There is no way I even own any of this, please don't sue. This ties into many of my old stories from years back, except most of the Twinkie ones. Sorry about this being late, My youngest son David fell and broke his femur Saturday.

In through the Pain.

"I saw him, Jeannie. Scott was there, but he's not really even Scott anymore." I shout into my cell phone as I race towards Jean's office on my bike. The line keeps going out on me, but I think the message got through as I hear a garbled "I'll be home as soon as I can". I duck out of the tunnel and relay that I'm headed in her direction and she switches to telepathic communication.

"Logan, Don't bother." She tells me. "He's right here! Just go and make sure the kids are safe! Please, Logan!" She sounds frantic, scared almost. I don't know how he got there so fast, and I don't want to leave her alone, but I do as she asks and I turn my bike around and churn dirt up the other way.

"What do you want, Scott." Jean asks as she takes a step backwards, putting her hands up defensively. She knows what kind of man he had been corrupted into before his "death". His body had been stolen from the very room he was slain in less than five minutes after he fell. There was a flash of light and all that was ever found of him as some blood on the light beige carpet. "Before you can't contain yourself and get on me, get the hell off." He coldly drawls at her in a slight Nebraskan twang. "There's nothing I want from you that hasn't begun to dry up."

He was born in Alaska and raised in Nebraska; some of the frigid Alaskan air still freezes through his blood. Just being near him, the way he is now, what he was turned into is enough to chill to the very soul. "Do you think I'm going to strike you down here?" He laughs at her. "I'm going to kill you, make no mistake about that, moreover, I'll be waiting for you after your meeting. Don't contact anyone, don't ask for help, If you do, I'll have the boy taken down too." He speaks in hushed tones as he steps forward and whispers in her ear, his body too close for her own comfort. "We need to talk, Wife."

"Scott, I'm not your wife." She replies in a frightened, wavering little murmur. She's shaking as though death itself has graced her chest. " I divorced you."

"I know. I don't give a damn. I'm still going to get what I want, then, I'll make you suffer. But first, you will give me my daughter." His red glasses are glinting in the sun, with this new body, he doesn't need them, but the new appearance of his eyes are frightfully close to another man's; Gambit, now known to be his brother. His new body is essentially Scott, but with a few of Gambit's genes to better fulfill that which Scott's benefactor had in mind. He is a man, If he can even still be called one, known by the name of Nathaniel Essex; Mr. Sinister to those who have sense enough to fear him, whose only goal is to perfect mutant kind, a complete mad man.

"What is it you want?" She just barely breathes. She knows what this man is capable of. She has reservations about him just being here, his motives mostly, the lack of humanity to be certain.

"A son, and if you don't want you're entire new family slaughtered as punishment, you will yield me one." He tells her as he grips her hair and pulls her close enough to feel the heat off his breath.

"Why do you need one from me?" She questions, nearly at tears as she tries to pull away.

"I need a new body." He responds as he lets her go and walks away. "I'll be waiting."

Just like the end of all rains at the death of the monsoon season, he's gone. She knows he'll keep his promise to return and his threats are as good as done; He's just that kind of man. When he threatened to beat her, he did. When he promised that she would regret every time she didn't give in to him physically, he was right. He'd take whatever he wanted from her, whenever he wanted it, and it's the same now.

He wasn't always like that, only during the last little bit of their marriage. Only after Apocalypse had taken Scott's body, only after she had failed to remove all of Apocalypse's mind from what had melded with his. Scott had always blamed her for his misery, but he was the one who chose to fight En Saba Nur. He was the one that risked so much to play a hero. In truth, he was at fault for everything he did to her. She had done all she could, only a few could have done more.

She remembers when the beatings started, how hard she tried to keep the other X-Men from finding out, from knowing what he had done to her. Then, he had started to abuse her sexually; the beatings weren't enough anymore. He a psyonic inhibiter placed in the house somewhere, she could never find it, but her powers wouldn't work, His functioned flawlessly though.

He had gotten her pregnant, once, about a year before Ray was conceived, then he started accusing her of infidelity, and one night, nearly cut her in half with his optic blasts. That is how the X-Men came to know what horrible things had gone on in that converted boat -house. She survived, barely, but the baby was not so fortunate. Beast did a great job, as well as one of the healers to fix her wounds, but nothing could ever repair the hurt of loosing her child. She was going to name him Adam.

He left for a short while after that. Much had happened in the six months he was gone, Cody, a friend from Rogue's past returned, Forge and Storm reunited, and she and Logan had become closer. She had also divorced Scott. It wasn't easy, but Warren had helped getting the paperwork through. The grounds for the divorce were listed as abandonment and neglect. He is the only other person who knew that she had left Scott

Then, the day that it became final, He returned. He was furious, and let it show. Logan thinks she was leaving Scott, but she was trying to get away. She'd hoped that Scott would stop after using her body and leave, but he kept coming at her, and she would have died right there on that wooden floor had Logan not intervened. That encounter left her with Raychel.

