This is where it gets really dark, folks, and earns its M rating.

And yes, I know this is coming quickly on the heels of the last chapter, but this one pretty much just wrote itself. I don't anticipate having subsequent chapters up nearly so quickly.

Also, I keep forgetting to mention that I've got a fanmix for Logan and Teva, which can be found at my Dreamwidth journal: redbess (dot) dreamwidth (dot) org/50957 (dot) html; sorry for the convoluted "link", FF.N won't let me put the real deal here. If you need/want the direct link, I can email it to you. The mix for this particular fic is still in the works, but the first two are complete.

Teva sighed.

"What?" Logan asked.

She blinked at him, sitting up from where she'd been curled on her side on the cot dozing. "My headache, it's gone." She touched her forehead and squinted a moment, then gave him a weary smile. "And the link is back. They must have turned off my inhibitor."

He frowned at her. "Wonder why?"

"I dinnae much care at the moment as this is the first time I've been able to see straight in ... well, in who knows how long now." Truly, she'd lost track of time with no way to see the passage of sun and moon, without which even Logan was at a loss.

His answer was a growl and she sighed, trying not to yell in frustration, anger and fear. The longer they were in here, and the longer the project had an influence on him, the worse he was getting; little by little his humanity was peeling away, his resistance to psychological torture becoming more and more nonexistent. He'd been taken away several more times, vowing to find a way out if he could, but in so many ways he was helpless against the methods with which they could abuse his mind.

After the first time he'd been in a near-feral state and only when he'd calmed down some was he able to tell her that he'd been told they'd "think about" letting her go now that he was cooperating. Teva didn't want to acknowledge what that might mean, hoping that it was just a case of wanting to keep Logan docile until they had him completely broken. And since that first time, each time he came back, he was less himself. He was barely coherent and only able to tell her they were trying to destroy his ability to withstand pain.

Teva felt helpless to aid him with no way to link with him, no way to ease the pain and suffering he was going through, at least until now.

"Come here," she directed, reaching out a hand to him the way he'd done to her so many times in the past.

Logan stopped pacing for a moment to look at her. "Why?"

She resisted a glare. "I can do it just as easily from here but it's more simple if you cooperate.

They stared at each other a few more breaths before he complied, flopping down next to her.

Teva went up on her knees, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other along the back of his neck. It felt amazing to be able to feel him in her mind again, even more amazing to open the link again, at least until she pushed open the door and was hit with the turmoil in his head.

She breathed out hard, a soft sound of pain and shock escaping her before she bit her lip and braced herself.

"Don't," Logan growled.

"Shut it," she growled back. "I've acted as a steam valve for ye once before, I can do it again. You're no good if you've gone insane."

He grunted but subsided, slumping back against the wall.

She shifted with him and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the defeat with which he'd decided to submit to her ministrations. Under other circumstances it was interesting to see how much trust he'd show her but now it just made her sick to her stomach.

The inside of his mind was a mess, not unlike the black storm she'd found after he'd regained his memories, only this time everything seemed to be washed in red, disembodied voices screaming from all directions. As she looked around she found a wolf with blood on its muzzle staring back at her with amber eyes.

"Jesus," she whispered, shuddering before she brought herself back to the task at hand. With a deft, gentle soft touch, she drew away some of the bestial anger, pulled it into herself and felt her own levels of rage increase while at the same time Logan began to breathe a little easier. The low growl that had taken up residence in his chest decreased in volume and ferocity.

His heavy body leaning into hers brought her back to herself and she cradled his head against her shoulder, stroking his hair and murmuring to him in Gaelic, temporarily robbed of her ability to speak English. The words were similar to those she'd used with the horses on her grandparents' farm when they'd needed gentling, especially the stallion, a sibilance that sounded very much like shushing. Slowly the growl subsided.

"Thanks, darlin'," he said, apparently having found his voice again. "I was losin' it."

"I ken," she replied, letting him go when he sat up again. "Anything I can do to help, I will."

Logan looked around the small cell as he stood and began to stretch his limbs, rolling his head to make the bones in his neck pop and release the tension there.

"Can ya sense anything?" he asked.

Teva blinked at him and then pushed out with her telepathy, shaking her head when she came up to what felt like a brick wall. "Nothing past this room, so far as I can tell. If they've got a way to inhibit me I would'nae be surprised if they're blocking me." She snorted ruefully. "No way they'd want a psi poking around in their heads finding out all their schemes and whatnot."

"Would be damned convenient, though." He moved to stand beside the door, leaning in a familiar pose with one foot lifted and pressed flat against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. "But I still can't shake the feelin' that you havin' your powers back ain't a good thing. Why now?"

She shrugged. "I dinnae ken, and I agree as much as it's nice to no have my head feeling as if it'll split open any moment." She looked down at her nails and the chipped silver polish, felt a twinge of homesickness and loss at the memory of Ororo painting her nails the night before the wedding while they'd watched TV and gossiped with Kitty and Jubilee. Her toes were the same color and Jubilee had used a special pen to draw a little flower on one of her big toes; usually she abhorred such girly things but it had been fun to sit around with her friends and feel like a normal human being. The three women filled a hole in her heart that had been empty for years.

