(Movieverse X-men) Animal Behavior, chapters 1-3

Title: Animal Behavior
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Logan/Marie
Summary: complete AU. Logan and Marie are Stryker's lab rats, nearly stripped of humanity. Later, they meet again and make some attempts to reclaim it.
A/N: The premise for this AU belongs entirely to jjblazer, from her fic, The Cell. The concept was used with her permission.
This was originally posted several years ago under the pen name Moswen (len).


Prologue, part 1, chapter 1


He told himself that he had been a normal man. He hadn’t had the best lifestyle--he hadn’t had the fuck-me trophy wife with the ‘you’re fucked’ trophy car and the suburban house with a membership to the country club--but then again, what normal man did? He hadn’t really had a home, but he’d had places to crash, people he knew, some of which he even bother to talk to, women he fucked, some of which he almost even cared for. He wasn’t a saint; he was probably a little rough with them from time to time. He probably stole--not when he had to but precisely when he had nothing better to do. He knew he’d drunk--because there was an idea somewhere in him that amber liquid might be able to drown him when he knew nothing could kill him--and he’d probably drunk too much on more occasions than was good for him.

But it wasn’t like he’d ever killed anyone. It wasn’t like he’d ever raped or pillaged or set fires or started wars. Leave that to the government, bub.

He told himself this because to believe less was to be already beaten. To believe more--that he might have been a good man, even an honorable man--was to believe that God was not only dead but rotting in Hell in a prison twice as fucking terrible as his own.

He did not believe in God, not now, but maybe that’s why he’d convinced himself that he’d been like other men. He held on to that, to that belief that he was human. They’d taken away everything else--including his humanity--but they hadn’t taken away the belief, that single leap of faith, that he had once been a man.

They’d even taken his name. He’d laughed when they’d done it--a dry, raspy laugh, but see, he’d been the kind that laughed. To his knowledge, only humans laugh. They laughed when they cut him open--or before, or after, or sometime in the glory of it all, because they were really achieving something, weren’t they? And look at the man, the animal, the fearless, scared so bad he was pissing in pants they’d taken off of him so lines could cover his skin.

The name replacement was army issue. He’d known it was military--had to be government, those fuckers--but he hadn’t known quite how standard they were going to get. After all, this wasn’t exactly greenie recruitment camp. He had wondered at one time just how much the government actually did know about what went on here. They’d probably just given free reign to this big guy with the cultured voice and the face he never saw.

Said voice had laughed, too. “Yes, funny. Do you want to know what they’re for?”

“I don’t give a shit. Get me the fuck outta this cock-sucking piece of--”

“Tsk, language, Wolverine.” The voice always called him Wolverine--the name on the tags, instead of the last couple of digits of the number, like the scientists.

He hated it, of course. The numbers just reduced him to a nonentity--one among thousands, probably, but he preferred that to being called--humorously, with a hint of affection, almost--the name of an animal. He spit a tooth, aiming for the eye in the face of a disembodied voice, but he just heard it rattle to the floor and gingerly felt the inside of his mouth with his tongue, where the new tooth was almost already grown.

They’d beat him up pretty good--numerous times--knocking teeth around and breaking bones, but his healing factor had taken care of most of it. It was a problem with broken bones, though, because, as with the tooth, sometimes something else--bone splinters, mostly--was in the way and bones didn’t set right even as they began to heal. “Something has to be done about that, first on the agenda,” the voice had said, when they first brought him in, wounds already healing up, but bones healing crookedly and tooth aching because a new one was trying to grow in under the one that had been almost ripped out of his mouth, but not quite.

After having the crap kicked out of him more times than he quite cared to count, they put him in a metal room whose walls he couldn’t even begin to bend or break. He’d found these around his neck, and, after a while, laughed hoarsely, only to hear an echoing laugh, and this voice. “Do you want to know what they’re for?” the voice had asked again. “Soldiers wear them into war and battle. Perhaps you’ve head of them? Dog tags,” the voice had elaborated, and chuckled. “The army does have a sense of irony, Wolverine, although perhaps you are too distracted just now to see it. The dead and animals are sometimes only recognizable for what they wear around their necks.”

The voice paused, and he could hear a smile in it. “There are animals, Wolverine, which are a class below humans, and then there are mutants, a class below the animals. I will show you this. I will treat you like the animal you are and you will react like one, and you, too, will come to understand what you really are.”

“Not bloody likely, you little mother fu--”

The voice interrupting had been calm, smooth. “You stink of mutation. I would know that smell miles away. However, some people’s senses are not as finely attuned as yours and mine, and they will need those tags. You see Wolverine, if we mangle your body beyond even its ability to repair, we’ll need the tags to recognize you and record the number in our files. No one else, of course, will have even cared that you once existed.”

Perhaps it was that, more than beatings and namelessness; more than endless, shameful laboratory tests; more than no clothes, no utensils when they bothered to feed him, no urinals and no baths except when they decided to clean him for more tests--perhaps it was the fact that no one actually cared, that served to chip away his humanity. The idea of no one knowing, no one really caring, no one remembering that you were once a man makes you less and less of a man every day.

He lives naked in a closed metal box that stinks of his own pain, filth, blood, and sweat. There is a slot that opens for food; there is an impenetrable door that opens and pulls him out for more tests. He never knows the time of day. He has forgotten everything, except the idea that maybe, once, he was like other, normal men, and he hadn’t lived like this before, and he doesn’t deserve this now. He doesn’t care that they think he is an animal and treat him like one. He was a man. Was, is. The line was becoming less sure. Soon, even that will be gone.

This is what he is thinking when they bring her in. The door opens, and he is huddled in the corner, squinting in dim light and begging, please, to die. They throw in this little pile of limbs. And, if there is any kind of Lord, please forgive him this--his next thought is that he is very, very hungry, and if this fresh, living smell is meat he will kill it and eat it raw if he has to. He doesn’t care any more that these animalistic actions will amuse the voice, prove it right. He is starving.

