Chapter 9: White Water
The next few miles or so of road passed with Logan barely seeing it, or the scenery around him. He was too busy cursing himself for dragging Jubilee up here and nearly getting hit by that car. It must have turned off on another side road soon after the near miss, because he didn't see it on the road ahead of him. It was just as well, because in the mood Logan was in right now, he would have pulled the car over and commenced to harass its driver for taking that turn at such a speed.
The land changed as he sped along the road, taking the well-known turns instinctively. For years he'd been taking this road up to Canada when he wanted to think, or just get away for a while. He knew the road almost as well as he knew the back of his hand.
Scott was right. After Jubilee had left him the note and run away, he'd convinced himself that if hanging around him was so important to her, he'd just have to do what he could to keep her safe. She had probably thought that the night in the hotel had been a bit overprotective, but she hadn't complained. He'd tried to be unobtrusive about how protective he was; hopefully she hadn't picked up on it. But he couldn't be there all the time, and this time, back there with the damn car almost hitting her, was too close. True, he'd saved her life…but her life wouldn't have been in danger to begin with if she hadn't been following him up here. So it was his fault. Scott was right, hanging with him wasn't healthy for her, and he couldn't protect her all the time. She was better off without him.
And that led to the question he'd been asking himself lately. Was it time to close up another chapter in his life, and leave the X-Men? The team would do fine without him; Jubilee was all grown up and hanging with him now was more of a liability to her; Jean was gone; what else was there for him back at the mansion? Only the fact that he liked finally having a place to call home; because he liked and respected Charles Xavier; and because, while he didn't really believe in Charles's Dream, it had been a worthy cause to fight for, a good excuse to get into those fights.
And of course, there had been Jubilee. She had started out, to him, as a way of atoning, in some way, for not being there for his foster daughter as she was growing up; Jubilee had been a way for Logan to assuage his guilt over his absence. But that had turned into a genuine fondness for the gum-chomping, loudmouthed, smart-aleck teenager who somehow managed to irritate and endear herself to him at the same time. It was part of the reason why he let her hang around…that and he felt sorry for the way the others treated her; like an unwanted spare tire. But later that had turned to genuine liking, and then love, though it had taken a long time to figure that out, and an even longer time to admit it to himself. But he did; there was no denying the fact. Not a romantic kind of love; he knew she'd had a crush on him, but he simply couldn't see her that way. He loved her as a true friend, one who had been with him almost every step of the way; from that first meeting in Australia till now. They had been some very interesting years. But she was all grown up now, and she didn't need him anymore.
The road terminated ahead in a rickety wooden bridge spanning the breadth of a roiling, white-water river. It had been a little shaky the last time he'd ridden over it, and time certainly hadn't done it any favors. He wondered if the weathered, rotting planking would hold the weight of his bike. He slowed the bike, came to a stop, and pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, soaking in the scenery while lighting himself a cigar. So lost was he in his thoughts that he almost missed the heavy, acrid, familiar smell of the huge, feral man slipping through the forest behind him. It was only when he took the cigar out of his mouth that he detected the familiar odor.
He tossed his head back, blowing smoke between his lips, and said "So ya gonna stand there all day, or are we gonna eventually get around to the point where I pound ya…again?"
"Only one gonna git pounded this time's you, runt," said the low, growly voice of Sabretooth behind him. Logan tucked his lighter in his pocket (a Zippo, with a naked redhead on it; Jubilee's present to him a while back.) He turned to see the familiar bulk of Sabretooth's body filling a gap between two trees at the verge of the clearing by the road. "Ain't none o' them X-freaks around ta keep me from trouncin' ya."
Logan looked regretfully at his cigar. What a waste. He'd just lit the thing, and it didn't look like Creed was going to let him finish it. He sighed and tossed it aside into the underbrush, then dropped into a fighter's crouch in front of the big yellow-and-brown furred creature. "All right, then, let's get this over with so I can get where I wanna go." He popped his claws out with that distinctive little snikt sound they always made.
"Only place yer goin' is hell, runt," Creed ground out, dropping into a fighter's position himself.
Logan rolled his eyes. "Only one goin' t'hell's you, Creed," he growled.
Creed lunged. Logan stepped back, angling toward the side, out of Creed's reach. Creed bellowed and lunged for him again. This time Logan lunged for him, keeping himself low to the ground, reaching up with his claws and raking them across Sabretooth's ribs. The taller mutant had adamantium as well, so it wouldn't really hurt, but the sound of Creed's howl as Logan sliced open skin and flesh was quite satisfying. Even if the wounds did heal in the next second. Logan growled in his throat. The one thing he hated about that damn healing factor both he and Creed had was the fact that he couldn't really watch his opponent bleed.
But his howls of pain were so satisfying. And so Logan proceeded to wring as many of those howls as he could from Creed, by dint of inflicting as many wounds as he possibly could. As he slashed away, he reflected grimly that all of those sessions in the Danger Room actually had a purpose. He was in prime fighting shape, while Creed seemed to have gotten a little soft during the last few months since Logan had seen him. Certainly his reflexes were a little slower, and it felt to Logan that there was a little more flesh around the bigger man's ribs than there had been formerly. "Gotten soft, Creed?" he taunted.
"No softer than you, old man," Creed lunged for Logan again, this time catching Logan across his upper right arm with one set of claws. Logan bit his lip, trying to suppress the roar of pain as the strike left five deep parallel gashes all the way down to the bone of his upper arm. He pulled away just in time to keep Creed's adamantium claws from doing any damage to the adamantium coating on his bones, but it was deep enough to do some damage to the muscles and tendons in his arm…damage that would take more than a few seconds to heal, and would leave him vulnerable on that side.
