Chapter 8: Memories
Logan didn't stop to put his bike in the garage. He sprinted into the front door, raced through the front hall, and up the winding staircase to the room he and Jubilee shared. Jean, Ororo, Remy, Charles, Hank, and Scott stood in front of the door, looking worried. The door was firmly closed; and when Logan tried the knob, he found it locked. He knocked. "Jubes, open the door," he said.
No sound. He growled, gave the knob a savage twist that broke the lock, and pushed open the door.
Jubilee lay on the bed, still in her coat, the helmet lying forgotten on the nightstand. She was curled up in a miserable ball, sobbing. Jean took the first step into the room, and when no further explosion was forthcoming, she sat down on the end of the bed. "Jubilee," she said, touching the hunched, shaking shoulder.
"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" Jubilee screamed wildly, flinging herself out of the bed and backing into the far corner of the room. "Stay away from me, don't touch me, oh, God, you don't know what he did to me, I'm dirty, I'm filthy, don't touch me…" Ororo walked in, approached her, and tried to hug Jubilee. The girl backed away from her, tears streaming down her face, and sobbed out, "Oh, God…" and she turned and fled again. Logan caught the back of her jacket as she flew by him, but she simply shrugged out of the jacket and ran off wearing her jeans and T-shirt.
* * *
Her bare feet made no sound against the rain-slick grass. She barely noticed the chilly February rain against her skin as she ran across the lawns, away from the mansion. Anywhere. She didn't care where. She just had to get away from all of them, to stop herself from blurting out all her pain and misery and anguish to the people who would be the most hurt by the description at what had been done to her.
She remembered it all. Finally. Every disgusting detail. Sabretooth breaking into Moose's garage. Telling her if she didn't put the damn collar on he would hurt her friend more. Then when he'd gotten her away, when he'd gotten her to the damn warehouse, the things he'd done to her…
She cried out as her bare foot caught on a protruding root and she went sprawling. She picked herself up, ignoring the fact that she was now soaked with cold mud and rain. She just kept running, as if she could run away from the memories of pain and anguish. She ignored the burning pain in her lungs as her body fought for air; she ignored her feet, now getting cut by the stones and sticks and thorny brambles that littered the forest, until her body refused to run anymore and her legs collapsed. She curled up in a ball on the muddy ground, sobbing in anguish as the rain worsened and was joined by icy sleet. "Why?!" she screamed at the dark sky. "I was happy! I put Bastion behind me…I stopped having nightmares…Logan wanted to marry me… why did he have to torture me like this?" She sobbed.
A nasty voice away in the back of her head taunted her. Because ya wanted it, said the voice. Ya coulda used yer powers ta fry the collar 'fore ya put it on. Ya coulda pretended ta be helpless 'til I got ya away from the garage, away from yer friend. Ya didn't do it. Ya didn't do it 'cause ya like bein' treated like the dirty little girl ya are. Ya shouldn't even be thinking 'bout marryin' da runt. Ya think he wants ta marry a frail who can't keep her legs closed?
The voice was familiar. The face that went with that voice dominated her mind, the snarling, feral features of Sabretooth whispering those words into her ears, over and over again as he beat her brutally with the heavy chain, with the thick rope, as he gagged her to muffle her screams as he did vile, painful things to her defenseless body. The pain and the words were the only things keeping her company during those long hours lying bleeding, cramped, and in pain, jammed into the bottom of a wooden packing crate.
She lay on the cold, soaked ground, shivering for the longest time, until the icy sleet pounding her forced her to move. She pulled her half-frozen limbs under her, got to her feet slowly, and started to walk. She didn't know which direction she was going in. And she didn't care.
* * *
Logan was left, staring stupidly at the jacket still in his hands as he heard Jubilee's pounding footsteps on the stairs. They died away quickly, and a second later he heard the back door slam. From their bedroom window he saw her heading away from the mansion, and he knew she was crying.
He dropped the jacket, was about to go after her when Hank caught his arm. "She'll come back when she's ready," he said. "Logan, there's something you should know. I don't think she knows yet; I don't know how to tell her. Logan, Jubilee is pregnant."
Logan stared at Hank, speechless with shock. "Uh…how…" it was all he could get out.
Hank looked grim. "Sabretooth, most likely," he said. "The pregnancy is about three months along. I need to run some more tests, but they may have to wait, given her current state of mind."
"I should go after her," Logan said, putting aside the question of Jubilee's pregnancy aside for a moment. "It's rainin' out there. She'll catch cold."
"She'll come back when she's ready," Jean said soothingly to him. "She's not going to stay out there in the cold like you."
Logan stared at the jacket in his hands, at the sleet that started to pound against the windows outside, and said, "I'm goin' after her."
