Chapter Four: Lost
The greatest man I never knew
Came home late every night
He never had too much to say
Too much was on his mind
I never really knew him
And now it seems so sad
Everything he gave to us took all he had
~Reba McEntire
Fairbanks Memorial Hospital
When a person is taken or vanishes without a trace, there are questions. Police, family, friends, they all want to understand the nature of this intrusion. Nothing can harm a human’s bleeding heart so much as a disappearance without answers. When there is information, whether good or bad, it brings some morbid closure to all those involved.
However, after that person is discovered, whether it is a body found floating in the nearby river or a person merely walking out of the dark woods, there are even more questions. Family, loved ones require some sort of justice. Police need a collar, someone to blame for their own ineptitude. Doctors console themselves with medicinal answers, hoping to piece together what the victim cannot recollect.
And then, there is the victim. Though the entire matter revolves around a singular person, the one stolen in such a crude manner, they are usually the last to gain answers. How? Why? Did I deserve this?
These were the questions on a mutant named Storm’s mind as the pair of Alaskan police officers tried to interrogate her as to her abduction. The sterile hospital room was more familiar now, the day after her awakening, but it still reminded her of evils she had no memory of.
Sleep was a thing of nightmares. Dark faces and sharp pain would draw her all too quickly from peaceful rest. Logan would appear, as if by magic, drawing her into his arms to chase away the bad dreams. She never questioned his presence, or why he had not insisted on returning to New York, but he was a comfort. He was a reminder of all the good she had left behind in her search for solitude.
He was here now, standing in what she mentally referred to as “his corner”. One leg propped on the wall behind him, face set in a grim mask, and arms woven across his chest; his very stance dared someone to push her too far.
“All right, Miss Munroe, can you take through it one more time? Any small detail may help.” The elder, friendlier officer was asking as she focused her attention again.
Inhaling deeply, she cast a glance to her silent sentinel that she was all right for the moment. She could see him visibly relax. Propped up in her hospital bed, she fidgeted with the thin cotton robe, drawing it more tightly around her body. Smoothing long locks of snowy white from her face, she cleared her throat.
“I had come home and made dinner for the dogs and myself,” she began quietly. “I had poured a glass of wine and settled in on the sofa to read.”
“How much wine did you consume?” the younger, sarcastic officer cut in.
“Less than a glass,” she answered promptly. “I was settling in for a peaceful evening.”
“You didn’t have any visitors? A friend? A lover?” the elder questioned gently.
Ororo gave him a small smile, shaking her head. “No. I have few visitors, especially so close to a blizzard.”
“Right.” He nodded, marking something in his book. “What happened next?”
Frowning, she concentrated on drawing up the memory. “Eliar, my male Husky, jumped up from in front of the fireplace. I watched him run from the front door to the back, sniffing as though something were outside.”
“Go on,” the elder officer prompted.
Tears began to sting at her eyes, remembering pain and fear in those last moments she could remember clearly. “I got up, trusting the dog’s instincts and got my rifle from the hall closet.”
“Most of us that live in the wild have one,” the younger officer said, a touch more kindly. “You loaded it?”
Ororo nodded, taking another steadily breath. “Once it was loaded, Andine “ the other dog “ was up as well. Both of them were prowling, growling very low. I crouched in the hall, grabbed for my satellite phone and called New York.”
“Your former residence?” the elder officer flipped a page in his book. “Xavier’s School?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Ororo nodded, licking her dry lips. “I could not get a good connection by the time the door was busted down.”
“How was it brought down? Someone kicked it?”
She shook her head. “It sounded more like a battering ram. Metallic against the wood door. I whistled for the dogs, but they had already fallen on the attackers.”
A shift out of the corner of her eye told her Logan was once again on the defensive. Could he smell her tears, the ones she refused to shed? Or could he read the fear in her body language as it slowly overtook her?
“Can you give a description of these men? How many were there?”
As she rubbed the bridge of her nose wearily, Ororo turned to the younger officer.
“There were at least half a dozen, most of them startled by the dogs. I don’t think they knew about Andine and Eliar. They wore what looked to be uniforms. Dark gray camouflage, sturdy black boots. Their faces were covered by gas masks.”
“You didn’t get a look at their faces?”
“No.”
“Ok, Miss Munroe, what happened next?”
“I…” she faltered, looking to Logan. “I was calling for help, even though I knew the phone wasn’t working. I fired two rounds, but I missed the men moving toward me. I heard Andine yelp and she fell in the hall.”
