Chapter 9

They wandered into the breakfast room one morning, and Jean handed Sara two letters. Curious as to who would be sending her mail, she ripped them open. Her face went white with shock, and she sat back heavily in the chair that Logan held for her.

"What is it, Sare?" he asked. She made no reply, instead ripping up the papers and limping across the kitchen to drop them in the trashcan. She was rather silent and withdrawn the rest of the day but wouldn't tell him why, no matter how he asked.

The next morning, there were two more. She dropped them into the trash without comment.

The next morning there were more, three of them. She went white when she saw them, and trashed them immediately.

There was nothing the fourth morning, and she was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Xavier came into the breakfast room. "Sara," he said gently, "I just received a note from my lawyer. Apparently the Senator has been trying to contact you regarding some personal business that his lawyer believes is quite urgent, and you have not responded. Did you receive the notes?"

"Yes," she said, tight-lipped. "I got the letters, and no, I really don't want to see them, but I don't really have a choice, now, do I?" She spun and limped off.

Logan found her later, sitting on one of the benches in the garden, gasping in the stiff autumn wind. He threw her coat around her shoulders as he sat down beside her. "Let me guess. You're going to try to talk me into acceding to Charles's wish that I go talk to Richard."

"No," he said, and she looked at him in surprise. "I don't want ya ta see that bastard. I just wanna know what he's harassin' ya fer this time so I can go kill him." She turned to stare at him in surprise, and he nodded. "I'm gonna kill him fer what he did ta ya," he said grimly, his face cold and set. "Sare, didja know ya talk in yer sleep? Sometimes I wake up to hear ya screamin'. Whatever yer dreamin' about, it hurt ya bad. I've seen ya convulse in yer sleep. It hurts me ta see what he's done to ya. I don't ever want him ta touch ya again. Tell me why he wants ta see ya now."

Sara digested that in silence, but she couldn't bring herself to talk to him. Not about this. "I can't," she said sorrowfully. "I'm sorry, Logan, I just can't. I have to work this out on my own." She stood, clutching her coat around her thin shoulders and limped off back to the mansion. He was left sitting there, wondering what was so terrible she couldn't tell him about it.

Sara tapped lightly on Xavier's study door. "Charles?" she said before entering. It was a habit of hers: she couldn't just walk in like the others did. He looked up and invited her in with a gesture as he spoke to someone on the phone. He talked for a moment more, then hung up and gave her his full attention. She stood for a moment, twisting her sweater around in her fingers before she got up the nerve to say what she wanted to say. "I'm going into town to talk to Richard and his lawyer," she burst out, "and I don't want Logan to come with me. I think I know what they want, and it will hurt him to hear some of it. I don't want to do that to him. Could someone else drive me into town?"

"Certainly," Xavier looked relieved. The phone calls he had been getting from Ryan and his attorney were just short of harassment. He hoped the relief didn't show as he said, "Did you have anyone in mind to take with you?"

Sara detected the relieved stance, and her feelings of guilt increased. She should have known they would bug Xavier. She would have to meet them if she wanted them to leave him alone. 'Jean mentioned something about needing to go into town for groceries with Ororo. I thought perhaps I could go with them, but we'd need to take the van. Jean's Miata doesn't have room for my crutches."

"Go ahead." Xavier said, taking the keys for his van from a desk drawer.

She waited until she saw the two women drive off to the grocery store down the road before she turned and went into the lawyer's office. She knew exactly who he was. She had seen him often enough at Richard's weekly poker games, the ones he had set up for some of his friends. She remembered, too, that he had a cruel streak a mile wide, a streak that had caused her so much pain. But she was free, and they couldn't hurt her anymore, or so she thought, as she swung into the office on her crutches. "Mr. Drew--" she started to say, and was grabbed from behind and a hand was clamped over her mouth.

"Well, well," her husband's voice purred in her ear. "My prodigal wife returns home."