Then he realizes that the creature that they have released into his cell is human--well, at least she’s got two legs, two arms, and a navel. She’s also got dark, tight curls hiding herself, breasts, rather full, and a mouth made for sex. And so the next thought follows hard upon the rest, Lord have mercy for this as well: woman.

God, how long has it been?

He must have been a normal man, because suddenly he was remembering things he had thought he’d forgotten. The idea of ‘woman’ is like the idea ‘whiskey’ had been when not two months ago, when he’d caught the word whispered among the scientists and he’d remember that it was something that could warm him and make him forget. ‘Woman’ makes him feel the same way--warm, creamy thighs parting for his entry and nails scratching down his back pulling him inside of a soft tightness that sometimes, almost, felt safe; sucking on rough nipples and making them rougher and rougher until he came deep inside of the warm, wet place and his entire body, almost, for a moment, found peace.

He shakes his head, trying to reconcile warm, wet, humid thoughts with this creature before him. His arousal dies as he looks at her again, but he is not ashamed that she has seen it. It doesn’t really matter any more.

She really is only arms legs and navel, now that he looks again. She’s huddled away from him, eyes huge and hungry, wasting away: the ribs are poking out already; the cheeks are sunken, which, he is sure, is the only factor making those lips look so generous and completely fuckable. She may not have been in the place long at all, but she’s definitely of the place; she’s so dirty that he is surprised he even noticed the rest. Except, different from him, no tags, and they seemed to have given her the dignity of clothes. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman--she’s got this gauzy thing-- on second thought, it doesn’t afford much dignity at all: almost completely transparent and not big enough to cover all of her.

He is just standing there, pressed up against the wall in horror, staring at her like that. At last she speaks from her corner to his. “They said you could do it.”

It has been a long time since someone has spoken to him, instead of at him, or instead of about him as if he wasn’t there. The voice--the precise voice, the main voice, the hated voice, had talked to him only in the beginning. Now the voice only laughed; now it did not need to goad any more, because its project really had turned into an animal. But the animal finds his own voice, locked deep somewhere next to the idea that he was a man, closely connected to his grunts and screams and groans from when they experiment on him. “Do what?”

“They said you were . . . creative.” She blinks up at him from where she sits, her limbs a little puddle on the floor.

“Creative? Do what?” The question is harsher now. This is really, all he can ask. He doesn’t know who she is or what she is there for, but it seems so simple to ask her: what could I possibly do? What do I possibly have to do in this world, that has anything to do with you, or anyone else?

Her eyes are wide as she stares up at him. It strikes him that he had not seen a face like that in a very long time. In fact, he is not sure he had ever seen a face like that, even before this place. Her whole face is open, earnest, almost as if she trusts him, almost as if her eyes beseech him and her lips tumble pleas. He knows, suddenly, why she looks so strange. She is a child, not more than sixteen. “They said you knew what I was for.”

“What are you for?” he asks solemnly, because that is all there was to know. That, and: “Do what?”

This last time seems to strike her, and she trembles violently for a moment, and draws the gauze around her, as if it can cover her. “Get me with child.”

“No,” he says simply, and turns away, refusing to even contemplate what she has just said.

“No.” No to the idea of them proving that he is an animal, screwing whatever piece of meat they throw in here, no to submitting to whatever their purposes are and no to this woman, whatever her ulterior purposes are.

“No,” he says again, louder this time. He remembers that she is a child and he stays turned away as all the hot thoughts come rushing back into him tenfold, and this third time he is saying no to his own urges, not to what she says and not to the idea of it. He is saying no to the idea that her body is womanly even if her face is not, to the idea that there is a pair of thighs behind him waiting for him to get between them, to the idea that it has been so long and that he wants it so bad. He is saying no to the fact that he has grown hard at the mere idea of entering this child, at the idea of entering anything, at this point. It has been so long. He is less than an animal--he had even forgotten about sex, until they throw this sack of bones in here and she makes him harder than a randy teenager with a real woman instead of a dirty magazine.

“No,” he is howling it now, and she is crying.

“Please,” she says, and her breath catches in a hiccup.

“Why?” This, too, is all he can ask. How can she want this with him? How can she want a child in this place? Why ask this of him? Why are they letting her?

“Because if you don’t,” she says at last, voice dull, “they’ll kill me.”

His mind has grown slow with thinking only these things: out, escape, hunger, food, rage, anger, hate, pain, pain, painpainpain and I was once a man. It has taken him a while to understand this new idea, but now he does. He understands what this is, what this place had become.

He knew somewhere that they were making him into a weapon, that they were using his mutation for some purpose of their own to do something or other. The faceless voice may be interested in making him understand his true self worth, but the scientists were interested in giving him some worth by making him their tool. Their completely manipulatable, usable tool. And now they wanted a child. His child--and hers, apparently. It wasn’t just a place of pain and production of a weapon--now it was a place of reproduction, too. Now it was a breeding ground, and apparently, he was the stud. “So what’s with you?”

“My skin. It--it hurts people.”

It wouldn’t hurt him, he realized, this dawning on him.

They had told her he could do it. They had told her he was creative. They had told her he knew what she was for--and they were right; he would know. He did know.

He was an animal. What more did animals do besides what they were told, and eat and fuck on the side? He looks at her again, considering--actually considering.

This is when he begins to remember, if only a little, and this is when he gets angry. He remembers that men don’t fuck a girl just because someone gives him one to fuck. He remembers that men don’t use children to sink themselves into oblivion. “I can’t.”

She blinks several times. “They said you could. They said it wouldn’t hurt you.”

“It won’t hurt me.” Nothing did, but he remembers that men live as equals in a world of human beings, not in this hierarchy of military/scientist/human, to animal, to mutant. He understands that she is his equal in this, even here. She is being used as much as he is. “I can’t.”

Her eyes widen and slowly, as if she can barely manage to look, her eyes travel from his own down to his nose, his mouth, his neck, his chest, his hips, his raging erection. “You can,” she diagnoses at that, and sounds almost petulant.

