With everyone finally back on the same page, and in varying stages of anger and disgust at Rogue, Logan made his way back towards the Medilab. He ran into Warren coming out of the lift, his face like fury.
"Where ya goin' Wings?"
"I'm going to track down that bitch and beat her into a bloody pulp." Warren ground out, not even sparing Logan a glance as he pushed past.
"I woulda thought ya'd be happy ta see Remy hurt more. What's changed your tune?"
"Remy? This has got nothing to do with him. Nothing." Warren whirled back on Logan. "Betsy's catatonic. There's nothing Hank can do. She'll either come out of it on her own or she won't. She's worse off because she tried to fight it. Jean trusted Rogue, she didn't fight at all. She's bad enough off, earned herself a month of migraines."
"Ya can't go after her alone. You'll only get yerself hurt."
"Try saying that when it's your lover drooling on the bed, perhaps permanently brain damaged!" The response that jumped into Logan's mouth was not the one he expected, nor one he had ever thought of. It just seemed… right.
"What if it is?" Luckily, Angel was already long out of earshot. Shaking his head to clear his mind of confusing thoughts, Logan continued on to Hank's lab. Ororo was there, holding Remy's hand with a face like an avenging angel. It had taken some effort to stop her going after Rogue as Warren had done, and it was only on the reminder that Remy would need her close that she had agreed and disappeared downstairs to sit with him. Bobby was busy trying to return Hank's lab to some sort of order, digging out undamaged items from the pieces of damaged equipment and putting them aside for cleaning.
o
"How's he doin', Blue?" Logan asked as he stepped inside. Hank sighed, looking away from the monitor he was attaching Betsy to. He glanced over at the nearby bed that held the Cajun, monitors already decorating his body, weaving around the bandages that covered the explosive damage.
"He continues to be unresponsive to external stimuli. Betsy is much the same. It was the similarity of their symptoms that convinced Warren that this was Rogue's doing, not Remy's." He finished with the lead and switched on the monitor. "Come, if we are to discuss this let us take it outside. I have no way of gauging how conscious they are." They headed for the door quietly, Ororo and Bobby following them out.
o
"What happened to his eyes?" Logan asked first. Hank looked at Logan, confused before glancing back over at Remy.
"Oh, I was forced to replace the bandages when I removed the contacts." Hank said, realising what Logan meant. "He wasn't blinking, and it would be dangerous to allow his eyes to dry out with contacts in them. He didn't respond to the light when the contacts were removed, but I would be loath to cause him pain if he simply cannot react to it."
"Why is his skin so cold?" Ororo asked quietly.
"He expended a lot of energy when he lost control of his kinetic powers. I have him on a glucose IV, his temperature will increase when his body has a chance to burn the sugars."
"Is he… gonna be alright?" Hank thought seriously about his answer before replying.
"Right now I cannot honestly say. I have never studied empathic damage to a mind, and it is not the kind of damage that can be seen on a scan or fixed with surgery. We must trust their own minds to work their way through this. When Jean is suitably recovered she has offered her skills in trying to fix what damage has been done, but she will not be able to do that for some time. She was lucky in many ways that she trusted Rogue, else she would most likely be here with them."
"You think they might be like this forever?" Bobby asked.
"It's a possibility we must address."
"I…" The realisation came across Logan like a wave, interrupting whatever he might have been about to say. "Where's Alisa? She would have fought Rogue too… and she's a psi. We need to find her!"
o
Logan's sudden panic spurred everyone into action, Hank and Ororo heading for the danger room where she had been last, and Bobby and Logan heading upstairs to the rooms where she might have gone. Logan hesitated on the stairs up into the residential part of the mansion, ignoring Bobby running past him. Her scent here was old, faded.
"She's not up there. She's still downstairs." He told Bobby as the young mutant looked back to find out why he had stopped.
"Let's go look with the others then." Even as he reached the bottom of the stairs Logan was drawn off to one side, a fresher scent catching his nose. "Logan?" Bobby asked, before following him.
"Hush." Bobby hushed, following Logan across the hall. He hunkered down at the door to the space under the stairs and slowly slid the door open. There was a sorrowful noise from inside that dark space that even Bobby heard. He knelt at Logan's side, trying to make himself look less threatening.
"Heya, Sweet." Logan greeted softly, using Remy's affectionate name for the girl without thinking. "You alright in there?" Two red dots appeared in the dark and blinked. "Rogue's gone now, it's safe for you to come out."
o
"She's alright." Logan told Hank as he looked up curious at his arrival. "Bobby's sitting with her, she's afraid of being alone. I think Rogue did somethin' ta her other than push her around. She's not… like Betsy and Remy are, but she's not right either." Hank looked up at this curiously.
"What do you think she did?"
"I don't know, but she's real skittish and afraid of everything. She's not talking either."
"How did this happen? Rogue's power should not allow her to do this, and Remy shows no sign of Rogue's touch. His current condition is purely a reaction to the empathic attack."
