Chapter Nine: Truth
I’d fight for you
I’d lie for you
Walk the wire for you
Yeah, I’d die for you
~Bryan Adams
Every minute was torture. Worse than endless nights of vivid memories brought sharply back to life, he had watched it all in silence. Waiting…hoping…praying that the moment would come, when he could release himself from this hell on earth.
She had been drugged, bled, drugged again…her head rolled languidly to the sides as she tried to fight the medicinal urge to give in, to spill her secrets for these bastards. But he knew she would never break. They could drain every drop of blood in her body, but they could not turn her into a traitor. It was a simple fact, to Logan at least, sure as the sun rising in the east.
Whatever they were doing with her blood, something had gone awry. Logan could see the scientists working in a small glass-enclosed lab, running their hands over bald spots and shouting at one another. Logan nearly allowed himself a small, knowing smile.
Only Ororo could drive a man that crazy.
He glanced at her for maybe the third time in the last several hours. He had always feigned indifference when it came to captures, preferred to let them all think it was the thrill of the hunt that got his rocks off. They’d never known how many mutants were freed because of his interference. For some reason, that thought always brought Logan a wave of comfort from somewhere inside he had assumed was long dead.
No matter what happened next, he had done right by his “people”. He had destroyed everything he loved for the “greater good”. Damn it, he really was letting these geeks get the best of him.
If he were truthful to himself, he had really done it for himself. To find a shred of self-worth after so much evil betrayed by his hands.
Ororo was held to what looked like a modified dentist’s chair. Her arms and legs were strapped down with flimsy metal clamps. When it was time, he could easily free her. The blow to the back of her head meant to “calm” her during the near-shoot out in the common area had not broken the skin, but it had left her vulnerable to their will. She had several puncture wounds on her arms from the various needles they had used to draw blood. They had not even bothered to bandage her, leaving swollen bruises and trickles of blood.
She no longer resembled all that was good and clean and bright in his dark world. He desperately wished to return her to that, replace this deity so he could worship properly.
The door to the lab slammed open, a handful of researchers talking in various clipped tones filed out, most looking frustrated to the point of insanity. Logan held a smirk firmly in check. Even his lover’s blood refused to cooperate. That had to be some sort of record.
“Any luck?” Rankin asked from beside Logan, where the two men had been watching over their prize.
A short, fat man with dark eyes glared up at his “boss”. “We can’t get the damned mutant gene to stabilize. It completely beaks down once it’s out of her body.”
Rankin let loose a string of exasperated curses. “Why?”
The other man shrugged, casting a curious glance at Logan, who studied the pair intently. “Its something in the way her mutation works. It’s not just bits and pieces, her entire body is suited for it. Unlike the kid last week, with the luminescence control, I can’t isolate this and keep it stable.”
For weeks Logan had heard rumors about experiments on mutants. He knew they had all been examined, but no one really knew the purpose behind it all. Somehow, he knew this would not end well. Why would terrorists want to know how to isolate a powerful mutant’s genes?
“Well, how are you going to fix this?” Rankin demanded, looking more agitated by the minute.
“I’m not sure. We’re going to get some coffee and come back to it,” the scientist clapped Rankin soothingly on the shoulder before following the rest of his team out of the building.
When they were gone, Rankin turned to Logan. “I can’t believe this! We’re so damned close!”
Logan seized the opportunity and carefully met the other man’s eyes. “To what?”
Rankin’s scowl turned to a slow, sinister smile. Logan had to take a step back, his keen, canine senses warning him of impending danger. Normal humans were one thing…insane ones were a whole new ballgame.
There was a madness in Rankin’s dull green eyes, a hypnotic insanity that seemed to scream for release. Logan instantly began reformulating his plan to get himself and his unconscious lover out of harm’s way and back to their abandoned family.
“You don’t get it, Logan,” Rankin said in a hollow voice as he turned his attention to Ororo. “You never have.”
Logan, his protective nature forcing him to circle Ororo’s inert form opposite his nemesis, never changed his facial expression. “You hate mutants, what’s so hard about that?”
The other man reached out, touching a lock of the woman’s dark hair as he spoke. “It’s not fair to the rest of the world, you mutants. You get to do things we can only dream of. God obviously made some sort of mistake, creating you. His babies, His favorites. He forgot about the rest of us.”
