Memories

Betrayal

Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men or any of their characters. Tora and Weapon X-ii are my own though.

She was lying down and a blurry face was looking down on her. A word slid involuntarily past her lips.

"Eva…"

"Are you alive again? We all thought you were going to die. When Kurt brought you in you were so still."

"Kitty…?"

"Oh, I forgot. PROFESSOR! She's awake!"

She closed her eyes, hoping Kitty would be quiet. She'd been so close. She thought for a second she'd heard Eva calling her but the words had been blurred and she hadn't understood them fully.

"Tora."

"Professor."

"You'll make a full recovery. It was lucky Kurt had been there. He's resting at the moment. Teleporting with another is very tiring."

"Wh…What?"

She tried to sit up only to be pushed back down.

"You need rest. I'm taking you off training for a while until you're in a more stable mental state."

"Please! Please don't. I need to train!"

"Tora, I let you into the X-Men when you were still obviously recovering from your past. It was irresponsible. You hadn't time to adjust. I want you to get used to living as normal a life as possible before I ask you to risk your life on missions."

"Please Professor. I need to do this alone."

"Tora, I cannot let you fight when your mental state is so fragile…"

"You can't read my mind so you haven't a clue about my mental state."

His kindly smile dropped for a second and then he turned to wheel himself away. As he opened the door he glanced back.

"I think someone should stay with you for a while. I'll call Ororo."

So, he didn't trust her. She tilted her head back on the pillows and shifted uneasily. She hated being force to stay still. She needed to get away, escape. A noise made her start.

"'Ro couldn't come so Chuck sent me up."

"Hello Logan."

"Why did you do it? Kurt told the others that you blacked out when swimming but he told me you were fully conscious and just stopped swimming."

"I don't know. It was just quiet and peaceful. And…and when I thought I was going to die- in Murderworld- it was so…so…"

"Calm?"

"I…I think so. There was just that promise of no more pain, no more hurt. And I wanted that. Just to not have to live with this. The poison in my bones. The throb in my back. The whispering in my head. The ache in here."

She pressed her hand to her heart, feeling the steady beat. She knew what the dying heart felt like. Fluttering, desperate. Trying to beat stronger but failing. Unable to do it's job of pumping blood around the body so the brain slowly starved of oxygen. Her heartbeat was strong and regular, in perfect order.

"There was someone else there, wasn't there?"

She stiffened slightly then, almost tentatively shook her head.

"There were no other living people at the facility when you arrived."

There- a fully truthful answer, just not to the question he had asked. But she felt terrible, as if she'd just torn out her own heart. She would never do that again. Luckily Logan didn't press her any further. He just glanced at her then shrugged. She liked that about him. He took what she said and didn't push any further. The others either pushed for answers so hard she wanted to resist or seemed edgy around her. She was just beginning to drop into a sleep when Logan said something she didn't quite catch.

"I'm sorry…"

"Oh. I was just thinking. The way you act, it's like there was someone I knew once like you. Someone important. There's just a few words, like a lesson, and mint. I remember the smell of mint. I'm not exactly sure who but I think it could have been a teacher of some sort."

"What are they saying?"

"Something about the things inside being the most important things we have."

"That doesn't sound like me…"

"No. But the tone, the way it was said was like you."

"Mint's a common soap or shampoo scent. I must be one of millions who use it."

"Yeah. But the other scents from that time are all things like lavender and rose and in one case jasmine. Only one mint."

"You don't remember faces so how could you possible think of this person when you see me?"

"Don't know."

The conversation petered out and the two feral mutants sat in comfortable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. They often sat like that when everyone else was out, at opposite ends of the sitting room downstairs, Tora reading whatever dusty old tome she'd found in the library, Logan either practising his Japanese calligraphy or reading a L'Amour. Then without any given signal one would get up and go and get drinks for them both. Because both were very alike in powers and, to some extent, past, they got on extremely well. Their silent comradeship only really worked because Logan didn't press questions on Tora and she didn't judge his more violent tendencies like the others did. They were both reaching the ends of the respective muses when Kurt arrived.

"Hello mien Freunds. How are the X-Men's suicidal X-ii and their Weapon X?"

Logan sensed rather than saw Tora sit up.

"Pardon, mon amis?"

He'd noticed that. When she was worried or angry about something she slipped into French, the only clue into her origins.

"Oh, has our surly Canadian not told you all about our fights with Alpha Flight in Calgary? Too bad. That was one amazing fight. You see, Herr Logan over there was the precious 'Weapon X' of the Canadian government. He resigned to join the X-Men so the Canadian equivalent of the Avengers only more government run, was sent to bring him back."

Kurt could tell he'd said something wrong. Logan had his head buried in his hands and Tora was sitting stock-still. Whatever was wrong, he guessed it would be better if he wasn't there when the fireworks started. He 'ported away as fast as he could and decided he'd go out with Amanda for a while.

As soon as Kurt had left, Logan turned to look at Tora.

"It's not as bad as it sounds…"

"Don't talk to me."

Her voice was icy, harsh. She was deliberately not looking at him, her eyes focussing on the wall behind his head.

"Tora…"

That seemed to crack the smooth veneer.

"GET AWAY FROM ME! DON'T TALK TO ME, DON'T EVEN LOOK AT ME! Every word you ever told me was a lie! You pretended to be a friend, when all the time you were responsible for this! You lied and lied and lied again, all covering up your past!"

"Please Tora, let me explain…"

"How many people did you kill 'Weapon X'?" The name was filled with hate.

"How many men and women have pleaded with you and you killed them anyway? Can you remember their names, their faces? Or have you killed so often they're all one to you?"