He turns away from her again, and one last time, “I can’t.”

“You won’t.”

“That’s right, sweetheart, so take a hike.”

“I can’t. They won’t let me out of here until . . . and if you won’t . . . oh please. Please.” She does not cry any more; it is just this begging. From the smell of her, she wants this even less than he does--there is no hint of reaction to his primal arousal in her scent, just fear. She reeks of fear--so scared, she’d left a puddle on his floor as they’d thrown her in. And still, she’s begging him for it.

He is convincing himself, with these sudden memories, that he had been a man, once. He would stand up to them this time, in this one thing, and it would make him a man. He had tried resisting them in the beginning, but it had only brought new dimensions of pain he hadn’t known existed. At first, it had been easier to give in, and then as everything that had made him a human began to leave him, it had just seemed natural. But if, far from now, they continued that torture of submission--he would know he’d refused them this one thing. He would know he wasn’t all animal, hadn’t always been all animal. He would know he had a free will, which is what makes a man a man.

“Darlin’,” he says, because somehow he remembers that it is a sort of nice name, and the smell of her fear makes him want to retch. He wants her not to be afraid, and then he wants her to get the hell out. “Don’tcha see what they’re tryin’ ta do to us? I can’t let them. I can’t. I won’t.”

She looks up, hair tangled and covering painfully bony shoulders. “I want to live,” she says simply, and that breaks him.

Her desire is so good, so pure, so untarnished by everything here. She has seen deep into the very bowels of viciousness and cruelty, and still she wants to live. She has seen this place and seen him and seen what he is, and still she is willing to take him inside of her--just to live. Even willing to grow a new life inside of her--in order to live. Her desire is completely unreasonable, completely thoughtless, completely ridiculous--but completely innocent. He thinks he remembers what this irrational thing is called: hope.

He wants her desire to live. It has been so long since he has desired it for himself.

He wants to believe that a hope, an innocence, a purity like hers exists in the world, even when he is deep down in this dark place. He wants to be able to think of it when they torture him. He wants to create life inside of her, a child of this hope, and think of the child and its new chance at life and innocence, even as he screams in his daily agony. He knows it is impossible--he knows that a child born in this place will be anything but innocent--but he wants the hope of it. He wants to stir her hope into a flame, and make the fire consume him, to protect him from the world. She is here, wanting, even wanting him--because she has to--and oh, it is too much to bear. He does not recognize his own choked voice: “Okay.”

Her fear increases tenfold, but she does not scramble away, nor does she make any sound of fear. “Good,” she says simply, and her voice does not even tremble. She stands, clutching the gauze tightly, but no longer trying to cover herself with it. Uncovering huge brown eyes and a wide mouth, she shakes back her hair, looking--despite bony shoulders--strong, like a lioness, accepting its mate. She is steady, takes one step toward him--two--and then she is almost touching him.

Her slim body is swaying slightly, and with little breaths of her, he can’t help but become aroused again. Beneath all the filth her skin is a milky white; despite the shallow ribs her breasts still yearn to be touched; despite her sunken stomach her hips are full and begging to be bucked against him. But he wants not just this, and now, not even just her hope--but her strength, the way she walks toward him, the way she does not reveal her fear except in scent.

“You will have to show me,” she says finally, after he stands for many moments silently staring down at her. “I’ve never done it before. I don’t know how.”

Then the answering fear begins to mount in him as well. He had not thought of that. He had not begun to think how hard this would be. Darlin’--baby. Mine, sweet, child, beautiful, cherished, youth, innocence, hope.

She has awakened in him what truly makes a man a man--not free will, as he had thought, as he had desired, as he had tried to exercise. It is only this: pity.

He moves one hand toward her cheek, and almost imperceptibly, as she is trying to control her fear, she jerks away. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya, kid.” They are the gentlest words he can find.

“It’s not that. It’s just that when people touch my skin, something happens. People get hurt.”

He shakes his head, and touches her.

A few moments later, when he is on his knees and she is frantically hovering about him, asking him if he is alright, he decides it was worth it. He hadn’t thought she’d hurt him, because of the healing factor, but apparently, she has one pretty powerful mutation. Which is why, apparently, they want them to mate. But it was worth it nevertheless, because he realizes how long it’s been since bare flesh has touched his own, and hers is soft, and sweet, and almost tempting enough to touch again.

“I told you not to do that,” she huffs, and he wants to laugh as he has not laughed in so long, because she almost sounds untouched, still a child: her voice is almost the petulant whine of an ‘I told you so.’

He gets to his feet and takes the gauze from her. “I can find other ways to touch you,” he offers at last, quietly, his eyes darkened and his body ready for her. It is a life-line, a choice, almost. He is giving her the power to refuse--the power to refuse what he can do, the power to refuse that some base part of him desires what will happen next.

Again, she steps toward him. “I am not afraid.”

She is lying. He can smell the fear coming off of her in waves.

---

Prologue, part 2, chapter 2


He does not know how to go about this. Despite the humid thoughts of women he remembers, he thinks he doesn’t even know what to do with a woman any more, much less a woman like her, who is barely a woman at all. This, in a way, is all new to him too. But there is one thing working inside of him: the pity for her, for himself, for the two of them, subjected to this animal behavior.

This moves him. Softly, he sinks to his knees. He can be a man in this, too--he remembers that it can be beautiful, what they are to do, that it can never be wrong unless you treat it that way, that a true man has the capacity to make a woman feel good. He can show her that, better than tell her. Hand covered in gauze, he begins to touch her.

“Wait.”

Immediately, he waits.

“What’s your name?”

He swallows. It seems fitting, somehow, that she should ask him that. He doesn’t remember his own name, but he wants to give her one--a man’s name. He wants to make one up, just so he can give it to her, just so he can tell her he is a man and that he is not doing this for the reasons they thought he would. He thinks frantically, and the name ‘Logan’ is the only one that comes to mind. He does not know if that was his name before. He does not know if the name has anything to do with himself, but it’s the name he wants to give her. So: “Logan.”