Tears burned in her eyes and she willed them away, unwilling to show such a sign of weakness in this place.

"I dunno how much more o' this I can handle," Logan said, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. Across the link he felt nauseated. "It's gettin' harder each time to come back, to shove the animal back and not do somethin' I'll regret."

She looked up at him. "Are you afraid you're going to hurt me?"

When he nodded she felt her heart break a little. She unfolded herself from the cot and went to him, touching his arms.

"You would'nae, not ever."

"Teva -"

"You would'nae."

Logan shook his head. "I know ya saw what it was like in my head. It's been buildin' each time, gettin' worse an' worse, and the last time they brought me back here ..." He trailed off, looking down. "I looked at ya an' all I saw was somethin' weak to take my rage out on."

The primal part of her brain wanted her to take a step back, then another, to get as far away from that confession as possible. The rational, human part, however, stood its ground, knowing that to do otherwise would contribute to breaking him. She took his chin in her hand, had to squeeze and force him to look at her when he fought her grip.

"Listen to me, ye stubborn Canuck," she said, her voice taking on a growling edge that was both a result of venting off her mate's anger and a consequence of her own. "I believe ye, that ye were that far gone, but I refuse to accept that ye would'nae have stopped before ye hurt me. As strong as that urge is, as strong as your beast is, the man is stronger. Logan is stronger than Wolverine, ye have to be or you'd be exactly like Sabretooth." Moving closer she pressed a kiss to his mouth, forced him to accept it.

"I love ye, I cannae do otherwise, and I know ye better than ye ken yourself."

His shoulders sagged, his arms dropping to his sides. "Sometimes yer faith in me is all that gets me through."

"Nothing will ever change that, mo chridhe." She took his hands and led him back to the cot. "Ye need sleep, Logan. I'll keep watch."

Sustaining Logan was taking its toll on Teva, on her own sanity and her energy levels, barely kept up by what little food and water they were provided at differing intervals. It created a sort of delirious state that she tried her best to hide from him, feeling it was imperative that she continue what she'd started in keeping him stable.

The next time they came for him she barely noticed, half-asleep as she was, but when her eyes fluttered open and she saw Creed standing there, she panicked. A sickening wave of adrenaline made her vision swim as she struggled to sit upright, scrabbling back the last few inches until she hit the wall behind her.

"Y'know, frail," he said conversationally, "the scent o' yer fear is somethin' like a drug to me. I think maybe it's 'cause ya smell so much like the runt an' I ain't ever smelled that on him. Ya might be the closest I'll ever get." He pushed away from the door and stalked forward with gliding steps, one foot placed directly in front of the other like the big cat he so closely resembled.

Even with the surge of energy she felt lethargic and she had barely enough sense to realize she needed to conserve that precious commodity. She watched him come closer until he loomed over her, his legs bumping up against the cot.

"Bet ya been waitin' on me, wonderin' when I'd show up again. Wonderin' when ol' Vic would come callin' to make good my promise to the runt that I'd destroy everything good in his life, every last beautiful thing, 'cause I'd say it's about due. I let ya live in peace long enough."

"Ye like to talk a big game, Victor," Teva breathed out, her voice a whisper of its former self. "Ye told me once ye were going to rape me and we both recall how that turned out."

Anger flared in his amber eyes but he held himself in check, only letting himself touch her leg where he drew idle patterns with presently-harmless fingers, his claws withdrawn for now. It tickled and made her want to throw up. "Yeah, but then ya were at full strength, an' ya had weapons. Now?" He chuckled, an evil purr of sound. "Weak as a newborn kitten an' twice as tasty. Y'know what the best part is?"

"Wh - ah!" Her query was cut off when he grabbed her by the neck and jerked her up so that they were staring each other in the face.

"Not only does the runt get to watch this," he replied, jerking a thumb up and back at the video camera in the corner, "he'll get to feel it over that bond ya got. I can only imagine how bloody he's gonna make himself tryin' to get free. Ya think it'll feel like I'm violatin' him, too?"

As if in response to his taunting she could indeed feel Logan losing it, realizing what was going on now that his mate was alone. She was almost surprised she couldn't physically hear his roar of rage and frustration, made worse because he couldn't unsheathe his claws and do damage.

Creed didn't give her time to answer, instead pushing her back onto the cot with his hand still loosely circling her neck. Her head bounced on the mattress and even that made her see stars momentarily in her weakened state so that matters had progressed further than she realized by the time she stopped seeing them: Creed had slashed at the front of her jeans to get at the parts of her he wanted.

With nails longer than she usually had she lashed out at him, catching him across the cheek in four bloody furrows that only made him laugh. Her feet kicked out to hurt him anyway she could, to keep him away from what he wanted.

"They told me I should tie ya up but I want ya to fight," he told her, still holding her down while he did something with his other hand that she couldn't see or feel. "Just ain't the same otherwise, y'know?"

