Of The Bonds That Bind
Abby Ebon
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Disclaimer: I do not own DNAngel or X-Men.
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Fateful Meetings and Happenings
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Wolverine is the only name he knows to call himself. He's sure that when he was born his parents gave him another name, one that's just like everyone else's and isn't an animal, but Wolverine is all it says on his tags, so Wolverine he is until he finds out the truth of it. He inhales before he wakes, and the scent of soap, of disinfectant and metals that no one likes to name, and he knows just by the smell of the place that he's in the lab.
He twitches awake, his eyes going to the bed beside him – empty, Rogue's scent fading minute by minute – and that makes his heart speed up. Yet there is a scent and he can follow it, if the girl didn't just get up and go to the bathroom. There isn't a reason to stir up a fuss, not just yet.
Wolverine's eyes go to the other bed, full of the tall dark haired boy, called simply enough – Dark, and with his royal purple eyes closed, shutting out the world. His hair is the kind of dark that catches light and makes it shine a color anyone off the street would swear as purple as those eerie eyes.
He hasn't so much as twitched or done much of anything since being brought down here but breathed – and at least there's still that, Wolverine knows Rogue feels guilty enough as it is.
Wolverine gets up from the chair, stretching his arms up above his head -telling himself sternly and silently to be calm, Rogue is a smart girl – she wouldn't go off and do something stupid. She'd stick around and make things right. Wolverine likes that about her, she's stubborn. Like himself.
Wolverine knows he has trust issues, but he has them for good reasons. He's almost sure of that, what with the way the man with teeth and claws and yellow hair had looked at him, had seemed to recognize him. A thrill of something had gone rushing through Wolverine. Part recognition, yes, and part challenge too. Wolverine knew danger when he felt it, saw it.
He follows the lingering smell of Rogue; her shampoo is something lavender, faint but there. Wolverine likes it about Rogue that she doesn't bother much about perfume or make up. That he knows her smell isn't any kind of insult, but has to do with his mutation- more animalistic than advanced humanity, and the fact that he'd picked her up and given her a ride. He'd felt reasonable for her, protective, and a pitying sympathy that had led him to help her out.
Wolverine wondered if that sympathy was what wolves had felt for the huddled masses of humanity before they'd come to be called dogs.
Wolverine stops just outside the gates of the manor that serves as a school, the street snatches up Rogue's scent as well as her crossing a river. There is a bus stop here, where any student could wait for the bus to take them away and into town.
He snarls, soft and deep. He hasn't got the time to wait for the bus, or to go back and tell the X-Men that they'd lost Rogue. If they had been paying attention while Wolverine had been unaware, this wouldn't have happened to start with. A part of him scolds himself for trusting them with his charge, for sleeping to start with.
He starts to run, and hopes he is on time.
Rogue really doesn't have a destination in mind. What she knows is simple, that she's got to find Krad, and to do that she has to get away from Dark. She knows she's being hunted, and while she doesn't want to get caught, she's got a feeling it's all somehow connected, the strands tie together like some wide net or web.
Rogue is good at running away though, and isn't really surprised to find herself at a train station. If someone is going to look for her, finding her here is as good a place to be found as any. Here she'll get a look at them, and she might – just might, be able to get away again, to attract attention by yelling for help and running like a mad hatter down a hole.
Rogue sits on a bench, a little out of the way, close to the tunnels, and as she pulls back a strand of hair with her fingers, she sees something in the shadows moving. Rogue keeps her eyes on the people under the bright florescent lights, she tries her best not to flinch or look again.
A man comes out of the dark and sits at her side; he's got black and red eyes, demon's eyes. His smile is easy and familiar, teasing.
"H'llo, Rogue-y." Rogue looks at him from the corner of her eyes, not quite daring to turn her head and look. She recognizes him, from Dark's memories. He's Remy…Sinister. Gambit. She doesn't dare wonder what he's gambling at, or what the odds are now of her getting free of this mess she's made for herself.
He knows, somehow, that she knows who he is.
"What do you want?" Rogue asks, knuckles whitening around the strap of her bag, the only thing in the world she can truly call hers.
"Tha' be the first question?" Remy tilts his head toward her, as if she'll answer in a whisper. The red of his eyes gleams almost playfully. His brown hair mixes with her own hairs, and that's how close he is against her side. What they must look like, like lovers or…Rogue shakes the thought away. He's dangerous and she knows it, must respect that.
Rogue doesn't answer, but she does nod her head.
"It's simple enough, chere. I want to live. Remy noticed something, he don't fit. Not in time, I don't know who seeded me, or birthed me, but I've got my suspicions now. I might be a clone of Sinister, or Sinister might be me. Doesn't matter much, but it matters to me." Rogue looked over the crowd of people, none of them suspecting a thing.
"I've never done anything to you." Remy blinks and looks away, bowing his head for a moment as if weighing the truth in what Rogue says.
"True enoug', that." Remy says, as if he regrets it.
"So why are you doing this to meh?" Rogue wishes her words hadn't betrayed her stress so much.
