Chapter 2
Rogue's reminiscing remained tattered and torn. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever leave her lonely cave party for one, other times she gathered her tears and wanted to stay. She knew the scenes were simplistic and the characters brittle and flaky, but how could you expect her to focus when she knew the hurt coming in chapter four? She couldn't introduce this. It was the same as the first one, slow to get started and ended with an oddity. Where was she figuratively and spiritually? She didn't know, but she cared. Her people had failed her and Paty Kerry songs littered her mind. Her head hurt. Maybe she could feel blood. Do you worry about what people think of you? She did. It plagued her and spun her until she forgot about being stuck in a cave. Her thoughts remained disjointed, and the end of this chapter contained visible shame. She could still smell the smoke wafting closer and closer until the memories from that shaken day passed from her to you.
"Keep your distance before I forget whose side you're on," Logan warned Bobby darkly, just as their enemies broke through the treeline. "Storm, we need aerial assistance! Jean and Scott, you take the rear. I'll handle the ones up ahead."
"I'm on it," Storm replied, regally floating high above them. At her request, the clouds darkened, casting a murky shadow across the land below as she summoned a thunderstorm. The wind whistled through the tree branches, drops of rain landing on the heads of their adversaries. When Logan's claws first clashed with a foe, Storm sent her first bolt of lightning to the battlefield, watching it strike dead a man armed with a machete cleaver. She frowned the longer she studied the men being slaughtered below. Something was wrong. They looked like normal humans to her.
Three kilometres away sat a cabin directly west of Storm's current position. Inside, under the wrinkled sheets, lay a sleeping figure of muscle with a shady past and a nest of golden hair. At the first rumble of thunder, his right eye opened. His ears focused on hundreds of foreign sounds and he sprung out of bed, his other eye opening during his search for a pair of sweatpants. Scraping his hair back, he stalked to the door and stepped outside. Inhaling deeply, he stayed on the porch, untangling the scents familiar to him.
Storm turned to focus on the second set of fighters and summoned further flashes of lightning when she felt a sudden ripple of pain sweep across her limbs. Locked into place, she couldn't move and discovered they bound even her voice inside her. A gush of wind tore her from the sky, and she plummeted toward the ground. She shrieked internally and closed her eyes as her body continued to tumble towards the rocky land. Hanging metres above a dangerous drop into sharpened rocks, she opened her eyes and almost recoiled. A mutant stood there, its skin glowing and pulsating white with power — Storm's power. She was being drained of energy. She could feel her will, her power, her mutation, and her life being depleted.
The owner of the ramshackle cabin stepped off the porch, shielding his hand over his eyes to catch a clearer glimpse at the falling form of a white-haired woman. He narrowed his eyes and stalked further into the forest, his bare feet crunching the leaves and sticks underfoot. It didn't take long to find two mutants - one he recognised, the other remained a mystery.
The mysterious mutant turned to face him. It almost took a fluid form, and he quickly worked out it was draining Storm's energy to gain power and a tougher exterior. It balked when he stalked closer to it. "Like fuck you're killing an X-Man on my fucking land," he grumbled, pushing his way over to the rocks. "I don't know what the fuck you are, but I know her, she's an X-Man and I'm not having the rest of those freaks raising hell when I'm craving sleep." His nails lengthened and slashed the stem between Storm and the other mutant, meaning business. "Now get the fuck outta here before I kill you."
The mutant hadn't gained the ability to attack and feed at the same time. As soon as the vital cord snapped, it lashed out at him. He grabbed hold of Storm with one calloused hand to stop her from striking into the rocks, and booted the other mutant, nicking it. It fled into the forest and he heaved the heaviest of sighs, looking down at the X-Man he held in his arms.
"Sabretooth," Storm murmured, weary of him and believing her life was still in danger. She fought to regain control of her body and soon slid further into a stupor.
He watched her eyes shut and shook his head. "I hate trespassers," he grunted, carrying her inside.
