Yay! New month=new chapter.
Well, I guess technically it's still October, but I figured it's close enough.
Besides, I was a bit eager to post the next chapter. :) I'm sure you'll forgive me for being a little (tiny bit) early. Especially since I think 90% of the reviews from last chapter had some version of the words: "UPDATE FASTER!"
Speaking of reviews, I really wanted to say thank you all for your encouraging words. Student teaching has been hard—my teacher has very high expectations, and uses a non-traditional approach for math that requires a whole lot more prep time than I expected. And then there's the fact that I had forgotten how hard it is to wake up at 6 am every morning. Still, the middle school kids are great (and that's something I never expected to think!), so it's not all so bad. Either way, your kind words and reviews were definitely helpful in cheering me up, especially on my harder/longer days.
I also wanted to thank you guys for the general positive reviews from last chapter after I'd expressed that I was a bit less than content with it. The truth is that the parts focusing on Wolverine's past have been getting steadily more difficult, mostly because Wolverine is in such an important point of development. His world's view is changing rapidly, and despite how exciting and fun it is to work through these chapters it is much more challenging to write a developing understanding of humanity and Wolvie's interactions with people than it is to write a man running around nekkid. There's a careful balance of Wolverine's awkwardness as he tries to understand the new things he's thinking and feeling and the confidence that he always has. I'm doing my best to try to find it, and the last chapter just seemed a bit . . . choppy.
Maybe I'm just spoiled. I'm used to these chapters flowing out almost effortlessly, and I had to rework the last one time after time before I thought it acceptable. Either way, it was good to hear that the hard work paid off and the chapter worked for those that reviewed. :)
Anyway, that went longer than I meant to. I could ramble on forever about my philosophies and the behind-the-scenes thought that is responsible for each chapter and the developing story, but that's not what you're here for (even if it does interest me and my selfish self).
Carry on, then.
Hope you enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 36: Sometimes You Tell the Day by the Bottle that You Drink
Grass.
It was thick—bent but not worn by the passing of feet. An ant crawled slowly up one of the long green blades, waving its antennae at the air lazily.
He breathed in deep, closing his eyes and feeling . . . .
. . . .
. . . .
He breathed back out. The air was cool, light, pure—clean. The faintest floral scent colored its edge, mixing with the damp scent of grass.
He breathed again; the darkness behind his lids was quiet and calm.
Still.
Light footsteps—barely audible, even to him—stopped on the grass before him. Still, he didn't stir until the soft words were spoken.
"Let us fight."
He opened his eyes and rose to his feet easily—lighter than he could remember being, lighter than air—lifting a long blade before him. It was comfortable in his hand—fitting with a known grip like he was born to it. The man before him bowed at the waist, and Logan mirrored his action before raising his blade.
He didn't wait for his sparring mate to move. He cut in, feinting low and swinging high. The sensei didn't even block his blade, but twisted to the side, effortlessly dodging the blow.
"Come, Logan-san. Focus!"
Logan cut in again, coiled to spring, and struck. This time the sensei deflected his blade with a flitting movement, and faster than Logan could react struck across, slapping him with a stinging blow across the back.
"Again!"
Logan gritted his teeth, biting off the instinctive rage that had arisen with his adrenaline.
Focus.
He set his footing, loosening his muscles—his senses alive in the cool air.
His blade twisted forward.
He caught the blade, spinning and bringing it around.
WHACK!
Another stinging blow rang against his shins and he snarled, striking out wildly. The sensei danced out of range—balanced, calm.
"Again!"
There was no need for the call—Wolverine was already moving. Six strikes cracking through the air like lightning, just as swift and impossible to follow. Blows reined on his shoulders, his back, and one clipped his cheek, striking hard enough to bruise, but not to draw blood.
The sensei was in control.
Again.
Sweat dripped into Logan's eyes, but the sensei was moving too quickly. He fell into defensive stance, barely managing to bring up his blade fast enough to block a strike to his gut.
"Concentrate!"
Again!
"RRRRARGH!"
His practice katana sang in his hand, and he struck in faster than thought. Snarling, he attacked wildly, the power of his swings knocking the sensei off balance in his fury.
Side cut, spin. The sensei struck down, but Wolverine was aware—every centimeter of his skin aware as he drove in.
