A/N: Sorry for the delay! This wraps up the X1 part of the story! This chapter is rather sappy. :/ But it's sort of necessary for what I plan in the next part of the story.
Also, if you haven't already, please check out my spin-off story "The Baby with the Blue Eyes", a what-if where Elle did not escape the facility (and thus didn't meet Logan) until she was 15. It will be much shorter (probably no more than 15-20k) and fluffier than this one. :)
I laid up on the bed, staring at the little box I found shoved inside a sock in the back of the cabinet where Logan keeps the liquor. I'd been looking for the bottle of Midori when I stumbled across it; I don't usually drink, but my nerves were pretty frazzled. Then I find this sock, and just when I start to grumble about Logan being lazy with his laundry, a little box comes tumbling out. Of course I'm gonna look inside.
Ring. There's a ring in this box. And then when I pick up the insert there's another larger ring underneath with the receipt, dated six months ago. These... these are wedding rings. Logan bought wedding rings. They're really something, platinum bands with what looks like little vines on the visible side. The smaller of the two has a large sapphire flanked by four diamond 'petals' in the center, while the larger has four sapphire leaves along the top. He remembered that I didn't like diamonds, and instead picked the color of his eyes.
Still awestruck, I'm brought back to my senses when I heard the whirr of the Blackbird's engines as it settled in for landing. I threw the box back together and shoved it in my pocket as I ran to the elevator. I appeared in the hangar as the hatch opened, and realized something was wrong as Hank rushed into the jet. Rogue emerged first, wrapped in a blanket and shaking.
"Rogue?"
When she saw me, she ran over and began crying into my shoulder. She looked traumatized, even though the only physical damage seemed to be the discoloration of her hair. She just kept muttering apologies into my chest, no matter how much I told her it wasn't her fault.
The next thing that hit me was a wave of vague discomfort and sadness, which I recognized as Remy's empathy. He didn't usually share his feelings, in fact he kept his mental shields up so strictly that even the Professor had trouble getting through to him. The only people he opened up to were me, Logan, and occasionally Ororo, and even then only in worse case scenarios. I looked over and saw Ororo helping Remy out of the jet, his hands heavily wrapped and splinted.
"Remy...? My god, what happened to you?"
"Lost a fight wit' a penny," he chuckled, though from the way Ororo cringed I could tell his joke was pure bravado.
"The blood under your nose, yours or someone else's?"
"Remy's, from a fight wit' Remy."
"That makes no sense."
"Oh believe me chère, no sense anywhere ce soir."
Remy was loopy, probably from something Jean gave him on the jet, and he was starting to broadcast it. I should just let him rest. "Logan... Where's Logan?"
All at once, everyone tensed around me. Rogue squeezed my stomach so hard I thought I wouldn't be able to breathe, and proceeded to soak the other side of my sweater. Ororo bowed her head and muttered to her Goddess. Remy winced, then turned back to the jet.
Wait, don't tell me Hank was...
I broke away from Rogue and ran at the jet. All kinds of nasty thoughts were going through my head, and I couldn't deal. I needed to see Logan. Before I could see what was going on, though, Scott came out of nowhere and held me back.
"Elle, wait."
"Let go of me, Scott!"
"No, Elle. You need to listen to me." Scott turned us away from the jet, and held my head still so I couldn't see what was going on behind me. I heard shuffling and the sound of a stretcher being unloaded, then everyone cleared the hangar except for him and Ororo.
"We got there in time to thwart Magneto's plan," he continued, "but not in time to stop him from using the machine. It was at the top of the Statue of Liberty, and we had to fight to get to the torch where the machine was placed. That's how Remy got injured the first time, when Mystique tried to slow us down."
"'From a fight with Remy...'"
Scott nodded. "After that, we were ambushed at the crown by Magneto and Blob, and Magneto tied us all to the statue's framework. Magneto must have realized Remy could have just blown himself free, so he bent a girder around his hands."
Holy shit... no wonder Remy was projecting so badly. I can only imagine how he was projecting when it happened. "And Logan...?"
"Logan's arms were bent up against his chest, so he wouldn't be tempted to try and cut himself free," Ororo explained. "Of course he did so anyway, cutting through his own chest to free himself. Scott's visor was knocked off into a corner, so Logan fought with Blob as a distraction until he could throw it to Jean. During the fight, Blob impaled him with a piece of metal pipe."