As Rankin spoke, he touched Ororo’s face, making her weakly flinch and draw away.
Logan slowly reached for the gun he’d tucked into the waistband of his jeans, looking about to ensure no one else had remained in the area unseen. A quick sniff to the air told him they were alone… His thought process abruptly stopped. Rankin knew.
“Do you think we asked for this?” Logan said evenly, knowing that calling attention to the fact that he’d just been “outed” would only make things worse.
“No, but you have done nothing to stop it, to help the ones forgotten by our Lord. So, I intend to even the playing field.”
“Seems pretty even to me. You out number us, hold all the real power.”
Rankin looked up at Logan, fire and hatred in his eyes. “Power? You have no idea what power truly is.”
He fisted his hand in Ororo’s short hair, drawing her head sharply back so Logan could see her pale face. The woman moaned softly through her haze, Logan’s pulse snapping to a quick pounding with restrained fury.
“She is the real power,” Rankin kissed Ororo’s forehead almost tenderly. “With her powers, she could rule the entire world…but she follows the teachings of an old cripple, ignoring the gifts He gave to her.”
Horror and cold dread seeped into Logan’s heart. Everything that happened in the last year came flooding back to him in a single instant. Jeffery and his father, the kid he’d killed in cold blood, pulling Ororo’s limp body from her mangled car…
“You sent them after her,” he said quietly. “You wanted them to bring her to you, so you could…become her.”
“Oh, you aren’t as stupid as you look, Wolverine,” Rankin said, still looking down at Ororo’s face, touching her as a loving father would.
“Why her? Why not the Professor or Jean? They’re just as powerful.”
“No,” Rankin whispered. “To control minds, that is a strong gift, but this girl…she controls the very world. Anyone can resist a telepath if they have the will, but no one…NO ONE can resist the fury of the elements.”
Logan pulled the pistol from his jeans, cocking the hammer back quickly. “You can’t take her gift…wouldn’t God have something to say about it?”
Rankin chortled. “My dear boy, I have perfected the art of stealing powers from mutants. She will fall, as the others before her. And then I will release the power over the weather. I will reign over mutant and human alike.”
Neither man spoke for a long moment. Logan glanced to the windows, wincing when he noted so many milling around outside. They would hear the gunshot and come running. But he knew this was his chance. He had to get them both out of here.
“I hate to kill her,” Rankin crooned. “She could have ruled beside me.”
Logan felt the man’s eyes on him, glowering with hatred. “You destroyed it. She was supposed to be mine. But she fell for you. An animal. Barely worthy to stand in her presence.”
A soft whimper interrupted Rankin’s raving. Glancing down at Ororo, Logan noted her eyes trying to flutter open. He had to move fast, get Rankin away from Ororo.
Inhaling deeply, Logan settled the pistol against his side and smiled broadly, wickedly. “So that’s why you let me get so close? Felt good to know I wasn’t with her, that it? You knew if I was here, I couldn’t make her scream my name I had her naked body under mine?”
With a roar worthy of Wolverine, Rankin leaped from Ororo’s side, tackling Logan to the dirty floor. Logan instantly flipped them both over, straddling Rankin’s thighs and drawing back an adamantium-laced fist. For the first time in months, he hit someone as hard as he could.
The echoing crack of breaking bones felt oddly comforting, so he did it again. And again. Howling with rage, he released every pent up worry, fear, and rage he had kept in check for so long.
This man had wanted Ororo’s powers, wanted her and for that innocent blood was on his hands. Uncontrollable tears coursed down Logan’s face as he recalled the young man he had killed in Colorado. A lackey that had been a lamb to the slaughter for another man’s ambitions. Innocence shed in the name of hatred, the lust for power.
Raging, screaming, Logan did not stop the onslaught of his feral blows until the first gunshot.
Grunting through the sharp pain, he heard the muffled shouts and clicking of weaponry from outside. They were going to open fire completely in seconds.
He threw himself off of Rankin’s lifeless body, toward the still form of his beloved.
Snikt!