On the battlefield, the bodies littered the field, and blood seeped into the ground. Logan panted heavily, sheathing his claws. "You okay?" he asked Jean and Scott. They nodded, and he looked Bobby's way. He was disappointed to find the Icicle still in one piece.
"Where's Storm?" Jean called to them, gazing up at the sky. Scott, Logan and Bobby searched too and shared looks of worry.
"We need to retreat to the jet," Scott suggested. "If she has her tracker turned on, we can trace her."
"I told you to get Forge to upgrade those trackers after we nearly lost Rogue on the Bayou," Logan growled. "They should stay on during a mission."
Scott, Jean, and Bobby followed Logan back to the jet. Stony-faced, Scott checked the tracker system. Jean treated Bobby's bleeding arm while Logan looked over Scott's shoulder at the screen. "It's off. Her tracker's off," he growled. "Forge should have fixed the fault."
Scott swung his chair round to face Logan. "I'm still blaming you for this. I knew there was a reason you stopped Rogue from coming on this mission."
Logan's temper flared. "I stopped her from coming because she's not ready for this. What the hell do you think would have happened to her out on that battlefield, huh? We would've been scraping her off the ground for weeks."
"Then you're admitting you knew about this," Scott challenged him.
Logan punched Scott clean across the jaw, knocking him against the controls. The communication system lurched offline, and Scott cursed loudly when he spotted the blackened screens.
"Where are you going?" Jean asked Logan moments later.
"To find her," he answered bad temperedly.
"How?" she said, looking worried.
"The traditional way," he said, heading outside to search the forest.
Victor tossed Storm on his bed and went to check the kitchen cupboard for something he could use to wake her up. All he found were three cans of soup seven years out of date and whatever the hell a Dunkeroo was. He went to search his duffle bag instead and grabbed a water bottle. He returned to the side of the bed, uncapped the bottle, and sprinkled a little water on her face. "Wake up already," he demanded. "You know who this bed belongs to? I'll give you a clue: it ain't yours."
When that had no effect, he dumped the contents of the bottle over her face to shock her into waking. She panicked and instantaneously struck him down with a hurricane force wind. He slammed his head so hard against the wall he cracked the wood in eight places. She calmed her thoughts, glanced at the empty bottle, noticed the water on her face, remembered what had happened in the forest and instantly felt regret.
"Did you break anything?" Storm asked worriedly, leaving the bed and cautiously approaching him.
"Fuck," a groggy Victor muttered, failing to focus on either of her faces. His head spun, her face spun, and the entire room joined in with that spinning cabin dance he wanted no part of. With one more curse slipping from his mouth, he fell into his curse-filled comatose state.
Storm patted his hand and fetched a pillow for him. She placed it under his head and watched his sleeping form. "Thank you for what you did today in the forest. It won't be forgotten," she promised him, reaching for the tracker on the front of her uniform and switching it on.
She took one last look of regret at the unconscious Sabretooth, almost wishing she hadn't swept him into a wall. He surprised her today and it almost willed her to feel sorrow for his current predicament. Hoping he would soon be mobile and free from pain; she left the cabin and approached the forest where the attack had taken place. The search for visible clues became fruitless, and eventually her thoughts returned to the jet.
Logan looked relieved when he spotted her in the distance. "Hey," he said, sniffing and suddenly scowling. "You smell like Sabretooth."
"Don't overreact. He was very helpful," she explained, continuing her journey through the forest.
"Helpful? The last time I saw him he nearly threw me off the Statue of Liberty," he growled. "Does that sound helpful to you?"
"You're overreacting, Logan," she warned him gently. "Although, I have one worry."
"And it isn't him?" he said in disbelief.
Storm described being drawn from the air by a mysterious mutant. She didn't mention Sabretooth's help, knowing it wouldn't improve Logan's feelings toward the errant feral. "What should we do first?"
"We need to get out of here. We'll talk to Charles when we get back to the mansion and figure out what attacked you," Logan told her abruptly. He frowned when Storm stopped in her tracks. "What's wrong?"