“Why didn’t you use your powers?” The younger officer raised a blonde eyebrow. “Weather manipulation, isn’t it?”
“Watch it, bub,” Logan snarled from the corner.
“No, Logan,” Ororo cut in. “It is a valid question.”
“Ya don’t gotta answer that, darlin’,” he cautioned before falling silent again.
“I did use my powers,” Ororo said plainly. “Until I realized that they were not working.”
“How’s that?” The elder officer asked curiously.
“Something about the blizzard was affecting them,” she said with a one-shouldered shrug. “I couldn’t get the elements to focus on me. I suppose there was too much turmoil in the atmosphere for them to change course.”
“What a weird mutation,” the younger man said, without any hint of malice.
Ororo offered him a small, indulgent smile. “Yes, I suppose it is a weird mutation.”
“Back on topic,” the older man broke in, shaking his head at them both.
“So, your powers weren’t helping…” mused the younger officer. “Your dog was injured, what next?”
“I was scrambling back into the bedroom, trying to shoot.” Ororo swallowed thickly. “When I ran out of ammunition, I attempted to fight hand-to-hand.”
“But?”
“One of them got close enough to use a tranquilizer gun.” She tilted her head; drawing the collar of her robe down to reveal the puncture wound still bruising. “I fell, and everything went black.”
“You’re doing fantastic, Ororo,” said the elder officer with a smile. “Can you tell us anything about your captors? Where you were taken? How you got away?”
Panic overwhelmed her in an instant as she tried to recall the weeks between the abduction and her escape. Her eyes slammed closed as she tried to fight the urge to flee, to run from the pain of sketchy memories.
“I…”
“Don’t push her,” Wolverine cut in again, this time in a dangerous tone. “I mean it.”
“I remember so little,” she said helplessly. “Pain, and exam tables. Many voices talking at once, not to me, but around me. I begged for mercy, but I cannot remember why.”
“Enough.” Logan said sharply. “She’s done fer today.”
“Mr. Hope…”
“Goddamnit, get out!” He was shouting now and when Ororo opened her eyes, she saw him standing before the two officers, clenching his hands into fists.
Knowing that in seconds his claws would release, Ororo nudged him with her foot. He glanced at her and relaxed a fraction, but she knew he would not cease until the officers were gone.
“It’s all right,” the officer in charge said with a nod. “Mr. Hope is right. You have my card, sir. If you remember anything else, Miss Munroe, please give us a call.”
“Yes,” she agreed instantly. “Thank you.”
“If you don’t mind, we’d like to take a look at the doctor’s findings,” requested the younger counterpart.
“Feel free,” Ororo agreed.
“I wish you a speedy recovery, Miss Munroe.”
“Thank you.”
As the officers turned to leave, Logan glanced to Ororo. “Be right back. Don’t go disappearin’ on me.”
“Scout’s honor,” Ororo promised, holding up her right hand.
When the door closed behind Logan and the police officers, Ororo covered her face with both hands. A single, strangled sob escaped her lips before she scooted down to lie in her bed, clutching the pillow and willing the fractured memories to flee.
~**~
Logan, fuming from the interrogation though he had little right to be, followed the police into the hall. They stopped at the nurses’ station, speaking to Ororo’s doctor. In only a few, quick strides, Logan had his hand on the elder man’s shoulder.
Turning him quickly, Logan glared at him.
“Ya’ve no right pushin’ her,” he snarled. “Ya don’t know what she’s goin’ through.”
“Do you?” The man questioned plainly.
“Yeah,” Logan nodded. “I’ve got 15 years of memory. That’s it. Someone took me, took all my memories. She’ll wake up screamin’ fer years ta come. She don’t deserve it, don’t deserve yer questions. Leave her alone.”
Sympathy, compassion flooded the older officer’s eyes as he stood toe to toe with the Wolverine. Logan released him, knowing that he’d gotten through to the other man.
“I see,” the officer said with a nod. “Look, sir, I just want to find who did to her, why she was taken.”
“I might be able to shed some light on that,” Dr. Forrester chimed in, his voice shaky as he came around to them. “I have her lab results back.”
Both police officers shot a look to Logan.
“Miss Munroe has informed me that I am to treat Mr. Hope as her next of kin. He could probably stand to hear this as well.”
Dr. Forrester drew the trio of men away from the nurses’ station. They stood in a small semi-circle near Ororo’s room, away from prying eyes and ears. Logan’s heart doubled in beat. What had he found? Was Ororo sick? She claimed they had taken something from her, did this doctor know what it was?