He followed her scent through the rain, past the lawn, into the treeline. It almost disappeared altogether in a giant mud puddle, but then his sharp eyes picked up the muddy footprints heading away from the puddle. He followed them until he got a bit further into the forest, and then saw an area of the ground where something heavy had landed. She had tripped over a root, and fallen.
He tracked the scent in a wide circle around the outer edge of the mansion's property, and finally reached the front drive. The drive was empty, though the smell of gasoline and exhaust told him that she'd gotten on her bike and ridden off somewhere. But to where?
Logan stood thinking for a moment, then ran into the mansion. He grabbed his jacket and helmet and ran back outside, revving the engine of his motorcycle sitting forgotten in the rain. He sped off down the long drive, only to be pulled up sharply by the sight of Remy in his pickup. "Outta my way, Cajun!" he hollered at him. Gambit shook his head. "Goin' ta help ya look. Where ya headed?"
"Moose's." Remy backed the pickup out of the way, then fell in behind Logan when they hit the highway.
Twenty minutes later, they were at Moose's. Logan got off the bike as Moose pulled open his garage door. He was sitting on his bike, pulling on his helmet "Ya seen Jubes?"
"Toward the docks!" Moose called. "She just went ridin' by; she didn't stop. She looked awfully upset, though; she was cryin'." Logan revved his engine and sped off, Remy and Moose following.
They cruised up and down the dock space for a while, Logan sniffing with all his might. It wasn't till the wind shifted that he got a faint, a very faint, whiff of mud and crushed wet leaves in the middle of the other smells of the city. He followed that wisp of scent to a warehouse he'd passed a few times already, and noticed the door was a bit ajar. He slipped in, followed by Remy and Moose.
A single bare bulb swung from the ceiling, illuminating the black-and silver motorcycle lying silently on its side on the floor. Logan's attention was drawn, however, to the heavy chain hanging from a low beam. A hook hung at the end of that chain, and two empty handcuffs swung at the end of the hook. The floor beneath the hook was splattered and stained with suspicious rust-colored spots, and Logan needed only a faint whiff to let him know what the spots were. Months old they might be, but the smell was unmistakable. Blood. Jubilee's blood.
He saw the heavy rope lying on top of the wooden crate, and saw the stained wood inside before he saw the tiny hunched-over figure beside it. Jubilee looked up at him, gave a soft moan, and then started to talk wildly. "It was here, I was here, he had me here all that time, he stuffed me inside this crate when you went by during the day so you wouldn't find me. It was all my fault…what happened to me was all my fault, it happened to me because I wanted it…"
Logan narrowed his eyes. "Jubilee, it wasn't yer fault. None of it was. What're ya talkin' about?" He stepped closer to her as he spoke, and as he reached out and finally touched her, he felt the burning heat of her skin, even though she was shivering. Fever. He had to get her warm and dry, fast. She rambled on, incoherently, as he gently pulled her up in his arms. "Remy, " he rasped, his voice not quite steady, "Open the truck door. Moose, I'll give ya a call when we get home an' we fin' out if she's okay. Can ya take care o' her bike fer us?"
The drive back to the mansion nearly broke all the speed laws in the state, but Logan didn't care. His only thought was for the woman he loved lying back there in the passenger seat of Remy's truck. He pulled right up to the mansion's front door and ran up to the truck behind him, lifting Jubilee's now-still body out of the truck. He ran into the mansion, leaving Remy, his motorcycle, and the truck out in the rain. Remy sighed as he closed the truck's door and started to pull the bike into the shed. "P'tite, I hope you 'preciate what de homme goin' t'rough for you," he said grimly to himself.
Hank looked up as Jean and Logan burst through the door. Logan gently laid Jubilee on the table, and Jean began to struggle with the mud-stained and rain-soaked denim and cotton of her T-shirt. Finally she gave up, found a pair of scissors, and cut the wet, sodden clothing off the shivering girl.
Logan swallowed hard. Jubilee had pale pink scars from Sabretooth's claws going up her legs, scars that climbed up her calves and body to her shoulders. They were nothing next to the pink scars that lined her back, ribs, and chest. And worst of all was the new pink skin growing on the inner surface of her thighs. There was far too much of it in that area. "He said he ruined her for me," he whispered, as Jean and Hank looked up in surprise. "On the bridge. Creed said he ruined her for me."
"She is not ruined," Jean said tersely to him. "Logan, please get out of here--"
"No, let him stay," Hank said. "Perhaps she will overcome her aversion to his presence if she senses him near her, and realizes he is not going anywhere." Hank slipped the needle under her arm, and had Jean hold it there as he took another vial of blood from Jubilee's arm. Logan frowned as he saw how slowly it filled.
