They had to get out of there. Artie saw that. People were starting to, bravely, make their way toward the hospital again. The law...the doctors & patients...the curious...the angry.
And the situation was so explosive inside the small room that Artie doubted they would be able to make a logical move.
The man Logan...or Wolverine...Artie wasn't sure if one or the other was a first or last name...held the girl cradled in his arms unconscious. He appeared ready to fight his way past Jim with her. Artie shook the last vestiges of the pain the girl had somehow caused, from his head and interrupted the stalemate.
"Jim...we need time to think all this through, and we can't have these two running around on the streets. Right now the city will be buzzing about what happened here like a fallen hornet's nest and if anyone else makes the connection then it could be dangerous." Then he turned to the stranger. "Your friend is sick...but if she stays here she could be in trouble. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, and it looks like you could do a lot of hurt. But you haven't, you stopped what was happening...and you helped her. And I'm willing to trust that for now."
The man eyed Jim suspiciously and Jim eyed him likewise. But Jim nodded to Artemus and reholstered his gun.
"I'm listening." Jim said with a small smile pulling the corners of his mouth.
"We need to get back to the Wanderer...they can stay at the train until we figure out what's going on and how to fix it." Artie looked pointedly at Wolverine. "Let her recover in peace."
The man shook his mutton-chopped head and grunted. "Where to?"
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Logan didn't like it. He didn't like it for a million reasons and all of them were, as they were introduced, James West.
But what choice did he have? He had no mansion, or modern hospital to take Tyme to. He had no Alpha Flight, or Salem Center to call a haven. This train would have to do...but the only reason he was there was the guy Artie.
The man had taken the initial head blow from Tyme, which was luckily weaker then Logan thought it could have been if she hadn't been so sick from the hop, and he had still kept a cool head about him. He wasn't willing to drop Tyme first and ask questions later.
The guy was a genuine, goddamned, fucking gentleman. And even if Logan wasn't he could sure as hell recognize and respect one when he saw one.
But he also respected the blue boy, James West. But in the way one soldier respected another. He could tell that this man was a fighter. Though Wolverine had no doubt he could beat him in a fight. He could also tell that the guy was no dummy and that was what really made him dangerous.
Logan read the tapping of the man in the other room...no need to let him know all his secrets...such as hypersensitive hearing. The telegram being sent was a request, to a superior officer, to keep them as "their guests" at the train until they decided if they were an actual threat or not. Logan snorted. They still think he's their prisoner? Welllll..he'd play along until Tyme was good to go, then she would do whatever it was she did and they'd be on their own.
In the meantime the Artie guy gave up his own room for Tyme and had made her as comfortable as he could. Then the guy became all business.
The introductions had been tense in the carriage to the station. Logan staring at West, who stared at Tyme, who lay so still. Uncomfortable.
Now.
Logan paced the floor and was stopped only when a drink was pressed into his hand. A large whiskey...straight. Logan nodded, and took it. No need to tell the man that he had sniffed it for any kind of tranquilizer. That wouldn't be polite. He downed it neatly and handed the glass back.
"Got another for me barkeep? It's been a really bad day."
The man chuckled and daubed at his nose again with a wet towel. "Tell me all about it sonny...that's what us bartenders are here for."
Logan took the second drink and sat down.
"Where do I begin?" He looked up and shook his head. "You won't believe me."
The man in blue reentered the room and got a whiskey for himself.
"After what we've seen tonight...I say you should try us."
Logan's eyes narrowed and then he shrugged.
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After hearing the story Jim was ready to go with what this Logan fellow had said. He almost didn't believe it.
But then he had seen too much not to believe it either. He had to say that he'd never seen anything like the clawed man and his headache-inducing friend in his time...so maybe the rest...the time travel part of the tale was correct.
If they were to be believed at least Jim & Artie could stop worrying about the bank delivery. The location of their arrival had been an accident. And if the second-hand information from the big guy was also right then, the man & woman would be able to leave as soon as the girl was okay.
But was she? Jim worried about her being here. If it hadn't been for her protector, and Artie's advocacy, Jim would not have had a problem with ending the siege at the hospital with his gun. He would have felt a moment's regret maybe...but for the greater good, and for the protection of his country he would have done his duty. But as he had sat across from the man with the girl bundled in his arms, as he had watched Artie tend to her cut & bruised ankle earlier, he wondered if he could do what he had to in order to protect the greater good...if the time came.
Then the creak of a door brought his answer. Holding onto the frame of the door she looked very small draped in the borrowed hospital gown.
"Logan?" she whispered hoarsely and a look of happy relief lit her pale face as she stumbled forward and almost fell. Jim caught her around the waist and she looked back at him as though she hadn't noticed anyone, but Logan, in the room before. And Jim felt a terrible guilt; He could see himself having to end her life if her power threatened them. Then her large green eyes grew larger. And they were filled with fear and he knew...he knew, that she had felt that regret and sadness in him too. She could, somehow, see the scene he imagined and her eyes registered the terror of someone standing on the gallows staring at the hangman.
What would she do? According to Logan, she had acted out of fear to save them with her power once. Jim tensed. He was standing and lifting her to her feet, his hands on her slender waist and their eyes fixed on each other.
He could feel something happening...it started as a tickle in his brain...
He pleaded in his mind and hoped she could read his thoughts...he begged her not to make him kill her...not to bear that guilt. He waited for the assault...for her to act in self-defense. She glanced down to see the derringer pressed into her ribs, covered by the angle from her friend's vision...he could tell by the look that passed over her features that she understood that he would do what he had to.
But she didn't stop, though she was trembling in his arms. She proceeded with a boldness he hadn't expected and he suddenly felt something he had never felt before. She didn't attack him or plunge deep into his soul, even though he was almost certain she could. Instead she was giving him a desperate gift. Opening herself to him...so he wouldn't doubt or hurt them. He could tell that this gift cost her. He could feel it as though this was the last thing that she ever wanted to happen...as though she feared doing this almost as much as she feared him hurting her or her friend. And Jim knew that there was no way to for her lie in here...in the heart. And he drew her closer to him, in an instinctive way. She asked nothing in return.
She had taken a breath of all the surface emotions she felt around her. Including his...she seemed to gauge her surroundings from them like a quick look around can tell an agent who in the room might be a danger to them. It was probably as much a survival instinct as a flinch or ducking. But she never dug deeper. She never forced her way inside him.
And then it was over...as gently as a butterfly brushing his hair, she was gone from his mind. And he opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed.
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Something had passed between them. In an instant reminiscent of a dance's dip, West had caught the falling Tyme and something had happened. Wolverine could feel it.
And he didn't like it.
A long look passed between the two as Wolverine had stood and helped Tyme to the sofa.
West had broken the gaze and picked up his drink and finished it and went to get another.
He returned with a warmed brandy, which he held out to Tyme and she accepted.
Logan looked at her in askance, but she just shook her head curtly and he let it be. For now. Now Tyme explained a bit more about the temporal gifts she had.
Artemus Gordon leaned forward in rapt attention, and Logan decided he had a lot in common with Hank McCoy. A look at the bookshelf saw Plato vying with Shakespeare, vying with science texts. He imagined that if locked in a room with the furry blue behemoth that the two of them would end up either curing something or writing a play.
After Tyme finished it was Artie who prodded for more details.
"So when you feel better you'll just vanish?" he asked.
"No...it doesn't work like that. It's more mechanical then that. I have to trigger that part of me...and it isn't easy to do. If I did it by accident all the time I'd be dead by now. Even my first time was a deliberate trigger...even though I didn't know it and it took me a week to go over everything I did that day before I realized just how to make it work again."
"But you said that after a time you had to go back...that your time drags you back."
Tyme yawned a little; Logan could tell that the brandy and the events had taken a serious toll.
"After too long in the past I start to become sick...and I can start to feel my time pull on me. Like a rubber band stretched too far. If I don't follow it back I break. But it's me who triggers the return."
Logan could feel her shake slightly. "I tried to stay too long once, in the past, and I almost died."
Then she looked at Logan. "Something different has happened though...I can feel it."
She looked uneasy. "I have never, never been able to take anyone with me. But I did. And something exploded inside me. I feel. like my powers...have...have...grown."
Logan looked down at her. He could see that while she was excited about this...that she was also terrified. She hadn't been very good in controlling her skills in the past. But now what?
"Like how have they grown?" he asked.
"I don't know...but I think...I'm afraid they might be more dangerous now."
She looked past his shoulder and her eyes locked with James West, who looked down into his drink with a solemn frown.
Logan made sure he was heard loud and clear.
"Honey...Mine are more dangerous."
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The tall figure walked around the wrecked hospital room and stooped to pick up the broken shackles. He hadn't cleaned himself up since the incident. Blood was cracking in a line, which extended from nostril to the end of his chin and he looked down at his shirt and smiled.
He had seen the girl through tear-filled eyes and a crashing headache as the government agent had stumbled out of her room. Sitting bolt upright, with the emerald light pouring out of her, her hair flying around her like flames. MAGNIFICENT!
That much power! The girl possessed a weapon...and he wanted it. He wanted it for the greater good, he told himself. He was, after all, a doctor...a scientist...and an Army officer. Why shouldn't he be the one that molds this power...develops it...for the protection of the nation?
He could see her potential...her application, clearly. And after years of frivolous research...after all the years the war robbed from him as he hacked limbs off and tossed them onto piles like firewood, while less deserving researchers and officers were promoted ahead of him...now...NOW...he had this miracle dropped into his lap. He could make many regret their actions...the reports of misconduct...the slanderous suggestion that any of his "experiments" were based on a sadistic appetite rather then pure scientific discovery. He could make them take notice of him...even fear him.
He dropped the chains and looked into the shards of broken mirror near the overturned water basin and inspected himself with a smile. He scratched at the blood on his collar and laughed.
He didn't know where the girl had gone...but he could find out. He knew that the secret service agent had somehow helped trigger her assault...interesting...he could find out more. He had family connections...government friends. And worded correctly, with power whispered in just the right ears...he could get the things he needed.
Straightening his cravat, and defiantly leaving the blood as his badge of merit, he strolled through the devastation leaving aghast stares behind him as he whistled happily.
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James West was amazed by how quickly the girl seemed to recover from not just the incident caused by her empathic powers, but from the cuts to her ankle, and the bruises and marks on her neck which he now knew came from the attack that triggered their escape to here.
Within two days the marks were no more then a slight discoloration. By the third day she was well, and bored, and Jim and Artie had the shipment of greenbacks & gold coming in to supervise. While Artie had no qualms about leaving their "guests" unattended, Jim did.
That morning Artie brought back to the train something Jim hadn't expected to see. A beautiful green dress with cream lace and gold buttons.
"A new look for you Artie?" Jim looked over his shoulder with a grin.
But when Tyme came inside she gave a squeal of delight and threw herself into Artie's arms and kissed him.
Jim frowned and Logan, walking in after Tyme, scowled.
Artie looked at Jim and shrugged. "You don't want them out of your sight? Then we have to take them with us. I suggest a day on the town followed by the exchange then dinner and a show."
Tyme looked back at Artie and kissed him again. Jim didn't know what upset him more.... the fact that Artie decided the day's events without him...or the fact that he was obviously enjoying the affection the girl was heaping on him...or the more aching fact that he hadn't done anything to make her this happy first. He was looking at her joy and the glitter in her luminous green eyes and the way her hair...and hell...the rest of her bounced because of what Artie suggested. And he hated the realization that for the last few days the girl had spent them, she had been unsmiling, sick and scared and he had done little to rectify the situation for fear of what? Getting too close?
Before Jim could veto the idea the girl had scooped up the dress and run into another room to change. When she returned Jim heard the other two men take deep breaths. It was only when he found himself slowly exhaling as well did he know that the vote had been unanimous. She was beautiful.
Jim decided to change into something more appropriate...and he wondered which suit would go better with green on your arm.
It actually took longer to find something that would fit Logan, But Artie managed to pull something together that was comfortable and less bloodstained.
After a shave and some careful grooming....Logan still looked rough.
"What's with his hair?" whispered Jim very faintly to Tyme when no one was looking. Jim counted and waited....
Logan's head rose from where he buttoned the vest he'd taken over and answered. "The chicks dig the hair Bub."
Jim grinned. He would have to watch Logan closely. He had suspected that Logan was hiding some of his talents and this confirmed one.
In the meanwhile Tyme took a moment to behave as any young woman does...she took a final look in the mirror and after Artie once again proclaimed her flawless, to her great delight, he extended his elbow and escorted her, with a wink to Jim, out the door.
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The tour was detailed and would have been subdued but for the enthusiasm of Tyme and Artie. With a bag of warm peanuts and a giggle Artie led them down the pier and pointed to the island in the bay.
"We have a fort out on that rocky island...it's called..."
"Alcatraz!" The girl exclaimed.
"You know it?" Asked Jim.
"Oh yes...when I was 12 we came to San Francisco on vacation and my father took me on the tour of the island." Jim watched her face as she smiled at a memory that hadn't even happened yet.