“Thank you.”

He is kneeling before her, and she stands, her dirty, bruised body rising up before him like something both ancient and young, immense and petite--love and squalor. An oddness rises in his chest, a love not particularly of her but of the something indomitable in the human spirit that makes us stand straight like that when the whole world is pushing down on us, and we become omnipotent in our vulnerability.

He begins at the small of her back, reaching around her to touch her lightly there until she is not shivering with fear and surprise at the touch. He rubs a small, ever widening spiral, and her eyes grow large. This is not what she thought it would be like. This is something her mother used to do, on those sweltering Mississippi days, touching her bare back in the oppressive heat with light touches--before, in those days when people could touch her. Fear trickles through her, because she doesn’t know this man and she doesn’t know this place and she doesn’t know this act they are performing, and she has seen tags with an animal name and number, and she knows she is doomed and she just wants mother and Mississippi again, but his touch is insistent, roaming down the backs of her legs, across her stomach.

His hands grow heavier, his touch powerful, but gentle--completely certain, completely sure, existing as if only to reassure her. It has been so long since anyone touched her. For the first time in months, she feels almost safe. This frightens her too, and so she narrows herself to that touching that is just warm, relaxing, soothing, silken against skin so unused to any kind of contact; she shuts out her questions and her fear and her uncertainty.

He follows her; the touching changes. He touches her ankle, the barest of touches that makes her shiver with surprise. Then he reaches and touches her elbow, a quick stroke that makes her jerk reflexively. The rub of the warm, rough cloth there makes her yearn for the long, soothing strokes, the way he has massaged all her muscles away and made her melt. Now he is at the soft, boneless skin of her throat, light touches, and she wants them to deepen; she wants him to stroke her. The feeling frightens her--but she wants, desperately, to be touched. She has not known the comfort of touch for so long, and he makes it feel so good.

His hands are unpredictable--here, there, making her desire that long, steady touching. She begins to twist into his touch. Part of her wants to cover his hands with her own and make them touch her more, but the rest of her wants him to control the reactions of her body, to let her know that it is alright. She trusts that touch because it trusts her, trusts her skin, and it comforts her; she wants to let the skill and strength in his hands manipulate her into thinking that this is alright, that they will take care of her, that they know what they are doing. She does not move, except to sag against the wall, because her knees have turned to liquid with how he touches her legs.

Yes, he knows what he is doing. Now he runs a fingernail along her inner thigh; now his hands flick into her hair and briefly touch her scalp, then the spot just behind her ear. Now he runs a knuckle along the soft curve of the side of her breast, which produces a little sound in her throat as she hungrily tries to turn into his hands so he touches her where she wants it. This frightens her too, that she wants that kind of touch--but the touching feels good, feels safe, feels right.

She begins to feel the little reactions she thought she’d left behind somewhere back in Mississippi--the little moans, the sighs, the wetness, the throbbing, the yearning and the aching. She feels it and she welcomes it. She had begun to fear that she cannot feel that way, that she is not a woman because she can never treat a man as a man. She writhes under his touch; she aches for him in ways that make her whimper--and yet still, his touch is comfort; his touch is peace, because he touches her as if she is a woman and he is a man. “Logan,” she says simply, because she does not know what else to say.

Suddenly the touch is gone, and the gauze is thrown over her mouth. She panics--afraid that she has done something wrong, afraid that they are coming to take her out already, afraid that they won’t let Logan take her, afraid that she shouldn’t say his name, most of all afraid that he will stop touching her. She begins to speak, and then, through the cloth, she feels his mouth on hers.

His lips are like his hands--surprisingly soft, incredibly warm--and insistent. They move against her closed ones and she unthinkingly reacts as she has been reacting--she tries to twist into his touch, and she unknowingly opens her mouth so she can take more of him. His tongue enters her mouth through cloth--it’s hot and full and at first, she wants to spit it out. She feels suddenly violated; she feels suddenly afraid, having this part of him inside of her. This wasn’t what she wanted, wasn’t what she trusted him to do, wasn’t what she--But it is doing such things--strong, hot, worshipful things--to the insides of her cheeks, to the roof of her mouth, to her own tongue, that her fear is smoothed away with the muscle of his mouth, and she accepts that too.

Part of what comforts her in this new way of touch is that she can feel that he wants this; he wants to be inside of her like this. He treats her mouth as if it is something sacred, as if it is prized, as if it is to be cherished. This soothes her. It is not just that he is the only source of warmth in this cold dark place; it is not that he is the only man who has been gentle with her since all those months on the road before this. It is that he is the first person that has ever made him feel like a woman--except David, who just after she kissed him had made her feel like a freak, a monster, an animal, because even as her lips left him his eyes rolled back into his skull and he shook, foaming at the mouth. When his mouth leaves hers she tries to call him back. “Logan--please--”

She vaguely realizes that he must have ripped the cloth in two, because he is still touching her with his hands. She should be afraid, that he could have managed that without her even noticing, but his mouth draws her attention away from her fear again--firm, gentle, and utterly in control. He lifts her easily and places her gently onto the floor, and she barely notices this either. His mouth is sinking; she can feel his hot breath on her, lower, and a jet of cool air--blowing on her here, there, in places she never even knew had nerve endings.