Sara slammed her crutch into his shin, causing him to yelp and grab his bruised leg. "I'm not coming back," she said defiantly, swinging around to face him. "You wanted to talk to me, so talk. Tell me what you want so I can say no and get the hell out of here."

"Nice try," he snarled at her. "You can't go anywhere until your friends come back. We saw them leave. So make nice and give us what we want."

"What do you want?" she asked warily.

Lewis Drew snatched her crutches away from her, letting her fall to the floor. "We want you to come back," he said. "We miss our little poker prize. I won last week, but you weren't there as my reward."

He advanced on her.

"No," Sara panicked, and began to limp toward the door. "No, you can't, leave me alone, just leave me alone--" but they ignored her as they grabbed her and slung her facedown across the conference table. She fought them with all her strength, but they were too strong for her and Richard held her as Lewis Drew ripped her clothes off. She screamed as she felt the incredible stabbing pain between her legs as they violated her.

She could do nothing. She was completely helpless, and at their mercy as they used her brutally. She grasped the tiny gold star around her neck and forced herself not to think about the vile things they were doing to her, trying instead to think about Logan, his gentle hands, his love, and thanking God that he wasn't here to see this. And when they grabbed her crutches and used them on her, she stopped thinking about anything at all except surviving to see him again. Dazed and in agony, she barely noticed when they left, dropping her broken, bloodstained crutches beside her body, which was already beginning to heal.

Jean and Storm took a great deal of time doing the grocery shopping, trying to give her as much time as possible to conduct her business. They didn't have an inkling that anything was wrong until they drove up in front of the office. Sara was sitting on the curb, staring blankly into the street, her broken crutches beside her. They saw the torn clothing, the empty look on her face, and knew something was terribly wrong. Ororo jumped out and helped her climb into the van, trying to be as gentle as possible as she heard Sara gasp with the pain in her loins. Apart from the rips in her clothes, she looked all right, but they could tell something terrible had happened from the bloodstains on her clothes and her wooden crutches, the stiffness with which she moved, and the way she cradled her stomach. "Sara!" Jean cried in shock, "what happened?"

"Nothing that hasn't happened before," Sara said tonelessly, refusing to meet their eyes.

They refused to allow her to retreat into her room when they got home, but forced her into the kitchen to clean the dried blood off her. Wolverine came running in response to Jean's frantic telepathic call for Xavier. He grabbed her and spun her around, shaking her roughly. "Sara, what the hell happened?" he demanded, staring in shock at the torn clothing and the bruises on her face and body. She stayed silent in his arms, refusing to meet his eyes, refusing to tell him what had happened. Jean and Storm stood around them, arms folded.

"She wouldn't tell us, Logan," Jean said, her voice anguished. "We tried. Sara, if you can't tell us then at least tell him! We're your friends, we're here to help, if he hurt you, tell us so we can call the police!"

"Enough," Charles said sternly, coming into the room. "Sara, tell me what happened."

"No," she whispered, her eyes fastened on the floor in front of her.

"Sara, you must tell me. If you don't, I will go into your mind and find out."

She stared at him in shock. "You wouldn't," she whispered.

Xavier hated the terrified look in her eyes, but hated even more the thought of how badly she had been hurt. Even worse was the fact that he felt guilty for pressing her to go to the meeting. "I will. Sara, please don't make me do that to you. I will if you don't tell us. This is important, Sara, if they hurt you we need to know."

"No," she whispered in anguish. "I can't, please don't make me." She turned to run out of the room, but her bruised legs wouldn't cooperate, and stumbled into Logan's arms. Before she could regain her feet, Xavier was in her mind.

She had only the barest of shields, so it was easy to slip into her mind and pull up the memory. He stared, sickened, as he watched them violate and beat her almost senseless. He gasped, and pulled out of her mind, letting her collapse against Logan, sobbing.