"But it's not a fort in my time...it became a prison...then it was shut down and became a tourist attraction." She looked a little pale and shook her head.
"Is there something wrong?" Jim asked and he stepped to her side and put out an arm to catch her when she looked ready to faint.
"It's nothing...it's silly. It's just weird to see it looking so...new." She laughed nervously. "Maybe I'm just a little more worn out then I thought." She looked back at the island and then moved from Artie to Jim's arm as if draw there by a magnet.
Jim laid a hand over hers and smiled to Artie with a wink...the man Logan stepped up on the other side of the girl and she extended that arm, looking suddenly at her arm in Jim's arm and disengaging herself with an embarrassed nod and thanks. The burly man nodded smugly to West.
James ignored him. "Let's get to the bank for the transfer...then we'll go to dinner."
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Jim should have guessed. After all, nothing else had gone as expected this week, so why start now?
The explosion took place while they talked about the guard arrangements with Flannery about half a block away, but the dust and debris still flew out to greet them as the front of the bank was blown out. Jim turned to Logan. "Stay here!" And he and Artie ran toward the disaster in a dead run.
Out of the rubble and flame and smoke a group of eight men with guns blazing ran out of the building with bags, heavy with the gold bars they'd stolen. Throwing them onto a wagon they took advantage of the explosion, and the gunfire and mounting casualties to make their escape.
It was a simple strong-arm job but it was proving effective by sheer numbers and the continued use of dynamite by 2 of the men.
James drew his gun and attempted to draw their fire while Artie set up a few surprises of his own. The flash of red smoke gave Jim & Artie enough cover to reach the stairs of the building. Artie went to the left to stop the wagon from leaving, and Jim took cover behind a fallen column and continued the gun battle. The man who jumped him from behind did so under the remaining cover of Artie's smoke bomb but that didn't bother Jim too much. His gun was knocked from his hands. He reached behind himself and threw the man on his back. The man stood and charged, but Jim almost casually brought his elbow into the man's back and tipped him with his own momentum until he crashed headlong into the column.
Jim looked up and saw Artie cutting the tack of the horses hitched to the wagon and he saw that Artie had been spotted. One of the bandits leveled a gun at his friend and Jim was weaponless, and too far away. He shouted. Just as Artie turned and looked up. The bandit gave a horrified cry, and there was a roar and Wolverine, with claws extended, simultaneously knocked the man off his feet and disarmed him...by removing his arm at the elbow. The man balled up around his severed arm and screamed.
Just as Artie ran up the steps of the bank Wolverine greeted him with a savage smile.
"Now we're talking! Great tour Bub...beats the opera any damned day!" Then he elbowed Artemus Gordon, genially. Wolverine stepped over the arm still holding the gun that lay on the ground at his feet. "Let's have fun."
There was a crackle and Artie and Wolverine were thrown backwards by a dynamite blast that sent granite flying in their direction. Artie, who was behind Logan, wasn't hit by the sharp stone, but his brutal human sheild was deeply gouged and cut. As Jim tried not to stare, it was once more evident that Wolverine's healing ability made him a dangerous enemy...and right now, a valuable ally.
Jim saw one of the men with the dynamite sticks laugh as he prepared another one. He shouted for Wolverine and Artie to make for cover and then he saw Tyme step out of the smoke like a vision. Her styled, curling blond hair was flying away from her messily...like the angry snakes of a gorgon. She had her arms raised in front of her. As though she were both reaching out and pointing to the man with the TNT. The man looked at her and his laughing stopped. He stood with a lit fuse and stared down at her. He reached back as though he had decided to throw the explosive in her direction when he froze.
Tyme's eyes were glowing. Jim was stunned. He looked around for his gun but couldn't see where it had fallen to. He looked to where Artie watched with dread. If her power erupted again, then they all might be killed.
Even Wolverine looked uncertain. But Tyme looked serious, not out of control. She appeared to be concentrating and even though her eyes glowed brighter and brighter, lighting the air around her they couldn't feel the pressure that the felt all around them the day she arrived.
Then the man with the TNT screamed and began jumping up and down frantically swatting at himself and crying.
"Pull out the fuse and I'll make them go away!" said Tyme with a chilling calm.
The man did exactly as he was told and defused the stick throwing aside the burning wick and holding the TNT in front of him like a child displaying a cleaned plate to his mother.
"Here! HERE!" The man had tears rolling down his face and Jim noticed that the remaining bandits were all paused and standing in a wide circle around their friend when fear took control and they attempted, in almost a united decision, to run in different directions with their ill-gotten booty forgotten.
Tyme pointed at the man she had focused on and told him to sit on the ground and be still. The man's sobbing became less fearful, and more sad and depressed. He complied.
Jim and Artie, with the persuasive help of Wolverine, gathered the rest.
The glow died in Tyme's eyes as the bandit leader was disarmed of his bag of explosives by James.
Luckily the smoke and explosions had driven most bystanders from the area in fear of their lives. Jim would have to trust that no one would believe the stories of any stragglers who saw more. He was left to secure the area as Artie took their guests away as quietly as possible.
When the gold had been secured and the thieves all bound away, Jim went in search of Tyme.
He found her with Artie at the restaurant they had agreed to meet at. Wolverine sat close to her, his hand lay protectively on the back of her chair.
Jim sat at the empty seat left for him and leaned across the table.
"What just happened? What the Hell just happened?!"
"That's what we're still trying to find out, pretty boy, so ease up." growled Logan.
Artie was more calm though his first brush with her powers had made him more wary of this new development.
"Tyme?" he asked softly.
She shook her head slowly with a look of wonder brightening her, now human, green eyes.
"I think...I know...my powers have changed. Oh My God!" She exclaimed breathlessly. "Did you see what I did?"
"Yes...we saw." Jim said with an edge of urgency. "But we don't understand. What was it you did to that man?"
Tyme looked at him with wide eyes and nodded at his need for an explanation.
"I saw him getting ready to light that stick and had to help. I reached out to feel his emotions and found that I could go straight into his deepest emotions. I saw images. Scenes. Spiders. He was terrified of spiders. So I pulled that forward." She looked up. "I don't know how but I was able to amplify his fear of spiders. He imagined himself covered in them. He did anything I asked to get rid of them."
"And when he became docile?" Artie asked.
She turned her head to his voice. And shook her head with stunned amazement. "I took the feelings he had for a dog that had died when he was a child and made him so sad he couldn't move."
Wolverine sat back and whistled. "Girl you had me scared you were going to spaz out on us again."
"NO!" she replied with gusto. "No...I felt so calm...it was very quiet...It felt like a dream. And my head doesn't hurt."
"So you've never done anything like that before?" Artie asked.
"Never." she smiled nervously. "All new me. Like instinct. That kind of power is totally new."
She grew distant for a moment and her look saddened. "I wish Charl...Professor X was here to tell me what was happening...what to do."
Jim spoke. "You can control it though?"
She looked worried, she looked lost.
"Chuck will be happy to just get us home in one piece." said Logan with a puff on his newly lit cigar. "You can still do that?"
She looked worried for a moment and Jim watched as she closed her eyes and he knew she was searching inside for something. Then she opened her eyes and sighed with apparent relief. "Yes....but not yet....It's like I've got to build a big charge just for that and the hop here drained me bad."
Artie placed a hand on hers and smiled. "Then let's throw some coal on your furnace and order dinner...we can talk about this later."
Jim wanted to talk about it now, but he smiled and picked up his menu.
Dinner was an interesting affair. With this further reminder of the pair's incredible powers Jim was surprised that Artie had no trouble with his easy banter, and his even easier charm. Though James remained polite he couldn't quite bring himself to embracing this fully.
Perhaps this was the fear they engendered in their own time? The fear Tyme had spoken of with Artie.
He shook his head....as a former Union soldier...son of a staunch abolitionist...he hated to think he may be capable of any bigotry. Or maybe it wasn't bigotry...maybe it was jealousy. It wasn't hard to look at Logan and wish for the power to heal quickly from your injuries. From Tyme's description of the night they arrived, Logan's attackers would have killed a normal man. But there sat the burley man without a scratch.
But maybe it was even more. Jim stole glances throughout dinner at Tyme. How sorrowful, sick and sad she had looked when she came to the train, and how elegant she had looked at the beginning of the day. Innocent. Now...she was alive...vibrant...even confident. She laughed and the hair that had been so neat earlier flew around her like a living thing and Jim was attracted and he couldn't deny it.
More then attracted. And Jim had never been more desirous of a woman...ever. She was affecting him like an opiate. If only he could 'have her' he could then purge her from his system...it was as simple as that, he convinced himself. The desire, for all her unusual talents, for her was the same kind as any other he'd had for a woman...but magnified due to the unusal circumstances. And for James West there was only one cure. He nodded to himself grimly and his rakish grin spread over his face.
After dinner they drank and Artie stood and extended his hand to Tyme and she took it. He led her to the dance floor and the quartet that played for the guests played a breezy tune that swept her giggling into the center of the room.
James watched her and felt Logan watching him.
"I don't need to be a bloody empath to know what's on your mind." The man said low, but without real menace. "She's a good kid West...but she's out of your league."
"But not your's?" asked West with a smile.
"She's outta mine too..." said Logan with an appraising look and a self-deprecating shrug. "But she's not mine...and most of the dames I do fall for are outta my league anyway."
He smiled at West with a grim, toothy savage look. "I'm just warning you...she isn't a freaking dessert on the menu. She deserves better then she's gotten and I would take it, BADLY, if anyone hurt her anymore. Understand?"
Jim smiled and drank his drink with one gulp and stood. Walking past Logan he patted him on the shoulder.
"Thanks for the advice..." Jim didn't look back at the deepening scowl and the dangerously flexed muscles. He chuckled as he walked away with his back to Logan. "...Bub."
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Tyme saw him approach as she opened her eyes when Artemus Gordon spun her around. She liked Artemus. He was sweet...funny...daring. He also went out of his way to make her comfortable despite the royal headache she gave him at their first meeting. And while she felt a healthy bit of male attraction towards her she was delighted that he didn't seem inclined to pursue her further in that regard. He seemed to just want to be her friend.
And while she and Logan were also friends...even they hadn't managed to leave it at just a platonic level.
But now came trouble. From their first encounter James West had made her nervous. His surface emotions had her confused. He was suspicious, cautious, and at times even fearful of what she was...and it hurt. But he was also attracted to her in a way that scalded her to touch. He was not a mutant berserker like Wolverine, but his passions were at least as wild as any that Logan summoned for Jean. And as conflicted. Almost as though he hated her...or himself for feeling the way he did. She had done all she could to avoid him. How she had ended arm & arm with him earlier she didn't understand. His emotions gave off ripples that battered her walls relentlessly. It exhausted her to be too near him.
Yet here he approached her. Smiling. The predator in his eyes. A tap on Artie's shoulder and she had been handed into his arms for the next dance.
He wasn't a particularly tall man...5'9..5'9.5 maybe...but he was no weakling. His hands were larger then average and firm as he drew her hard against his body in a way that she could feel the fit musculature she had glimpsed in passing on the train in the last couple of days. She tried not to look in his eyes...and she was suddenly aware that she wasn't smiling anymore. She was nervous...she was...scared.
Her eyes flicked to his and stopped. His hazel gaze was examining her in minute detail...anticipatory. And when she locked eyes with him he smiled in a way that was more then friendly. She swallowed and felt herself try to draw back but he held her tight. She didn't resist.
She had refused to go deeper then surface feelings with Artemus..or Jim. She didn't want to invade. And with James West she was afraid to know.
Today had been different. She had never...ever...deliberately used her power as a weapon. But she didn't want anyone hurt...not even the bad guy...and she'd done it. Safely and in a controlled way. In the past she had hurt people while reacting out of pain, sickness or fear, but that was because she was untrained, and until now...underdeveloped. Now she felt possibilities in her that both frightened and elated her. And she wondered if her previous training would be enough to control the powers she held.
Now...when she returned with Logan she might be a real benefit to the X-Men...not a burden to Charlie. Now...now she also knew what it was to have a power that could be a temptation to abuse...to reach deeper into a soul then she ever could before...without permission. She could easily reach into James West..deconstruct every motivation...examine every feeling...scientifically, minutely scrutinize every emotion he exhibited towards her. She had to re-evaluate how you ethically use that kind of power and all she knew was that she didn't want to deteriorate into an emotional rapist. It was that kind of power that terrified her.
He terrified her.
He leaned in to her ear, his lips soft and warm, tickling her.
"What would I have to do to win a kiss from you?" He pulled back slightly and smiled, his dimples deepening, as he watched her reaction. The game he played with her, even as her body ached in his arms.
She lifted her chin boldly. No games.
"Let me look into your soul." She said calmly, feeling anything but calm.
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They were called mutants in their time. And Artie had to think that such a name that, by definition, spoke of aberration and abnormality, didn't particularly sound complimentary and it made him uncomfortable to refer to them, especially a young lady as a "mutant".