Again, he draws a warmth, a peace, a serenity out of her up to her skin, her hated, untouchable skin, that he touches now with the most deft, most sure, flicks of skillful hands. Her whole existence is his touch; she is formless under it, a shapeless putty that arches and strains and bucks, trying to raise into his unexpected, unpredictable touches created by his fingers and his tongue. He is everywhere at once and in not enough places altogether, a gentle mouth at her nipple or a scrape of teeth against her shoulder, the brush of a hand against her wrist and finally, soft kisses planted between her thighs. She has been mad and wet with want, and now she is lost. “Logan. Logan. Logan--”

He can feel the animal rising in him at the smell of her, at the sight of her body writhing under him, begging him to take her. The animal wants to do her bidding--it wants to take her, to use her, to fuck her, to make her give him what he is giving her: comfort and oblivion. She is incredibly wet; her nipples are incredibly hard; her mouth is incredibly swollen from his kisses, and she is ripe for the taking--and the animal is ready to take. Her skin requires care, but the moments before the pull and the slow drag afterwards would be enough. It has been so long for him that it would be easy to get ready, to touch himself until he can release himself with a single thrust, almost before he enters her, or as he enters her. This is what they have planned; the animal is instinct and reflex, and will work to satiate itself despite the fact that the man and real strength is slipping away into her skin.

But in the end, it is not the animal that has her, but the man. It is the man who has been giving her this pleasure, and it is the man who fills it out, because of the way her eyes snap open to look directly into his, and because of her simple words: “I want you, Logan.”

It is the man she wants--not escape, not a child, not her own life. She wants him, because of what he has given her, and nothing else will do. That is his name she is calling, as if he is actually a man. He is savagely proud of that fact, prodigiously satisfied by that he did this to her, he made her comfortable with this, he made her accept this, he made her see she wasn’t the one in the wrong. In some way it is both the satisfaction of an animal and the satisfaction of the man triumphing over the animal; only man, he thinks, has the capacity to turn something this ugly into something almost beautiful. It is the man she wants. In that moment, at her words, a man he is.

And so he gives her that. His fingers drive her to fall apart, and as she is in the midst of it he brings himself to the edge, and enters her, and it is enough. Her head is still lolled back with pleasure, almost oblivious to the pain of his entry, and his reflexive thrusting shudders to a stop as her skin pulls him.

She feels him inside of her--not just his body but his mind. She feels herself begin to change, feels her skin begin to distort into his image. She scrambles away from him, throwing the cloth between them. She frantically places little kisses through cloth across his back and the cords of his neck, praying that he will wake up. He is passed out on the floor, not breathing, and that’s how he is when they come for her, and she is clutching at him through cloth and calling his name, still kissing him, still saying the name of the man, over and over and over again. That is what she is doing as they pull her off of him, using thick, hard cloth and metal to handle her, wrapping her up and taking her away. They beat her, but not too hard, because of the possibility of offspring, and all the while, she is calling his name.

---

Prologue, part 3


“The girl you took is ruined as a woman. She will not let anyone touch her, even under cloth; because she is so disgusted by it now. The merest touch she finds disgusting, revolting; she says it reminds her of you and all she can do is vomit until she can heave no more. She knows how vile you are, and she hates you and the thing that grows inside of her because of you. She was glad when she thought her skin killed you, and she herself wants only to die. She tried to kill the thing growing inside of her too, and her greatest torment is that we let it live. It defiles her--it is a monster extruded from her womb created by nothing natural, nothing human. The creature is hungry already for our cruelty, for our defilement, for our treatment.”

“The girl-child you used? A whore. She touches herself for us. Wants us to rape her again and again and again, as you did. She begs us to touch her, to use her, to abuse her, to fuck her, to get the feel of you off of her. She didn’t know why you just didn’t get it over with when you took her. She found you repulsive, disgusting; she would have done anything to get the ordeal over with. She was faking it when she called your name, when she said she wanted you. She revels now in the touch of our scientists because it is not your touch. She’s had the baby, amidst it all. A ripe, fine healthy little boy. We’re going to kill him three days from now, just to hear him squeal. She is glad.”

“We wanted you to do it, you know; we wanted you to take her how you took her. It was planned. Why do you think she had the gauze? If we had just wanted you to mate we would have left her without it. We know you would have done it in your own animalistic way--rough, hard, immediate, painful. You would have come inside of her and you would have survived. Instead we wanted you to think you were a man. You actually thought you were helping her? You think a real man would rape her mind, too, make her want it, instead of just making it quick? You think a real man would prolong it like that? She may have gotten over what you did to her body, but how is she going to withstand what you did to her mind? You made her want you and now all she can feel is shame that she asked you to take her, asked you to rape her. But the child--it lives, though it already wants to die. It will be the perfect killing machine, and it will grow to hate its life, hate you, and most of all, hate her who brought her into this world, screaming and crying for you.”

“She has forgotten you. She doesn’t know the father of her child and she doesn’t care. She’s lifeless--you took away her womanhood, you took away her livelihood; you took away her hope, and now she has no reason to live. We wanted you to take her slowly, gently, for her sake. And what did you do? You fucked her raw. You just took her. She was barely ready for you. She was only a girl, and you just took her, took her because you’re an animal that can’t even help himself. Face it, you took one look at that bag of bones and you got hard; you wanted the first thing you saw that was free to take. You wanted to mark her, to take your territory. You wanted yourself inside of her because that’s what we wanted. You knew it would please us, and that’s why you did it. She lost the baby. So much blood, for such a little girl. She lost it, writhing in her own blood and screaming your name, over and over and over.”

He held the thought of her stronger than they thought he would. He replayed the words over and over in his mind: ‘I want you Logan. I want Logan. I want you. I want you. Logan. Logan. Logan. Logan. I want you. ’ He tried not to forget it; he held on to that moment in his mind in which he was utterly and completely a man again, with someone wanting him for him, for his equality, for his free will, for his compassion. He held onto his name faster and harder then he’d held on to anything in his life; he strained to remember every line of her face--those sweet, wide, innocent eyes, looking up at him, forgetting her pain, forgetting her imprisonment, forgetting her fear, telling him she wanted him and him alone.

They worked again to break him, of course. They had already done their worst--already kept him here for years of torture, already cut him open again and again, already put in hot, searing metal. And yet they measured him and cut him and measured more, drawing lines, drawing pain, drawing confessions of things he had never done: he had raped her; he had tortured her; he had wanted to do it again and again until she was dead with him inside of her.