“Miss Munroe claims she has no memory of her abduction, right?” Forrester said softly. “That is because someone didn’t want her to remember.”
“What’s that mean?” Logan demanded.
Forrester opened a file, handing it to the police. The elder officer held it open so that his young partner and Logan could read it easily.
“Someone doped her to the gills, for an extended period of time,” Forrester explained as Logan read over a dozen names of drugs he didn’t know. “Her bloodstream is littered with muscle relaxers, pain killers and something with properties similar to LSD.”
“Miss Munroe isn’t a drug user,” the younger policeman said.
“No, every drug in her system is medical strength,” Forrester explained. “Someone without medical training would have killed her with these doses.”
“Yer sayin’ a medical doc did this to her?”
“I’m saying that someone with medical training had unlimited access to her.”
Forrester turned, flicking on a light switch for the panel on the wall beside them. He clipped several X-Rays onto the panel. Logan’s sharp eyes darted over the thin sheets, looking at them carefully.
“She has incision scars,” he offered, pointing to several places on what looked to be Ororo’s abdomen and chest. “At least half a dozen, all expertly executed and repaired.”
“Why? Why kidnap a woman to dope her up and cut on her?” asked the elder officer, clearly disgusted.
“That I don’t know,” Forrester admitted. “I’ve got a specialist looking at these already, she might find something I’ve overlooked.”
“At least we know something,” the younger officer said, anger dripping from his words.
“What’s that?” Logan asked with a raised brow.
“We’re looking for a doctor or nurse, a sick one. I get the weird feeling that Miss Munroe isn’t the only victim fitting this description.”
“He’s right,” Forrester nodded. “I don’t think this was an isolated case, especially given the hospital bracelet we found on her.”
“Right,” the other officer sighed. “We’re gonna go run this down. Mr. Hope, would you like us to place a pair of officers in front of her room?”
Logan, still pondering all of this new information, nodded. “Yeah. I can protect her fine, but even I’ve gotta take a piss now an’ then.”
“And get some sleep,” the officer smiled. “I’ll have guards here in ten minutes.”
Thankful that someone was now on Ororo’s side, Logan held out his hand. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
The man’s handshake was strong, confident. “It’s my job, sir.”
Logan dropped into a nearby chair, staring at the floor as the doctor and police departed. He should have gone home. If he wanted to play his “State Department” card, he could have her MedVac’d to New York in a matter of hours.
But something told him to stay. He wanted to find the bastard that had taken her, but he felt the need to just sit tight. Something was going to happen, something that would only be made worse if Ororo were surrounded by children and friends she’d abandoned.
She looked so frail on that bed, so vulnerable. He hadn’t known that this strong woman could be reduced so fast. He wanted to comfort her, something he wasn’t prone to. She called to him, like a siren to a traveling sailor. Come to me, soothe me, make it all go away.
Though he’d never shown it, Logan was a man deep feeling. So many assumed that because of his ferocity, his link to nature that so few humans could understand, that he felt nothing. He was anger, all pain. But it was far from the truth. He felt so much, so acutely that it often drove him to the brink of madness.
He felt for the woman lying not ten feet from where he sat. No harm should have come to someone who fought for her solitude. All she had wanted was time to be alone, to heal wounds no doctor could ever cause. The scars on her body would heal in time, but those on her heart were still open, still bleeding.
“Logan?”
Looking up, he smiled at the now-familiar sight of young Mary. She had a paper cup carrier in one hand, a bag of what smelled like bagels in the other. All her long hair was pulled up from her neck and she’d obviously not dressed for work.
“I thought you and our ‘Roro could use some real food,” she said, frowning. “Everything ok?”
“No,” Logan shook his head. “Sit down a sec, you need to hear what the doc just told me.”
“Oh, God.”
~**~
By the time Logan returned, Ororo had lost it.
Blood streaked her arm, the IV ripped out in a rage she had never felt before. She’d overturned the bed, thrown medical equipment across the room without remorse. The heavens shrieked her anger, thunder and lightning mingling with hail the size of grapefruit.
Her face was wet with tears, her hair crackling with electricity. She paid no mind to Logan, even as he screamed for her to stop. The monitoring equipment was tossed onto its side, crashing to pieces on the floor.
She turned when she ran out of things to destroy. Logan stood in the doorway, shielding a terrified Mary. The police had already taken up residence inside the room, hands on the pistols at their sides.