Teva snarled at him, felt herself losing the ability of speech with her own rapidly-dwindling sanity and the feral state Logan was descending into somewhere else in the facility. She tried to shut the door between them to spare him this much and felt the fingers of her astral self slide right off, and her last thought of true clarity was a strangled ~I'm sorry!~ to Logan when she realized her shields had been stripped away, just another kind of rape. And even as she fought back, a small part of her came loose and buried itself deep while the rest of her went on survival autopilot.

Pain blossomed between her legs, a sharp burst of it that pulled not a cry but a gasp from her as though the air had been knocked out of her, and she couldn't get much more than that out as Creed's hand tightened on her throat. He gave a low, gutteral cry of triumph, his other hand clamped down on her thigh to keep her in place, his claws embedded deep in her skin the way they'd been the day he'd nearly crippled her. With a sickening sort of clarity she realized she could sense his thoughts, could feel the joy he took in hurting her, in invading her. It made her head spin trying to push that away, made her feel as if she were going to throw up. She didn't want him in her mind.

She could do nothing but struggle even though that made the pain worse, made it ache in a dull throb with the frantic beat of her heart but she couldn't not fight, couldn't lay there and be passive even if it meant not hurting.

He was just as bloody as her by the end though his wounds were gone almost as soon as they appeared, his clothes in just as sorry a state where she ripped them and did her damndest to make him stop. His body pinned hers to the bed so heavily she wondered vaguely if her pelvis would be crushed, the thought coming just as she felt him lose his even rhythm and he let her neck go.

With a burst of speed she grabbed him by his long hair and plunged her thumb into his eye socket, felt the orb pop and then her own satisfaction and that of her mate's that she'd done some little damage, but by that point he'd finished. He roared in agony and backhanded her so that she actually rolled away from him, falling off the cot and hitting the floor, her head ricocheting off the cold, hard concrete. Stars once again exploded before her eyes.

Still, she could feel Logan struggling, fighting her to keep their bond connected. She couldn't understand it, couldn't fathom why he wouldn't just let her close it, to spare himself further pain. Another, deeper pain inside of her made her gasp and writhe, an agony worse than that caused by the concussion that was slowly dragging her under, something attached to her soul rending itself apart.

She could have sworn she heard Logan howling before she was sucked into oblivion.

Logan had been prepared for another session of tortures both physical and psychological, drawn up every shred of lucidity he had left and wrapped himself in it hoping that this time wouldn't be the time he didn't come back from it. Creed had been there as he always was, smirking and taunting but never following through with his threats so Logan didn't think anything of it, at least not until he realized they weren't taking him to the same place.

It was on the same floor as the cell with a single chair that they strapped him to. A handful of screens sat on a table, showing what appeared to be security feeds from various parts of the complex, and at first he felt confusion, not understanding why he was there. He saw guards moving in and out of frame down hallways, a few labcoat types doing what they did best, but nothing that made any sense.

"Why am I here?" he demanded, craning his head to try to look back at one of the guards. "What the hell's goin' on?"

"Check out the bottom right feed," he was told, just as the first nauseating wave of fear hit him, his mate unconsciously sending out the psychic equivalent of a distress call that only he could hear.

His eyes ticked to the screen and locked on, his lips drawing back as he watched Creed slip across it, heading for the huddled mass Teva made on the cot. She was clearly trying to make herself as small a target as possible but, with nowhere else to go, it was a useless gesture.

He heard both her words and the bigger feral's, heard the thoughts flitting through her head at warp speed.

"Get her outta there," he growled. "Goddammit, he's gonna kill her!" His muscles flexed as he tried to free himself, apparently a losing proposition since they had him in cuffs of some kind of metal that was stronger than usual, something he couldn't break. The harder he fought the more he felt the cuffs cut into his skin, blood creating lubrication that gave him an unexpected edge that was further aided when he violently dislocated several fingers on both hands and slipped free of the restraints, bones in his feet popping and compressing until they came free, too.

His first target was the guard just behind him, his feral state giving him a distinctive edge despite the inhibitor so that he easily overpowered the man, howling in satisfaction when he felt the neck snap. The second guard hit him with his taser, the dead one having been in possession of the inhibitor's control device, but all the blast did was anger the Wolverine further. He took out the brunette man with similar ease, shoving the barrel of the taser into the soft flesh of his stomach.

Dimly he was aware of the end of the conversation between Creed and Teva. She shouted something to Logan over their link, an apology he barely understood until he felt her trying to break the link, shut it off to spare him from experiencing what she was enduring. The first bloom of pain from her nearly knocked him flat on his back, and a distant part of him knew that she was unable to spare him; even worse, the shields between the two of them had been torn apart, so that each took on aspects of the other, Logan becoming somewhat more controlled while Teva fought like an animal. Another part of her was still struggling to shut down the link and Logan fought her, struggled to hold onto that to keep her sane the way she'd been doing for him.

Blinding pain in his head made his vision go black, long enough that reinforcements poured into the room he was in before he could react. His vision cleared for one brief moment, a moment in which he witnessed the aftermath of the rape, Teva's body broken and bleeding on the floor of the cell. Several guards piled on top of him to keep him down until his inhibitor could be activated.

The last thing he realized before they put him down was that the link was gone, but not like it had been before. The lack of her presence felt even more permanent.

She was dead.

Author's Note: Please don't hit me!