So in the end it wasn’t the pain that made him at last forget entirely that thing they wanted to make him forget most: that he was a man. It wasn’t the pain; it was their words. It was these things that they told him. They had done it on purpose, they said. It had all been engineered. Now she was dead; she was a whore; she was ruined; she called his name; she bled; she bore children; she masturbated for their pleasure; she miscarried--and somehow, worst of all, she had forgotten him.

There was shame in that--that her forgetting him was worse to him than her hating him and reviling him, than her ruination or death. It was true, what they said: he wanted his mark on her; he wanted her to hold his name because he could not; he wanted someone in the world to know that he was a man and that he had lived. He wanted to touch another person, to have been touched. It was strange that the person who could do that was a woman who couldn’t be touched at all.

They didn’t ever give him another woman. They knew he would kill her, and what was the point of that? They would lose a possible brood mother and he would be satisfied that his pity had saved someone, and there would be nothing they could do about it. Instead, to torture him, they whispered these words that crawled like snakes through his ears, until he didn’t know what was truth and what were lies.

The idea of her did not leave him. She stayed, twisted, distorted, until he knew that whatever he had been, he had never been a normal man. He had always been an animal. He had always been less than an animal. He had always been sub-human, to be able to do what he had done to that child.

He still wanted her, that was part of what was wrong. They had reminded him of sex and all that it could do and sometimes now it was all he thought of--but he did not bother remembering the countless, faceless women who might have spread their legs before. What he remembered was her. She was the only fantasy that brought him pleasure, and when he began to listen to their words, and learned that he had raped her, used her, pained her, killed her, fucked her--he still wanted her. He wanted her sweet, child-face, her soft, dark eyes, her tumbling hair, her bony little ribs and shoulders, her young breasts and tight virginity, clutching around him as if to save itself this final violation. He wanted the hope and strength that had seemed to shine in her eyes--and he knew he must want it so that he could twist it into something as dark and terrible as himself. He was only an animal, after all. There was nothing more he could want it for.

He did not think of the infant that might have resulted from him taking her. If he did, his thoughts were only to destroy it, to kill it as quickly as possible, to save it this life and this world. It would not be mercy. It would be selfishness, doing to it what he could not do to himself.

In the end, the very end, when all vestiges of humanity were gone, he forgot her. He wrapped her up in his mind and did not let her out. Had he still had the capacity for rational thought he would have said it was because the animal couldn’t understand something like what had happened. In his hate, his misery, his despair of that animal inside of him, he would have been right, but not in the way he thought. In the end, the very end, the animal saved him, protected him and protected her, the memory of her, pulled his mind into a darkness so deep he wouldn’t be able to remember what had happened and thus damage that spark of light he’d once had.

---

Weight of Portent chapter 3


“This is it.”

“Where are we? I thought you were going to take me as far as Laughlin City.”

“This is Laughlin City.”

She squinted and tumbled out, pulling her bag with her. In the process, her hood pulled back a little, revealing two locks of white hair. The trucker watched, eyes narrowing, as she hastily pulled up her hood again. His eyes then fixed on her gloves--not cold weather gloves but fancy gloves, made so the fingers could move agilely--but her eyes steadily met his. He shrugged. It wasn’t his concern. He was rid of her now.

She followed him into the only alive structure in town--the smoky, ill-lit bar, with buzzing neon lights and out-of-date posters advertising various types of alcohol. The twang of music was lost in the crowd--a boisterous, sweaty, smoky crowd, pressing in against a cage that was almost blue with empty smoke and haze. She wondered if this was what she was searching for. Marie had been searching for what seemed like all her life.

She was drawn into herself, assaulted by several minds that attempted to beat back her soul and gain control. With so many people inside her, she had not even begun to try to deal with individual people on the outside--in every sense of the word, she was unable to touch others, unable to reach out. She could never get too close; she could never grow to care too much; she could never show herself too much--skin might brush skin; minds might brush minds, and people she almost cared for would learn who and what she was and hate her for it.

Marie had been searching, all these years, for a touch.

Her first thought, six years ago, when they took her away from him, was that she shouldn’t have let him take her. If it had been any other, she would have let him, so she could live. But this man had been so utterly and completely selfless, gentle--kind, even. He’d done it because she’d asked him to, not because he’d been willing to, and he’d made it as good for her as possible.

She had killed him for it, just for the hope of his seed so that perhaps she could live, and selfishly, just for that touch of his skin inside of her. She’d cursed her skin and she cursed herself and most of all, she had cursed Logan, who she believed she had killed. Her hair had whitened with his age and she had so much of his pain and rage inside of her that she had wanted to die.

She had hidden that part of him within herself as she had hid all the others, unable to bear this particular mind’s pain just as she had been unable to bear the product of that single heinous act, losing it early in puddles of too much blood. The child had never lived; the man was dead; and through it all, she still hoped to live, and despised herself for it.

A possibility haunted her, and in some ways, a new hope had driven her. They wouldn’t have given her to him if they thought he could die so easily. They wouldn’t waste him like that. Besides--how to kill him? He was invincible. He might--perhaps--still be alive. But directly after her conception they had transferred her to another facility, and shortly after her miscarriage, she had escaped in the confusion of this second holding place shutting down--in no official way; military officials and scientists scattering like cockroaches in sudden light, leaving their subjects to their own devices. Perhaps someone had exposed the atrocities taking place in bases like that, but she never quite knew what had happened, and had no idea what might have happened to the first base, whether it still stood, whether he was still there.

She had absolutely nothing to go on, and yet she searched. It was not merely lost hope and willful innocence; she was less naïve now, more street-wise. She had learned a measure of strength and control, dealing with the other minds in her head--both physically and mentally. She knew how to deal with men when they approached her, and, for good measure, she could almost make them not approach her at all. She knew how to steal and live hand to mouth and drop a place and job at the whisper of a word--or hint of the name she was looking for. She worked here and there, had friends, almost, who tried to look out for her even as what they called wanderlust struck her and made her move on, ever away from anything she could become too close to, always away from a place she might begin to love.

