Once again, I don't own this, nor any of the materials there of.
Snakes in the Garden.
No. I'm not in the woods. It smells like the woods, it looks like the woods and the dead rabbit I'm eating looks like a wild rabbit, Looking in the puddle of water near my feet, I look like a wild animal. But I can faintly hear a child crying and I can smell the Cajun. His footsteps trail through here as he must have been the one having to provide the rabbit to feed me. If he's gotten in here, there's a way out of this zoo like habitat Sinister's made for me. I can see little trickles of sky above me, leaking lazily through the tree canopy above me. I wonder if I can climb the trees and find a way out. I wonder if the Cajun's dusty footprints on this compact dirt trail lead to a door. "I'll try the trees first." I find myself thinking, also finding thinking strange, like I haven't heard my own language in my own thought for some time.
Climbing the stocky pine rooted best in this fake forest proves slightly tricky as my clothes have long been shed and parts of me scrape against the bark. "How long have I been here?" Like a mantra, reappears through my mind. "Where's Jean? Have I hurt her? Did Sinister use me against her? Is she ok? What's Storm doing, how's the baby?" My thoughts are racing like a mudslide through a broken dam, but I make my way to the top of the tree. To my left, I can see out, but there is an obvious energy field keeping me in. To the right, I can see my wife cradling a child close to a year old while another one sits and plays on the floor next to her. A year, I've been here nearly a year. I can't help but get broken hearted at seeing her play with her children and know they aren't mine. I wish she was my daughters mother for a moment, that I hadn't done what I'd done, that I were that brown haired little boy's father, playing catch and teaching him to fish and the red-haired little girl giggling to me, calling me Daddy. That my beautiful wife wasn't being forced to be a brood sow. I watch her love those babies so and I can't watch anymore. I gotta climb down.
The Cajun is waiting for me at the bottom, Jean's scent faded on him well enough to the point I know he hasn't been intimate with her for at least two weeks. "Ah understand ya'll acting human again." His thick accents growling out behind his cigarette like a purr." The man's lithe, muscular body only accented by the worn shorts he wore. Sinister might not have given him a shirt, or he may not have wanted to wear one, but the way he was built, how the X-Men ever missed he was of Scott's genes, I couldn't guess. They even smell enough alike now, but the Cajun's former spicy diet usually played havoc on my senses. "What'dya want, Gumbo?" He wouldn't be here unless he wanted something. "Logan?" He asks, almost hesitant of my answer. "What would you say if I could get her out of here?" He pauses. "The little girl too maybe, Sinister won't let de boy go." He stops to turn away for a moment. I know he's crying, who wouldn't cry having to leave his child. "Ah have sum'tin for ya." Gambit tells me as he hands me pictures of a little girl at a first birthday party. "I can get out, y'see, and back in."
"Is this Aurora?" I smile for a minute until the Cajuns words sink in. "You can get out? Why haven't you gotten help? Look at us! Look at your children, you bastard!" I launch at him, but he smoothly sidesteps me. "It's not like dat, wild man!" The Cajun sidesteps me again. "If Sinister noticed me gone, He'd take them, Ah'd never to find them! What would he do to her then?" The Cajun looks around nervously. "You next mon frier. She's being brought to you tonight and you best do whatever you are told, please." His eyes look pleading into mine, almost out of love and concern for her. "Ah can't bear to see her hurt no more." He lowers his voice further. "Sinister will get what he wants from you and it's better to do it willingly than to be strapped to dat table of his. Jean fought hard nearly every time he made Scott or I, do those things." I can tell the Cajuns trying hard to forget those first times. His eyes stare off blankly. He shakes himself back to reality. "Dat table made her go willingly." Knowing Jean as well as I do, for her to change her mind, cooperate at all with something she didn't want to do, that table must be horrific. We sit silently for a moment before Jean's screams of terror and defiance ring over the garden and Sinister's gravelly voice threaten resoundingly. "Ah don't hear the children." Gambit whispers. "She must have put them in their rooms." He's shaking slightly as he stands up. "Ah'd better go see what's going on."
"I'm coming with you, Gumbo! She's my wife!" I snarl. "No one's hurting her while my old corpse is still kicking!" Gambit understands, he might even had let me play macho, even though in this state I'd have my butt handed to me, but the ruckus is brought to the hidden door to my green prison. The whoosh of hair from the opening brings the smell of the sterile lab and the sight of my wife slapping Mr. Sinister and him returning her blow, knocking her to the dirt floor. The light on a disk anklet was beeping furiously as she falls. That must be how Sinister keeps her powers down to a manageable level, otherwise, she'd incinerated him with little cause. "Jean!" Both Gambit and I yell as we rush to her, her green eyes flaring as she stands herself up, ready to fight again. "Woman. Do not try me again." Sinister bluntly threatens. Jean doesn't listen. She's too stubborn sometimes. It's one of the things that attracted me to her. She charges at him again, but Gambit makes a quick grab for her, holding her down. "Don't do dis Jeannie. It's not worth losing you over." He whispers into her soft, red hair, caressing it slightly. I don't like what I see.
"Remy." Sinister snarls, almost as if Jean has fought the breath out of him. "To your quarters, Luke and Rosie need be attended to." He demands. "Wild animal," He barks at me. "Your wife. Take her. Don't disappoint me, or you'll be hunting her for your supper."