His claws freed for the first time in weeks, he snipped the metallic bonds that held Ororo in place, catching her weakened body effortlessly. Laying her on the floor, hopefully sheltered from the bullets, he took up the rifle Rankin had set aside some time during their long vigil.
“’Ro? Now’d be a really good time to show me some of that tenacity,” he called over his shoulder, loading the rifle quickly.
The breath was pushed from his lungs as the rapid sound of semi-automatic weaponry shot through the building. Glass shattered mere seconds before the bullets imbedded themselves into Logan’s body.
He glanced at Ororo, who remained still and lifeless. “Baby, come on!”
Snarling through the pain and blood, he raised the rifle and returned fire. When he ran out of rounds, he sent another volley with the .9mm in his hand. There was screaming, the scent of death permeating the air already. Everything had gone to hell. Again.
The second round of fire tore through Logan’s body as he tried to shield his helpless lover. There were too many rounds, too many guns. He dropped the pistol in his hand, falling to the floor in front of his love.
“’Ro…” he whispered, reaching for her.
Rankin was right about one thing. She was powerful. She was damned near god-like when she needed to be. And for the first time in his life, he had to admit that he needed help.
Shaking her shoulder gently, he spoke in a low, pleading tone.
“Darlin’, I know I’ve done wrong, but I’ve tried to make it right. Maybe I just fucked it up worse…but I’m telling you now,” he choked on the blood rising in his throat. “I can’t do this without you. Help me.”
She twitched slightly. Logan swallowed over the oozing blood as yet another volley of gunfire whipped through the building. There was nowhere to run as the glass around the lab shattered, raining down on them.
With a growl, Logan further covered Ororo’s body, trying to catch as many of the bullets as he could. He had lost count of the injuries, hoping his famed healing factor would keep him alive long enough to do something, anything.
“’Ro, please. I need you to wake up. I need you to be stronger than me.”
Slowly, almost dreamily, he saw those familiar blue eyes open. Her gaze cleared, horror filling them almost immediately.
“Logan…” she whispered weakly, reaching for him.
He could smell the blood and knew he must look like something out of those horror movies Bobby insisted on watching all the damn time. He tried to smile, his ears twitching at the sound of the Friends reloading outside.
Taking her tiny hand in his, he squeezed it gently. “I need your help. I can’t…I can’t do this alone.”
Another grunt of pain followed the fourth round of ammunition that found a home in Logan’s weary body. Ororo cried out, scrambling to sit up, to protect him. Logan slumped over into her arms, looking up at her with a small smile.
“Stop bein’ girly and get us out of this mess.”
She rewarded him with a small smile of her own, forcing her body to move. She leaned closer to him as the gunfire stopped, the clicking of clips reloading like something out of a bad movie.
“You need not worry,” Ororo said as she kissed his lips. The warm smell of her gave him hope, peace, at least if he died, it wouldn’t be alone as he long feared. “I am going to save you this time.”
“Less talk, more rain,” he said back as she pulled herself to standing.
“Quiet, I am working.” He chuckled at her attempt at humor as she let her eyes turn to white.
Without another word, the skies instantly blackened ahead. Logan smelled burning ozone and the fresh scent of rain a moment before the winds hit. Ororo stretched her arms out, palms up and lifted herself effortlessly into the air.
The Friends of Humanity would probably be screaming about this one, but the mere sight of her in all the elemental glory was worth it.
The winds were so strong, so fast; that the rickety wood structure, already weakened from the gunfire tore up around them. Debris followed Storm as she spun aloft, whipping the winds and terrible rain up with her. Logan, however, was shielded from her fury. She kept he eye of her storm around him. Like a thick wool blanket in the dead of winter it was warm, comforting, safe.
She was screaming in her native tongue as she brought lightning down through the thick walls of wind that her made up her tornado. Logan watched her, only her, as she destroyed the small city around them. He could feel the blood soaking the floor beneath him.
He wasn’t healing fast enough.
The last thing he could see as the blackness overwhelmed him was the sight of his beautiful weather goddess held aloft in her element. The lightning seeming to come from her hair, the winds caressing her as a lover’s hand, the rain washing away all of the fear and doubt…
In the back of his mind, he thanked whatever gods he could think of that she was the last thing he would ever see.
~@~
Peppermint. Flowers. Burning ozone. Lab cleanser.