Burning. Festering rage boiling upwards and outwards, turning his vision red.
He struck down, shattering the sensei's katana. He lashed out, grabbing his throat and slamming him into the ground, and bringing his sword to his throat.
He was panting, wild rage roaring through his veins.
It took him a couple seconds to get his hand to loosen on his throat, to find the words to speak around his growling breath.
"Yield," he growled softly.
Cold, unmoved eyes looked back at him, fearless above the blade. He nodded, and Logan let out a breath, rising. His limbs were trembling—the world felt vibrant and wild around him, and he took a careful breath, wiping sweat from his eyes.
The sensei rose easily, as if he had laid himself down on the ground to rest for a moment, rather than slammed down with a force strong enough to leave already-forming dark bruises around his throat. A wild blow had caught the side of his face, and a thin trickle of blood dripped down his cheek. He didn't seem to notice, but looked at Logan, his dark eyes deep and piercing.
"What have you learned, Logan-san? To fight? To kill? To win?" He shook his head. "You came to me because you wanted to learn control. Is that what you have shown yourself here?"
"Sensei—" But the master raised a hand, and Logan cut off sharply, shame deep in his heart.
"Ask yourself, Logan, who won this battle. The man, or the animal?"
Now:
Logan jerked awake to find himself in the dark. The song of a lone cricket braving the chill of late fall chirped weakly across the yard, and a cold breeze drifted over his bare arms. His skin felt stretched over his metal bones—stiff with unseen dried blood. He hadn't bothered changing since that morning, and the quick rinse of his face and arms in his sink had only gotten rid of the most obvious streaks from his encounters with the Scarlet Witch.
He sat up, rubbing off the gravel that had imprinted into his cheek while he dozed, and stretched, pulling out the aches from sleeping on the stone stairs. His breath was white in the darkness.
His bones ached. Body still healing, even if he was healed by all appearances. The last memory of lingering pangs would take a couple weeks to completely go away. But that didn't matter. They wouldn't slow him down.
He rubbed his eyes—they felt dry and itchy—and felt next to his side to find the cordless phone he'd been using when exhausted sleep had taken him.
He stood, opening the back door and padding bare-foot into the kitchen. He slid the phone he'd been using to follow up on various contacts for sign of Storm onto the table and glanced at the clock on the wall (He never had gotten around to replacing his wristwatch after Bloodscream had shattered it. Good thing, too; it wouldn't have lasted past yesterday's fall.)
2:13.
He'd only been asleep for two hours, he'd guess. He hadn't really been keeping an eye on the time, after all.
Logan-san . . . .
He shivered, then swore softly and moved forward, pushing his hair from his face.
Ninja dreams. He'd had plenty since his run-in with Bloodscream—they were becoming almost as usual as the adamantium. But they were dark dreams—bloody, wild. He'd given up replacing his sheets, and the floor and walls bore more than one permanent scar from his claws. No sense—only blood, screams, confusion. Drowning. Waking up with nothing but bile, blood, and terror in his mind.
But what the hell was this?
No nightmare: not the normal kind. There wasn't the fear, the panic.
What was it he had felt?
The details were already fading into the night, but the feelings remained.
The rage.
Animal.
Familiar as anything. He could still feel it, simmering in his chest, waiting.
He shook his head.
There had been something, before the rage. Something else. Something strange.
He frowned out the window into the cold, still darkness, trying to find a word that could describe it even as the last tendrils of its memory were slipping away from him.
The word came to him, catching his throat.
Peace, he thought.
But even as he recognized it, it was gone, leaving only emptiness and a lingering burning in his blood that made him want to kill something.
Had he imagined it in the first place?
Heh. Peace.
He shook his head, feeling foolish.
Ninjas? Swords? It was stupid—all of it.
Maybe that was it—just a normal dream, for once in his life. Not everything had to mean something, dammit.
He wiped sweat from his forehead and headed to the elevator and the hidden hallways below.
It was against the rules to use the Danger Room alone, but hell—what were rules for but for breaking? And he'd broken this one too many times to count.
What was it going to do to him, after all? Kill him?
Sometimes, after waking up from his dreams, there was nothing left to do but fight. And since there was nothing solid to fight in the early hours of the morning, the Danger Room had to do.
He strode down the empty halls, the constant metallic light harsh after waking up in the chill of late fall.