"I almost feel guilty leaving him there alone," she admitted, knowing it sounded foolish.
"Keep walking, Storm. He doesn't deserve any sympathy," he told her gruffly, his interest half awake. "What happened back there, anyway?"
"It's not my story to tell," she replied cryptically, returning to the jet with the scowling Logan by her side.
When they arrived at the mansion, Rogue watched them file out the elevator frowning, scowling, huffing, puffing and mostly avoiding each other's company. Part of her wondered what had happened and when she noticed Scott holding a small icepack against his lumpy jaw, she took the time to tease Jubilee. "That money's mine," she cheered, receiving an eye roll in response.
"What money?" Bobby asked, walking over to them and quickly deciding he didn't really care. "It doesn't matter, just listen to this. That is the greatest mission the X-Men have ever been on, Rogue. There were hundreds of them, and they all wanted to fight us and I have this bandaged arm to prove it," he said, gesturing to the scrapes and tears in his uniform.
"I don't think I believe you, Bobby Drake," Rogue teased, trying to catch Logan's attention when he walked by. "Hey Logan, is Bobby lying to me?"
"Not now, Rogue," Logan grumbled, escorting Storm to the Professor's study.
"What's wrong with him?" she asked Bobby.
"I guess he doesn't like me being stronger than him," Bobby told her, still showing off. He took her by the gloved hand and walked toward his room. "I have more stories that I would have told you on our date tonight, but I'm tired and thought if we called it off, we could still spend time together upstairs?"
His last sentence hung low around her middle, and she felt a little worried about it. "I guess so, Bobby. What happened to Scott's jaw?"
Bobby talked about the names carved in the trees, the attack, Storm going missing, then how Logan punched Scott. She looked surprised by it all, apart from the fight at the end. After living with Logan's blotchy memories, she knew his name might be James. But why had Sabretooth carved a hole in this story? Bobby didn't know either, and seemed pushy by the time they reached his room.
She fidgeted nervously by his nightstand, sidestepping his groping hands more than once. When he asked her if she wanted to lie on his bed with him, she shook her head. "No," she finally said, her voice steady and clear.
"Is this one of your jokes?" Bobby asked her with a half-twisted smile. "You have a strange sense of humour sometimes."
"I'm not joking, Bobby. I'm not ready and I'm not sorry," she answered, her tone easing into her usual good natured southern girl just doing her thing. "You keep putting pressure on me and I don't like the way you're making me feel. Don't you think you're better than this?"
She left the question hanging in the air and walked out of the room, going to seek sanctuary in her own bed. She waited for the obligatory sorry text or call; it never came. She didn't hear from Bobby and she felt pissed. She barely slept on the swirling theories that slowly crept into instability. Eventually, when the sun slipped through her open blinds, her indignation chased her from her room and carried her all the way to his. When she pushed open the door and stepped inside, there was something to be seen that was even stranger than her current job as the worst secretary Stateside. Bobby, her boyfriend, was in bed with a feline and they had misplaced their clothes. Sadly, the cat was Kitty, and she wasn't an animal, she just acted that way with straying men and Rogue's shattering heart.
They stared at her; she stared at them, and her mind imploded. Luckily, it was sunny outside and the perfect morning for barbecuing bed sheets. Perfectly calm, she wandered into the grounds with the sheets they cheated on, the same sheets she bought on sale in Wal-Mart, the sheets she threatened them out of, and she let them drop to the grass. She added Bobby's clothes, the smiling faces in the glossy photos, the gifts, even the curtains she bought him back when she read a book about happy homes and pretty patterns. She was blind, stupid, naïve, and too much of a coward to go punch her boyfriend and cry into a five-litre frozen tub of toffee swirl ice cream with those oozing brownie pieces and warm chocolate fudge. Stealing Pyro's name with the strike of a match, she watched her scattered plan combust and then burn into the school's first winter wildfire.
