Chapter 4: Alone
And now, when I am gone,
And I have left you on your own,
Will you forget your love for me?
When I have left you…all alone?
It was raining somewhere. It was raining everywhere. It was cold. The air was full of moisture and the sky rumbled and broke. Sabretooth awoke weaker than he had ever been in his life. They were still in the boat, and rain and river sloshed all around them. Eden was awake, though night had fallen some time ago and the sky was the inky blue that comes only before sunrise, clouded over with the haze of a storm. "Where are we?"
"We're here. I couldn't move you."
Sabretooth struggled to sit up. "What happened? You kill somebody?"
She shrugged. "He was on the boat when we got here," she said, gesturing to the dead body of the uniformed man, who looked merely asleep, and uninjured. Were it not for the two small puncture wounds in his neck, one could have assumed that the man had died of natural causes. "He must have been waiting for us. He didn't see me. And I have his walkie-talkie." She held it out for him to see. "I used it to make sure we weren't followed."
Sabretooth nodded and was truly surprised by her resourcefulness. It was quiet for some time between them. The only sounds were those of the raging storm around them.
"Sabretooth." Eden said suddenly. "I think Toad is dead."
He waited. She said nothing else. "And? What? You want me to cry?"
"No." She stood up and wrapped her arms around herself. "But I think I might." She swallowed. "I saw him, and that woman with the white hair. Storm. She hit him with a bolt of lightning. The electricity went right up his tongue…and into his whole body." She paused. "And he screamed. He screamed like…" She ran her hand over her face. "And then, he went flying into the river, electricity just exploding out of his body like a firework. It was so awful. I went into the water after him but it was too dark, I couldn't…see. I couldn't find him. So I came back to the boat."
"Why are you telling me this?"
She turned and stared right at him. Her eyes were dry. "Because there's no one else to tell."
He returned her gaze. "Well, listen, the only thing I regret about Toad buying the farm is that I didn't get to send him there myself." She never broke contact. His assertion did not faze her.
Instead she maintained a steady, expressionless gaze, "Let's go inside and eat something. You're still not healed all the way," she said. "And those bandages need to be changed."
She opened the cabin door and stepped out into the storm. She moved with the wind and somehow seemed immune to it. The rain fell at a slant and threatened to tear her down. Something kept her on her feet. She walked as one would to one's execution, with a mixture of fear and stalwart resignation.
Sabretooth was about to follow, but stopped. He refused to be completely useless. He turned and hoisted the body with all the strength he had out onto the deck and dumped it unceremoniously overboard.
Open your eyes.
Blinding light!
Close your eyes.
Blissful darkness…pain.
Open your eyes.
That damn light again!
Close your eyes.
Now what do you want me to do Voice? Who are you anyway? And where the fuck am I?
Look at his pupils, sir. They're actually fascinating. See? Open your eyes.
The light! Get rid of that damn light!
They're heart-shaped. What purpose do you suppose that serves? Close your eyes.
Open my eyes and close my eyes. Open my eyes, close my eyes. How many times can I do that? All my life, I suppose. I could do that all my life. But that light! It burns fucking terrible. My eyes are burning…my body is burning. I can't speak. And I can't open my eyes unless he says so. I won't unless he says so.
Mutant? Speak. Tell us about your eyes.
My eyes suck. I can't tell you that, because I can't speak. My fucking tongue.
His tongue has been severely burned. Looks like electrocution. I don't know if it can be repaired. I suppose we could amputate some of the more damaged areas. It's insanely long. Like a frog's. Proportionally, of course.
Like a toad's, fucking git. I'm Toad! I'm The Toad! And who the fuck are you!
Give me that syringe! Hurry!
Screams. I don't need my eyes. I smell you Voice! Fuck! Pain! A needle. I know needles. Needles and sleep. Sleep…close my eyes, open my eyes…open my eyes, close my…
It rained for days. And during each of those days, Eden changed his bandages, Eden brought him food, Eden brought him water. She said nothing. And he couldn't get his mind around it, around her. She should wait until he couldn't fight sleep for another second, sneak into his room and pour her poison into his neck while his powers were focusing their meager efforts on his many wounds.
The untamed laser beam, raw and uncontrollably strong, had more than weakened him. It had nearly destroyed him. It had overworked his powers to near breaking point. He was not, as he had often believed himself to be, invincible. And it killed him to think that. It killed him!
It killed him even more to think that he should be dead but for Eden…Eden who wasn't even allowed to come on missions which might involve a fight, which was every mission—Eden, whose weaknesses far outweighed her strengths—were it not for her, he would be at the bottom of the river around Liberty Island, not to be seen again but by police dredging it for the bodies of his victims.