Logan's mutation appeared to be his frightening claws, and a healing ability that made Tyme's accelerated healing pale by comparison. The man had even allowed him an up close look as he extended those amazing appendages. They actually sliced open his skin to escape and push outward, and upon retracting, with a disturbing metallic scraping sound, the skin immediately sealed and healed, without so much as a scar.
Artie was strangely honored by Logan's trust in telling him the things he did. He had a feeling Logan and trust didn't occupy the same territory sometimes.
He knew that the man certainly didn't trust Jim. In fact a barely restrained hostility seemed to exist between them and Artie was pretty sure that Jim's interest in Tyme was only part of it. Since the incident at the bank and Jim's dance with the girl the siding outside of the city that they now called home was a prickly place. He had found himself trying to defuse more then a few tense moments at the train when the two circled each other like alpha male wolves ready to battle for pack leadership. This had to be more then just a growing jealousy. From all accounts Tyme wasn't even Logan's girl. Artie hated being in the dark...he needed to know all the angles so he went to someone who would probably know more.
He went to Tyme. And he was surprised to learn that her knowledge of her friend was second hand at best.
"Logan doesn't say much about his past because he can't remember most of it." She sighed heavily. "The talk is that because of his healing ability he may be older then the man who formed the X-Men, Charles Xavier. And he's in his late 60's." Artie heard a hesitation at this name, but she continued. "We just don't know. All we know is that he was experimented on. Like a lab animal. Some government group tried to use him as a weapon I think. Military men looking for a weapon. A super soldier, an assassin. They took him apart and coated his skeleton with a metal that's unbreakable...and he must have felt it all, because he heals so quickly that anesthesia doesn't work well on him. It was torture. So all he remembers is the last few years and the pain."
Artie nodded, but inside he was horrified. Logan had mentioned that mutants weren't exactly loved in their time...but torture? It said a lot about the man if Logan had been able to set aside his pain to help people. Even if it did seem that he did so reluctantly. Fact was he didn't have to do it at all...and trusting someone who worked in government....
"So Jim may be a little too military for his taste?"
The girl looked uncertain. "Yes...I think."
Artie was casual, he thought he was hearing more in people's silences lately then in what they said. "But it could be something more?"
Tyme looked at him with eyes so full of misery that he regretted the question. She had simply gotten up and walked down the track for some time alone. He knew where she was going...it wasn't far.
Jim had taken the precaution of moving the train from the station siding to a siding about 5 miles outside of San Francisco. This siding had a large abandoned barn about half a mile down the track which Jim immediately took advantage of hanging a heavy bag for boxing from the rafters and on whose floor he had laid several of the sawdust stuffed pads he used for cushioning the blows he received after a hard workout. It was also remote enough to allow their guests an area to exercise without drawing too much attention...and as Jim reasoned...it allowed them to exercise their talents without harming anyone.
Artie knew that Tyme's confession to being unsure of her expanded talents had made Jim more nervous then he would admit. It made Artie nervous as well. Because he knew how close Jim had come to killing the girl in the performance of his duty. Like a "rabid dog" as he had described her. Artie saw the way he looked at her now. The way they avoided each other in a polite, but painful way. Something had passed between them on that first night. And again in their dance.
Now his friend faced many dangers. One of which was the distrust of someone as dangerous as Logan...but even that didn't worry Artie as much as the danger Artie feared most for someone like James West.
That his friend was falling in love.
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Jim could have told Artie what was going on if he understood it himself. But he didn't. He looked back at her as she walked away. She didn't look back at him. He was glad they were outside the city. Even though she didn't wear the distracting pink shirt now she now was wearing a light blue shirt of his that was a little too big. And he found that even more distracting. She had rolled the sleeves up and tied the ends in a knot at the top of her black pants. Jim walked toward Artie as the girl retreated toward the barn.
He shook his head and turned to see Artie watching him and he smiled.
"She's beautiful...isn't she?" he commented.
Jim smiled. "Yes."
"But?" added Artie.
Jim looked as innocent as he could. "But...what?"
"Jim Boy...I see a great big "but" hanging over you."
Jim laughed out loud at the wording.
Artie chuckled too. "You know what I meant."
"I know." said Jim. Then he looked around. "Where's Claws?" he dared.
Artie shut his book and set it aside. "He left about an hour ago. He saw deer in the tree-line and decided to spend the day hunting."
James West was always careful about where and how his guns were kept. "I didn't see a hunting rifle missing when I was inside."
"He said he didn't need one." said Artie with a serious look. "Jim...I see it in your eyes. If you go after her both of you are going to be hurt. There is no future in it."
Jim smiled. "But isn't that the kind of lady I like Artie? If I wanted a future I'd have retired my commission and taken up farming with a little woman and a pack of kids."
Artie frowned. "What about her future?" He asked Jim's retreating back softly.
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She took a few experimental jabs at the heavy hanging bag and sighed. She knew her powers had grown, and while she was excited and more then a little frightened by them she was even more frightened by another result of their expansion. They would be here longer then she had ever been anywhere before she could take them away from this place. Away from James West. She hadn't told this to Logan yet...but she should be getting sick again right now and she felt disgustingly healthy. She had held on for three weeks when she had met Charlie, but every moment after the first week had become harder and harder to resist the pull of her time. But now she didn't even feel the first stirrings of that pull. And while she had tried to stay for the sake of love with Charlie, now she just wanted to flee this time before she could fall anymore in love with the agent in blue.
The past couple of days had been an agony for her. In one dance she had confirmed for herself what she had felt would happen the moment he had held her in his arms on their first night there. When she had fallen into his deep hazel eyes and brushed the surface of his emotions and pulled back in fear while wanting to move forward so much that she trembled with the sudden need.
The dance had doomed her. And her newly expanded powers were going to prolong the agony.
She rubbed away an angry tear. She was through with tears. She threw another punch instead.
"You're relaxing your shoulder and your arm is doing the punching...lean into the punch and let your shoulders and body give the punch power."
She jumped and turned. Framed in the light of the open barn door James West stood. His lean, powerful body seemed to glow like he possessed a mutant ability of his own. As he shut the door she could see him looking at her with mild surprise.
"I didn't think I could startle a mind-reader." he smiled.
She turned away and threw an improved punch at the bag. "I'm not a mind-reader....I'm an empath." She turned on him. "I can't hear your thoughts...I can only sense emotion. And only when I want to...I can build walls to keep them out you know."
He walked up to the bag and stopped it's swinging and looked down at her. "And my emotions?"
"Are yours. I don't want them, I don't care." She went to walk away but he grabbed her arm firmly.
"You haven't tried to feel them?"
She looked down at his hand on her arm. "I could." she warned. "I could, now, pull your deepest emotions out of you and wrap you in grief, or fear." She felt her eyes blaze with her warning. She wasn't going to fall in love and she wasn't going to be toyed with.
He released her arm, but didn't step away.
"But I wouldn't." she finished quietly. Looking up as the green haze died in her vision, she smiled ruefully. "If you're worried I'll spill your secrets then don't. I've scanned surface emotions for a long time...as a safety measure. Like walking into a room and using my eyes to see if everyone is smiling or frowning. It is a natural response. But I never go deeper if I can help it, or unless it's welcome."
"You went deeper two days ago. That man with the dynamite..." he continued.
"Might have blown you to kingdom come!" She looked at him with sudden pleading in her eyes and she hated herself for begging for his understanding. "You own a gun. Do you shoot everyone you see because you can?"
He moved closer shaking his head thoughtfully. "Only if I have to kill. And I don't enjoy it."
"I don't enjoy doing it either." she sighed. "Do you know what it's like to have to force yourself into someone's soul and wade around in a sickness to find what you need to stop a disaster? Do you know what its like to feel emotions pressing in on you all the time and having to erect barriers just to stay sane?"
"Like owning a loaded gun...a heavy responsibility." he added.
She closed her eyes and nodded. "Would you have killed me that night?" She asked the question that plagued her.
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He looked at her greener then green eyes and frowned. He believed her when she said she wouldn't dig around inside him...unless she had to, but what was the real use in not being honest with her. After all...he was prepared to do what he had to at the time.
"Yes." he spoke bluntly. Firmly...without any guilt or guile. But he smiled sadly to deaden the impact he hoped.
She nodded. "Because I was a danger...you would have done what you needed to with the weapon at hand."
He nodded. "Yes. I had a greater responsibility."
She looked down again. "Then maybe we aren't so different after all."
"Am I different then Logan?" he asked with a smile.
Her brow furrowed as she weighed that. "Is that a subtle way of asking if we are lovers?" She deduced cannily.
Jim smiled.
She smiled back. "We were...for a night...and if this.." She waved her hands expansively. "Hadn't happened we probably would have slept together again. Does it mean we're lovers? No."
Jim found her casual manner familiar, in the way he looked at intimate contact, and disturbing in a woman.
"Logan saved my life...he's a hero and my friend. We're mutants, and he knows what it's like to be lonely." She turned away and shrugged. "And...you may have noticed...he's very handsome, in rough way."
Jim took her by her arm again and spun her around and pulled her against his chest. Capturing the back of her head he silenced the coming protest with a kiss.
He felt the air around them grow denser, like a storm approaching. Through closed lids he could still see the growing, incensed, green glow of her eyes. He waited for her to strike out at him and wouldn't have blamed her. But while she struggled against him physically, the glow subsided and he opened his eyes enough to see hers now shut tight. Her struggling ceased to be about release but about a need to be closer. She returned the kiss.
Her body pressed against his and the heat of their desire igniting like a bonfire in both of them, he pulled back slightly to look at her.
She looked at him with an anguished gaze. "This is a mistake. I don't know if I can take this all over again. Please...Logan & I will leave, we'll wait for the time I can get us back to our time...but THIS is a mistake...I...I..."
Jim leaned in to kiss her again and she met his lips eagerly and her hands reached up to entwine themselves around his neck and she held on to him as desperately as she wanted to push him away.
He scooped her legs up from under her and carried her to the stall with the new hay.
Snagging a blanket that was draped over the stall's low wall, he dropped it onto the prickly feed grass and looked down at Tyme's face as they discontinued their kiss. She looked around with a startled look on her face, but she didn't resist what was taking place. Jim smiled reassuringly and her trembling abated slightly. Jim pulled back, by her own admission she had been with another man, and he knew that she had been with a man before Logan, yet he knew, without any need for special powers, that she was scared.
"Should I stop now?" he asked softly.
She shook her head with an almost grim resolve. "No...I don't think I could stop what's happening to me by leaving now...as much as I want to." Her eyes glistened and her voice strained to a whisper. "I'll give you what you want...but can you give me what I want?"
He immediately knew what she wanted and as much as his growing need for her made it difficult to refuse her, he shook his head.
"I know you can force it, but I don't think I'm ready for anyone to look at me that closely." He lifted his hand from where it rested on her breast and started to pull away.
She didn't allow him to. "I won't ask again. Just...please....don't leave me. Don't leave me. And she pulled his hand back towards her and unbuttoned the blue shirt she wore and rested it on her naked skin. Her eyes large and pleading. "Don't leave."
Jim looked at her with startled hesitation. She was giving herself to him and asking nothing in return. Why then did her plea sound so much like forever. Don't leave me.
He would sleep with her so he could leave her. He had told Artie as much. Her skin was warm and soft under his fingers and he molded it tenderly, firmly, as she kissed him. He should stop...he should.
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Jim lay next to Tyme watching her sleep. Jim couldn't recall the last time he'd done that with a woman. Watching the rise and fall of her breasts, her hand relaxed across her navel, her hair generously spiked with loose straw. He closed his eyes and shook his head angrily at himself. Artie was right, Tyme was right. This had been a mistake. He thought he could take her, and by making that conquest, purge her from him like a virus. He was wrong and now he didn't know how to make it right. She'd respected his wish not to have his soul searched by her. The only thing she'd asked of him, and he'd refused her and she'd still given herself to him. Jim didn't feel good about it. During their lovemaking she had opened herself to him. With all the despair for their future, with all the heartache this sort of thing had caused her in the past, Jim recalling the brief flashes of a young handsome man and then seeing the sadness of her love for the older man he had become that he had seen in her mind, and she had still risked her heart for him. What could he offer her now? He was ashamed to have her see what was in his heart, and frightened. And James West was frightened of nothing....but love.
He wished again, as she took a deep sighing breath, that he could just do as he always did. Leave. Send a gift, flowers, a pretty bauble after, and from far away. This had been a mistake. He hated himself, the situation, her powers, anything that had made this situation possible...but he couldn't hate her.
"You're here?" she breathed. She opened her huge leaf green eyes and smiled uneasily at him. She seemed surprised. As though fully expecting to be left...and he knew that it wasn't because being an empath that she knew this, but because as a woman she suspected that she would find herself alone when she woke. He had felt it when she'd shared herself with him. The heartfelt sure knowledge that this would end...and she would be alone again. Lonely again. There was nothing permanent in her life, not family, not friends, not love and he had just added to it.
He leaned forward and kissed her.
"Yes...I'm still here."