He turned away from Creed, just slightly, trying to keep his left arm, with its set of claws, toward the other mutant, while cursing himself for being so careless as to have gotten injured. Creed, however, picked up the smell of blood from Logan's arm, and he did a quick feint toward the left side. When Logan lunged to block him from that side, Creed switched to the right, and slashed Logan's arm open even further. This time Logan did howl in pain. His left hand went to the now badly-slashed arm, leaving him unprotected for a moment.
A moment was all Creed needed. He swept in low, catching Logan around the middle, and tried to bear him to the ground behind him.
Too late, both men realized that their fighting had taken them too close to the wooden rails of the rickety wooden bridge. As Logan's weight, supplemented by Creed's, came bearing down on that rotted wood, it gave way. Logan suddenly found himself falling backward, Creed's greater weight and mass pulling him off Logan, and both of them plunged headfirst into the roiling, violent whitewater rapids below them.
Just before he hit the water, Logan thought he heard a feminine scream…
Jubilee had come on the two fighting men just as Logan sustained his first set of gashes to his upper arm. Her bike had broken down finally on the approach to the bridge, and for a second she had been about to turn back when the yells of two men and the clash of adamantium attracted her. She dropped her bike, ran forward…and was stunned into speechlessness when she saw Logan fighting Creed. Anger surged in her when Logan stepped back, cradling his arm, and she started to call out, to attract Creed's attention, when she saw him rush Logan. She saw Creed's weight break the rails; she saw the long fall through empty air down to the roiling river below. "LOGANNNN!!" She screamed after him, but her voice was lost in the roar of the water, and there was nothing he could have done to save himself anyway.
She couldn't let him go like that. She stood on the edge of the bridge, framed by the jagged edges of the railing, and took a deep breath. Then she jumped.
She hit the water at almost the exact same spot Logan had gone in. The shock of the cold almost drove the air from her lungs in a gasp, but she clamped down on that instinct and clawed her way to the surface, searching for Logan. It was hard to see anything through the tossing spray and foaming water, but she thought she saw a dark head above the water some distance away. She relaxed her body and muscles, letting the water toss her along its surface like so much flotsam. When she got downriver to where she'd seen the head, though, it was no longer there.
She felt a tugging at her ankles, and barely had time for a gasp of air before being pulled underwater. She realized it was the strong undercurrent, and was about to kick for the surface again when she suddenly realized if the current were strong enough to pull her under, it definitely would have pulled Logan under, too, especially with the weight of the adamantium bonded to his bones. Opening her eyes underwater was a risky venture; if a stray twig got hurled into her face at the last minute it could poke her eyes out, or worse. But she had to find Wolvie. She ducked under, swam right down to the bottom of the river using every ounce of strength she had, and scanned the river bottom.
The current down here wasn't as strong as the ones rushing over the surface, possibly because of the huge boulders scattered across the riverbed, breaking the water's flow and slowing it, And it was here that she found Logan, lying on the bottom half-wrapped around a large boulder. She swam toward him as best she could, kicking and flailing, trying to make headway against the current. Finally she reached him.
His arm was still bleeding sluggishly, but of more alarm to her was the fact that he seemed to be unconscious. Probably hit his head on a rock under here, she reasoned as she touched him. She tried to tug him free of the rock, but something seemed to be keeping him from going anywhere. After a moment of fruitless tugging, she swam closer to the rock and saw that one foot was caught between two others. She tried to pull it free.
A hand caught at her wrist, and she turned, horrified, to see Creed hanging onto her. He was being swept downstream, but had unluckily caught hold of her, and he didn't seem like he was willing to let go. His eyes gleamed with a feral light as he tried to yank her away from Logan. Jubilee knew if she lost Wolvie now, she might not see him again. She kicked out with her foot, trying to break his grip, but the strong pull of the water slowed her foot's momentum, making her kick ineffectual.
She'd never tried to release her plasmoids underwater…but now was as good a time as any. She was perilously close to losing her grip on Logan, and she had nothing left to lose. She released a burst from the hand Creed was holding. They sparkled in the water a moment before exploding (surprisingly, they weren't wrenched away from her by the current; they stayed where she told them to stay) and exploded satisfactorily close to Creed's face. The resulting concussive burst from the displaced water pushed him backward with a force equivalent to a small (very small) bomb blast. It wasn't as much as Jubilee hoped, but it was more than she expected, and it served its purpose: Creed let go of her hand to bring his own hands up, trying instinctively to shield his eyes from the brightness of the blast, and the current caught him up and carried him away.
Her air was running out; she could feel her lungs striving for air. She had to get them both free, fast. Pointing at the rock, she released a tight stream of plasmoids directly at the second rock holding Logan's foot in place. It exploded, and she wrapped her arms around Logan's waist, lacing her fingers together behind his back, and kicked to the surface for air. The water carried them along, so she was already several yards downstream from the rock by the time her head, and Logan's, broke surface, but now she didn't care. She had Logan, and she would keep tight hold of him. Let the current carry them wherever it wanted; she would ride it out until the water became calmer.
And so she did, gasping and spluttering as water filled her mouth, her eyes stinging as water slapped against them as she was searching for a way out. But she kept her arms tightly wrapped around Logan's middle, despite the lancing pain as her knuckles scraped underwater rocks, as her elbows banged painfully against those same rocks and other pieces of debris. After a while, she just tucked her head against Logan's chest to protect her face and moved her feet just enough to keep them above water so they could breathe. Dazed from the pounding and roaring of the water, the drag of the current, and exhausted by her continual efforts, she almost missed the feel of the current relaxing its hold. When her feet touched a flat, pebbly river bottom, she used the last of her strength to pull them up onto the small pebbly bank, and collapsed beside Logan in exhaustion. "We made it, Wolvie," she mumbled as darkness claimed her.