“Logan?”
A woman’s voice. He sniffed again, relieved the smells returned. Scents of home and comfort.
“Wolverine? Can you hear me?”
Someone was shining a light in his eye. He shifted, then grunted with pain. Everything hurt. Everything was too loud, too much.
“I’m supposed to be dead.”
His own voice was scratchy, unnatural. He opened his eyes slowly, carefully. A huge, furry, blue face was frowning at him, shining a light into his eyes again.
“Hank? Want to get that away from me? Before I turn you into canned Beast.”
There was the sound of soft chuckling all around him. Though his eyelids felt weighted down by two-ton anvils, he managed to keep them open, glancing down at his bloody chest.
“Seems you healed just fine,” Hank McCoy said matter-of-factly. “Though when we arrived, we all feared the worst.”
Logan nodded, understanding. His eyes widened as he glanced around, spotting the ruins of the Canon County chapter of the Friends of Humanity. Everything was destroyed.
Buildings had been uprooted and tossed aside, the ground was drenched with rain, trees scorched by lightning. Logan could see a few unfortunate bastards strewn about the place, either dead or wishing they were.
Ororo had left nothing untouched.
Ororo.
Struggling against Hank, who still seemed intent on examining him, he spotted Jean just beside him, talking with her fiancée in a low tone. They both crouched near a thin, motionless body.
“No,” he choked, shoving Hank away. “’Ro?”
Two sets of soft hands pulled him back. Turning, still weakened as his body desperately tried to knit itself back together, he glanced at Rogue and Jubilee. The fear must have been naked in his eyes, because they let him go almost instantly.
Jean turned to Logan, her eyes still alight with the fire of the Phoenix inside her. Obviously, they had arrived expecting a fight, only to find Logan and Ororo on the ground.
“She’s ok,” Cyclops said softly, jerking his head toward where Ororo lay. “Just exhausted and dehydrated.”
Logan crouched beside his teammate, touching Ororo’s face gently with the back of his hand. She still had smears of his blood on her, her clothing torn and sopping wet from the fury of her storm.
“When we got here, she just fell out of the sky,” Jean was saying gently, her voice filled with sadness. “We could see the storm from miles away. When she saw the jet, it’s like her will just…left her. She dropped from 100 feet.”
“Luckily, Jean just jumped right outta the jet,” Rogue chimed in. “Caught her before she hit the ground.”
Logan looked around at his friends, noting that Iceman and Colossus were a few yards away, looking for survivors.
“They aren’t dead,” Jean said as though reading his mind. “Most just knocked out or injured. Except for one…”
“That was me,” Logan said quickly, his voice hard. “Happened before the storm.”
Jean nodded, as though she had expected it. “The Professor… he wants us to bring you two home as soon as we can. He said you’ve both been away from home too long.”
Logan’s mind instantly filled with images of the mansion. He allowed himself a small smile, the ache to o home stronger than ever. He had done his job, finished his work. Tonight he could sleep in his own bed, see everyone again.
Reaching down, he slid an arm under Ororo’s legs and the other under her shoulders, drawing her into his arms. Though it hurt to even move, he pulled her against his chest and stood, cradling her in his arms.
No one said a word. Logan slowly carried his unconscious love toward the awaiting jet, his family following closely. Cyclops said quietly that they had called the authorities for the tornado victims.
Ororo had caused quite a stir with her F-6 tornado, the first on record. Logan had a feeling she would be none-too-thrilled over it. He would have to tease her mercilessly about it.
With Hank’s help, Logan strapped Ororo into a seat and took the one beside her. Rogue, sitting in front of him, gave him a small smile, reaching over the seat as Cyclops took the jet into the air.
“You’re not off the hook, you know. The Professor told us what was going on, but we’re all too relieved to still be miffed. Give it a couple of days.”
Logan grinned at her, leaning back in his chair and squeezing her gloved hand. “Good, I wouldn’t want to think you’d gone completely soft on me.”
Rogue’s smile was teary as she squeezed his hand in return. “Never. Now get some rest, it’s a bit of a flight before we’re home.”
He watched her turn back to Bobby, then glanced at Ororo.
You hear that, Darlin’? We’re goin’ home.
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