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They dressed in silence. She had no choice. Her throat was sore with the tears she held back. She smiled, and she kept her eyes averted. She wouldn't cry. She would not. She knew what would happen...she knew...and she still wanted him.
He was so intensely private but she had never made love to a man without being allowed into his heart....and his refusal was sweet poison. She still wanted him even though she knew she could never have him. She still loved him and his poison worked its way through her. When they left there would be nothing left for her inside again. Ever.
She watched him from the corner of her eye as he pulled up trousers over his beautiful legs and behind. She memorized every line of him and committed them to memory. For memory would be all she had left soon enough. She turned her head and coughed, refusing to torture herself.
"I'm sorry." He whispered. He stood behind her she could feel the warmth of him against her back.
"For what?" she asked with a laugh she didn't feel.
"For everything." He slid a hand around her waist and turned her gently to face him.
She smiled. Her eyes were dry. But he wasn't fooled. She could resist seeing into him, but when she made love she couldn't resist letting him see her soul. He knew her now. He read her like a page and she resented him for it.
She wanted to reach for him, to fall into his embrace again, even without that sharing she was used to...she wanted to run...she wanted him to leave...she wanted....wanted...
"Look inside me."
"What?" She felt herself blink. She wasn't breathing, but blinking was a good sign that she was alive and hadn't dreamed what he'd said.
"Look inside me...do whatever it is you do and look inside." He shook his head. "I don't know if you'll like what you see...but I don't know how else to make you understand what is happening to me."
She shook her head and stepped back. He took both her hands and even though they were suddenly cold and shaking he placed them on either side of his face.
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Tyme didn't move. She could feel his heart beating through his temples quickly. He stood within a kiss of her. Beneath his hands, hers shook. She looked into his hazel gaze and nodded.
He knew. He knew that once she did this...that between them everything would be sealed and nothing would be the same.
She closed her eyes.
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Jim's eyes opened wider. There was no painful jarring like the wild lashing she gave everyone on her arrival. It was more like warm water being poured over his mind. He felt his pulse slow as his anxiety decreased.
When a woman would wax poetic about "two hearts beating as one" Jim was the first to roll his eyes...but this...was something, and the only way to even come close to explaining it was with the term Jim found to be romantic, flowery fluff.
Almost embarrassing.
Then there was a shift...not uncomfortable. but still disquieting. He felt her gently lifting and reacting to his emotions...And she held hers out to him at a deeper level then she had before. And nothing was hidden. She felt his decision to use her..to purge himself of her. He felt her motivations, and he was taken aback, violently, feeling the despair that led her attempt suicide in deep snow...and her emotional turmoil when she exchanged love for comfort in Logan's arms.
For all the shame he'd felt at using her...or trying to...he realized that they both had secrets and fears and fragile moments that neither one could speak of...anywhere but here.
He also knew with a certainty that she had never shared herself this deeply with anyone else in her life. Whether that was because her powers weren't as strong before or because what was happening to them was different he didn't know...but he suspected a bit of both.
But like a dandelion blown by a child...once this breath blew over them neither one of them would be the same.
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Artie saw Logan coming out of the hills at a distance. He made no obvious moves but his eyes glanced to the barn down the track and he silently prayed that Jim and the girl would finish their "discussion" soon. He would do his best to stall Logan and he prayed equally hard that he wouldn't have to deal with the Wolverine.
Across Logan's broad shoulders a buck hung limply. Artie knew that the incredible man had taken no gun or bow with him, so it was easy, though frightening, to guess that Logan had actually stalked and killed the deer as a wolf or cougar would. Tooth and claws. Artie had recalled him waxing poetic on his less civil hobbies and apparently those involved the need for prey. He seemed to suggest that it vented aggression he'd otherwise take out on humans. It was hard for Artemus Gordon to believe that there could be a more aggressive version of this man. He hoped Wolverine had taken out A LOT of aggression on that animal.
As Artie prepared his actor's mask and a diversion he observed the approach and he saw the figure on the hillside stop and drop the dead buck.
Uh Oh.
With his head thrown back, his wild hair lifted like the ears of a beast and with a sudden baring of white savage teeth he took a few running steps in the direction of the barn.
Artie stood and waved an arm toward him. "Hey Logan!" He bellowed. "Nice buck there! Bring him down, I'll help you skin him!"
Artie hoped that Jim or Tyme had heard the warning. Wolverine had, and he turned in Artie's direction with a growl and went back and picked up the deer and brought it down the hill the rest of the way and dropped it at Artie's feet.
Blood covered the Wolverine's arms and hands and was splattered on the shirt he wore. Artie was shocked to discover that the corners of his mouth also bore traces. He lifted a finger and jabbed it into Artie's chest, as if to make it penetrate. He stumbled back slightly. "You promised to watch her!"
Artie smiled, and straightened. "I have watched her. But she's a grown woman and I can't make certain decisions for her...and neither can you."
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Wolverine was furious with Artemus Gordon. A sense of betrayal, of being made a fool. Why did he halt then? This man presented no obstacle to getting to James West...why did he halt?
Because Gordon was right, part of him screamed. It wasn't his decision. But Dammit West had been warned to leave her alone, and Tyme knew better...she said so herself.
Was he the only sane creature here? Like being a time refugee mutant with a hard-on for another man's redhead was sane, he chided himself.
Wasn't anything ever going to be easy for him...besides killing?
He glowered at Gordon.
"The girl doesn't need this kinda pain Bub...she doesn't deserve this."
The man sighed and smiled sadly. "I'm not arguing with you there...I hope to God it won't be like that."
But Wolverine had already tuned Artie out. He turned his head and looked down the track with a snarl.
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James West saw Wolverine bearing down on him with a savage gait. More like stalking...the tenseness of the hunter beast just before the muscles explode into a leap that signals it's readiness to kill.
Jim didn't hesitate...he clenched a fist at his side and felt a similar tensing. Wolverine may resemble a beast...but James West refused to look like prey. He sped his pace forgetting Tyme at his side he focused his full attention on what lay ahead.
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Tyme saw it coming. FELT it coming. Like two fronts of a vicious storm moving toward a collision that would leave devastation in its wake she felt the man she knew she loved and the man who had once made love to her and whom she considered a friend commit themselves to a violently primitive display of control. Moreover she knew that while Jim might understand, on some level, that Wolverine would win such a challenge she knew it wasn't in him to back down from it either.
With three long running strides she put herself between the coming train wreck.
"Get the hell away from him Tyme." He growled at her without taking his eyes off of Jim. "Me and boyfriend there need to have a talk."
"Stop it Logan...why are you doing this?" She was mad. "This isn't about me...you don't love me. You love Jean. What is it? Does Jim remind you of Scott? Is it Jim you want to beat up or Scott."
Logan looked at her. "You're crazy...you said it yourself...falling in love on a hop was worse then the hop for you. I'm trying to stop you from hurting yourself again!"
"I don't need saving!" She screamed back. She turned an equally angry face at James West. "I didn't WANT to fall in love with you....you knew that. But I am and I know we're doomed because of it." She looked back at Logan. "BUT...I can make my own mistakes and I can fall in love no matter how stupid it is to do it. The mistake is mine and stop pretending that this has nothing to do with Jean and Scott for you...you could have told me to my face that you thought it would be bad to hook up with Jim...but instead you want to get into a macho pissing contest. This is all about getting to pound Scott for winning...something you can't do at home."
Logan looked ready to protest but she pointed her finger at his nose.
"Don't even think for a second that you can tell me different....I can feel it in the air around you...I know it even if you can't admit it!"
Logan balled a fist and a thunderous rumble welled up in him.
Tyme turned her head slightly and saw James grin at Logan.
"AND YOU!" she roared, "You aren't any better....God, I know that you love me...I do know it...but in order to be sure you had to fuck me to see if you could get me out of your system like I was one of your used up pretty young things." The tears stood in her eyes. "You couldn't admit it was love until you were done. Do you know how that makes me feel? Knowing you were willing to use me and lose me like that?"
Jim's mouth opened and then snapped shut. She knew he was carefully weighing what she said...and knew it was true.
She threw up her arms and closed her eyes. "Beat the crap out of each other if it makes you both feel like men...but don't either of you pretend you're doing me any favors!"
She turned and ran back toward the barn.
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Artemus Gordon moved quickly to occupy the space between the two men that Tyme had just vacated. But then he shrugged and stepped out of their way.
"I hope you're both happy boys. She's right...get it over with." He jogged down the track after the girl.
Artie followed her to the barn leaving the two men squaring off in display of primitive, caveman bravado. As much as Artie loved his best friend he couldn't understand him sometimes. Or maybe he understood him too well. Since the first night they had arrived Jim had been distracted, difficult. And only part of it was the friction that he and Wolverine had generated together. That competitive male animal way of staking territory and defending it even if they didn't particularly want or need it. Unfortunately Tyme had become part of that competition. Part of it was that Jim was a creature of habit and the love of a woman didn't fit into his life as he had designed it. And Jim could be incredibly selfish with his life. Artie loved Jim...but he could also be angry with him. And right now he was royally pissed off at him.
Logan was no better. By all indications, and he didn't know all the particulars, Logan was in love with another woman but because this woman was unavailable he had found the company of other women a substitute for love. It was obvious that Logan cared for Tyme...maybe loved her as a friend...but that was not what she needed and it was selfish of the big mutant muscle man to tell her what her feelings should be.
But as he came up on the barn he was prepared to comfort the heartbroken girl...instead he found himself dodging a flying kick. The girl came out of her spin and looked up in horror.
"Did I hit you Artie?" She asked reaching out her hand.
Artie blinked and felt his head. "Nawww...It's all still attached."
She looked relieved. "Stress management...when I can't take the heat...I beat myself up in the gym."
Artie chuckled. "Jim does the same...." Artie's voice trailed away.
She nodded. "I know."
"So are Dumb and Dumber duking it out in a gruesome spray of testosterone?"
Artie was stumped. "Huh?"
She shook her head and chuckled. "Sorry...the first was a movi...er play...from my time and the second was the scientific term for male hormone. Too much of which leads to aggressive tendencies."
Artie laughed. "In that case...no...not yet anyway."
She smiled but it was a worried look. "Tell Jim to be careful. Wolverine is fast, and mean. A cage fighter. He'll do anything to win and once the fight starts he WILL win."
"Jim is pretty tough himself...he can hold his own." Why Artie felt the need to defend his friend's prowess was beyond him but he did. But the girl's worried, unconvinced expression was disconcerting.
"I know he can...but "his own" aren't mutants with a metal encased skeleton, claws and a healing factor." She sighed.
Artie nodded and hoped that Jim, in a fit of machismo, remembered that too.
Tyme took another leap through the air and rounded a strike high on the hanging bag and then a rabbit fast series of punches. Then she leaned heavily on the bag and Artie noticed she kept her eyes directed away from him in a deliberate way. Artie was no empath, but he knew she was hurting.
"You know Jim loves you don't you?"
Her shoulders shook imperceptibly. "Yes. And I know he doesn't want to."
Damn him, thought Artie. "Tyme...it's hard for Jim to admit loving you...he has neatly avoided that all his life. I would trust that man with my life...but if I had a sister..."
She turned sad eyes to Artie. "It's okay...really. Logan was right. I make the same mistake over and over. I fall for men I can't have." She shrugged. "Part of the whole mutant parcel. Love is a spectacular failure with us. We can make fire, control weather, grow blue fur and walk through walls but when we fall in love then the real disasters take place."
Part of Artie marveled briefly at the description of other mutant powers but he understood...apparently the love lives of mutants mirrored that of secret service agents in an alarming way.
"Well...maybe you just need to find a nicer young fellow..."
She brightened a bit. "Maybe someone like you?"
Artie was cheered by the flattery, and the brief flare of attraction that charged him but he raised his hands and stepped back.
"Noooooo! I'm more dangerous then the both of them together! A thief of hearts...a rake...a cad! Tough as nails..."
"Tough as a buttered muffin." She finished as she stepped toward him in the hug she desperately needed and he suddenly found himself giving.
He snorted. "Yeah, but I'm the kind that has little seeds on top that get stuck in your teeth and hurt a lot. Very dangerous."
She giggled, her face buried in his chest. She made a sniffling noise and he held her closer. "It's going to be all right....you'll see." He whispered. He was surprised to see she was holding her tears back
Slowly her breathing slowed and she relaxed in the embrace and he could feel her emotions surface ever so lightly where she projected them almost without realizing it. This astonished him as much as he was frightened by the potency of her initial awakening. He just held her and allowed her feelings to flow over him like a warm spring. And he felt a moment's pang...it was very easy to fall in love with this girl...poor Jim.
Then there was a break in the flow so sudden it was like the snapping of a twig and Tyme collapsed, dead weight, in his arms. His eyes snapped open and he saw her head fall back her green eyes rolling up into her head, and the retreat of the offending syringe from her neck. As his eyes followed the needle to its source he felt his head explode with the shattering pain of a blow to the back of his skull. He started to fall trying to hold onto Tyme as blurry figures pulled her from his spongy grasp.
Before he fell into darkness he heard a voice, echoing and deep, in his head.