"So? He can heal those kinds of things."
"He did," Scott finished. "Jean got my visor back, and I dispatched Blob. Storm and Jean then guided Logan up to the torch through a whirlwind, so he could destroy the device. Magneto tried to interfere, but I took care of that."
"Okay, so what happened? Where's Logan?!" I struggled against Scott's grip on my shoulder, but he wouldn't relent.
"...We weren't exactly quick enough," he explained, bowing his head. "Rogue was nearly dead. The machine took a lot out of her, and I guess Logan felt like he had no choice."
"No... choice...?" Then I felt a shudder go through me, bringing back what Rogue did yesterday. I felt like how I did after Sabretooth mauled me, and I was in good health. If Rogue did that to Logan, and he was already injured...
Suddenly I felt like I couldn't breathe. My legs gave out, and if Scott hadn't been holding on to me, I would have been a pile on the floor. The realization that Logan could die from his injuries without his healing hit me so hard, and I just started crying. Ororo took me from Scott and murmured for me to calm my breathing, just as Rogue came back in the hangar.
"Yes? Okay, we'll be right in," I vaguely heard Scott say, before he patted my shoulder. "Hank would like you to come over to the med lab. He says you can help Logan in the same way he once helped you. Are you feeling up to it?"
I didn't quite understand, but I wanted to help him so I nodded. I could barely walk the short distance from the hangar to the med lab to begin with, but when the doors opened and I saw Logan laying there, I was done. Six small punctures across the top of the chest, one large hole through the abdomen, numerous bruises, but above all, color that suggested Logan had lost much more blood than I ever did with Sabretooth.
"Elle? Elle!" Ororo picked up the slack as soon as Elle's legs dropped out from under her for the second time, but couldn't get a response out of her, even after waving a hand in her face. "Hank, I think she's lost it."
"Did you ask her consent? I don't have nearly enough stored from either of them," he replied, referring to the school's emergency blood reserve. Given that the two were the only ones who shared their unique blood type, Hank usually made Elle and Logan provide samples more frequently than the other team members. Even so, there wasn't enough to counter how much Logan had lost.
"I told her what you needed her for," Scott answered, gathering Elle up and carrying her over to a chair beside Logan. "She agreed."
"Then this is the best option." Hank picked up a syringe and gave Elle a quick shot in the arm. After a few moments, she lolled her head over in unconsciousness.
Scott reacted in surprise. "What did you do? I thought you wanted her to donate blood."
"I do, Scott. But given the reaction just now, I thought it best to sedate her," he explained. "She was clearly in shock, so I gave her one cc of carfentanil."
"That's for horses!" Rogue exclaimed, having a little knowledge from her days back home.
"I don't want her to wake in the middle of the procedure. We just need to get Logan through the worst of it, then he'll be fine. His healing will kickstart itself, and she'll see that he's come back to her." Hank nodded, and set to work. "Now, Rogue, you go on up to your room and have a rest. Ororo, go see if Jean needs any help taking care of Remy's fractures. Scott, go ahead and get Elle on the table there, while I prepare the equipment..."
Logan woke rather quickly, once his body corrected the blood loss and adjusted to Rogue's energy drain. He only took twenty four hours to recover. The first thing he saw when he woke was a furry blue face, which he really had to resist growling at. "...Not what I wanted to wake up to."
"Well I'm sorry, old friend, but this is my lab and I am the one most likely to be here," Hank chuckled in reply.
"Did it work?"
"If you are referring to your efforts to aid young Rogue, it did indeed. She is upstairs in her room, taking some time with Jean to calm down. Remy's fine, too, he just has a broken bone in each palm. You, on the other hand, are in much deeper trouble than you think."
Logan frowned, until Hank flicked the lights on in the lab. He must have been really out of it, because this whole time he was talking to Hank, he didn't realize Elle was sleeping right beside him in the large hospital bed.
"When you came back here, you were so perforated that we had to give you a blood transfusion," Hank explained. "But you know that I don't have that much of your type in stock, and I had wanted to spare her from seeing you in that condition. I had no choice but to ask her to help, and of course it sent her into a panic attack."
"What?!"
"I ended up having to sedate her for the transfusion. She was still a little weak from her own event, so the panic attack plus the sedative exhausted her. I kept her for observation." Hank then walked over to his desk, and withdrew a small box from the drawer. "You're lucky Scott and I are the ones who took care of you two and not the girls, because if one of them had found this in her belongings, there would have been trouble."