He sighed, rolling his shoulders as he reached for the control panel, but then stopped as he saw the red light lit beside it.
IN USE.
What the hell?
Logan frowned at the letters. There weren't many students who could get past the security, and those who could weren't stupid enough to try the Danger Room out on their own—let alone in the middle of the night.
Nightcrawler was even less likely to pull such a thing, even after a day like yesterday, and Beast was still in the infirmary—incapacitated for the near future.
Logan pulled his hand away and turned to the control room.
The sound of battle reached his ears as he palmed open the door, and he frowned upwards at the screen.
Rogue.
Against the rules, no matter how many times Logan had done it. How the hell had she gotten past the safeguards?
He held back his initial temptation to stalk in there and smack her down for her stupidity, and instead stopped and watched. Let the Danger Room do some of the smacking for him. Sweet and fitting justice, indeed.
It was a familiar battleground—the floor already scattered with burning cars and sprawled rubble. Two sentinels moved in, surrounding Rogue as she ducked and weaved, bolting for cover as lasers zapped down around her.
She tripped, moving automatically into a roll, but the shot that nipped at her heels was too close. Logan reached for the panel, ready to end the scenario, when two missiles took aim and blasted right towards Rogue.
She pushed off the ground, darting into the air in a blur. The missiles blasted the earth behind her, sending rubble flying, and she bolted towards the nearest sentinel.
Fists extended, jaw clenched, she charged in a blur head-first right into the sentinel's gut . . . and bounced off, slamming twenty feet back onto the ground and leaving a crater in the scorched earth.
Rogue! Dammit, if she hurt herself . . . .
How the hell had she turned off the safety settings?
Logan slammed his fist into the control panel, cutting off the simulation—at least, he had meant to. A light on the console flashed red . . . and nothing happened.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Freakin' computer . . . .
"Now that ain't nice!" Logan's eyes shot back to the screen as Rogue pulled herself out of the crater and blurred forward again, drawing back her arm. The second hit split the metal in the sizable dent left from her first strike, and she gripped it, tearing back the armor like it was construction paper. She ripped the arm off, throwing the whole mass at a neighboring sentinel, which raised its laser and blasted the debris . . . right back into its injured partner. She bolted in, laying three heavy blows on the sentinel's head before slamming right between its eyes feet-first. She ripped at the cables, and seconds later it stopped flailing and slumped over. Rogue lifted out easily and into the air, leaving it to fall to the ground with an earth-shaking thud as she hovered above the smoke and dust.
Rogue spun around in the air, zooming about with two loops before touching down. "End program," she ordered, and the battleground dissolved around her. She wiped sweat from her face with the sleeve of her arm.
Logan met her in the hall as she came out of the room, and she did a double take when she saw him standing there, his arms folded.
"Well, who tied your panties in a knot? I thought you went commando, old boy."
"What the hell were you thinking?" Logan demanded. He could let her have some space, but he wasn't about to let her go and kill herself either. "You tryin' ta get yourself killed?"
"Ah'm fine, Logan. Invincible, remember?" she said, her voice holding only a shadow of bitterness at the reminder.
But the shadows were falling oddly on her face. Logan took a step forward. He brushed her hair aside, careful not to touch her skin to see the thin line of blood glistening on her hairline.
"Like hell. You're bleeding." Got a nice bruise right over her eye, too.
"It's nothing. Got blindsided. Ah'm not quite used to these powers."
Logan pulled back his hand, frowning. "Not as invincible as ya thought, eh?"
Rogue shrugged. "Can hold my ground as well as you can, Logan." She grabbed a towel from one of the cabinets in the walls and wiped the blood away before chucking the towel into a cleaning basket. "Wanna get a drink with me?"
"You kiddin'?"
"I couldn't sleep. Apparently, neither could you." She paused, glancing sideways at him. "Don't give me that look. I'm 21, you know. Plenty old enough t'go on out and drink."
That she was. It surprised him, though he wasn't sure why. It seemed like just yesterday that he'd woken up in the infirmary, Jean at his side . . . .
Now she was dead. They all were: dead or missing—and somehow he was left in charge of this circus.
How was it that time flew by, and he felt like he was just standing in one place?
"You comin', or does a girl gotta go alone?" Rogue prompted.
