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Chapter 2, “Without a Shadow of Doubt”

1:49pm, Local Time in Kenya…
[Mistress!!]*

[Your Majesty, are you alright??]

[Khaji, keep everyone back, please.]

[Wait”I believe she may be coming around.]

[Hm…w-what happened..?] Her blurred blue gaze blinked up at the people surrounding her, confusion and just a hint of fear paling her usually perfect, sun-kissed mahogany skin.

As the hall filled with priests, politicians and personal attendants stopped cold in their tracks, the tall beauty sprawled on the marble floor lifted one shaky, recently-manicured hand to her own cheek, patting gently at the flushed flesh. The large room was still slightly spinning, so she closed her eyes with a flutter, taking several deep breaths.

[There, there…I’ve got you.] Came the deep, velvet-like voice from above her, and for a moment the woman laying there had no idea who it belonged to. It”and the man leaning over her”quickly washed away the fading memory of hungry lupine eyes & a gravelly voice whose whisper still sent chills up her spine…

With a faltering smile, she couldn’t quite meet the stare of the man cradling her head in his lap, but tried to assuage his concern. [Ahh…I-I’m fine…thank you, T’Challa.]

Before he could protest, she pulled herself up into a sitting position, and as she moved to stand was swarmed by her female attendants, who reached out supporting arms, physically holding her up despite the fact she was now on her feet.

Behind them, T’Challa was slow to rise, resting on his haunches and watching her quietly but masking his worry. His fiancée was a very ‘independent’ woman; despite their long-lived closeness, he knew she would never want to show even the slightest perceived weakness. It was true to her upbringing.

As she kindly but sternly brushed away the hands of attendants, he allowed a small grin; the Ivory Priestesses that raised her would be proud.

Quietly, T’Challa came up behind her, his hand light at the small of her back as he whispered, [I can handle things from here, if you’d rather take a little breather.]

For a brief moment her eyes belied her relief as she glanced up at him quickly before nodding, already gathering her silk gown’s train before her three personal attending maidens could swoop back in.

The formally-dressed group bowed respectfully to the Prince’s intended as she walked by them a little stiffly. Passing by the royal family’s doctor, she avoided the woman’s look of concern and surprise at seeing the young princess apparently none the worse for wear.

Before she could question, T’Challa met her gaze, a silent communication exchanged. As he rejoined the small delegation awaiting his next move, he deftly motioned to one of his Dora Milaje, who slipped out of the door after Ororo…

[I apologize, but unfortunately you will have to forgo the pleasure of Our Lady’s company. I hope spending the afternoon with me won’t be too much to bear.] T’Challa’s charm elicited a round of good-natured chuckles from his guests, who were immediately put at ease by his reassuring smile as well as apparent lack of concern over what had just transpired.

As he ushered the group through the hall toward the elaborately manicured gardens outside the palace, he cast one last look behind him; it was the only indication of his true feelings, but none of them noticed it.



In another part of the palace…
She couldn’t stop. She just couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking.

Perched on the stone bench outside her master bedroom, she had closed off the terrace to her normally welcomed but now meddlesome attendants, clearly hurting some feelings in her attempt to get them to leave her be for a few moments.

Now, as she leaned over, holding her head in her hands and focusing her breathing, the stoic beauty closed her bright eyes against the images flooding back to her mind’s eye. Her pulse nearly beat out of her chest as she pushed back at the feelings that came w/ those images.

His voice…as he whispered how much he wanted her.

His eyes…as he drank in the sight of her naked.

His touch…as calloused hands massaged her body into compliance of his will like no man could ever hope to.

“Stop.” Her harsh whisper cut through the air and she squeezed her eyes closed, clasping her hands before her lips. Amazed, she winced, wondering why her lips were so sensitive…

[Ororo?]

Her heart skipped a beat as she whirled around, having tho’t she was alone. ‘Being by yourself w/ these thoughts isn’t such a good idea, you know.’
Dismissing that, she nonetheless gave the woman behind her a little smile, despite the unannounced interruption. [Khaji. I see T’Challa could not leave well enough alone.]

