Chapter Seven – Broken

"…a shocking scene outside the Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York. Alana Stratford was reportedly shopping at this mall when she was ambushed by paparazzi photographers. Refusing to give interviews or have her picture taken, Stratford ran out of the building in an attempt to escape the cameras…"

Warren felt his gut wrench as he watched the news footage flashing across the widescreen television in the headmistress' office.

The camera shot followed Alana bursting through the mall entrance and running straight out into the street. She casts a quick backward glance before stepping off the sidewalk, but does not slow her pace. A horn blasts, and the front end of a large delivery truck comes straight at her. She stands frozen. Then, out of no where, a man comes hurtling towards the defenseless woman. Throwing himself in between her and the speeding truck, he pulls her down in a tackle, but not before the truck catches him, slamming onto the right side of his body. Both Alana and her rescuer are flung hard to the pavement.

Suddenly, another man arrives at the scene, rushing to help the fallen pair.

Warren clenched his jaw as he recognized himself on camera, bent over Logan and Alana, frantically trying to see if they were okay.

Before the camera could get too close however, Logan is back on his feet. Blood is gushing from a gaping wound on the side of his head, but he appears to feel nothing. Shouting something to Warren, he picks up the unconscious Alana from the ground. Warren throws off his overcoat, and in a flash of white, his wings are freed from their harness. He takes Alana from Logan and immediately flaps his great wings. Once. Twice. At the third powerful beat, he and the woman in his arms are finally lifted off the ground. The camera follows him as he soars up into the sky, until he was just a moving speck in the distance.

With that shot, the news footage ended. The news anchor's face came back onscreen.

"…while the identity of Stratford's first rescuer remains unknown, we were able to identify her winged savior as none other than Warren Worthington III, the mutant son of Warren Worthington Jr. of Worthington Labs. It is also unknown where Stratford was brought for medical treatment, but it can be assumed that they have taken her back to Xavier's School for Gifted Children, the mutant institute where she is currently undergoing rehab…"

The television went blank as Storm flicked it off, cutting short the rest of the disturbing newscast. Warren continued to stare dully at the dead screen while the school headmistress sat in the chair opposite him in a huff.

"I know you meant well Warren," Storm began, her voice steady with control that was about to be lost. "But this…this was just incredibly irresponsible."

She sighed. "I mean, what were you thinking? Did it just slip from your mind who she was? Did you just happen to forget the kind of trouble she's had the press?"

She shook her head with an expression of clear exasperation. "If Logan hadn't been there, if he hadn't followed you to make sure you stayed out of trouble, then Alana would be…" She paused, almost to upset to continue. "…Alana would be dead."

Warren was silent for a long moment after that last word. "I'm not going to make excuses for what I did," he finally said. "I know I was careless, and I agree I'm the one to blame. I'm sorry."

His face was resolute when he added, "But you have to know that I never wanted to put Alana in any danger. She needed a day away from the mansion and I gave it. I only did what I thought would be good for her."

Storm sighed. "I'm sorry Warren, but I'm starting to wonder if you do know what's best for Alana," she told him. "I know you want to put her at ease, win her friendship and trust…but giving in to everything she wants? That's not taking care of her."

"On the other hand, look at Logan," she went on. "He may not exactly be the kindest person towards her, but he does what needs to be done. He knows where to draw the line. Now unless you learn to do the same, I don't want you going anywhere with her without telling me first, understood?"

Warren nodded. "Of course," he said quietly.

Storm hesitated. "Warren," she said slowly. "I know telling you to stay away from Alana would just be wrong…but I do think it might be best if you just let her be for a while. I think she needs someone else to talk to right now, someone…"

"Someone like Logan," Warren finished for her.

Storm gave him a small smile. "Yes," she said. "You may not see it now, but Logan is, in his own way, actually good at talking to people. I think he might just be able to get through to Alana in ways that none of us can."


Logan paused to put out his cigar before stepping through the doors that led to the mansion's subbasement infirmary. The room was nearly empty, save for the single patient that lay on one of the beds that lined the far wall of the room.

For some reason, Alana knew it was him who entered before she even saw his face. As he walked up to the bed where she rested, she turned to her side, facing her back to him.

Logan had to smile at her pride and stubbornness, even when she was down and hurt. In a lot of ways, she reminded him of himself. Spoiled princess though she was, Alana had a fighting spirit. He pulled up a chair next to her bed and sat down.

"Please go away." Her voice was muffled against the pillow, but still sounded cold and forceful.

Logan crossed his arms and ignored her hostility. "What? No thank you Logan, for saving my life?"

In an irate and louder voice she snapped, "Thank you. Now please leave."