"Logan!" She thinks to herself as she climbs the stairs to her meeting. "There is no way Scott can hear our psychic link!"

"Logan?" She sends out on the blue mental strand that bonds the two deeper than any flesh could do. Her thoughts reach Logan as gentle as a butterfly landing on a leaf.

"I'm here Darlin', and the kids are fine." He tells her as he mentally touches her cheek. "They're about to break for lunch."

"Logan, listen to me, I've got much to tell you and you might not understand a lot of it, but just know none of it was meant to hurt you."

She begins to fill Logan in on so much that she's hid from him over the last six years. He comes to understand much of the why's and questions, and despite her fears, he's not upset over her secrets, he just can't get why she wouldn't trust him.

"You divorced him after the first time he almost killed you?" He asks miffed. "Have you forgotten who it was that…After everything… Why Jean? I carried you out of that house! That was my blood Hank pumped into you!"

"I was scared, Logan, and after everything I'd been though with Scott, I didn't think I'd ever trust anyone again. Logan, I owe you so much, much more than I can repay and I know that. I owe you my daughter's life and mine. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Our daughter, Jean. And Jacob's our son." He tells her with compassion in his mind's voice. "I won't let anyone harm them, and I won't let anyone harm you."

"But what about this whole thing with Scott?" She asks worried as she looks out her office window at Scott. He's sitting at a bench, looking at her window in his usual calm fashion, but due to the situation, it's kind of creepy.

"You said he'd be waiting for you? So will I." Logan growls through the mental line.

"Someone needs to keep the children safe." She tells him. "I'll think of something, but he can't be let on. You know what he said he'd do and we can't risk it."

She gets through her presentation, standing ovations, as usual. Everybody tells her that the leather line is so much better than her brightly colored spandex line a few years back, Everybody tells her she's come a long way in her designs, that she's going to be rich someday, but that doesn't help her when she steps outside.

"I told you not to call for help." She hears called out behind her. "You couldn't listen."

"How? How did you even know?" She asks as she turns to face the man that has haunted her dreams and was the sustenance of her nightmares. "Don't tell me you can read minds now."

"You are too predictable." He sneered as he came up to her, face to face. "And I can do so much more than you think I can. Under Sinister's tutelage, I've become so much more than I ever could with Charles. Or even with you holding me back." He held her elbow as he pulled her along.

She pulls away from him defiantly and pushes him away. "You keep saying that, Scott, I'm not buying it. You can't hurt me anymore!"

"So you would like to think. I can hurt you, I'll kill you should it please me." He reaches behind him to show her something. "I think, though, I'd rather get what I want from you willingly, that way, I don't get any distasteful injuries." He tells her elegantly. "I trust you know what this is?"

"Jacob's Backpack!" She gasps. "If you hurt him I swear I'll…" But he cuts her off.

"The child is fine, but if I can so easily procure this, he would be no problem to dispatch." He looks at her darkly. "No matter where you hide him." He pulls her head towards his, roughly enough to make her cry out, almost in a squeak. "You'll come with me now, and give me what I want." He creates a teleportation portal behind him, courtesy of technology of Mr. Sinister and starts to pull her through. It's only an instant, but her powers flair up almost as though under their own control, and all of New York is bathed in a warm orange light, and Scott ends up missing an arm through his own portal as any part of him touching her disintegrates in a half second. Almost reminiscent of an unattended cigarette as it burns itself up, with the ashes falling to the ground. She has to protect her family.

"Logan?" She calls so sweetly along that same mental cord "Can you hear me?"

"I'm here and what was that? The sky looked like the northern lights came early!" He says to her concerned. "Are you O.K?"

"I'm fine." She's relieved to hear his voice. "I'm coming right now to get you and the kids."

"What do you want me to do with my scoot?" Logan asks.

"Follow us in it to the mansion, I've somewhere I want to go." She tells him as she reaches her own car. "You were right about not putting the kids into school."

"Well, now we have and they like it, I'm not pulling them out now." He starts to argue. "Where did you want to go?"

"Logan, you said you'd do anything to protect us, right?" She beseeches him.

"I would, what has this got to do with anything?" This crazy woman's got him puzzled.

"Logan, would you marry me? If not today, then tomorrow?" She pleads with him. She knows that this is absolutely the only way for any of them to ever be safe again. "Logan?"

"I'm thinking, Red." He tells her jokingly.

"Well?" She presses him.

"Yes."