The athletic young woman cocked her head, perched easily on the edge of the roof over the still-locked terrace doors. Her skin-tight, dark leather outfit from neck to toe looked thoroughly uncomfortable, but she moved with the grace of a feline as she slipped down off of the angled roof to stand behind Ororo. [Did you really expect him to?]

Ororo’s lip quirked at the tone in the other woman’s voice; a cross between amusement and a chiding. Without turning, she could already imagine the 19 yr old”well past her years in experience and intellect”evaluating her for any signs something was off. Khaji’s perceptiveness was usually reassuring…today it was just annoying.

[I suppose not. But you of all people know how I don’t like to be made a fuss over. It was a simple dizzy spell, for goddess sake.]

[Ororo…you were unconscious for over ten minutes.]

Khaji’s brow rose at Ororo’s sudden but barely noticeable pause; a stiffening of her back muscles and a jerk of her head that would’ve been missed if one wasn’t waiting for it. When the other woman didn’t respond to that, the Dora Milaje took a couple steps closer, her waist-length, side-locked ponytail of shiny jet-black hair swishing with her very feminine walk.

They remained silent for several tense seconds, as Khaji waited for Ororo to say something…anything. When it became apparent there was nothing to say, a delicate but deadly hand curved over Ororo’s right shoulder, squeezing. [Is everything alright?]

Staring out over the expansive personal tropical garden that she usually took so much pride in nurturing, Ororo’s eyes couldn’t meet her friend’s. She didn’t want Khaji to see the conflict in her eyes…or that was blossoming in her heart.

She wasn’t sure what had happened to her; there was no sense at all of the jumbled emotions and cloudy ‘dream/feelings’ that seemed more like a tasteless delusion. At that moment, Ororo wasn’t sure of much, let alone the answer to Khaji’s question. She simply couldn’t shake the feeling that something dreadful was headed her way.


---


Days Later; Westchester, NY…
The heavy dark wood door to the Professor’s downstairs study had been closed for almost 2 ½ hrs now, with barely a sound coming out past it. The closed ‘sessions’ were becoming a bit of a ritual, and others among the team couldn’t help but be curious at exactly what was being discussed within.

“How much longer do you think he’s going to do this?”

“Beats me, Sugah. ‘Till the Prof. or Hank can figure out what ‘appened, Ah guess.”

“And if they can’t?”

“That’s not something you need to worry about.” Came from behind them.

Kitty & Rogue weren’t so bothered by Jean’s intrusion as by the equally worried expression coloring her own face as she watched the closed door with them.

It hadn’t quite been a week yet since the small rescue party had retrieved Logan from the African desert, and things were by far not returning to normal. The X-Men’s lone-wolf member could no better articulate what he’d experienced than Charles could delve into his mind to extract it. The usually chaotic mind of one James Howlett had been exponentially fucked over, leaving him edgy, sullen and down-right moody half of the time, while any other given moment he appeared almost at peace.

It was that latter state that had everyone in the mansion looking over their shoulders.

“Jean, what happened to Logan out there?” Kitty asked, not for the first time.

Rogue & Dr. Grey looked over her head at each other briefly, and it took a couple seconds before Jean answered. “Kit, I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that. Professor Xavier is working hard on it, don’t worry.”

Just then, the trio jumped in embarrassment as the door to the study was jerked open, swinging wildly back on its hinges before an audibly growling Wolverine stalked out, only glancing their way briefly before continuing by, toward the lower levels of the mansion.

Rogue covered Kitty’s teenaged ears with her ever-gloved palms in a vain attempt to shield her ‘impressionable’ mind against the string of swear words that echoed their way as he stomped down the hall. “The soonah, the bettah.”

Jean watched the tightness of Logan’s back muscles as he departed, worry etched over her face, before wasting no more time heading into the study. Rogue & Kitty were hot on her heels.