Still in a frenzy of rage and pain, Ororo brought her hands up. A hurricane force wind threw Logan, Mary, and the police into the wide corridor. She followed, dropping her hands almost instantly. Sobs wracked her body, tearing from an already hoarse throat.
With a bare fist, she went up and down the hall, shattering the plexi-glass x-ray panels. More blood tore from her veins. Only physical violence was soothing to her in this state. She wanted to hurt the world as she was hurt.
Logan was calling for her, but she tuned it out. Moving down the hallway, her clothing whipping around her as unbidden wind tore at her clothing, she continued her rampage.
Emotion was too thick inside of her to simply swallow. Raising her hands again, she shattered the glass emergency doors outward. Deep inside of herself, she was hollow. How could a human being be so cruel? Why? Why had they done this to her?
With a scream of tortured rage, Storm fell on the nurses’ station. A sweep of her bleeding arms took every file from the counter and tossed it onto the floor. No one came near her, they cowered in fear. She was screaming again, though she had no idea what it is she said.
One of the officers guarding her room came too close. She spun her weary body, heedless to the pain. Two swift kicks had him on the floor, twitching. The same went for dear Dr. Forrester.
Ororo could not control herself, nor the pain that demanded release. She would destroy everything in her wake to sate the desire for blood boiling inside of her. There was nothing anyone could do to soothe her. Nothing would make up for what she had lost. Jean, Scott, Charles…and now this? The Goddess had taken too much. She was not strong enough to weather this storm.
“STORM!”
“Leave me alone!” she shouted in response to Logan.
“I can’t do that, darlin’!”
“Will you kill me?” she demanded, turning to him. “As you did Jean?”
The stricken look on his face proved too much. That was a line she should never cross. She, above all others, had to know what it cost Logan to kill the woman he had loved for so long. But he believed in the dream, in the teachings of Charles, he had done what Jean would have wanted.
Ororo wanted it now. She wanted to die. There was nothing left here on this earth for her. Not even the power of her element, the fury of nature, could balm her broken heart. She met his eyes across the damage strewn on the corridor floor, over the trembling hospital staff and patients, the policemen she had injured.
“Kill me,” she pled with him. “I cannot take more pain.”
“I won’t do it, darlin’,” he replied in a voice that spoke of eternal suffering. “I can’t.”
“Please, Wolverine,” she begged, falling to her knees as the winds died around her.
“No, it ain’t the answer, girl.”
He moved to her, crawling through glass and wire, around the frightened people. Ororo wrapped her arms around her own body, rocking as sobs tore from her weary heart. The thunder ceased, the hail vanished, but the rain fell in steady droplets, mirroring the wetness covering her face.
Logan’s arms, such a source of comfort wrapped around her, but she fought. He would not release her, even as she kicked at him, trying to flee. She begged in that same broken voice for him to end it all, but he refused.
“What happened?” he demanded in a whisper against her ear. “What the hell happened?”
“They took it,” she cried, dissolving in his arms. “They took what I can never take back.”
“What’d they take, darlin’? Tell me,” he continued, rocking her as a father does a frightened child.
Words would not come, so she reached for his hand. That strong, impossibly gentle appendage was brought to her injured abdomen. She flattened his fingers there, pressing his flesh into hers through the cotton of her nightgown.
“Hope,” she whimpered. “They took my only hope.”
Realization dawned on his handsome face, though a hint of confusion still lingered in his dark eyes. She collapsed completely then, trusting him to hold her up, to help her.
As usual, he did not let her down.
~**~
Logan saw that the hospital received an insane donation from Xavier’s Institute after Ororo was sedated. He managed to convince them not to strap her to the bed, though she was placed under heavy guard while he ran about to finish the damage control.
Many in the hospital were told of the particulars behind Ororo’s rampage, but Logan wanted to hear it from the doctor’s mouth. Mary was beside Ororo’s bed, holding her limp hand and whimpering at the silent tears streaking the white haired mutant’s sleeping face.
She’d been bandaged for numerous cuts on her hands and arms, results of the rage she wanted ended by death. He knew something about that kind of hatred, when only the silence of the afterlife could soothe your soul. Her voice still plagued his thoughts, her plea to be killed as he had taken Jean.
He sat now, beside the doctor that had spoken to Ororo prior to her rampage. Doctor Tate was a slim, blonde woman with round blue eyes and a kind smile. Judging by the ring on her finger, she was married and she smelled of little ones. A mother.
“She was pregnant?”
His question was blunt, to the point. He could still feel Storm trembling in his arms, her flat, empty womb under his hand.
