A dangerous glint of the polished gunmetal-glazed weapon under the dappled, swinging, scattered light caught Rogue's widening-eyed defensive stance. She dropped the empty rucksack at her feet, bracing for a bullet and snapping a stolen stare at Logan's piercing glare. Her three-month-long mentor leaned heavily to his righthand side, his narrowed-eyed scowl darting from the gun barrel to the kid in the tatty sneakers. Unsaid words wrapped in a steely determination to double down on the menacing method of sabotage, he gruffly nodded once. Rooted to the spot of a lively litterbug's trashed, uninhabitable home, she watched and waited for the crucial second nod.
"You won't disarm me before I shoot her, so don't waste your fucking time," the disinterested man responded lazily, his laughter like a tightly coiled spring shedding its rigidity.
"Wanna bet?" Logan growled with a developing snarl that darkened the bleak irises of his ocean-strong eyes. The tightly packed brutality of his sudden movements strung together a second nod and the slicing at the wrist of the would-be shooter's gun-carrying hand.
The guttural roar from the Wolverine's throat failed to smother the rocketing and pained shriek escaping the slack-jawed, one-handed assailant. As Rogue fled to the exit with a tear-stained gaze, she covered her ears with trembling, gloved hands, desperate to outrun the haunting sounds of a violent, claw-laced death. She eventually skidded to a clumsy stop two blocks from the warehouse, flashes of her mama's bloodied, bruised, and battered body cluttering every crevice in her claustrophobic mind.
She sunk to her scabby knees behind an overflowing double dumpster and focused on recovering the sullenness of a habitual runaway. Cussing up a storm of expletive-laden words, she spat them spitefully at the trash bags strewed across the dimly lit alley, failing to register Logan's presence until he rested a protective blood-smeared hand on her slumped shoulder.
His tone betrayed little emotion, but its usual graveness remained submerged in a gravelly command to snap out of it. "You don't belong with the garbage, Rogue. Up you get and try not to get lost, huh?" He hauled her upwards for good measure, placing her a foot away from his beat-up second-hand pickup truck.
She collapsed into the frayed leather seat, drained of momentum and rapid-fire rudeness, and levelled a tortured look on the bug-splattered windshield. Words faded much like the last shadows of moonlight as he closed the door.
"You slaughtered every part of him dead," the shaken teen finally accused in a strained whisper, daring herself to examine his blood-splattered clothing.
"Uh-huh," Logan calmly confirmed, turning the key in the ignition and glancing her way. "You got something else to say for yourself before we head back to Xavier's?"
Recoiling from the beads of blood drying on his lined face, her eyes sprinted back to the refuge of the hastily dumped garbage bags rotting in the alley. "Thanks for granting me a lifetime of nightmares, Wolverine."
"You're welcome," he grunted half-heartedly, easing his foot down on the gas pedal and allowing the silence to engulf them both.
A/N: These short, sharp chapters are rather freeing. It's also my first time writing such a brutally violent Logan. It's in keeping with his character, right? I thought so, at least.