"No...don't kill him. He might be useful."
And the situation was so explosive inside the small room that Artie doubted they would be able to make a logical move.
The man Logan...or Wolverine...Artie wasn't sure if one or the other was a first or last name...held the girl cradled in his arms unconscious. He appeared ready to fight his way past Jim with her. Artie shook the last vestiges of the pain the girl had somehow caused, from his head and interrupted the stalemate.
"Jim...we need time to think all this through, and we can't have these two running around on the streets. Right now the city will be buzzing about what happened here like a fallen hornet's nest and if anyone else makes the connection then it could be dangerous." Then he turned to the stranger. "Your friend is sick...but if she stays here she could be in trouble. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, and it looks like you could do a lot of hurt. But you haven't, you stopped what was happening...and you helped her. And I'm willing to trust that for now."
The man eyed Jim suspiciously and Jim eyed him likewise. But Jim nodded to Artemus and reholstered his gun.
"I'm listening." Jim said with a small smile pulling the corners of his mouth.
"We need to get back to the Wanderer...they can stay at the train until we figure out what's going on and how to fix it." Artie looked pointedly at Wolverine. "Let her recover in peace."
The man shook his mutton-chopped head and grunted. "Where to?"
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Logan didn't like it. He didn't like it for a million reasons and all of them were, as they were introduced, James West.
But what choice did he have? He had no mansion, or modern hospital to take Tyme to. He had no Alpha Flight, or Salem Center to call a haven. This train would have to do...but the only reason he was there was the guy Artie.
The man had taken the initial head blow from Tyme, which was luckily weaker then Logan thought it could have been if she hadn't been so sick from the hop, and he had still kept a cool head about him. He wasn't willing to drop Tyme first and ask questions later.
The guy was a genuine, goddamned, fucking gentleman. And even if Logan wasn't he could sure as hell recognize and respect one when he saw one.
But he also respected the blue boy, James West. But in the way one soldier respected another. He could tell that this man was a fighter. Though Wolverine had no doubt he could beat him in a fight. He could also tell that the guy was no dummy and that was what really made him dangerous.
Logan read the tapping of the man in the other room...no need to let him know all his secrets...such as hypersensitive hearing. The telegram being sent was a request, to a superior officer, to keep them as "their guests" at the train until they decided if they were an actual threat or not. Logan snorted. They still think he's their prisoner? Welllll..he'd play along until Tyme was good to go, then she would do whatever it was she did and they'd be on their own.
In the meantime the Artie guy gave up his own room for Tyme and had made her as comfortable as he could. Then the guy became all business.
The introductions had been tense in the carriage to the station. Logan staring at West, who stared at Tyme, who lay so still. Uncomfortable.
Now.
Logan paced the floor and was stopped only when a drink was pressed into his hand. A large whiskey...straight. Logan nodded, and took it. No need to tell the man that he had sniffed it for any kind of tranquilizer. That wouldn't be polite. He downed it neatly and handed the glass back.
"Got another for me barkeep? It's been a really bad day."
The man chuckled and daubed at his nose again with a wet towel. "Tell me all about it sonny...that's what us bartenders are here for."
Logan took the second drink and sat down.
"Where do I begin?" He looked up and shook his head. "You won't believe me."
The man in blue reentered the room and got a whiskey for himself.
"After what we've seen tonight...I say you should try us."
Logan's eyes narrowed and then he shrugged.
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After hearing the story Jim was ready to go with what this Logan fellow had said. He almost didn't believe it.
But then he had seen too much not to believe it either. He had to say that he'd never seen anything like the clawed man and his headache-inducing friend in his time...so maybe the rest...the time travel part of the tale was correct.
If they were to be believed at least Jim & Artie could stop worrying about the bank delivery. The location of their arrival had been an accident. And if the second-hand information from the big guy was also right then, the man & woman would be able to leave as soon as the girl was okay.
But was she? Jim worried about her being here. If it hadn't been for her protector, and Artie's advocacy, Jim would not have had a problem with ending the siege at the hospital with his gun. He would have felt a moment's regret maybe...but for the greater good, and for the protection of his country he would have done his duty. But as he had sat across from the man with the girl bundled in his arms, as he had watched Artie tend to her cut & bruised ankle earlier, he wondered if he could do what he had to in order to protect the greater good...if the time came.
Then the creak of a door brought his answer. Holding onto the frame of the door she looked very small draped in the borrowed hospital gown.
"Logan?" she whispered hoarsely and a look of happy relief lit her pale face as she stumbled forward and almost fell. Jim caught her around the waist and she looked back at him as though she hadn't noticed anyone, but Logan, in the room before. And Jim felt a terrible guilt; He could see himself having to end her life if her power threatened them. Then her large green eyes grew larger. And they were filled with fear and he knew...he knew, that she had felt that regret and sadness in him too. She could, somehow, see the scene he imagined and her eyes registered the terror of someone standing on the gallows staring at the hangman.
What would she do? According to Logan, she had acted out of fear to save them with her power once. Jim tensed. He was standing and lifting her to her feet, his hands on her slender waist and their eyes fixed on each other.
He could feel something happening...it started as a tickle in his brain...
He pleaded in his mind and hoped she could read his thoughts...he begged her not to make him kill her...not to bear that guilt. He waited for the assault...for her to act in self-defense. She glanced down to see the derringer pressed into her ribs, covered by the angle from her friend's vision...he could tell by the look that passed over her features that she understood that he would do what he had to.
But she didn't stop, though she was trembling in his arms. She proceeded with a boldness he hadn't expected and he suddenly felt something he had never felt before. She didn't attack him or plunge deep into his soul, even though he was almost certain she could. Instead she was giving him a desperate gift. Opening herself to him...so he wouldn't doubt or hurt them. He could tell that this gift cost her. He could feel it as though this was the last thing that she ever wanted to happen...as though she feared doing this almost as much as she feared him hurting her or her friend. And Jim knew that there was no way to for her lie in here...in the heart. And he drew her closer to him, in an instinctive way. She asked nothing in return.
She had taken a breath of all the surface emotions she felt around her. Including his...she seemed to gauge her surroundings from them like a quick look around can tell an agent who in the room might be a danger to them. It was probably as much a survival instinct as a flinch or ducking. But she never dug deeper. She never forced her way inside him.
And then it was over...as gently as a butterfly brushing his hair, she was gone from his mind. And he opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed.
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Something had passed between them. In an instant reminiscent of a dance's dip, West had caught the falling Tyme and something had happened. Wolverine could feel it.
And he didn't like it.
A long look passed between the two as Wolverine had stood and helped Tyme to the sofa.
West had broken the gaze and picked up his drink and finished it and went to get another.
He returned with a warmed brandy, which he held out to Tyme and she accepted.
Logan looked at her in askance, but she just shook her head curtly and he let it be. For now. Now Tyme explained a bit more about the temporal gifts she had.
Artemus Gordon leaned forward in rapt attention, and Logan decided he had a lot in common with Hank McCoy. A look at the bookshelf saw Plato vying with Shakespeare, vying with science texts. He imagined that if locked in a room with the furry blue behemoth that the two of them would end up either curing something or writing a play.
After Tyme finished it was Artie who prodded for more details.
"So when you feel better you'll just vanish?" he asked.
"No...it doesn't work like that. It's more mechanical then that. I have to trigger that part of me...and it isn't easy to do. If I did it by accident all the time I'd be dead by now. Even my first time was a deliberate trigger...even though I didn't know it and it took me a week to go over everything I did that day before I realized just how to make it work again."
"But you said that after a time you had to go back...that your time drags you back."
Tyme yawned a little; Logan could tell that the brandy and the events had taken a serious toll.
"After too long in the past I start to become sick...and I can start to feel my time pull on me. Like a rubber band stretched too far. If I don't follow it back I break. But it's me who triggers the return."
Logan could feel her shake slightly. "I tried to stay too long once, in the past, and I almost died."
Then she looked at Logan. "Something different has happened though...I can feel it."
She looked uneasy. "I have never, never been able to take anyone with me. But I did. And something exploded inside me. I feel. like my powers...have...have...grown."
Logan looked down at her. He could see that while she was excited about this...that she was also terrified. She hadn't been very good in controlling her skills in the past. But now what?
"Like how have they grown?" he asked.
"I don't know...but I think...I'm afraid they might be more dangerous now."
She looked past his shoulder and her eyes locked with James West, who looked down into his drink with a solemn frown.
Logan made sure he was heard loud and clear.
"Honey...Mine are more dangerous."
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The tall figure walked around the wrecked hospital room and stooped to pick up the broken shackles. He hadn't cleaned himself up since the incident. Blood was cracking in a line, which extended from nostril to the end of his chin and he looked down at his shirt and smiled.
He had seen the girl through tear-filled eyes and a crashing headache as the government agent had stumbled out of her room. Sitting bolt upright, with the emerald light pouring out of her, her hair flying around her like flames. MAGNIFICENT!
That much power! The girl possessed a weapon...and he wanted it. He wanted it for the greater good, he told himself. He was, after all, a doctor...a scientist...and an Army officer. Why shouldn't he be the one that molds this power...develops it...for the protection of the nation?
He could see her potential...her application, clearly. And after years of frivolous research...after all the years the war robbed from him as he hacked limbs off and tossed them onto piles like firewood, while less deserving researchers and officers were promoted ahead of him...now...NOW...he had this miracle dropped into his lap. He could make many regret their actions...the reports of misconduct...the slanderous suggestion that any of his "experiments" were based on a sadistic appetite rather then pure scientific discovery. He could make them take notice of him...even fear him.
He dropped the chains and looked into the shards of broken mirror near the overturned water basin and inspected himself with a smile. He scratched at the blood on his collar and laughed.
He didn't know where the girl had gone...but he could find out. He knew that the secret service agent had somehow helped trigger her assault...interesting...he could find out more. He had family connections...government friends. And worded correctly, with power whispered in just the right ears...he could get the things he needed.
Straightening his cravat, and defiantly leaving the blood as his badge of merit, he strolled through the devastation leaving aghast stares behind him as he whistled happily.
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James West was amazed by how quickly the girl seemed to recover from not just the incident caused by her empathic powers, but from the cuts to her ankle, and the bruises and marks on her neck which he now knew came from the attack that triggered their escape to here.
Within two days the marks were no more then a slight discoloration. By the third day she was well, and bored, and Jim and Artie had the shipment of greenbacks & gold coming in to supervise. While Artie had no qualms about leaving their "guests" unattended, Jim did.
That morning Artie brought back to the train something Jim hadn't expected to see. A beautiful green dress with cream lace and gold buttons.
"A new look for you Artie?" Jim looked over his shoulder with a grin.
But when Tyme came inside she gave a squeal of delight and threw herself into Artie's arms and kissed him.
Jim frowned and Logan, walking in after Tyme, scowled.
Artie looked at Jim and shrugged. "You don't want them out of your sight? Then we have to take them with us. I suggest a day on the town followed by the exchange then dinner and a show."
Tyme looked back at Artie and kissed him again. Jim didn't know what upset him more.... the fact that Artie decided the day's events without him...or the fact that he was obviously enjoying the affection the girl was heaping on him...or the more aching fact that he hadn't done anything to make her this happy first. He was looking at her joy and the glitter in her luminous green eyes and the way her hair...and hell...the rest of her bounced because of what Artie suggested. And he hated the realization that for the last few days the girl had spent them, she had been unsmiling, sick and scared and he had done little to rectify the situation for fear of what? Getting too close?
Before Jim could veto the idea the girl had scooped up the dress and run into another room to change. When she returned Jim heard the other two men take deep breaths. It was only when he found himself slowly exhaling as well did he know that the vote had been unanimous. She was beautiful.
Jim decided to change into something more appropriate...and he wondered which suit would go better with green on your arm.
It actually took longer to find something that would fit Logan, But Artie managed to pull something together that was comfortable and less bloodstained.
After a shave and some careful grooming....Logan still looked rough.
"What's with his hair?" whispered Jim very faintly to Tyme when no one was looking. Jim counted and waited....
Logan's head rose from where he buttoned the vest he'd taken over and answered. "The chicks dig the hair Bub."
Jim grinned. He would have to watch Logan closely. He had suspected that Logan was hiding some of his talents and this confirmed one.
In the meanwhile Tyme took a moment to behave as any young woman does...she took a final look in the mirror and after Artie once again proclaimed her flawless, to her great delight, he extended his elbow and escorted her, with a wink to Jim, out the door.
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The tour was detailed and would have been subdued but for the enthusiasm of Tyme and Artie. With a bag of warm peanuts and a giggle Artie led them down the pier and pointed to the island in the bay.
"We have a fort out on that rocky island...it's called..."
"Alcatraz!" The girl exclaimed.
"You know it?" Asked Jim.
"Oh yes...when I was 12 we came to San Francisco on vacation and my father took me on the tour of the island." Jim watched her face as she smiled at a memory that hadn't even happened yet.
"But it's not a fort in my time...it became a prison...then it was shut down and became a tourist attraction." She looked a little pale and shook her head.