“Charles?”

The Professor looked up from behind his wide desk, still in the midst of finishing notes from his latest ‘session’ with Logan. He stopped typing on the laptop, closing it quietly and trying his best smile”which, of course fell drastically short. “Jean. Marie, Kitty. How can I--?”

“What’s wrong w/ Logan, Professor??” Kitty blurted, her young eyes fraught with a depth of worry Charles hadn’t seen from them since the young woman had first stepped to his school’s door.

He didn’t need telepathy to guess they’d been outside & had seen Logan’s departure. With a gentle smile, like a patient parent, he wheeled himself from behind the desk, choosing his deflective words carefully. “I understand your concern for Logan, Kathryn. Unfortunately, I’m unable to discuss our sessions without his consent.”

“Professor”“

He held up a hand, still wearing his “patient face”. “But…I can tell you that he’s going to need some time. The Wolverine that you found at that crash is not the same man that left here last week.”

“You’re talking about his healing factor returning?” Jean peered at Charles carefully, her expression thoughtful.

“That, and many other things. Whatever happened to him during that crash has had a profound effect on Logan; one I can’t explain and that even he cannot fully understand yet.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Jean laid a hand on Charles’ shoulder, sensing the man’s fatigue.

He squeezed her fingers, giving her a sort of tired smile before replying, “Well, I wouldn’t recommend pursuing the subject with him just yet. It’s taken me 3 days just to get him to talk about it, and still nothing he’s said has made much sense. I fear the progress we’d made these past months may be in jeopardy, unless Logan can begin to unlock the secrets his mind is withholding from him.”

Despite his intentions, Charles could see his words had only made Kitty feel worse for her mentor & friend. He patted the girl on the hand reassuringly, adding, “Just act exactly as you always have, Kitty. We’re all happy to have him back and alive, but the best thing for Logan right now is a sense of normalcy…”

Just then, Peter Rasputin and Bobby flew past the far corridor with some of the younger students in a wild”and completely unauthorized”game of indoor football. Someone yelled out, there was the unmistakable sound of some type of long-range mutant-power exploding in the air, and the resulting sound of something expensive breaking brought all of them up short, and Charles touched his forehead to his hand, rolling his eyes.

“…or, what passes for it around here.”


---


A couple hrs later, Downstairs in one of the Danger Rooms…
He had already run through the computer’s Senior-Level combat scenarios half a dozen times, but still he couldn’t seem to work the edge off of his bad mood. Sitting on the fallen body of one of the men he’d eviscerated, Logan looked around the holo suite’s manufactured replica of the underground bunker at Alkali Lake.

This particular program he’s designed himself, a few weeks after the team’s battle there, when everything had changed so drastically for him. It was the exact battle where he’d been captured and stripped of not only his adamantium skeleton but also his healing abilities, even down to the faces of the soldiers & scientist he had etched in his memory.

He ran through this program at least 10 times a week (more, if he were honest with himself), finding new ways to gut, dismember and otherwise maim the men that haunted his dreams and waking moments when he thought about what he’d lost.

Now that his healing had returned, there was a whole new sense of “fun” in it.

One of the bodies nearby struggled to move, moaning in a chillingly life-like way (just as he asked the computer’s A.I. to design them) as the man dragged himself up, one of his legs obviously broken and undoubtedly suffering from countless other internal injuries. Calmly, Logan stood, turning to the man, who looked up in alarm and immediately reached for his weapon, which of course was going to be no match, but the programmed ‘instinct’ of the A.I. never failed.

The sound of a glock discharging echoed in the room several times as the man emptied his clip into Logan, who barely paused each time the bullets embedded themselves in his flesh. The sound of bone scraping bone as six claws emerged was just as painful as its description. Logan remembered the first time after the adamantium was gone, when he’d forgotten & let them out, how much it hurt. The bony, irregular shapes had a difficult time sliding out of his skin; unlike the smooth metal of the shiny adamantium. This time was no different.

