had looks of sympathy, but in Rose she saw a woman who had her own questions. A big bad wolf had come up at her door a huffing and a puffing, and she was a woman that needed a new rug or some trophy for her wall.
"That son of a whore!" Rose snarled, stalking off into the kitchen with the slamming of a door that crashed throughout the burnt bones of the Princess Bar.
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The thing about monsters was you knew when you found one, and looking on the very monster he'd been hunting, every instinct Remy LeBeau had bet against the house hoping to just up and run. Vegas taught him that the house always won, and finding the kind of courage he didn't like to admit he had, he stalked on through t he crowd to meet a monster in the flesh.
"Olly, Olly, Oxen Free!"
It was made all the worse because both men wore masks, the living and the dead, and looking at each...Remy tried to remind himself which was which. It was a gross mockery of the masks of drama, to see Deadpool hauling around the severed head of a real boogeyman who had caused so much tragedy. It was an exercise in self control not to eavesdrop on the secret conversations had between the living and the dead, all the psychoses and dementia of the insane laid bare for all to see.
"There be more of them?" Remy asked, it was the only question he had to have an answer to.
The mask of Drama was thrown into the crowd as a very dark comedy was announced in the smile of the infamous merc, as awful a sight to behold through his cowl as it was. It was all the warning he needed, a N'awlin's boy didn't have to be told when to pray. Blood was an old friend, the weight of a body something strangely reassuring since it wasn't his own. Throwing off the corpse, there were two more who wouldn't see a priest or a grave.
"We're getting close." Deadpool chuckled, a flick of his wrist throwing the blood from the blade before he sheathed it.
"Close to where?" Remy asked, a line prompted and impossible to ignore.
"Not where, but who! Who are you, who...who, who...who...!"
It was an unmistakable gesture, except that this mouthy merc didn't actually have the sunglasses he was putting on even if he cried out to the song he had sung but moments before. Three dead boogeymen was a hard feat to shrug off just the same, the cooling corpses of the highly trained assassins of the Hand they might be.
"Tante you be laughing at your ol' boy Remy right now, you always tell me that a man's life be worth more than his dignity. I just never know back then that it be so steep a price to pay, merde..." Remy hissed in a prayer to the dead.
Running his thumb over a stacked deck, cards he had counted himself, Remy followed after the lunatic in hopes of meeting a real monster, the one who had kicked the hornets nest. Just maybe by the time he was through then Logan would be the one owing him favours, just maybe the next time he came calling he could tell the man to go fuck himself. Whoever this Jubilee was, she better be worth that kind of favour, otherwise just maybe he might go and bet large on the Southern Belle, all in if that would be what it took.
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"I killed you..."
Over and over, those where the words he heard her say aloud again and again as she cooked for him. Jimmy always was a pussy, every bit of his coddling just another poppy to grow row by row. But him, he couldn't have her being just another blood stain someone felt sorry for. Not him nor his beast, not when it came time to be asking the questions that could only be answered in between the beats of a heart...he'd have her pick the right ones every time.
Hard as it was to admit, he became a man in and around the time when cowardice was mistaken for PTSD. Grabbing her by her throat, that little bit of him became hard as he felt the edge of a chefs knife press right under his rubs. Fuck sanitary, it was every kind of hot and he wanted to take her over the counter in that very moment, dinner could burn for all he cared.
"If I ever...have you scared enough that you wanna kill me, then just fucking do it..." Victor swore.
A hiss of a breath that was his own was her answer, feeling the stainless steel blade slide up and into him like no one's business but his own. He found her hand, took it in his own and guided it away from his lung. She let him, he knew she could do worst if she really wanted to, but she let him guide that blade off to the sink to fall in an awful clatter.
"Blast 'em, burn 'em or blind 'em. As long as they don't get back up I don't give two shits cause I'll take care of those that do. But back to back, that's when I need to know, is it gonna be us or them, who do you pick?"
Her answer was given in the blood of her bit lip, in her fast breath as she was forced to admit something to herself. Us or them, she'd choose Us every time, and everyone that fell into Them would be a sorry son of a bitch after all. She had lost her family once or so said the background check he had Shiro run on her. He knew she wasn't going to let it happen a second time. His kiss told her his own choice, family before friends, and anyone who damn well found their way to getting called foe could go fuck themselves...
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