"Is there something wrong?" Jim asked and he stepped to her side and put out an arm to catch her when she looked ready to faint.
"It's nothing...it's silly. It's just weird to see it looking so...new." She laughed nervously. "Maybe I'm just a little more worn out then I thought." She looked back at the island and then moved from Artie to Jim's arm as if draw there by a magnet.
Jim laid a hand over hers and smiled to Artie with a wink...the man Logan stepped up on the other side of the girl and she extended that arm, looking suddenly at her arm in Jim's arm and disengaging herself with an embarrassed nod and thanks. The burly man nodded smugly to West.
James ignored him. "Let's get to the bank for the transfer...then we'll go to dinner."
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Jim should have guessed. After all, nothing else had gone as expected this week, so why start now?
The explosion took place while they talked about the guard arrangements with Flannery about half a block away, but the dust and debris still flew out to greet them as the front of the bank was blown out. Jim turned to Logan. "Stay here!" And he and Artie ran toward the disaster in a dead run.
Out of the rubble and flame and smoke a group of eight men with guns blazing ran out of the building with bags, heavy with the gold bars they'd stolen. Throwing them onto a wagon they took advantage of the explosion, and the gunfire and mounting casualties to make their escape.
It was a simple strong-arm job but it was proving effective by sheer numbers and the continued use of dynamite by 2 of the men.
James drew his gun and attempted to draw their fire while Artie set up a few surprises of his own. The flash of red smoke gave Jim & Artie enough cover to reach the stairs of the building. Artie went to the left to stop the wagon from leaving, and Jim took cover behind a fallen column and continued the gun battle. The man who jumped him from behind did so under the remaining cover of Artie's smoke bomb but that didn't bother Jim too much. His gun was knocked from his hands. He reached behind himself and threw the man on his back. The man stood and charged, but Jim almost casually brought his elbow into the man's back and tipped him with his own momentum until he crashed headlong into the column.
Jim looked up and saw Artie cutting the tack of the horses hitched to the wagon and he saw that Artie had been spotted. One of the bandits leveled a gun at his friend and Jim was weaponless, and too far away. He shouted. Just as Artie turned and looked up. The bandit gave a horrified cry, and there was a roar and Wolverine, with claws extended, simultaneously knocked the man off his feet and disarmed him...by removing his arm at the elbow. The man balled up around his severed arm and screamed.
Just as Artie ran up the steps of the bank Wolverine greeted him with a savage smile.
"Now we're talking! Great tour Bub...beats the opera any damned day!" Then he elbowed Artemus Gordon, genially. Wolverine stepped over the arm still holding the gun that lay on the ground at his feet. "Let's have fun."
There was a crackle and Artie and Wolverine were thrown backwards by a dynamite blast that sent granite flying in their direction. Artie, who was behind Logan, wasn't hit by the sharp stone, but his brutal human sheild was deeply gouged and cut. As Jim tried not to stare, it was once more evident that Wolverine's healing ability made him a dangerous enemy...and right now, a valuable ally.
Jim saw one of the men with the dynamite sticks laugh as he prepared another one. He shouted for Wolverine and Artie to make for cover and then he saw Tyme step out of the smoke like a vision. Her styled, curling blond hair was flying away from her messily...like the angry snakes of a gorgon. She had her arms raised in front of her. As though she were both reaching out and pointing to the man with the TNT. The man looked at her and his laughing stopped. He stood with a lit fuse and stared down at her. He reached back as though he had decided to throw the explosive in her direction when he froze.
Tyme's eyes were glowing. Jim was stunned. He looked around for his gun but couldn't see where it had fallen to. He looked to where Artie watched with dread. If her power erupted again, then they all might be killed.
Even Wolverine looked uncertain. But Tyme looked serious, not out of control. She appeared to be concentrating and even though her eyes glowed brighter and brighter, lighting the air around her they couldn't feel the pressure that the felt all around them the day she arrived.
Then the man with the TNT screamed and began jumping up and down frantically swatting at himself and crying.
"Pull out the fuse and I'll make them go away!" said Tyme with a chilling calm.
The man did exactly as he was told and defused the stick throwing aside the burning wick and holding the TNT in front of him like a child displaying a cleaned plate to his mother.
"Here! HERE!" The man had tears rolling down his face and Jim noticed that the remaining bandits were all paused and standing in a wide circle around their friend when fear took control and they attempted, in almost a united decision, to run in different directions with their ill-gotten booty forgotten.
Tyme pointed at the man she had focused on and told him to sit on the ground and be still. The man's sobbing became less fearful, and more sad and depressed. He complied.
Jim and Artie, with the persuasive help of Wolverine, gathered the rest.
The glow died in Tyme's eyes as the bandit leader was disarmed of his bag of explosives by James.
Luckily the smoke and explosions had driven most bystanders from the area in fear of their lives. Jim would have to trust that no one would believe the stories of any stragglers who saw more. He was left to secure the area as Artie took their guests away as quietly as possible.
When the gold had been secured and the thieves all bound away, Jim went in search of Tyme.
He found her with Artie at the restaurant they had agreed to meet at. Wolverine sat close to her, his hand lay protectively on the back of her chair.
Jim sat at the empty seat left for him and leaned across the table.
"What just happened? What the Hell just happened?!"
"That's what we're still trying to find out, pretty boy, so ease up." growled Logan.
Artie was more calm though his first brush with her powers had made him more wary of this new development.
"Tyme?" he asked softly.
She shook her head slowly with a look of wonder brightening her, now human, green eyes.
"I think...I know...my powers have changed. Oh My God!" She exclaimed breathlessly. "Did you see what I did?"
"Yes...we saw." Jim said with an edge of urgency. "But we don't understand. What was it you did to that man?"
Tyme looked at him with wide eyes and nodded at his need for an explanation.
"I saw him getting ready to light that stick and had to help. I reached out to feel his emotions and found that I could go straight into his deepest emotions. I saw images. Scenes. Spiders. He was terrified of spiders. So I pulled that forward." She looked up. "I don't know how but I was able to amplify his fear of spiders. He imagined himself covered in them. He did anything I asked to get rid of them."
"And when he became docile?" Artie asked.
She turned her head to his voice. And shook her head with stunned amazement. "I took the feelings he had for a dog that had died when he was a child and made him so sad he couldn't move."
Wolverine sat back and whistled. "Girl you had me scared you were going to spaz out on us again."
"NO!" she replied with gusto. "No...I felt so calm...it was very quiet...It felt like a dream. And my head doesn't hurt."
"So you've never done anything like that before?" Artie asked.
"Never." she smiled nervously. "All new me. Like instinct. That kind of power is totally new."
She grew distant for a moment and her look saddened. "I wish Charl...Professor X was here to tell me what was happening...what to do."
Jim spoke. "You can control it though?"
She looked worried, she looked lost.
"Chuck will be happy to just get us home in one piece." said Logan with a puff on his newly lit cigar. "You can still do that?"
She looked worried for a moment and Jim watched as she closed her eyes and he knew she was searching inside for something. Then she opened her eyes and sighed with apparent relief. "Yes....but not yet....It's like I've got to build a big charge just for that and the hop here drained me bad."
Artie placed a hand on hers and smiled. "Then let's throw some coal on your furnace and order dinner...we can talk about this later."
Jim wanted to talk about it now, but he smiled and picked up his menu.
Dinner was an interesting affair. With this further reminder of the pair's incredible powers Jim was surprised that Artie had no trouble with his easy banter, and his even easier charm. Though James remained polite he couldn't quite bring himself to embracing this fully.
Perhaps this was the fear they engendered in their own time? The fear Tyme had spoken of with Artie.
He shook his head....as a former Union soldier...son of a staunch abolitionist...he hated to think he may be capable of any bigotry. Or maybe it wasn't bigotry...maybe it was jealousy. It wasn't hard to look at Logan and wish for the power to heal quickly from your injuries. From Tyme's description of the night they arrived, Logan's attackers would have killed a normal man. But there sat the burley man without a scratch.
But maybe it was even more. Jim stole glances throughout dinner at Tyme. How sorrowful, sick and sad she had looked when she came to the train, and how elegant she had looked at the beginning of the day. Innocent. Now...she was alive...vibrant...even confident. She laughed and the hair that had been so neat earlier flew around her like a living thing and Jim was attracted and he couldn't deny it.
More then attracted. And Jim had never been more desirous of a woman...ever. She was affecting him like an opiate. If only he could 'have her' he could then purge her from his system...it was as simple as that, he convinced himself. The desire, for all her unusual talents, for her was the same kind as any other he'd had for a woman...but magnified due to the unusal circumstances. And for James West there was only one cure. He nodded to himself grimly and his rakish grin spread over his face.
After dinner they drank and Artie stood and extended his hand to Tyme and she took it. He led her to the dance floor and the quartet that played for the guests played a breezy tune that swept her giggling into the center of the room.
James watched her and felt Logan watching him.
"I don't need to be a bloody empath to know what's on your mind." The man said low, but without real menace. "She's a good kid West...but she's out of your league."
"But not your's?" asked West with a smile.
"She's outta mine too..." said Logan with an appraising look and a self-deprecating shrug. "But she's not mine...and most of the dames I do fall for are outta my league anyway."
He smiled at West with a grim, toothy savage look. "I'm just warning you...she isn't a freaking dessert on the menu. She deserves better then she's gotten and I would take it, BADLY, if anyone hurt her anymore. Understand?"
Jim smiled and drank his drink with one gulp and stood. Walking past Logan he patted him on the shoulder.
"Thanks for the advice..." Jim didn't look back at the deepening scowl and the dangerously flexed muscles. He chuckled as he walked away with his back to Logan. "...Bub."
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Tyme saw him approach as she opened her eyes when Artemus Gordon spun her around. She liked Artemus. He was sweet...funny...daring. He also went out of his way to make her comfortable despite the royal headache she gave him at their first meeting. And while she felt a healthy bit of male attraction towards her she was delighted that he didn't seem inclined to pursue her further in that regard. He seemed to just want to be her friend.
And while she and Logan were also friends...even they hadn't managed to leave it at just a platonic level.
But now came trouble. From their first encounter James West had made her nervous. His surface emotions had her confused. He was suspicious, cautious, and at times even fearful of what she was...and it hurt. But he was also attracted to her in a way that scalded her to touch. He was not a mutant berserker like Wolverine, but his passions were at least as wild as any that Logan summoned for Jean. And as conflicted. Almost as though he hated her...or himself for feeling the way he did. She had done all she could to avoid him. How she had ended arm & arm with him earlier she didn't understand. His emotions gave off ripples that battered her walls relentlessly. It exhausted her to be too near him.
Yet here he approached her. Smiling. The predator in his eyes. A tap on Artie's shoulder and she had been handed into his arms for the next dance.
He wasn't a particularly tall man...5'9..5'9.5 maybe...but he was no weakling. His hands were larger then average and firm as he drew her hard against his body in a way that she could feel the fit musculature she had glimpsed in passing on the train in the last couple of days. She tried not to look in his eyes...and she was suddenly aware that she wasn't smiling anymore. She was nervous...she was...scared.
Her eyes flicked to his and stopped. His hazel gaze was examining her in minute detail...anticipatory. And when she locked eyes with him he smiled in a way that was more then friendly. She swallowed and felt herself try to draw back but he held her tight. She didn't resist.
She had refused to go deeper then surface feelings with Artemus..or Jim. She didn't want to invade. And with James West she was afraid to know.
Today had been different. She had never...ever...deliberately used her power as a weapon. But she didn't want anyone hurt...not even the bad guy...and she'd done it. Safely and in a controlled way. In the past she had hurt people while reacting out of pain, sickness or fear, but that was because she was untrained, and until now...underdeveloped. Now she felt possibilities in her that both frightened and elated her. And she wondered if her previous training would be enough to control the powers she held.
Now...when she returned with Logan she might be a real benefit to the X-Men...not a burden to Charlie. Now...now she also knew what it was to have a power that could be a temptation to abuse...to reach deeper into a soul then she ever could before...without permission. She could easily reach into James West..deconstruct every motivation...examine every feeling...scientifically, minutely scrutinize every emotion he exhibited towards her. She had to re-evaluate how you ethically use that kind of power and all she knew was that she didn't want to deteriorate into an emotional rapist. It was that kind of power that terrified her.
He terrified her.
He leaned in to her ear, his lips soft and warm, tickling her.
"What would I have to do to win a kiss from you?" He pulled back slightly and smiled, his dimples deepening, as he watched her reaction. The game he played with her, even as her body ached in his arms.
She lifted her chin boldly. No games.
"Let me look into your soul." She said calmly, feeling anything but calm.
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They were called mutants in their time. And Artie had to think that such a name that, by definition, spoke of aberration and abnormality, didn't particularly sound complimentary and it made him uncomfortable to refer to them, especially a young lady as a "mutant".