Despite her good sense and ability to take care of herself, she was driven by this need to search for him. It was only when she thought of his touch that she felt like herself. In these upper reaches of Canada she was a child to be looked after, a thief that slipped in and out of shadows and made you want to protect her without quite knowing why, a lost girl with a southern lilt, gloves, and white hair that immediately marked her. But somewhere deep inside of her she was a woman who wanted to be touched, wanted all of her secrets to be understood, wanted, more than anything, to at last be set free.

He could do that, she knew. She spent nights dreaming of his touch, dreaming of his hands coursing over her, dreaming of his mouth against hers, dreaming of his touch inside of her, all over her, giving her both peace and desire in a way she could not find elsewhere. They were children of the same nightmare, she believed, and he was the one that could save her. He could liberate her from her yearning for his touch. And so she searched.

Suddenly, it got almost too easy. She worked for a week as a waitress here, a week as a maid there, picking up cash, and suddenly, heard a word that made her pause: Wolverine.

She had seen his tags those many years ago, but--What sort of twisted fool kept the name the devil gave him? It marked him, surely, and named him, so that in the end a bodiless hand could extend its long, icy fingers, and drag him away from her all over again. She had followed the name anyway.

She had hitch hiked, bummed rides, used her little cash, stolen when she had to, following the rumor of that name. The truckers knew all about it, and they liked to talk: “Yeah, the Wolverine, sure. I know him. Big fella. Cocky as hell. Doesn’t speak much. Real animal in the cage. Invincible, they say. Never a scratch on him.”

She would have followed any lead she got, but that last—‘never a scratch on him’--really made her sit up and take note, made her think she had at last hit on something. When the truckers had spoken she had listened for clues as to whether this Wolverine was indeed the man she was looking for, not clues as to whether he was *not*. She hadn’t heard it when they told her he was ruthless, and animal, a real killer, if anyone’d ever give him the chance. She’d just heard ‘Wolverine’ and ‘invincible,’ and had thought she had found what she was looking for.

Now, here in this bar, she immediately knew that she was in the wrong place. She had followed the wrong man. This could not be who he was. This could not be what he was.

The need was sudden, immediate, urgent. She had to escape; she had to get out. She had to leave before she caught a glimpse of the animal in that cage.

But some morbid fascination kept her rooted--she was a single, still face in the midst of dozen of distorted ones: a calm, clean pool unrippled by waves crashing against it.

The body that finally stood straight, cracked its neck, and become visible to her was in some sense, the same way. His back was something still, something powerfully defined in the midst of these formless shapes that shifted and reformed around it, as if it was the focal point of everything in her world. It was steady, sure, the only thing really existing in the room, precisely in the way that strong, certain hands had once been her only reality as she melted shapelessly under them.

He was the king of the cage. He was a ruthless fighter that made a living by beating the life out of other men. He was without compunction in doing so; he liked doing it, even. The savior she had searched for so long was anything but the gentle, selfless touch she remembered. He still had the tags around his neck—like an animal, as if he accepted the fact that that’s what he was, as if he was proud of it.

She was a little fool. She had spent years dreaming of that touch, but what did she know of the man behind it? All that she had of him was some fantasy that she had created, without real definition or limit, now that she actually considered it. She had had a childish idea that he would fix her and make everything better. The truth was, she knew nothing of him. What her mutation had pulled from him she had hidden away, unable to look at it because it contained too much pain, and because it contained that most anguished, most beautiful moment of her life--when she had wanted him and he had touched her.

And even as her dreams of this man shattered into pieces at this sight of him, of a man who made a living by causing pain, of a man who seemed to have no gentle edges, who didn’t have a care in the world or give a fuck about anybody--even as she saw him, her desire rose in her. She would have known him by this, even if she had not recognized that stance, that back, that hair, those tags. She would have known him by the wetness growing between her thighs, by the way her stomach and nipples tightened into little knots, by the way her mouth fairly watered at the sight of him. In the years since she had last seen him, nothing had made her feel as completely a woman as she knew the sight of him could.

And she knew that no matter who he really was, his hands still have the power to touch her. Something in her, somehow, felt that she even deserved that.

---

He didn’t recognize her. He hadn’t recognized her in the bar, where he pretended to watch the TV and she watched him, and shrieked a word to save him the pain of a knife. And he hadn’t recognized her when he wanted to leave her there in the cold, snowy street; he hadn’t recognized her when apparently he’d grown a conscience, somewhere between the whiskers and the cigar. He still didn’t recognize her. Perhaps it was the fact that she was older. Perhaps it was the white hair. Perhaps he had buried her too deep, beneath other memories that were more painful, more important than she was.

Why did she think he would remember? Why did she assume she was the only one? They probably brought thousands of girls in there; he certainly had the energy for it. Maybe he had made all of them want him. She didn’t blame him, not at all--he had suffered so much. Why bother to remember her? Why care for her little, sniveling, endless and searing desire for the touch of him to burn into her once again?

She already knew how stupid she’d been to assume he’d be her knight in shining armor and take her into his arms, telling her how sorry he was, how long he had searched for her, how he wanted to make it up to her in any way possible. She felt twice the fool now, hitching a ride though she knew it was dangerous, riding silently beside a man of whom she could ask nothing if he didn’t recognize her.

It was not as if she could tell him. She did not want to repeat what had happened in that black box, not ever, both because it was something sacred and something terrible. She had allowed herself to revel in the memory of his touch, it was true, but she did not take pleasure in the reality of what had happened that day. And to have to relive that reality was something she could never do, no matter how much she wanted from him.

And yet, this could not be the end of the road, either. She had not searched so long and so hard for it to end this way; she would ride out the tension she felt in the air and see what came of it. She wavered between pity, revulsion, and uncertainty--knowing, somehow, that she didn’t quite know what she was dealing with, and yet still feeling as if she deserved something from him--and so above everything else, she was determined. “I’m Rogue,” she said finally.