"He raped her," Charles whispered. "And he beat her. With his lawyer, too. And it wasn't the first time, either. Oh, Sara, it's not your fault, please believe us--"

Sara pulled away from all of them, drawing her hurt around her like a cloak. She couldn't stand the look in their eyes. "No," she cried to them, "it is my fault, my fault for marrying him to begin with, my fault for staying with him after the first time he beat me, my fault for not leaving when I had the chance. I could have fought him, but I didn't. I gave in; I let him use me for those damn poker games. I let his friends use my body for their sick games and desires, and now you know, and you'll think I'm a whore, a slut, like they called me then, and I deserve all of it, because that's what I am." Her voice trailed off in a choked sob, and she pulled away from all of them, limping out of the room. Logan ran after her.

She was sitting on a bench in the garden, coatless, shivering in the chill wind that blew through her torn clothes. Logan's heart ached as he knelt in front of her, slipping a hand under her chin and pulling her chin up until she met his eyes. She was bleeding quietly to death from a major soul wound, and he didn't have the faintest idea how to heal it. "Sara," he whispered, "I love ya. Yer not a whore, I don't care what that son of a bitch husband o' yers says. You're a strong, brave, wonderful woman, and I love ya. Please, darlin', believe me." He wrapped his arms around her and held her for a moment, feeling her body shiver in his arms. "Now come in, please, 'fore ya freeze." She got up when it became clear to her that he wasn't going to be placated with anything less than obedience. He got her to their room, where she showered and slipped into a nightgown, and got into bed. Logan lay beside her until he was certain she was asleep, then went hunting for Xavier.

The X-Men sat soberly around the War Room table, and the temperature of the room felt about ten degrees colder than the rest of the mansion. Cold, cold rage filled the room, rage at what had been done to her, and the desire to hurt the Senator as he had hurt her. Xavier looked grim as he spoke. "Sara's husband and his lawyer beat and raped her. They hurt her, terribly, but from what I saw in her mind, it's not the first time she's had this happen to her. Her husband did this to her all the time. When he had poker games, the person who won got to use Sara for a night." All the faces around the table mirrored the sick horror he felt. "She doesn't want to talk about it. She thinks it's her fault that it happened, because she married him and stayed with him. That idea was probably planted into her mind by him."

"Beaten int' her's more like it," Gambit snarled, flipping his cards through his fingers. "Gambit t'ink dis Senator need a taste o' his own medicine, no?"

"I am as upset as you all are," Xavier snapped. "I told her to go. I didn't know they were going to hurt her. But we can't take matters into our own hands, Gambit, no matter how angry we all are." Gambit sat back, still looking angry.

"She thinks we will blame her for what happened to her," Storm said into the silence as Logan slid into a seat at the end of the table. "Professor, how do we convince her we don't?"

"Ya don't," Logan said. He stood. "Chuck, I wanna take her away. Sorta like a vacation, get her away from all this crap, get her to where it's just me an' her, where she can't run away, an' gimme a chance ta talk some sense inta her head. Ryan's beaten all sortsa crazy ideas in her head, an' there ain't none o' yer mind tricks gonna work with her till she's let go of it an' is ready ta accept it ain't her fault."

Xavier said quietly, "It was on my mind to ask you to do the same thing. Go, please, with our blessings. Take as much time as you need."

As the meeting ended, Warren stopped him. "Logan. Did you have a particular destination in mind?" he asked. Logan shook his head.

"Here." Warren pressed into Logan's hand a set of keys. "My family has a summer cabin in Washington State. It's not used at this time of year, and I thought it might be a good place to take her to sort things out. It's across Suksan lake, at the foot of Mount Suksan. It's fall there, and the scenery is beautiful. It's not much, just a rustic cabin, but it's a good place for solitude. I took Betsy there once, and she loved it."

Logan smiled to himself as he considered the possibilities. The mountains…oh, that would suit them well indeed. Sara couldn't run from him there; she would have to stay, and listen to him, and he could talk some sense into her. Yes, that would do well indeed. "Thanks, Warren," he said, palming the cabin's keys. "We'll go there."