"He had hope a few days ago. Real hope. What… what did she do to him?" Ororo sat in the corner of Hank's office, clinging to a mug of tea and trying to pull herself back together after this latest fall.
"She gave him her darkness. All the shit in her head that she didn't want." Logan answered quietly, thinking of the emotions that he had felt filling Remy's mind.
"You mean… empathically?"
"She knew his weaknesses. Like he knew them himself. She knew exactly how to use that power of his for maximum damage. Only difference between the two of them is that Remy would never do that. Not even to someone he hated. Not even to defend himself."
"You think Remy was capable of this?" Hank asked, clinging to his own mug and sounding somewhere between horrified and astounded. "Capable of manipulation to this extent?"
"Yeah. And I think there's a good reason why he didn't tell us about it."
"He didn't trust us." Ororo spoke up, her voice full of sorrow.
"He didn't trust us?" Scott joined the conversation from the doorway, sounding tired and irritable. Jean wasn't sleeping and Scott was being supportive, which meant he wasn't sleeping either.
"Trust is earned. Someone had to trust first." She replied.
"And it should have been us." Logan spoke up. "We had the whole mansion and each other at our backs. There were always at least ten of us against just him. We should have taken the first step."
"By the sounds of it, he could have turned us all even with the whole mansion against him." Scott said cynically.
"And that's why he couldn't tell us about the power he had. He didn't want to tell us anything that would scare us away from trusting him. Not until we trusted him not to use it against us." Ororo was almost in tears at this realisation of their failure. "And now Rogue has this power, and she has nothing stopping her from using it. No morals and no need for acceptance."
"That ain't Remy's fault." Logan gruffly defended the man. "He ain't ever used it against us. Not even ta protect himself. He could have manipulated Rogue inta takin' him back from Antarctica. He could have manipulated us into takin' the initiative ta trust him. It wouldn't have taken much."
"There's always the possibility that Remy didn't know he had this power, or didn't know how to use it." Hank put forward tentatively.
"He knew. He knew every moment of every day, and it haunted him." Hank was immediately on his feet and rushing to help Betsy into his chair as she wavered in the doorway. She collapsed into the support with relief. "Rogue doesn't have the shielding that Remy has to lock everything in and out where it should be. I saw… things I didn't want to see. He knew exactly what he was capable of, and at times he wanted to use that power – sometimes so badly – but he couldn't do that to another person. I would never have expected him to have that kind of restraint." She half-smiled, her gaze still absent.
"Never mind Remy now, how are you my dear?" Hank pressed, kneeling in front of the woman to check her vitals.
"A little dazed still. Where did Warren go?" Hank glanced up at Logan.
"He went out lookin' fer Rogue. He'll be back soon."
o
o
Logan sat on the end of the bed and watched Alisa watching him. For some reason - perhaps because of their not-quite-rescue, Alisa had taken to clinging to him and Bobby, making sure that there was one of the two not far from her sight at all times. She had claimed Remy's room as her own and refused to leave it for anything but the essentials. Ororo had brought her small bag from her room, and she had disappeared inside her pink sleeping bag with her stuffed cat for most of the afternoon. Logan could see that she was slowly fighting through whatever Rogue had done to her; her behaviour becoming more extroverted at every turn. But still she wouldn't say a word to anyone, biting her lip nervously when asked a question and hiding away from unfamiliar visitors.
Right now Hank was peeling butterfly stitches off a healing wound on her jaw where Rogue had thrown her across the room.
"You're lucky Rogue didn't put her full force behind that blow, my dear, else I fear she might have broken your jaw." Hank was saying. Alisa refused to look at him, her gaze fixed on Logan, panic in her eyes. Hank waited for some kind of reply or acknowledgement and shared a glance with Logan before backing away. "Well then, that's healing up fine. It won't even leave a scar I'm sure you'll be glad to hear."
"Thanks Blue." Logan said, grinning as Alisa moved quickly away from the doctor and to his side.
"I only wish there was more I could do right now." He sighed. "If she wishes, she may visit Remy. He may respond to her if he realises she needs his presence." Hank shrugged, a strange gesture in his form. "We can only hope." With that he headed back down to his lab.
"Remy?" It was more whisper than word, but the first that Alisa had said in over twenty four hours it was more than enough for Logan's sensitive ears. She held his gaze seriously, willing him to answer with her eyes.
"He's not well, kiddo. His head's all messed up, like yours was."
"No. It can't. He doesn't… He's never… Can't get…" A serious frown settled across her features and she looked around the room as if searching for threats. She turned to whisper in his ear. "Never scared."
"You'd be surprised, sweet. He won't talk to any of us. Would you try and talk to him for us?"
"But… where is he?"
"He's in the Medilab. But you're so brave. I bet you could go down there for him." Wide eyes stared back at him.
"It's… there's…"
"Me an' Bobby would be there with ya."
"Not leave me?" Bobby had told Logan that she had been inconsolable while he had been downstairs talking to Hank.
"Not for one minute."
"An'… y'd hol' m' hand?"
"Sure, if yer like."
"'Kay."