"Tora, please…"

That was it. She exploded, launching herself off the bed Xavier had ordered her to remain in. Claws slid out of her tightly clenched fists as she screamed at him.

"GET OUT! JUST GET OUT!"

And rather than face the delicate, spindly claws that could actually kill him, Logan fled, leaving Tora to scream after him in English, French, Japanese, German and Russian.

"And they ended up…"

"Oh, please Death, don't interrupt a perfectly worded outburst like that. Better than those stupid films Miss Lee insisted on watching when she arrived."

"I never saw her lose her temper that much except when the Parker boy stole her coffee."

"She lost it when Summers was caught with Frost."

"Well she was Phoenix's best friend."

None of the other X-Men knew what had caused the painful silence between Logan and Tora. The training sessions together had stopped and Tora took pains to make sure she was never alone in the house with him. Even when others were there, she'd leave a room as soon as he entered. She took to spending most of her days with Ororo, reading her books up in her attic. She'd take Kitty into the city whenever she asked, and gradually had gained a few stores she would happily spend hours in. They were mainly tiny bookshops in which she would browse through for most of the day before Kitty dragged her out. She'd also found the song that the guard had used to sing to her by accident, hearing it being played in a restaurant and Kitty had happily identified it. She'd bought the CD with it on at a music store as well as trying to find a surprise present for Kitty's birthday. In the end she'd simply sneaked into her room, gone through the CDs and bought the new album from the most prominent artist there, someone called 'Dazzler'. It sounded as if she was popular. But apparently she'd made the right choice because Kitty had hugged her very hard when she'd opened it. She then started gabbling so fast Tora almost didn't catch that Dazzler, who was really called Alison Blaire- according to Kitty- was a mutant who could convert sound into lights. Hence the name. But apparently it was a secret because of all the mutant phobia right now.

She'd also started drawing. Peter had offered her some of his art equipment and, in a futile attempt to forget all the feelings she'd been betrayed by someone she liked a lot, she began sketching furiously. She soon gave up the more realistic drawings as her photographic memory and enhanced hand-eye coordination made it too easy. Instead she started drawing small cartoon or caricatures. She found them more challenging because you had to decide what to emphasize.

But in some ways she was becoming a lot more approachable. She'd lost the slightly surly walls she threw up and a quietly sarcastic sense of humour was slowly developing. After a particularly bad training session, in which Scott had managed to get on everyone's nerves, she had Kurt on the floor in stitches with the perfect imitation of Cyclops. She'd shifted her position, her accent had changed and her voice deepened and she'd become Scott for a few short seconds. The illusion had been spoiled by Kurt laughing so hard he'd fallen off the ceiling and landing on top of her, breaking her concentration. But after that she'd do impersonations of the other X-Men on request. She still avoided the TV room though. When they finally asked her why, she mentioned she didn't see the point of staring at a series of still, unfocussed photos with a soundtrack and a high, irritating buzz. Xavier had whisked her away for more tests before discovering she saw about 30 images a second instead of the usual 20. And her hearing gave her a much higher frequency range. Therefore, the buzzing she heard was outside the usual human range and very high frequencies caused her extreme pain.

After about a month of this behaviour the Professor finally agreed to let her return to the active team roster. She hid her happiness well, guessing that if she appeared too eager to return he'd advise another months rest.

"She's acting more human by the day."

"Of course. But she has still a few more things to do before she's fully human."

"Like that robot- Vision. He could only become human by dying."

"A good analogy, but she doesn't have to die."

It was a month after she'd returned to the roster and Tigress had quickly become a fixture in the X-Men. The press interest had died down and she was fitting comfortably into the group. She still hadn't spoken to Logan in two months except for one cursory "Pass the mustard please," at a meal but she would fight with him if required. He'd tried to talk to her but she'd always have something important to do and would rush off before the first syllable was out of his mouth. She'd tried a fastball special the day before and proved to be a useful long-range projectile. Because her skeleton had been smaller than Logan's when the adamantium was implanted, she had about 20 pounds less in her bones. She knew the bone was brittle and would crumble without the adamantium otherwise she'd have tried to remove it.

They'd been playing baseball again, Girls versus Boys. However, Ororo could fly and Kitty had a habit of working out vectors so they were pretty equal against Scott, Kurt, Peter and Logan. They'd been about to equalize when the Professor had appeared looking grave.

"I've found out a Sentinel factory has been built. If we go now, we may avoid the fiasco of the last time we were attacked by them."

"Er… What or who are Sentinels?"

They all looked at Tora who was sitting looking slightly worried. She shrugged then defensively said, "Creed never really kept me up to date on current affairs. I can remember the conversations the guards had the day before about the founding of the Fantastic Four but that was the only conversation I remember overhearing. I assume the X-Men have been going for as long."

"The Sentinels are mutant hunting robots. Each model has a different weaknesses and they have almost wiped us out on occasions."

She chewed her lip, obviously deep in thought.

"Are their visual sensors digital? If they are I can get in undetected and do what I'm best at. Espionage and sabotage. I wasn't very good at assassination. Actually I was rubbish. I got a good mark in principal protection though but my teacher said I'd never be an efficient bodyguard. Apparently I'm too emotional."

The description of quiet, reserved, practical Tora as emotional would have had even the most humourless person snorting. As it was, Kurt, who had been preparing to bowl, got so hysterical he 'accidentally' threw the ball at Scott's head. The Professor gave him a sharp look and then turned his attention to Tora.

"I don't think going against the Sentinels alone is a viable option. But your offer will probably come in handy. Perhaps the others could provide a distraction? Scott?"

Scott looked up only to find his head was still ringing.

"Er… I think it might work."

"Did he even hear what he said?"

"Sadly, no."