With a feral growl he pounced on the injured man, grabbing him by the neck with one hand while his other fist drove into the man’s diaphragm, puncturing organs. Without the clean slice of the metal, Logan knew he’d have to change the way he fought”the way he killed.

Pushing the man up against the nearby wall, knocking the wind out of him, Wolverine held him by the throat, his wide shoulders pinning the man in place, while he repeatedly retracted and extended his bone claws in and out of the man’s body, turning his insides to hamburger with the quick jabs.

The pain he felt each time they slid in and out melted into the sadistic pleasure he got out of killing the man, and Logan didn’t stop until the man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, choking on his own blood and tissue before his body went limp, sliding down to the floor.

Wolverine watched quietly as the body spasmed several times before it stopped moving. He was covered in blood”most of it wasn’t his own”and his arms hurt like hell, but the satisfaction he was expecting to feel after a few rounds in his ‘favorite’ DR scenario never came.

Reaching down, he stole the soldier’s Bowie blade, backing up to the wall where he leaned against it, sliding down himself to sit beside the dead body. Holding his other hand out, he extended the bone claws slowly until they were fully visible, and with the blade began sharpening the claws & sanding down the irregular spots so they would be as smooth as the missing metal blades.

‘Ya know why this shit ain’t workin’ anymore, Bub.’ He chided himself, concentrating on making the bone as sharp & smooth as possible. Unbidden, a flash of silver-white and blue floated before his mind’s eye. It was fleeting, and he couldn’t see Her face, but he could hear her light, airy laughter reverberate in his ears as if she were there with him.

Truth be told, ever since he’d returned to New York, she had been. In the middle of the night, when he woke up in a cold sweat with a hard cock; during mission briefings in Chuck’s office when he found his mind wandering & he looked outside to the clear, beautiful sky that looked just like her eyes; when he’d try to escape her by taking his usually calming late afternoon ‘hunts’ in the woods on the School’s property, she was still there…

In the trees, in the water; hell the wind even started to carry her scent”that mixture of jasmine, rain & vanilla that he’d not soon forget.

That’s when Logan knew he was going crazy. Judging by the look Charles had given him when he’d finally opened up about it, there was no doubt.

‘Buddy-boy you are off yer rocker.’

“Feelin’ better, ami?”

Logan didn’t look up from his suddenly very important task, but his expression changed just a little to one of mild annoyance that was quickly building. “Whadaya want, Gumbo.”

Remy stayed exactly where he was in the doorway of the Danger Room, arms crossed and leaning against the wall. A half-lit cigarette dangled dangerously from his lip as he spoke, his crimson eyes surveying the room. “Wondered who was takin’ so long in da trainin’ room, is all. Good t’see ya got y’spirit back.”

The high-pitched clack-clack of the blade against his bone claws stopped.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Gambit’s eyebrow went up a little at the menacing tone, and he wondered what nerve he’d unknowingly hit. “Just sayin’ is all. Since y’been back, de Wolverine done come out ‘little more.”

During his statement, Remy could hear Logan’s low growl rumbling up out of his chest, and was suddenly thinking twice of coming to see how his teammate was doing. It hadn’t been his idea anyway, but Rogue & Kitty had wrangled him into it with their blasted charms.

As Logan stopped his sharpening, flipping the blade end-over-end in one fluid motion to grasp blade down, plunging it into the body beside him before standing, Remy swallowed. ‘Ah, sometime Remy think he just need to say ‘No’.’

Still covered in some blood (his own now, as the Danger Room timed-out), Logan began walking with a purpose toward Remy. “End program.”

The room returned to normal, the bodies, blood & gore disappearing. Logan’s hands were bruised, but mostly healed, as he grimaced, the now dangerously sharp & smooth bone claws sliding back into his hands. A little blood dripped as they cut new paths back in, but he seemed oblivious to it as he kept his flint-colored eyes locked on his younger teammate.

As he approached, Gambit took a step back, but his face remained calm; he didn’t seriously believe Logan would hurt him, but he thought he’d be an idiot not to be prepared for anything.