Logan's mutation appeared to be his frightening claws, and a healing ability that made Tyme's accelerated healing pale by comparison. The man had even allowed him an up close look as he extended those amazing appendages. They actually sliced open his skin to escape and push outward, and upon retracting, with a disturbing metallic scraping sound, the skin immediately sealed and healed, without so much as a scar.
Artie was strangely honored by Logan's trust in telling him the things he did. He had a feeling Logan and trust didn't occupy the same territory sometimes.
He knew that the man certainly didn't trust Jim. In fact a barely restrained hostility seemed to exist between them and Artie was pretty sure that Jim's interest in Tyme was only part of it. Since the incident at the bank and Jim's dance with the girl the siding outside of the city that they now called home was a prickly place. He had found himself trying to defuse more then a few tense moments at the train when the two circled each other like alpha male wolves ready to battle for pack leadership. This had to be more then just a growing jealousy. From all accounts Tyme wasn't even Logan's girl. Artie hated being in the dark...he needed to know all the angles so he went to someone who would probably know more.
He went to Tyme. And he was surprised to learn that her knowledge of her friend was second hand at best.
"Logan doesn't say much about his past because he can't remember most of it." She sighed heavily. "The talk is that because of his healing ability he may be older then the man who formed the X-Men, Charles Xavier. And he's in his late 60's." Artie heard a hesitation at this name, but she continued. "We just don't know. All we know is that he was experimented on. Like a lab animal. Some government group tried to use him as a weapon I think. Military men looking for a weapon. A super soldier, an assassin. They took him apart and coated his skeleton with a metal that's unbreakable...and he must have felt it all, because he heals so quickly that anesthesia doesn't work well on him. It was torture. So all he remembers is the last few years and the pain."
Artie nodded, but inside he was horrified. Logan had mentioned that mutants weren't exactly loved in their time...but torture? It said a lot about the man if Logan had been able to set aside his pain to help people. Even if it did seem that he did so reluctantly. Fact was he didn't have to do it at all...and trusting someone who worked in government....
"So Jim may be a little too military for his taste?"
The girl looked uncertain. "Yes...I think."
Artie was casual, he thought he was hearing more in people's silences lately then in what they said. "But it could be something more?"
Tyme looked at him with eyes so full of misery that he regretted the question. She had simply gotten up and walked down the track for some time alone. He knew where she was going...it wasn't far.
Jim had taken the precaution of moving the train from the station siding to a siding about 5 miles outside of San Francisco. This siding had a large abandoned barn about half a mile down the track which Jim immediately took advantage of hanging a heavy bag for boxing from the rafters and on whose floor he had laid several of the sawdust stuffed pads he used for cushioning the blows he received after a hard workout. It was also remote enough to allow their guests an area to exercise without drawing too much attention...and as Jim reasoned...it allowed them to exercise their talents without harming anyone.
Artie knew that Tyme's confession to being unsure of her expanded talents had made Jim more nervous then he would admit. It made Artie nervous as well. Because he knew how close Jim had come to killing the girl in the performance of his duty. Like a "rabid dog" as he had described her. Artie saw the way he looked at her now. The way they avoided each other in a polite, but painful way. Something had passed between them on that first night. And again in their dance.
Now his friend faced many dangers. One of which was the distrust of someone as dangerous as Logan...but even that didn't worry Artie as much as the danger Artie feared most for someone like James West.
That his friend was falling in love.
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Jim could have told Artie what was going on if he understood it himself. But he didn't. He looked back at her as she walked away. She didn't look back at him. He was glad they were outside the city. Even though she didn't wear the distracting pink shirt now she now was wearing a light blue shirt of his that was a little too big. And he found that even more distracting. She had rolled the sleeves up and tied the ends in a knot at the top of her black pants. Jim walked toward Artie as the girl retreated toward the barn.
He shook his head and turned to see Artie watching him and he smiled.
"She's beautiful...isn't she?" he commented.
Jim smiled. "Yes."
"But?" added Artie.
Jim looked as innocent as he could. "But...what?"
"Jim Boy...I see a great big "but" hanging over you."
Jim laughed out loud at the wording.
Artie chuckled too. "You know what I meant."
"I know." said Jim. Then he looked around. "Where's Claws?" he dared.
Artie shut his book and set it aside. "He left about an hour ago. He saw deer in the tree-line and decided to spend the day hunting."
James West was always careful about where and how his guns were kept. "I didn't see a hunting rifle missing when I was inside."
"He said he didn't need one." said Artie with a serious look. "Jim...I see it in your eyes. If you go after her both of you are going to be hurt. There is no future in it."
Jim smiled. "But isn't that the kind of lady I like Artie? If I wanted a future I'd have retired my commission and taken up farming with a little woman and a pack of kids."
Artie frowned. "What about her future?" He asked Jim's retreating back softly.
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She took a few experimental jabs at the heavy hanging bag and sighed. She knew her powers had grown, and while she was excited and more then a little frightened by them she was even more frightened by another result of their expansion. They would be here longer then she had ever been anywhere before she could take them away from this place. Away from James West. She hadn't told this to Logan yet...but she should be getting sick again right now and she felt disgustingly healthy. She had held on for three weeks when she had met Charlie, but every moment after the first week had become harder and harder to resist the pull of her time. But now she didn't even feel the first stirrings of that pull. And while she had tried to stay for the sake of love with Charlie, now she just wanted to flee this time before she could fall anymore in love with the agent in blue.
The past couple of days had been an agony for her. In one dance she had confirmed for herself what she had felt would happen the moment he had held her in his arms on their first night there. When she had fallen into his deep hazel eyes and brushed the surface of his emotions and pulled back in fear while wanting to move forward so much that she trembled with the sudden need.
The dance had doomed her. And her newly expanded powers were going to prolong the agony.
She rubbed away an angry tear. She was through with tears. She threw another punch instead.
"You're relaxing your shoulder and your arm is doing the punching...lean into the punch and let your shoulders and body give the punch power."
She jumped and turned. Framed in the light of the open barn door James West stood. His lean, powerful body seemed to glow like he possessed a mutant ability of his own. As he shut the door she could see him looking at her with mild surprise.
"I didn't think I could startle a mind-reader." he smiled.
She turned away and threw an improved punch at the bag. "I'm not a mind-reader....I'm an empath." She turned on him. "I can't hear your thoughts...I can only sense emotion. And only when I want to...I can build walls to keep them out you know."
He walked up to the bag and stopped it's swinging and looked down at her. "And my emotions?"
"Are yours. I don't want them, I don't care." She went to walk away but he grabbed her arm firmly.
"You haven't tried to feel them?"
She looked down at his hand on her arm. "I could." she warned. "I could, now, pull your deepest emotions out of you and wrap you in grief, or fear." She felt her eyes blaze with her warning. She wasn't going to fall in love and she wasn't going to be toyed with.
He released her arm, but didn't step away.
"But I wouldn't." she finished quietly. Looking up as the green haze died in her vision, she smiled ruefully. "If you're worried I'll spill your secrets then don't. I've scanned surface emotions for a long time...as a safety measure. Like walking into a room and using my eyes to see if everyone is smiling or frowning. It is a natural response. But I never go deeper if I can help it, or unless it's welcome."
"You went deeper two days ago. That man with the dynamite..." he continued.
"Might have blown you to kingdom come!" She looked at him with sudden pleading in her eyes and she hated herself for begging for his understanding. "You own a gun. Do you shoot everyone you see because you can?"
He moved closer shaking his head thoughtfully. "Only if I have to kill. And I don't enjoy it."
"I don't enjoy doing it either." she sighed. "Do you know what it's like to have to force yourself into someone's soul and wade around in a sickness to find what you need to stop a disaster? Do you know what its like to feel emotions pressing in on you all the time and having to erect barriers just to stay sane?"
"Like owning a loaded gun...a heavy responsibility." he added.
She closed her eyes and nodded. "Would you have killed me that night?" She asked the question that plagued her.
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He looked at her greener then green eyes and frowned. He believed her when she said she wouldn't dig around inside him...unless she had to, but what was the real use in not being honest with her. After all...he was prepared to do what he had to at the time.
"Yes." he spoke bluntly. Firmly...without any guilt or guile. But he smiled sadly to deaden the impact he hoped.
She nodded. "Because I was a danger...you would have done what you needed to with the weapon at hand."
He nodded. "Yes. I had a greater responsibility."
She looked down again. "Then maybe we aren't so different after all."
"Am I different then Logan?" he asked with a smile.
Her brow furrowed as she weighed that. "Is that a subtle way of asking if we are lovers?" She deduced cannily.
Jim smiled.
She smiled back. "We were...for a night...and if this.." She waved her hands expansively. "Hadn't happened we probably would have slept together again. Does it mean we're lovers? No."
Jim found her casual manner familiar, in the way he looked at intimate contact, and disturbing in a woman.
"Logan saved my life...he's a hero and my friend. We're mutants, and he knows what it's like to be lonely." She turned away and shrugged. "And...you may have noticed...he's very handsome, in rough way."
Jim took her by her arm again and spun her around and pulled her against his chest. Capturing the back of her head he silenced the coming protest with a kiss.
He felt the air around them grow denser, like a storm approaching. Through closed lids he could still see the growing, incensed, green glow of her eyes. He waited for her to strike out at him and wouldn't have blamed her. But while she struggled against him physically, the glow subsided and he opened his eyes enough to see hers now shut tight. Her struggling ceased to be about release but about a need to be closer. She returned the kiss.
Her body pressed against his and the heat of their desire igniting like a bonfire in both of them, he pulled back slightly to look at her.
She looked at him with an anguished gaze. "This is a mistake. I don't know if I can take this all over again. Please...Logan & I will leave, we'll wait for the time I can get us back to our time...but THIS is a mistake...I...I..."
Jim leaned in to kiss her again and she met his lips eagerly and her hands reached up to entwine themselves around his neck and she held on to him as desperately as she wanted to push him away.
He scooped her legs up from under her and carried her to the stall with the new hay.
Snagging a blanket that was draped over the stall's low wall, he dropped it onto the prickly feed grass and looked down at Tyme's face as they discontinued their kiss. She looked around with a startled look on her face, but she didn't resist what was taking place. Jim smiled reassuringly and her trembling abated slightly. Jim pulled back, by her own admission she had been with another man, and he knew that she had been with a man before Logan, yet he knew, without any need for special powers, that she was scared.
"Should I stop now?" he asked softly.
She shook her head with an almost grim resolve. "No...I don't think I could stop what's happening to me by leaving now...as much as I want to." Her eyes glistened and her voice strained to a whisper. "I'll give you what you want...but can you give me what I want?"
He immediately knew what she wanted and as much as his growing need for her made it difficult to refuse her, he shook his head.
"I know you can force it, but I don't think I'm ready for anyone to look at me that closely." He lifted his hand from where it rested on her breast and started to pull away.
She didn't allow him to. "I won't ask again. Just...please....don't leave me. Don't leave me. And she pulled his hand back towards her and unbuttoned the blue shirt she wore and rested it on her naked skin. Her eyes large and pleading. "Don't leave."
Jim looked at her with startled hesitation. She was giving herself to him and asking nothing in return. Why then did her plea sound so much like forever. Don't leave me.
He would sleep with her so he could leave her. He had told Artie as much. Her skin was warm and soft under his fingers and he molded it tenderly, firmly, as she kissed him. He should stop...he should.
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Jim lay next to Tyme watching her sleep. Jim couldn't recall the last time he'd done that with a woman. Watching the rise and fall of her breasts, her hand relaxed across her navel, her hair generously spiked with loose straw. He closed his eyes and shook his head angrily at himself. Artie was right, Tyme was right. This had been a mistake. He thought he could take her, and by making that conquest, purge her from him like a virus. He was wrong and now he didn't know how to make it right. She'd respected his wish not to have his soul searched by her. The only thing she'd asked of him, and he'd refused her and she'd still given herself to him. Jim didn't feel good about it. During their lovemaking she had opened herself to him. With all the despair for their future, with all the heartache this sort of thing had caused her in the past, Jim recalling the brief flashes of a young handsome man and then seeing the sadness of her love for the older man he had become that he had seen in her mind, and she had still risked her heart for him. What could he offer her now? He was ashamed to have her see what was in his heart, and frightened. And James West was frightened of nothing....but love.
He wished again, as she took a deep sighing breath, that he could just do as he always did. Leave. Send a gift, flowers, a pretty bauble after, and from far away. This had been a mistake. He hated himself, the situation, her powers, anything that had made this situation possible...but he couldn't hate her.
"You're here?" she breathed. She opened her huge leaf green eyes and smiled uneasily at him. She seemed surprised. As though fully expecting to be left...and he knew that it wasn't because being an empath that she knew this, but because as a woman she suspected that she would find herself alone when she woke. He had felt it when she'd shared herself with him. The heartfelt sure knowledge that this would end...and she would be alone again. Lonely again. There was nothing permanent in her life, not family, not friends, not love and he had just added to it.
He leaned forward and kissed her.
"Yes...I'm still here."
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They dressed in silence. She had no choice. Her throat was sore with the tears she held back. She smiled, and she kept her eyes averted. She wouldn't cry. She would not. She knew what would happen...she knew...and she still wanted him.