Logan looked up at her, ubiquitous frown in place. It wasn't as good as a fight, but beer might work just as well tonight.
Rogue didn't bother changing despite the dust and scuffs on her clothes; a small tear showed skin on her shoulder, but somehow she'd managed to face the Danger Room still wearing four-inch heeled boots.
Why the hell not? It's not like she need to be able to run, flying around like that.
They stepped into the garage and Logan grabbed the keys to the mustang, but Rogue gave him a look, heading for his bike and hopping right on like she'd been born to it.
"Nice ride."
"Yeah," Logan replied, putting the keys back and grabbing a helmet. He tossed it to her, and Rogue caught it, immediately tossing it back.
"Invulnerable, remember?"
"Not invulnerable enough, kid."
"Close enough," she said, getting off the bike again. "Come on. At least this way if you run into some crazy vampire on the road, you'll have someone watching your back."
Logan pulled the bike keys from his pocket, looking at her. "Heh," he said after a while, stepping forward. He swung onto the bike, feeling it drop its usual inches from his weight, and Rogue hopped on behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
Logan kicked the bike on, letting it roar before pushing forward onto the driveway. The garage closed behind them, and soon they were out the gates and roaring down the road.
Rogue ducking her head next to his. "Let her go, Logan!" she called, exhilarated at the speed.
Logan grinned, rocketing up the speed. Rogue's grip tightened slightly, but she laughed. They blurred away into the darkness.
They pulled up to Duke's, a small bar off the road that almost looked like it would have fit in up in the Canadian Rockies and Rogue hopped off, hair wind-wild, eyes bright. She pushed her hair from her face as Logan came up next to her. She looked down at him and smiled, and Logan wondered when she'd passed him up in height. Her high heels put her a good half a head above him.
They walked in, and Logan felt the itch of eyes as the bar's patrons turned to watch Rogue. He bristled, glaring down those who looked in his direction, but most didn't even glance at him as Rogue sauntered to the bar and sat down. The bartender was there in a second. "Two beers, hon," she said, her southern drawl giving her words a slightly musical lilt. "An' keep 'em coming." She glanced back at Logan. He felt suddenly very warm.
What the hell? This was Rogue. Kid sister Rogue.
21-year-old, hot-as-hell, cocky, southern belle Rogue.
He shook his head, doing his best to mentally kick himself.
He slumped down next to her, glowering at any bastards who were still looking in their direction. After a good minute, he gave up and turned to his drink.
He guzzled half of it, and when he lowered his glass Rogue was wiping her mouth. Her glass was empty.
Well, hell.
"Not half bad," Rogue commented as the bartender poured her another. "Most places like this have piss-poor beer."
"Been here. Beer passed good enough ta come back."
"Doesn't mean anything. You always did like bad beer." She lifted her second glass, gulping it down.
"Slow down," Logan said, putting a hand on her arm. "You're going to knock yourself out at this rate."
Rogue lowered her beer, amused at his protectiveness. "Are you kidding, short-stuff? I want to get drunk. Slobbering, knock-me-over-the-head drunk." At his expression, she smirked. "Yeah, I know you're jealous. Suck it up." She nodded at his own beer, and he glared, lifting it and downing it in one long swig. He pushed it towards the bartender, and Rogue chuckled. "That's my man."
Logan caught his second beer, and Rogue lowered her second empty glass. The bartender filled it back up with a glance at both of them, but they ignored it.
"So what's up with you?" Rogue said. He could smell the alcohol on her breath. "You've been off all day."
"You haven't been around."
"Ah've been around enough, an' the whole trip to the Danger Room in the middle of the night kinda gave it all away. Somethin's off."
Logan frowned at her. "Are you kiddin'? With everythin' goin' on today, and yer wondering' why I'm not my usual cheery self?"
"Storm, Beast, an' me on top of it," Rogue counted off. "But ah know you, Logan. There's somethin' else. You've been twitching—keep starin' off into space like you're hundreds 'a miles away." She stopped to drink. "So that's not so usual, but there's somethin'. Been itchin' at you for a while now. Not just today. Days. Weeks maybe."
Logan debated for a second, frowning at the condensation forming on his glass as he ran his thumb idly over it. But the first beer'd been enough to do something; he figured what the hell. Rogue was as good a person to talk to as anyone. He shrugged. "Been havin' dreams—flashes. They're gettin' worse. Gettin' dropped on my head off the Avenger's tower didn't help."