Suddenly Wolverine’s gaze turned forward, and as he passed Gambit, he only muttered, “S’all yers.”

Remy let him get a good two steps farther before he said, “Logan?”

The other man stopped but didn’t turn.

“Is good t’have you back, mon ami.”

There was a pause, and then a very wolf-like snorting grunt before Logan continued out the doors and down the hall to the showers.




Once he was alone again, Wolverine sighed deeply, resting his forehead against the warm porcelain of the shower wall. The water was much too hot, but he was hoping it would either cleanse his senses or beat his body numb; whatever it took to get his mind off of Her.

He shook his head at himself. He didn’t even know who she was, or if, for that matter. Rationale told him that what he’d experienced out there in that desert couldn’t have happened. His body, his instincts & senses”which he’d trusted for his whole life”told him differently.

That's what was scaring him. If he was just suffering from some desert-induced hallucination, Logan may’ve been able to handle that. Hell, he couldn’t think of anything better to conjure up in one’s last living moments. But the fact that he kept thinking about Her, kept imagining seeing her, feeling her, tasting her…

Squeezing his eyes shut, he pushed those blood-boiling thoughts away. He couldn’t imagine why he suddenly felt like some under-sexed, over-imaginative teenaged boy on top of it all.

‘Yeah ya do…’ He chuckled sarcastically, as a flash of smooth brown skin was brought to mind.

It had seemed so real, though. Every beautiful, soft, curvaceous inch of her. And what she’d done with his healing factor…

“You gotta go get 'Some', or something.” He chided himself, shaking his head, standing directly beneath the hot water. He couldn’t be obsessing over a friggin’ hallucination. A mirage, of all things.

Toweling himself off afterwards, Logan made up his mind, determined to get the cloudy, elusive images and feelings of the woman out of his head. He should just be glad his healing factor was back, and leave the whys and hows to people like Charles and Hank.

Damn. Speaking of which…


---


About 30 mins. later, in the MedLab…
“I’m glad you decided to make the appointment.” Henry said dryly, his back to Logan as the door slid open.

“Yeah, yeah, McCoy. I’m late, I know. Let’s just get this over with.” He came over, hopping up on the nearest examination table.

Ignoring the attitude, Henry adjusted his specs, moving over to the panel of gorgeous Shi’ar technology. “Of course. Please remove your shirt and pants, and lay back as still as possible.”

Logan complied with no more complaint, stripping down to his boxer briefs and laying on the unnecessarily cold table. Above him, a machine whirred into life, a bright bluish light shining in his eyes before it started at the top of his head and scanned the length of his body. Logan was beyond uncomfortable, but bit it back; he knew it was his recent run-in with those Dept. H assholes that he kept being reminded of.

At the control station, Henry monitored the holographic results of the scan, his hand supporting his chin as his eyes darted back and forth between two monitors. He knew the instruments only needed one pass, but the results he was seeing made him recalibrate the scan and it went over Logan’s body two more times.

“Is something wrong?”

Hank didn’t immediately respond, but turned to the side, grasping a small paper readout of some calculations he could’ve done in his head, but wanted to make sure of before he said anything. “’Wrong’ would not be the term I would immediately contemplate using.”

“Spit it out, Doc.” Logan barely waited for the scanner to leave him alone before he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the table to dangle, leaning toward Hank.

Shaking his head, Henry pointed to the slip of printout in his hands. “Due to the nature of your recent…accident, I thought a comparison study between your last physical and the results of the first molecular DNA scan I performed upon your return last week would yield a conclusive answer to the ambiguity surrounding the re-emergence of your healing factor.”

“Uh…huhn.” Logan’s eye brow went up, his hand motioning McCoy to continue in an impatient way.

“However, these samples I’ve just taken, are slightly different. I had to be sure.”

“Of what?”