After three days, he was nearly healed, inside and out. The internal organs righted themselves, he felt every one. The bones healed. The wounds closed. The bruises vanished. Eden removed his bandages for the last time.
"You should have killed me," he growled. "And now it's too late."
She looked tired. She looked sick. She sighed, "I don't want to kill you Sabretooth."
"After what I said?"
"You've always hated Toad. I knew that before I saved your life." The words stung. She sat down beside him on the bed. "And I know how you feel about me. And I know the promise you made to Toad on the boat. So you see, I'm stronger than you think."
"I don't feel anything about you."
She wasn't looking at him. "You hate Toad because he's strong. And you hate me because I'm weak. You hate me because Magneto sees my strengths and uses them and you can't understand that. You hate me because my body is frail and if you wanted to kill me right now, you know you could do it. You hate me because I wouldn't be able to put up a fight." She turned her eyes to him and smiled. "And now, here we are. The weakest, and the strongest. And I have kept you alive and you hate that more than anything else."
There was nothing for him to say, nothing that would have made any sense. There was nothing he could deny. Laid out like that, it all made perfect sense. He hadn't given it that much concise thought, but it was clearly put and clearly understood and clearly true.
"You left something out," he said, getting up. "I hate you because I'm grateful to you. Because I owe you now. I don't like being in debt."
"You don't owe me anything," she mumbled.
"Shut up," he snapped. He went to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving. There's no point hanging around here. Magneto's gone. Mystique's gone."
"We have to wait for them!" Eden cried. "They'll come back! We can find them, together."
He shook his head. "Nobody's paying me to stick around here. I'm not a hero. We were supposed to be running the world by now."
"Sabretooth! You can't leave!"
He grabbed her by the shirt suddenly. "I can do whatever I want and I'm leaving."
"You said you owed me! I'm calling in the debt! Don't leave me here!"
He let her go. "Then come with me! Either way, I'm gone." He turned and moved towards the door again. She grabbed his arm. "Sabretooth! Please! Please…"
Sabretooth knocked her away with his free hand, as one would swat a fly. She went careening into the bed and fell against it. She heaved a weak and pain-filled breath. It made him sick….and sorry. "I have to leave. You don't understand."
"What don't I understand?"
"Why I'm leaving."
She rubbed her hand over an injury sustained by Sabretooth's blow. "Why are you leaving then?"
"BECAUSE I LOST!" he growled. He roared! "More than once, to the same people! I LOST!"
Eden stared at him, frozen. He stared back. She had seen him weak and near death, and now she saw him like that again, all pride stripped away. It was now, and only now, that he saw her tears and he knew that they fell for him. "Don't…" he said.
"Victor…please…"
It was the last thing he heard her say. The last thing. His name, his real name, on her lips, in his hears. A plea, a desperate, fleeting plea. It would stay with him forever.
It was more like a dream than anything else. A strange dream. One of those dreams that you wake up from and can't remember but you do remember that you dreamed! And how he dreamed! And the dreams ached! And the dreams…they weren't dreams, but they weren't real either.
Stand up, Mortimer. It is Mortimer, isn't it?
He nodded and stood.
Strange name, cruel parents. Cruel parents who abandoned you, correct?
He nodded again.
Open your eyes, Mortimer. Open them, so we can all see your eyes. Your eyes are very interesting to us. Your eyes are strangely beautiful and ugly. All at once.
He opened his eyes. There were people all around him. White lab coats, syringes, stethoscopes and shiny metal tables. Shiny metal instruments, blurry white, everything! Everything was a shiny metal, blurry white nothing. But there were people in the blur and he could see them and they were watching him. They had blurry faces. He wished for his glasses.
Now, Mortimer, blink for us. Blink again and again and again. Until I tell you to stop.
Sure, Voice. I'll do that. And he did. Blink, blink, blink.
Again please.
Blink, blink.
You can stop now. Very good. Now, Mortimer, open your mouth.
I don't want to do that, Voice, it hurts. It hurts a lot.
Do it.
And he did it. And it hurt. It hurt a lot. The Voice talked to the Blurry Faces.
Observe his teeth, deeply inset in the gums. And his tongue, we've discovered it can stretch up to nearly eighteen feet long.
Twenty if I stretch it!
This mutant has the most awesome musculature. You can close your mouth now, Mortimer. Lie down on the bed.
And he did.
We'll have to test this out, but I think he can crush and/or lift several hundred pounds.
He laughed. And the Voice stopped talking.
Why are you laughing Mortimer? Is something funny?
I'm laughing because I can lift more than a ton and crush more than two, you daft git! He laughed again.
Mortimer. Nothing I've said is funny.
OH MY GOD! OH GOD! WHAT THE FUCK! I'LL STOP LAUGHING! GODDAMMIT! I'LL STOP!