Rogue sobered—frowning without a hint of drunkiness in her seriousness. Kid held her beer like a pro. "Wanda has been known to be impulsive. You're lucky she didn't do worse." She frowned at him. "Stryker?" she asked, her voice lowering. She didn't remember the details of the dreams, but she had had a couple herself before Logan had faded from her mind those years ago; the memories of the pain, terror, helplessness would never leave her, even if the specifics vanished to time.
Logan shrugged. "Yeah—he still comes around."
Rogue leaned forward. "What else?"
Logan grimaced, then looked at her with a humorless grin.
"Ninjas," he said dryly.
"Like this Bloodscream creep?"
"Yeah, at first. But then there's more." He swore. "Some old guy, teachin' me ta fight with swords, d'ya believe it?"
Rogue actually chuckled. "Yeah, well—I don't know how much of it was true, but there were plenty'a rumors about you. Said you were trained samurai, or something crazy like that—could fight with any weapon ever created. I never asked, but I was never given any reason to doubt it."
Logan stilled; he'd almost forgotten Rogue wasn't her normal self—or at least he hadn't expected her to just pop out and say it like that.
"When was this?" he said, his voice low.
Rogue blinked, but quickly raised her drink to hide her confusion.
"Rogue," Logan said, his voice a near-growl as he lowered it further. "What do you know?"
His glass was tight in his grip—he had to consciously loosen his fingers, afraid that he might shatter it. Rogue looked down.
"Ah—I can't remember it clearly. These memories—they're all mixed up, you know? Like they're not connected right in my brain. Just keep popping up at random times."
"Heh," Logan said, surprising himself with the short chuckle. "Yeah. I got that, kid."
"Yeah, you would, huh?" she said, putting down her own glass. She took a deep breath, readying to speak, then deflated. "I don't know where to start."
"How 'bout the beginning—the simple version." He could pry for details later.
Rogue nodded. She took another long swig and wiped her lips before beginning grimly.
"Carol met you back in '63. You were a hard-core soldier, she fresh into the field, and you took her under your wing."
Almost fifty years ago. Danvers had looked 30 at best. Yeah, well—he was one to talk.
Well that confirmed it. Maybe he was immortal.
He took a long drink, trying to wash the sick feeling in his gut.
"Did she . . . . know my name?" Logan asked, his mouth dry despite the plenty of drink.
Rogue gave him an odd look, like she wasn't sure what he was asking. "Well, yeah. Logan."
"That's not a full name."
"Guess you're right. But that's what everyone called you. Mostly, anyway. Had more identities than anyone I ever met." Logan tried to hide his disappointment at that, pushing it down. What had he expected? A name, address, and a list of surviving relatives? He should know by now that life just didn't unfold that neatly.
"We worked some capers together," Rogue continued, "but I didn't see you for a couple years again until I ran into you in 'Nam in '69. It was a mess over there from beginning to end. We worked some jobs together—wasn't anyone else out there safer to be around out in those jungles—but you split. Guess you were heading some black ops, and that's the last time ah saw you. Later I heard your whole platoon had been bombed to hell, and you'd gone MIA, but later they moved you up to deserting, and put a price on your head enough to drown a normal man."
Rogue stopped to drink, and Logan took the opportunity to drain the rest of his glass and start on another. The effects didn't last more than a few seconds, dammit.
"Where'd I go?" he asked at last.
Rogue shrugged. "I didn't bother to look. You did that all the time—disappearing, and showing up years later in Russia, Brazil, or wherever the hell somethin' caught your attention. You weren't found unless you wanted to be."
Logan let out a frustrated breath. Sometimes he wished he hadn't been quite so good.
But that wasn't right, was it? Because one of those times, someone had found them. Someone who screwed him over so bad that he was still trying to put the pieces together.
So what had happened? Had he flown the coop? The mission gone to hell, men beneath him dead—he just decided he'd had enough and taken off?
Cowardly, that's what that was. If something like that happened to him now, he'd leave a bloodbath behind—a dozen dead for each of his fallen men.
Or had he been taken out by the bombing too? Had Stryker just swooped down and picked him up while his insides were still crawling back together?