He was so intensely private but she had never made love to a man without being allowed into his heart....and his refusal was sweet poison. She still wanted him even though she knew she could never have him. She still loved him and his poison worked its way through her. When they left there would be nothing left for her inside again. Ever.
She watched him from the corner of her eye as he pulled up trousers over his beautiful legs and behind. She memorized every line of him and committed them to memory. For memory would be all she had left soon enough. She turned her head and coughed, refusing to torture herself.
"I'm sorry." He whispered. He stood behind her she could feel the warmth of him against her back.
"For what?" she asked with a laugh she didn't feel.
"For everything." He slid a hand around her waist and turned her gently to face him.
She smiled. Her eyes were dry. But he wasn't fooled. She could resist seeing into him, but when she made love she couldn't resist letting him see her soul. He knew her now. He read her like a page and she resented him for it.
She wanted to reach for him, to fall into his embrace again, even without that sharing she was used to...she wanted to run...she wanted him to leave...she wanted....wanted...
"Look inside me."
"What?" She felt herself blink. She wasn't breathing, but blinking was a good sign that she was alive and hadn't dreamed what he'd said.
"Look inside me...do whatever it is you do and look inside." He shook his head. "I don't know if you'll like what you see...but I don't know how else to make you understand what is happening to me."
She shook her head and stepped back. He took both her hands and even though they were suddenly cold and shaking he placed them on either side of his face.
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Tyme didn't move. She could feel his heart beating through his temples quickly. He stood within a kiss of her. Beneath his hands, hers shook. She looked into his hazel gaze and nodded.
He knew. He knew that once she did this...that between them everything would be sealed and nothing would be the same.
She closed her eyes.
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Jim's eyes opened wider. There was no painful jarring like the wild lashing she gave everyone on her arrival. It was more like warm water being poured over his mind. He felt his pulse slow as his anxiety decreased.
When a woman would wax poetic about "two hearts beating as one" Jim was the first to roll his eyes...but this...was something, and the only way to even come close to explaining it was with the term Jim found to be romantic, flowery fluff.
Almost embarrassing.
Then there was a shift...not uncomfortable. but still disquieting. He felt her gently lifting and reacting to his emotions...And she held hers out to him at a deeper level then she had before. And nothing was hidden. She felt his decision to use her..to purge himself of her. He felt her motivations, and he was taken aback, violently, feeling the despair that led her attempt suicide in deep snow...and her emotional turmoil when she exchanged love for comfort in Logan's arms.
For all the shame he'd felt at using her...or trying to...he realized that they both had secrets and fears and fragile moments that neither one could speak of...anywhere but here.
He also knew with a certainty that she had never shared herself this deeply with anyone else in her life. Whether that was because her powers weren't as strong before or because what was happening to them was different he didn't know...but he suspected a bit of both.
But like a dandelion blown by a child...once this breath blew over them neither one of them would be the same.
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Artie saw Logan coming out of the hills at a distance. He made no obvious moves but his eyes glanced to the barn down the track and he silently prayed that Jim and the girl would finish their "discussion" soon. He would do his best to stall Logan and he prayed equally hard that he wouldn't have to deal with the Wolverine.
Across Logan's broad shoulders a buck hung limply. Artie knew that the incredible man had taken no gun or bow with him, so it was easy, though frightening, to guess that Logan had actually stalked and killed the deer as a wolf or cougar would. Tooth and claws. Artie had recalled him waxing poetic on his less civil hobbies and apparently those involved the need for prey. He seemed to suggest that it vented aggression he'd otherwise take out on humans. It was hard for Artemus Gordon to believe that there could be a more aggressive version of this man. He hoped Wolverine had taken out A LOT of aggression on that animal.
As Artie prepared his actor's mask and a diversion he observed the approach and he saw the figure on the hillside stop and drop the dead buck.
Uh Oh.
With his head thrown back, his wild hair lifted like the ears of a beast and with a sudden baring of white savage teeth he took a few running steps in the direction of the barn.
Artie stood and waved an arm toward him. "Hey Logan!" He bellowed. "Nice buck there! Bring him down, I'll help you skin him!"
Artie hoped that Jim or Tyme had heard the warning. Wolverine had, and he turned in Artie's direction with a growl and went back and picked up the deer and brought it down the hill the rest of the way and dropped it at Artie's feet.
Blood covered the Wolverine's arms and hands and was splattered on the shirt he wore. Artie was shocked to discover that the corners of his mouth also bore traces. He lifted a finger and jabbed it into Artie's chest, as if to make it penetrate. He stumbled back slightly. "You promised to watch her!"
Artie smiled, and straightened. "I have watched her. But she's a grown woman and I can't make certain decisions for her...and neither can you."
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Wolverine was furious with Artemus Gordon. A sense of betrayal, of being made a fool. Why did he halt then? This man presented no obstacle to getting to James West...why did he halt?
Because Gordon was right, part of him screamed. It wasn't his decision. But Dammit West had been warned to leave her alone, and Tyme knew better...she said so herself.
Was he the only sane creature here? Like being a time refugee mutant with a hard-on for another man's redhead was sane, he chided himself.
Wasn't anything ever going to be easy for him...besides killing?
He glowered at Gordon.
"The girl doesn't need this kinda pain Bub...she doesn't deserve this."
The man sighed and smiled sadly. "I'm not arguing with you there...I hope to God it won't be like that."
But Wolverine had already tuned Artie out. He turned his head and looked down the track with a snarl.
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James West saw Wolverine bearing down on him with a savage gait. More like stalking...the tenseness of the hunter beast just before the muscles explode into a leap that signals it's readiness to kill.
Jim didn't hesitate...he clenched a fist at his side and felt a similar tensing. Wolverine may resemble a beast...but James West refused to look like prey. He sped his pace forgetting Tyme at his side he focused his full attention on what lay ahead.
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Tyme saw it coming. FELT it coming. Like two fronts of a vicious storm moving toward a collision that would leave devastation in its wake she felt the man she knew she loved and the man who had once made love to her and whom she considered a friend commit themselves to a violently primitive display of control. Moreover she knew that while Jim might understand, on some level, that Wolverine would win such a challenge she knew it wasn't in him to back down from it either.
With three long running strides she put herself between the coming train wreck.
"Get the hell away from him Tyme." He growled at her without taking his eyes off of Jim. "Me and boyfriend there need to have a talk."
"Stop it Logan...why are you doing this?" She was mad. "This isn't about me...you don't love me. You love Jean. What is it? Does Jim remind you of Scott? Is it Jim you want to beat up or Scott."
Logan looked at her. "You're crazy...you said it yourself...falling in love on a hop was worse then the hop for you. I'm trying to stop you from hurting yourself again!"
"I don't need saving!" She screamed back. She turned an equally angry face at James West. "I didn't WANT to fall in love with you....you knew that. But I am and I know we're doomed because of it." She looked back at Logan. "BUT...I can make my own mistakes and I can fall in love no matter how stupid it is to do it. The mistake is mine and stop pretending that this has nothing to do with Jean and Scott for you...you could have told me to my face that you thought it would be bad to hook up with Jim...but instead you want to get into a macho pissing contest. This is all about getting to pound Scott for winning...something you can't do at home."
Logan looked ready to protest but she pointed her finger at his nose.
"Don't even think for a second that you can tell me different....I can feel it in the air around you...I know it even if you can't admit it!"
Logan balled a fist and a thunderous rumble welled up in him.
Tyme turned her head slightly and saw James grin at Logan.
"AND YOU!" she roared, "You aren't any better....God, I know that you love me...I do know it...but in order to be sure you had to fuck me to see if you could get me out of your system like I was one of your used up pretty young things." The tears stood in her eyes. "You couldn't admit it was love until you were done. Do you know how that makes me feel? Knowing you were willing to use me and lose me like that?"
Jim's mouth opened and then snapped shut. She knew he was carefully weighing what she said...and knew it was true.
She threw up her arms and closed her eyes. "Beat the crap out of each other if it makes you both feel like men...but don't either of you pretend you're doing me any favors!"
She turned and ran back toward the barn.
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Artemus Gordon moved quickly to occupy the space between the two men that Tyme had just vacated. But then he shrugged and stepped out of their way.
"I hope you're both happy boys. She's right...get it over with." He jogged down the track after the girl.
Artie followed her to the barn leaving the two men squaring off in display of primitive, caveman bravado. As much as Artie loved his best friend he couldn't understand him sometimes. Or maybe he understood him too well. Since the first night they had arrived Jim had been distracted, difficult. And only part of it was the friction that he and Wolverine had generated together. That competitive male animal way of staking territory and defending it even if they didn't particularly want or need it. Unfortunately Tyme had become part of that competition. Part of it was that Jim was a creature of habit and the love of a woman didn't fit into his life as he had designed it. And Jim could be incredibly selfish with his life. Artie loved Jim...but he could also be angry with him. And right now he was royally pissed off at him.
Logan was no better. By all indications, and he didn't know all the particulars, Logan was in love with another woman but because this woman was unavailable he had found the company of other women a substitute for love. It was obvious that Logan cared for Tyme...maybe loved her as a friend...but that was not what she needed and it was selfish of the big mutant muscle man to tell her what her feelings should be.
But as he came up on the barn he was prepared to comfort the heartbroken girl...instead he found himself dodging a flying kick. The girl came out of her spin and looked up in horror.
"Did I hit you Artie?" She asked reaching out her hand.
Artie blinked and felt his head. "Nawww...It's all still attached."
She looked relieved. "Stress management...when I can't take the heat...I beat myself up in the gym."
Artie chuckled. "Jim does the same...." Artie's voice trailed away.
She nodded. "I know."
"So are Dumb and Dumber duking it out in a gruesome spray of testosterone?"
Artie was stumped. "Huh?"
She shook her head and chuckled. "Sorry...the first was a movi...er play...from my time and the second was the scientific term for male hormone. Too much of which leads to aggressive tendencies."
Artie laughed. "In that case...no...not yet anyway."
She smiled but it was a worried look. "Tell Jim to be careful. Wolverine is fast, and mean. A cage fighter. He'll do anything to win and once the fight starts he WILL win."
"Jim is pretty tough himself...he can hold his own." Why Artie felt the need to defend his friend's prowess was beyond him but he did. But the girl's worried, unconvinced expression was disconcerting.
"I know he can...but "his own" aren't mutants with a metal encased skeleton, claws and a healing factor." She sighed.
Artie nodded and hoped that Jim, in a fit of machismo, remembered that too.
Tyme took another leap through the air and rounded a strike high on the hanging bag and then a rabbit fast series of punches. Then she leaned heavily on the bag and Artie noticed she kept her eyes directed away from him in a deliberate way. Artie was no empath, but he knew she was hurting.
"You know Jim loves you don't you?"
Her shoulders shook imperceptibly. "Yes. And I know he doesn't want to."
Damn him, thought Artie. "Tyme...it's hard for Jim to admit loving you...he has neatly avoided that all his life. I would trust that man with my life...but if I had a sister..."
She turned sad eyes to Artie. "It's okay...really. Logan was right. I make the same mistake over and over. I fall for men I can't have." She shrugged. "Part of the whole mutant parcel. Love is a spectacular failure with us. We can make fire, control weather, grow blue fur and walk through walls but when we fall in love then the real disasters take place."
Part of Artie marveled briefly at the description of other mutant powers but he understood...apparently the love lives of mutants mirrored that of secret service agents in an alarming way.
"Well...maybe you just need to find a nicer young fellow..."
She brightened a bit. "Maybe someone like you?"
Artie was cheered by the flattery, and the brief flare of attraction that charged him but he raised his hands and stepped back.
"Noooooo! I'm more dangerous then the both of them together! A thief of hearts...a rake...a cad! Tough as nails..."
"Tough as a buttered muffin." She finished as she stepped toward him in the hug she desperately needed and he suddenly found himself giving.
He snorted. "Yeah, but I'm the kind that has little seeds on top that get stuck in your teeth and hurt a lot. Very dangerous."
She giggled, her face buried in his chest. She made a sniffling noise and he held her closer. "It's going to be all right....you'll see." He whispered. He was surprised to see she was holding her tears back
Slowly her breathing slowed and she relaxed in the embrace and he could feel her emotions surface ever so lightly where she projected them almost without realizing it. This astonished him as much as he was frightened by the potency of her initial awakening. He just held her and allowed her feelings to flow over him like a warm spring. And he felt a moment's pang...it was very easy to fall in love with this girl...poor Jim.
Then there was a break in the flow so sudden it was like the snapping of a twig and Tyme collapsed, dead weight, in his arms. His eyes snapped open and he saw her head fall back her green eyes rolling up into her head, and the retreat of the offending syringe from her neck. As his eyes followed the needle to its source he felt his head explode with the shattering pain of a blow to the back of his skull. He started to fall trying to hold onto Tyme as blurry figures pulled her from his spongy grasp.
Before he fell into darkness he heard a voice, echoing and deep, in his head.
"No...don't kill him. He might be useful."