Logan sighed. "Look, I'm sorry this had to happen. But the point is you've survived it, and you'll recover in no time. Now you have a choice of whether to learn from this or to keep putting yourself in danger."

"I did not put myself in danger," Alana retorted, still refusing to face him. "Those reporters acted more aggressively than they ever did before. I thought I was safe."

"Well you're not," Logan countered. "Out there, you're not safe. All right? The sooner you get that through your head, the better it will be for you and all of us."

"So what are you saying?" Alana said. "That I can't ever go out in public again? That I'm some sort of prisoner here?"

"No. No one's forcing you to be here," Logan told her. "You came to us, remember? You asked us to help you. If you want out, then you can leave. None of us would stop you."

There was a long pause. "I hate you."

Logan grinned. "Well, no one's stopping you from doing that either."

At that smug comeback, Alana finally turned around to face him, allowing him to see her injuries and how they had been treated. Considering the death-defying injuries Logan had to sustain and self-heal because of the accident, she didn't appear to be too badly hurt in comparison. A large bandage concealed the ugly bruise on her forehead, and her porcelain skin was marred by a couple of cuts across her cheekbone. Her right forearm was in a cast and mounted on a sling.

The angry scowl on the young woman's face met Logan's smirk. Her mouth trembled, as did her voice as she spoke. "All I want is a normal life! Is that too much to ask?" Tears shimmered in her eyes, and her face started to turn red. The sight of it wiped the smile off Logan's face instantly. "Am I such a terrible person to want that?"

"No," Logan answered. "A normal life is what all the kids in this school want. But part of what they learn here is that a normal life just isn't possible for mutants. Since you're older, it's probably harder for you to accept that reality, but that doesn't mean you can escape it. You're a mutant. And now thanks to your little display in front of the cameras, it's been made known to the world."

Alana closed her eyes, and the tears began to flow down her cheeks. Seeing her in this pitiful state actually made Logan feel a twinge of sympathy towards her, but he remained firm in his stance. At least it was clear that his words were starting to get through.

"Why are you so afraid of accepting what you are, anyway?" he asked. "Being a mutant is not what it used to be. The humans are learning to understand us now. Our kind is being granted more and more rights each day."

"But you said so yourself!" Alana cried. "There is no normal life for mutants! I'll never be able to get back what I had. To go back to life before this whole mess happened."

"No. You won't," Logan said resolutely. "You'll just have to start a new life then."

Alana shook her head. "But this isn't what I wanted," she sobbed. "It's not. I don't want things to change. I don't want a new life. I don't want to be a mutant!"

Logan felt his sympathy for her quickly turning into annoyance. "Well then, if you're not interested in learning to control and accept your powers, what else are you wasting your time here for? Since you obviously hate being a mutant so much, then the answer is obvious. Just take the Worthington cure and put yourself out of misery!" he snapped.

It was now Alana's turn to smirk. "God, how stupid do you think I am? What makes you think I haven't tried doing just that?"

Logan frowned. "Whoa, back up there," he said. "You're saying you did take the cure? And it didn't work on you?"

The girl sniffed and raised a hand to wipe her tears. "It did…for a while," she said slowly. "For about three months, I think. And then my powers came back. That's why I lost control when I injured that photographer, and the asshole brought the case into court. All the while I thought my powers were already gone, so I let my guard down."

Logan looked astounded. "Why didn't you tell us about this before?" he demanded. "What else have you been keeping from us?"

At that question, Alana fell silent. She lowered her eyes and looked slightly uncomfortable, but she clearly did not want to say anything more.

Logan slapped a hand to his leg in frustration. "Damn it Alana, you have to be honest with us!" he exclaimed. "Once and for all, make up your goddamn mind about what you want! If it's help that you're looking for, then let us help you!"

When she still refused to say anything, Logan let out a growl of exasperation and pushed his chair back. "Fine," he snapped. "You're not a kid anymore, so I'm not going to treat you like one. If this is what you want with you're life, have it your way."

He turned and walked to the doors, with full intention of leaving her to figure things out for herself. But he didn't get far until she suddenly spoke up.

"I was fourteen years old."

Logan stopped. He turned back around, but did not take a step. He raised his eyebrows at her, and she started back at him evenly. The tears were now cleared from her eyes, but she spoke with a softness that showed the sensitivity of what she was about to reveal to him.

"What?"

"I was fourteen," Alana repeated. "When my powers first came out." She took a deep breath before continuing. "My parents were already divorced then. I was living with my mom. One day my dad took me out to dinner and told me the truth about Uncle Chuck, that he was a very powerful mutant. Uncle Chuck was my father's cousin; that meant mutant blood ran in our family. Dad was worried that I might have inherited the mutant gene, and wanted me to be prepared."