He thought more clues would help clear up what had happened to him—help him put the pieces together. But at the same time, his last traces of hope of him having once been normal—living a normal life, sometime in his past—were quickly vanishing.
"Dammit," he breathed.
Rogue looked at him and sighed. "At least it's something, Wolvie."
"Every time I get another piece of the puzzle I realize the whole thing's bigger than I could'a thought." He thought he'd be relieved to find out more—to find out that the dreams, for once, were just that—dreams.
Fear, pain. Hate.
Who won? The man, or the animal?
He swallowed roughly.
Wars, death, blood. Killing. 'Course it would be the only thing that he'd been able to do, all these years.
Stryker had been right.
He glared down at his hands, resting on the countertop. Rogue's gaze was becoming pitying, and he felt it.
He cleared his throat. "Capers, eh?" he asked, forcing relative lightness into his gruff tone. Still sounded grim as hell. "What'd we do, then?"
"What did we not do?" Rogue returned wryly. "KGB, Russian Mafia . . . ."
"Sounds like fun."
"World's a fun place."
"Could'a fooled me."
Rogue smirked, and despite himself Logan's own face mirrored a ghost of the same. It felt surreal.
Tense as he was, strangely his caution had taken to the wind; he hadn't felt this comfortable around somebody in years. Rogue sounded older, cynical, sarcastic in a way that her youthful innocence hardly had allowed, even after absorbing him.
He'd never felt closer to the kid.
He looked back at her from his drink. She was watching her with those old eyes again—and she looked sad.
"You've always been a good man, Logan," she said softly, serious again.
"I doubt that, kid."
"And you always have," she said with a slight quirk of a smile, but it was sad. "That doesn't make it any less true."
"Haven't changed a bit, have I?"
Her smile shook slightly—so slight that most wouldn't have noticed it—before turning unreadable. "You're still a good man, Logan," she said.
Logan grunted softly at her not-so-subtle question dodge.
A spike of anger from Rogue's scent, quickly stifled. Yeah, lady was good.
"You know," she said, leaning forward with a mischievous smile. "There's plenty I can still tell you. Like how you used to have the Black Widow on your speed-dial. And that was back when she was still working against us."
"Black Widow?" Logan asked.
Again the unreadable expression, before she recovered, leaning back casually. "Sometime-super-villain extraordinaire-turned-good, more or less. A complicated one—I've worked with her as many times as against. Was on the Avengers team a few years ago, but took off. Probably working for SHIELD. Fury's always had an eye on her." She smiled to herself. "If you want one thing to prove how you haven't changed, Logan, it's how you still have a soft spot for girls in distress," she continued. "I only met her once back then—we were on a caper in Russia. She almost wasted me, but then ended up putting up her gun and giving you a hug instead when you showed up. Called you 'little uncle.'"
Logan grimaced, rubbing his head. "How the hell do all these people live so long?"
Rogue actually laughed. "I've been asking that myself these past years. Far as I can tell, Fury has hardly aged since World War II, Miss Marvel's powers helped me out, and you've got your mutant thing going on. Hell if I know what's up with Natasha."
They fell silent, turning to their drinks, but with less hurry as at first. Logan frowned.
"You knew I was a mutant before?" he wondered.
Rogue hesitated, putting down her glass. "Yes," she said. "But you didn't admit it. It was just kinda hard to cover up, with us running through machine gun fire. You took more bullets for me than I could count. We just never talked about it; you avoided the subject like a plague."
"Guess mutants weren't a public thing back then."
"Yeah, but with the whole bullet-spitting thing, it was a hard thing to hide," Rogue said, then hesitated again. She looked him in the eye. "You weren't scared of many things, Logan," she said. "But if I had to say you were scared of anything, it was probably that."
Logan stared at her. "Bullets?" She had to be kidding.
She shook her head. "The mutant situation," she said. "Being careful was important in our line of work, but you were—I don't know. Paranoid. Half the black ops I knew thought you were bigoted against mutants—hated them, even." She paused. "What if Stryker—or whoever he was with—was after you even back then, and you knew it?" she wondered. "Certainly would explain some'a that paranoia."
Logan frowned into the dregs of his beer, their conversation bringing up more questions than answers to churn through his head.
But what else was new?
TBC . . . .