"Magneto wants you to make this world a world of mutants, for them, by them. Krad just wants to hurt Xavier, because of Dark and Daisuke. Not that I can blame him. I can't let Krad have them. I'm truly sorry." Rogue sees his hands, how light twists out from between his fingers, it is red like blood, and throbs like a heartbeat. She wonders if he truly is sorry, she saw what taking Daisuke had done to Satoshi.
If this is how she dies, Rogue decides to not close her eyes, but to look the red eyed devil in the eyes as he kills her. Remy must sense her staring, and he looks up to meet her gaze, startled that she's as bold as all that.
Her fingers tighten against the strap of her bag, barehanded. Rogue waits until she knows he won't look away, and slaps him, hard, across the face. It stuns him, and more than stuns him.
Her skin to his skin, he lets out a keening gasp that could have been a scream…if he had had the breath. Rogue watches the flicker of red light about his hands die, and lets him go; he's slumped down on the bench as if sleeping off something alcoholic.
Rogue stands up and gets on a train that she knows will go where she needs to be. She's seen the place that Krad – and Magneto – call theirs. She knows her danger, but hopes that she's doing the right thing. For their sake, for Dark and for Daisuke – and for Satoshi, who she's never met but who has been waiting for them to return, all along, for all this time. She can't imagine sleeping the world away in waiting. Yet that's what coma does, and Rogue ought to know, as she sent her boyfriend into that kind of slumber.
It isn't quite as much a surprise as it ought to be, that when the train starts to move, Wolverine sits down at her side, half smiling. He's pleased with himself, she thinks. As if this is a game, a bit of hide and seek, and he's found her and it's his turn to play.
"We should go back, no one blames you, you know that don't you?" Rogue bows her head; she can admit that she feels guilty and ashamed of what she'd done. Yet it was a personal guilt, not something her peers could press her into.
"I'm not doing this to run away." Rogue told Wolverine about her boyfriend, and her home in Mississippi. How much she misses it, and how she knows she can never go back to it.
"What's it about?" Wolverine asks, looking about the train. He feels uneasy, but it isn't about being on the train and going even further away from where he wants to take Rogue. He knows how city trains work, with their set destinations and timetables. They only have to sit and wait and they'll be back to where they started. It's something else that makes him uneasy, a smell.
"Dark and Daisuke, I'm doing this to help them." Wolverine can't see how all this is helping some boy sleeping in a school, but he nods and is sure that it makes sense to Rogue. Something of his doubt must shadow his eyes, for she rolls her.
Wolverine inhales, about to speak, when he pauses, smelling it again -familiar. But where?
"What is it?" Rogue asks, looking about now – and he has a moment to be proud of her, that she's learnt him better than most ever do.
"There!" Wolverine says, recalling with that scent - long teeth and claws and yellow hair. It isn't wholly him, it's them.
The train grinds to a stop, metal screeching and people screaming, and a man under a metal helmet smiles at them as he steps onto the train as if it's stopping for him. It is, Rogue realizes with a touch of dread.
There is a blue woman at his side – her skin is blue, she isn't sad – she's actually beaming at Rogue as if pleased to meet her, and the long toothed fellow is simply leering at Wolverine, as if he's on the winner's side. Rogue has only ever heard this man's name – but she's sure he is who she thinks.
"Magneto…." Rogue says, and the helmeted man nods his head, mockingly, as if pleased to meet her. Wolverine growls at them one and all, and with a wave of Magneto's hand, Wolverine is suddenly flung and held against the wall of the train, as if he's a magnet that's been caught.
"My dear." Magneto greets her, looking over Wolverine as if wondering at the company she keeps.
"You'll take me to Krad?" That's been the whole point of this, Rogue has to remind herself. To get to Krad, so Krad can help Dark, because they are like two halves of a whole – why else would Krad's name be Dark spelt backward? Rogue has to believe that, clings to it as she stands before these three who could hurt her; it's all she has to make her strong.
Magneto studies her, and his eyes are grey like the silver lining of storm clouds.
"A curious request, but I will grant it if you come quietly." Rogue looks back at Wolverine only once, and her heart breaks because he looks at her as if he can't believe what she's doing, betraying him. Yet he doesn't hate her.
Rogue takes a step near the blue skinned woman's side, and finds herself looking into a face that twin to her own. Side by side, they go to where a mutant with green hued skin is waiting for them, with a helicopter. He looks at her, at the both of them, frowning a bit in confusion and curiosity.
"Which one is she, Sabertooth?" He asks of the yellow haired man, who sighs at the question. It seems this mutant is one to ask a lot of them.
"Take a long look and guess, Toad." He does just that, if it helps or not Rogue doesn't know and just when she thinks he might give up he sticks his tongue out, it's a long one, long enough to wave – when Rogue jumps, not expecting it – he sucks it back in and grins at her alone.
"Hullo, there – charmed, I'm sure." He winks, oozing confidence.
"Start it up, we don't want company." Rogue's look-alike suggests, and with a comical salute he does as she says.
"Ma'am, yes, Ma'am Mystique!" Despite the mocking, he flies very well for someone called Toad. Rogue doesn't say anything, looking down at her bare hands, clasped in her lap.
It will be, she knows, the longest flight of her life. She only hopes it is not the last.