Apparently he could sense she wasn’t about to give him an ounce of Marie, because he snapped derisively out of the corner of his mouth, “What kinda name is Rogue?”

“I don’t know. What kind of a name is ‘Wolverine’?” She was fishing, trying to understand he was and what he could be, trying to understand what kind of man or animal let someone mark him with something as good as metal collar around his neck, naming him and branding him and owning him.

He didn’t answer. Maybe he had a right not to. She had been in the labs for maybe a couple months, and she knew--because of the tags, because of what the scientists had told her--that he had been in there years, and she didn’t even know how long he had had to stay after her. Certainly, worse things than her must have happened to him. She’d seen the claws, knew what they were, knew that they had been added sometime there, knew how they had added them, and knew the voice that had laughed as they had done it to him. So much had obviously happened to him, and the twisted fact of the tags was proof that somehow it hadn’t ended. “When they come out—does it hurt?”

His mouth was stiff as he said it. “Every time.”

No wonder he didn’t recognize her; much more had been done to him than being forced to take a woman. It might have even afforded him some pleasure through all those dark days. He might not even care. Why would he even bother to remember? Any ounce of humanity he might have had was more than likely gone—with good cause, but still gone.

And yet the fact remained that he had touched her, and his body had wanted her. She still wanted that touch; she still wanted something from him, and she realized she might be desperate enough to try to get it any way she could, no matter who or what he was.

---

‘Does it hurt when they come out?’ The little catch in her voice raked across his mind like a virus, making him forget for a moment his frustration in deciding whether to take her or just hold her—or, what seemed to be the most reasonable option, to just leave her alone, because she was beginning to confuse the hell outta him, and the Wolverine didn’t like being confused. Her voice wormed little holes into secret places, awaking things—images, feelings, nothing definite—that he hadn’t known were there, and his answer was suddenly unguarded.

The smell of her had begun to fill his camper--the smell that was somehow sweet and almost fresh, despite the months of road wear on her. The smell bothered him, tugging at memory, at desire, at a darkness deep inside him better left forgotten. The scent of her made the air heavier, somehow, and the heaviness felt like waiting. There was a scent of anticipation, and it made him downright anxious.

There’d been something strange about her from the very beginning. Maybe he’d sensed it in the cage and that’s why his senses had flared up--becoming hyper-aware, just as they do when something was about to attack him, ultra-sensitive to little sounds and tiny movements. It wasn’t just because he had wanted her; he was sure of that now.

Later, in the bar, he had been able to tell that there was something about her that bothered him, something that wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was the way she had watched him, he had thought, eyes flicking up to the mention of mutants on the TV screen from moment to moment. When she’d shrieked a warning and hadn’t really been surprised at the revelation of his claws, he’d thought he’d figured it out. She was a mutant too. Go figure.

But the strange feeling had been thicker than ever as he drove away from her standing on the road, leaving her after dumping her out of his trailer. The air had felt heavy even then, as if something terrible was waiting to happen. And strangest of all, he’d felt his chest tighten at the idea of leaving her there, alone, in the cold, freezing to death.

When she’d gotten into the truck that strange feeling had increased tenfold. She’s asked him for something to eat and he’s wished he had more to give; she’d taken off her gloves and suddenly he’d been worried by how cold and frail her hands looked. He wanted to touch her, to warm her up. He wanted--inconceivably--to make her feel good.

Instead she’d jerked away, and there was silence. He didn’t ask about that, didn’t bother. There was a code that you knew if you’d been on the road--you didn’t ask questions and that way, you didn’t get asked. That didn’t mean this goddamn smell didn’t bug the hell out of him. He wanted to know who she really was. He wanted to know why she seemed so familiar, and yet so remote. Like someone he had known in another lifetime. He’d wanted to ask her name--Rogue, like hell. Her alias was stupid, and it was in the way. He didn’t ask, however, same as he didn’t ask her about the gloves or weird hair that he was pretty sure wasn’t just dyed. He’d asked where she was heading but she’d just shrugged, so he hadn’t asked more. He wasn’t that surprised at her silence--she sure as hell wasn’t gonna ask about *him* after he’d released nine inches of adamantium in a seedy bar--he was just ticked, and confused.

Like now, she was drawing off her hood and shaking back her hair, turning to face him. He didn’t know what the hell she expected; he just knew that when she started to take off that cloak every instinct deep inside of him told her to keep taking it off, first that, then the clothes--take it all off; let me see you, baby. Her body, anyway, was how he liked it--generous hips, full, small breasts, the lips of a woman in the face of a child. The face was what he couldn’t get past--her body made him want to screw her--hard--and her eyes made him want to protect her--and to his mind, those two actions were pretty much diametrically opposed.

He didn’t need this. He didn’t care if every primal instinct in him screamed that he should make her his--there were plenty of women more willing than this little piece probably would be. He never fancied women who weren’t willing. Even if he spotted a downright ringer with legs to wrap around him twice he didn’t bother to try to get her interested if he couldn’t smell she was already wanting him. There was something in him that recoiled at the idea of making a woman want him, of touching her and getting her hot for him, in slowly seducing her with his hands and mouth. When he wanted it he wanted it right away, and after that, he either wanted it again, or wanted her to get the hell out; and along with both options he usually wanted a shot of whiskey to chase the taste of her down.

And he certainly didn’t need someone to protect. He had enough trouble covering his own ass, thank you. Besides which, he couldn’t remember ever wanting to protect anyone before, and the fact that there was something different about her, something that wasn’t familiar in the natural way, but in a way that called deep down into him--well fuck, it scared the shit outta him, and he wasn’t about to let some little slip of a girl make him get all worked up--about himself or about her.

He didn’t ask her any more questions--but code or no, if her scent didn’t stop fucking with the feel of the air sometime soon, he was resolved to just boot her out altogether.

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Go to: Young and Ancient: chapter 4