"Her blood pressure's pretty low," Jean said. She'd noticed the slow filling too.
Hank nodded. "I want you to hook her up to the blood pressure monitor," he said. "If it drops too low, her life, and that of the child's, could be in danger." He hooked an IV to the needle and started the clear fluids running into her arm.
* * *
Logan snapped out of the light doze he'd fallen in, his eyes instantly riveted on the girl in the bed. Jubilee twisted in the sheets, her forehead covered with a sheen of sweat and her face twisted in pain. Every muscle in her body stood out in sharp, agonizing relief, and she cursed through her clenched teeth. Logan reached out a hand to touch her, and jumped when she suddenly screamed. "Creed…." Her voice was somewhere between a whimper and a curse, and Logan flinched as he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Stop it….I won't…no… Damn it, Sabretooth, no…stop…" her tone changed from anger to pleading. "No, please…no, Creed, please don't, please…" The pleas became more and more frantic as she writhed, and then suddenly she screamed again. Logan flung himself frantically over to the other side of the bed, catching her before she could hit the cold floor, and sat down on the bed, cradling her in his arms as she curled up and cried. When she finally stopped, when the nightmare ended, he laid her back on the bed and lay beside her, holding her tight.
"Jubes," he whispered into the darkness, "I don't know what Creed did ta ya. I don't think I really wanna know. But he hurt ya, bad, an' I know ya blame yerself fer it. I don't know why. I don't know what ta do ta make ya feel better; all I can do is be here fer ya till ya come out of it." She moaned and shifted position, curling up in his arms and burying her face in his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, sighing as he felt sleep steal over him. "I love ya, Jubes," he said before sleep claimed him.
He woke, startled, instinctively grabbing for the girl who was supposed to be in his arms. The bed beside him was empty. His eyes flew open; just in time to catch Jubilee in the act of slipping her leg into her jeans.
"Going somewhere?"
She froze, and turned slowly toward him with a guilty look. He sat up, pinning her down with his gaze, and repeated, "Going somewhere?"
Her blue eyes dropped to the floor, and she stood there twisting her fingers awkwardly in the hem of her T-shirt. "I can't stay here, Logan," she whispered. "I couldn't bear staying here and seeing hate in your eyes every time you look at me. I don't want to be a constant reminder to you of what I let Creed do to me. I have to go…I can't--"
Logan grabbed her shoulders firmly. "Jubilee, listen. Ya didn't let him 'do' anything. What Creed did was his own fault. None o' it was yers. Don't blame yerself fer somethin' that wasn't yer fault. And what makes ya think I'd hate ya, anyway? Jubes, I love ya. If ya got yer memory back, then ya remember that I asked ya ta marry me. I wouldn't have done that if I didn't really mean it. And you said yes, an' I ain't lettin' ya back out o' yer promise."
"You have to," Jubilee said, twisting out of his grip. "You have to. I can't ask you to marry me now. I can't marry you now. Please, Logan," She looked at him, directly at him, for the first time during their conversation, and he saw the expression on her face. It was fear. It stunned him.
"Jubes, what are you afraid of?" he said gently.
Jubilee heard the soft note in his voice, and the truth slipped past her lips before she could stop it. "I'm pregnant, Logan," she whispered.
He stared at her, and she rushed on, as if desperate to get the truth out before her nerve gave out. "I suspected it back at Amanda's place. I bought a pregnancy test to make sure…it came up positive," she said sadly. "And it's got to be…his…" her face crumpled, and she had to choke out the next words around her sobs. "He was your worst enemy," she whispered. "You won't want to raise his child. But I can't…I can't…"
"Terminate the pregnancy," Logan finished for her. "I wouldn't ask you to, Jubilee. And that child is half you. It doesn't matter to me where the other half of its genes came from."
"You say that now," she sniffled. "You might change your mind later. I couldn't bear that, Logan. Please."
"I won't change my mind, Jubes," he said, hugging her tightly. "Because changing my mind would mean losing ya. I lost enough people in my life already, Jubes. I ain't losin' ya, too." He sighed. "As long as yer tellin' me the truth, I guess I oughtta tell ya somethin', too. I a'ready knew ya was pregnant. Hank foun' out when ya first got here; we all jus' been waitin' fer the right time ta tell ya. We didn' know ya already knew. And, Jubes, knowin' ya was didn't make no difference ta me, or ta anyone else. We still love ya. Now come lie down, 'fore Hank finds out yer outta bed an' gets mad at me fer it."
Jubilee sobbed softly as she got back into bed with him. He hugged her tightly as she cried. Not the angry, furious crying she'd been doing before, but a soft, anguished weeping as she slowly began to accept and move past what had happened. He held her, and let her cry, knowing that she needed to do that to heal.