Tate shook her head. “No, but she wanted to be. At some point, I mean.”
“I don’t understand,” Mary piped up. “What happened?”
The doctor sighed deeply, standing to move toward the lighted X-Ray panel. She, as Dr Forrester had done, clipped several sheets to the light. Immediately, Logan understood.
“Oh, my God.”
“All these lines,” the doctor pointed to several along what looked to be Ororo’s uterus. “Are scars. Someone cut her open and scoured her reproductive organs. Her Fallopian tubes, ovaries, and uterus are almost completely destroyed.”
“What the fuck coulda done that?” Logan demanded, staring at the pictures in horror.
“A person,” Tate said with obvious distaste. “I don’t why, but I know how. Someone deliberately went inside of her and tore her system to shreds. That’s likely why she claimed to feel hollow, robbed.”
“This couldn’t have been done overnight,” Logan said, clearing his throat. “That’s…”
“No,” Tate nodded. “It likely started immediately following her abduction and continued until the day she was released. The drugs in her system were to keep her from feeling the pain, from remembering what had been done.”
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill that bastard,” Wolverine fairly growled, unable to really dwell on what he’d learned.
“There’s more,” the petite doctor said softly.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” the black haired woman said from Ororo’s bedside.
“Every woman is born with up to a million ova,” Tate said clinically. “They are released one by one over the course of a woman’s life. For some reason, the numbers dwindle faster than a monthly cycle…”
“This is way too much information,” Logan cut in.
Dr. Tate, however, continued unhindered.
“With fertility drugs and certain treatments, you can make a woman produce several hundred eggs at a time. This is often to help a woman get pregnant or to store eggs for infertility treatments.”
“I’m feelin’ a big ol’ ‘but’ comin’ up here,” Wolverine sighed.
“But,” Tate sighed as well. “Someone super-produced all of Ororo’s eggs. And harvested them.”
“What?” Logan demanded, his head spinning.
Tate shrugged, though Logan could see sympathy in her eyes mingling with sorrow.
“From the tests I preformed on her, Ororo is completely barren. Even treatments like In Vetro Fertilization would get her pregnant, but the scarring says she will likely never carry to term.”
“Ya told her this,” Logan surmised. “An’ she fuckin’ flipped out.”
“One of the things all women cherish is the ability to create life,” the doctor said softly. “Someone stole that from her without cause or explanation. I’d fuckin’ flip out, too.”
“It’s like taking a man’s…ya know, away from him,” Mary offered.
“Thanks fer that image,” Logan rolled his eyes, flinching a little.
“Ororo confided that she’d always carried the hope that one day she’d be a mother,” Tate continued.
“They took her only hope,” he finished, swallowing hard. “The one thing she couldn’t handle.”
“Exactly.”
“Damn it.”
The shrill beep of a pager sounded as Logan moved back to Ororo’s bed. Mary was sniffling a little, brushing the wet strands of hair from her friend’s face. He heard Dr. Tate excuse herself, the door clicking behind her.
Unable to think of anything else to do, he pulled up the free chair and sat on the opposite side from Mary. The girl propped her head on her hand, giving him a small, strained smile as her thumb traced Storm’s knuckles.
They were quiet for a long time, giving Logan time to think. He still hadn’t told her that Charles was alive and well and back at the mansion. She’d not spoken to Hank or anyone else back in New York, though they had some explanation to why Logan needed such a large donation to cover up ‘Ro’s damage.
He was lucky that the police seemed to understand her rampage, no one was pressing charges. Dr. Forrester was fine and simply shrugged off any apology. He’d said that someone going through the emotional hell that Ororo was in deserved to strike out a little.
Still, Logan was already arranging for her to be taken home. He sure as hell wasn’t leaving Alaska until he found the asshole responsible for her abduction and injuries. Even if she decided she didn’t want him there anymore, he wasn’t leaving. She’d called for his help and she’d get it, come hell or high water.
Without thinking about it, he reached for her free hand, threading their fingers together as he sat with Mary in the still quiet. Her hands were bandaged , but he could still feel the energy pulsing through him. Hank had said that touching Ororo was like cuddling up to an electric generator. She “buzzed”.
While Hank said he found it a little unnerving, Logan could easily lose himself in the quiet hum. He closed his eyes, lowering his head to the mattress so his nose brushed the smooth flesh of her arm. She still carried the scent of blood, but it was overpowered by the smell of fresh rain and sopping earth.
Lost in that scent, the gentle hum of her skin, Logan slept for the first time in days.