With a smirk, Hank sat the box near Logan's palm. He took one look at it, and his eyes widened. "Where'd you find that?"
"It fell out of her pocket, after I changed her into a scrub gown. You apparently didn't hide it well enough, wherever it originally was. It doesn't take a genius with six PhDs to know what's inside it." Hank looked at his watch, then back to Logan. "I'd say you have a few more hours before she wakes up to practice."
"...Been practicing for six months, bub."
"Then you have nothing to worry about, my friend," Hank replied, and retreated to the other end of the lab to give Logan some privacy. Logan smiled at the box, before turning and cozying up to Elle.
Nightmares are a funny thing. Logan stopped having his nightmares for the most part, after he stabbed me when I was sixteen and went to the Professor for counseling. I usually don't have nightmares, but when I do, they revolve around things like my time in Stryker's facility or fears of loved ones being taken away. The most frightening are the latter, and they usually involve people like Remy or Jubilee since they are vulnerable. Now the nightmare is about Logan, and I can't stop seeing that horrible image of him punctured and bleeding on the med lab table...
The first thing I did when I woke was move to rub the tears out of my eyes from my nightmare, but as I did so, I somehow stabbed myself in the eyelid. "Ow... the hell?" Groggy, I open my eyes and find that the ring that was in my pocket is now on my finger. Before I could start figuring out what was going on, a giant paw covered my cheek and kissed the sore eyelid.
"Not like yer gonna say no, so didn't see the need to ask."
Gasping, my eyes immediately filled back up with tears. Logan was awake, I couldn't care less about what else was going on. I threw my arms around his neck so tightly, I pulled over the IV stand I was hooked to, making a loud crash and of course causing Hank to come grumbling into the room. I heard him mumbling something about 'Howletts being destructive risers' as he cleaned up the mess, whatever that's supposed to mean.
"I heard you had a bit of a meltdown when I came back," Logan said, smoothing my hair out. I nodded. "It's okay, darlin, you don't need to be scared. I don't feel near as bad as when Gumbo laid me out, so as long as we don't piss him off, I should be good. And let me tell ya, there's only one other guy I know besides him who actually stands a chance at doin' me in."
"Sniff... who's that?"
"Let's just say he's big and green." Logan chuckled, then picked up my left hand. "So you found my hiding spot, huh?"
"...Yeah. I was gonna yell at you for leaving laundry around," I laughed, before glancing at the ring. "I thought you said I was too young for this?"
"When I was a kid, women were still getting married in their teens. Besides, I already think of you as my mate. I love you the same, married or not. I mean, we're already family, so I guess all this really does is just change your last name into mine..."
"Stop trying to sell me, like you said it's not like I was gonna say no."
Logan grinned, then rolled me over onto his stomach for our first big kiss as an engaged couple. I marveled at how good the ring on his finger looked, until I noticed the lunar notches where his blades emerged. "Hey... Won't they break it?"
"Nope, called in a favor from a friend in Japan. Bands ain't made of platinum."
Holy shit. "These... these are adamantium?"
"You thought I was gonna wear anything else?" Logan and I chuckled at the same time, and just laid back down to rest for a little bit. "...You want a ceremony, or just keep going as is?"
"Remy will kill us if we don't have some kind of celebration."
"Give him a bottle of Rip Van Winkle with a bow on it, and he'll forget all about it."
"I'm fine with keeping it low key if you are. Like you said, we're already family..."
We were interrupted a few moments later by a very timid Hank. "Excuse me, I hate to interrupt the two of you in your recent celebratory state, but Charles has warned me that one of you has apparently projected your happiness a little too loudly."
Logan raised an eyebrow. "...And?"
"Jean, Ororo, and Jubilee know."
We both groaned and withdrew into the bed, hoping that Hank had the decency to lie and say we were still too sick to come out. Last thing we needed was to be pounced on by the self appointed 'planning committee'.
A/N: I based the rings off real ones, Elle's is the second result when you google image search 'sapphire engagement ring', while Logan's is the 34th result for 'sapphire wedding ring'. Also carfentanil is more like an elephant/dinosaur tranquilizer than for horses, but how would Rogue know that?
I'll be going back and fixing Remy's French lines in the last chapter, thank you to Rasha007 for correcting them.