"My mom was furious when she found out. They'd been fighting about it for years, whether to tell me about the family secret or not. My mom was deathly afraid of mutants, and hated the idea that I could be one of them. She was the opposite of my father—always in total denial of the possibility."

Alana's expression was taut now, as though it was taking great effort to keep the story going. "There was so much yelling going on, and my name kept coming up in their argument. I couldn't take it anymore, so I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. I just sat on the floor and lost it. I was crying, but I just wanted to scream my lungs out. I never felt so angry and scared at the same time. And then…"

She paused to swallow hard. "Everything in the room just started shaking. But I didn't even notice it until the glass windows shattered. My parents came running in. They didn't feel anything downstairs, but they still assumed it had probably been an earthquake. I was the only one who started to realize that something was already happening to me. But I never told them."

All throughout this narration, Logan kept silent, strangely enthralled by her story. But at this point he felt the need to speak up about a thought that was bothering him. "So you did lie to us," he said, eyes narrowing. "You told us you were twenty-one when your powers first came out."

Alana shook her head. "No, that was the second time it surfaced," she said "After that first incident when I was fourteen, I was determined to whatever I could to keep it from happening again. I didn't understand what mutation was back then, but I sure as hell decided I didn't want to be mutant. So I got it in my head that maybe if I focused hard enough, I could hold it back and hide it. I could stop my power from developing."

She smiled weakly and glanced up at Logan. "And it seemed to work. For a while. Every now and then whenever I'd feel strong emotions, usually anger, I would accidentally levitate things, but even those instances stopped after a while. I convinced myself that somehow I had managed to beat my mutation. I was able to live a relatively normal teenage life after that."

"But then seven years later, it all suddenly burst out of me again. It happened while I was asleep. I had a terrible nightmare that I was being attacked, and when I woke up my entire bedroom was in shambles. The furniture was overturned, picture frames shattered, things thrown across the room, curtains ripped…" She shook her head. "I was terrified. It seemed that my powers were struggling to be used, to be let out of the cage I put them in. They never really went away."

Logan frowned. "That's because mutations can't be held back. It sounds like you were just able to gain some control over your powers. To summon and block them at will."

Alana shrugged. "Whatever you choose to call it. The point is, I realized that I couldn't trust myself to keep my powers locked away forever. So when Worthington Labs came up with the cure, I jumped at the chance to take it and rid myself of the mutation once and for all."

She sighed. "But then the incident at the studio happened, and I was caught red-handed, my secret busted wide open for the public to see. When the judge found out that the cure itself failed to strip me of my powers, he ordered me to learn how to control them instead. So I was sent here."

"Jesus," Logan muttered, when she finally came to the end of her long tale. "You should have told us all this from the very beginning."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, it's not exactly the easiest story for me to relive and tell," Alana said bitterly. "Why? What does it matter? It doesn't change anything. I'm still a mutant either way."

"You just don't get it, do you?" Logan snapped. "You haven't even begun to realize what all this means. What your powers are about. What they can do. What you're capable of. "

He leaned close to her, his brow furrowed with the intensity of his stare. "You spend all those years suppressing them, pretending they don't exist. You even tried to use the cure to rid yourself of them. But they're still there inside you, and they're strong. They're growing. Doesn't that concern you even the smallest bit?"

Sometimes when you cage the beast, the beast gets angry.

Logan could remember all too well the day he said these words to the Professor. He had never wanted to think about them again, yet here he was, faced with another situation that fitted that statement exactly. But this wasn't going to be like last time. Not if he could help it.

Alana stared back at Logan, reading from the expression on his face as well as his sudden silence. "There's something you're not telling me," she said slowly. "What is it?"

Logan did not answer. Instead, he rose from his chair. "Get some rest," he told her simply. "I'm pretty sure Hank will let you out of here soon. You'll be back in your own room by tonight."

Alana sat up in bed, surprised by his sudden urge to leave. "Wait, where are you going?" she called, as the man turned away from her and headed for the door. "That's it? You get me to open up about so many personal things in my past, and then leave me to ponder over a pile of vague cookie-fortune crap?"

Logan paused at the doorway. "Well, I can tell you this. Don't waste any more time wishing you could go back to being a regular human, since that's obviously never going to happen now. You've got enough problems to deal with as a mutant. Right now, learning control over your powers is not so much for the sake of others, but more for your own."

"But what…?" Alana began, before Logan cut her off again.

"Don't worry," he said with a smirk. "We'll continue this later. I think I'm starting to enjoy our little conversations…now that you've learned to do some of the talking."

To be continued…