“How shall I say this..? From what I have been able to conclude from the comparative studies, Logan…you’ve done a little more than simply regenerate.” Hank took his specs down for emphasis, piercing Wolverine with his gaze.

“Meanin’?”

“Well, take your arm, for instance.” Henry got up, coming over to hold Logan’s right elbow up slightly, evaluating the musculature there as if it was going to explain the secrets of life to him. “Do you remember telling me you thought you’d lost it during the crash?”

“I know I did. You and Chuck thought I was flippin’ crazy.” Logan watched his teammate over his bicep.

“Well, we found no evidence of dismemberment at the accident scene. In actuality, I was simply more inclined to believe your healing factor could have over compensated, regenerating at a much more accelerated rate. But now…” Hank turned back to the panel, where a holographic close-up of Logan’s arm was turning 360°. There was data running into infinity beside the image, none of which Logan could even begin to understand.

“Hank, are ya gonna ever spit it out, or what?” Logan’s ire was building, mainly because he didn’t like the way the doctor was hesitating getting to the point. A flustered Henry McCoy was never a good thing.

“Logan…if what I’m seeing is correct, the tissue scans of your right arm are different from those of the left.”

“Different how?”

“Younger.”

Wolverine’s head turned to the side in a motion very much like a canine. “Come again?”

Hank took his red-light pointer, flashing it at several spots on the image of the arm. “Let me explain. There are certain tell-tale signs, if you will, on regenerated cell structure. It is the way a pathologist, for example, can tell if scar tissue is present on a cadaver for preliminary identification in a post-mortem exam. Well, your scans, typically are slightly different, due to your healing factor. While outwardly it will appear as if this regeneration is brand new, unscarred tissue, deeper analysis would reveal that your healing factor usually only regenerates up to a certain age. For instance, say after a cut or gunshot wound, you will heal with tissue closest to the appearance of the surrounding, unharmed tissue. This is why, we believe, you’ve maintained a substantial hold onto your ‘youth’, despite what we’ve come to find out about your actual age. It’s quite a marvel of genetics, if I do say so.”

Logan ignored Hank’s admiration of his X-Factor, trying to sift through all the ‘Hank Speech’ to get to the heart of the matter. “Are you trying to tell me that if I never got hurt”stabbed, shot, blasted by the Phoenix Force, whatever”that I would be aging quicker?”

“That’s partially correct. In essence, every time your body is injured, your genetic pre-disposition to heal itself sort of kicks into overdrive. Getting shot at age 22 will heal certain cells to age 18, for instance. And so on. The exact back-dating is unknown, but if I had a little more time to study it”“

“Uh, that’s okay. Anyway…?”

“Ah, yes! The point I was coming to. While I can “age” the tissue on your left arm and other parts of your body back to the Alkali Lake physical…your right arm’s cell tissue is something of an anomaly. The tissue dated back farther than any scans I have since you’ve joined the X-Men.”

“Hold up a minute…” Wolverine kind of chuckled, his head swimming with all this information about his healing that he really didn’t need to know, he thought. “…are you tryin’ to say my right arm ain’t as ‘old’ as the rest of me?”

“Basically, the rest of your body is on a different healed age than that arm, yes. But that isn’t all.”

“Well, what else?”

“The ‘age’ of the right arm’s cells seems to be affecting the regeneration of the cells in the rest of your body. In essence, you are ‘de-aging’.”

“How the hell is that possible?”

“Logan, I have no idea.”


---

For the rest of the evening, Wolverine stayed in his bedroom, laid out on the bed, watching the shadows crawl across the ceiling. His exam with McCoy had his mind reeling. Henry had insisted on taking some biopsy samples to do further “comparative analysis” he’d said, and Logan had grudgingly allowed it.

Wolverine didn’t need modern”or alien”science to tell him what he was already beginning to realize: that desert encounter had done more to him than set his hormones back a few decades. He was beginning to understand why he felt so…different. His senses were much more acute. He hadn’t even realized that, despite his abilities, he was still aging, albeit so much slower than your average human or mutant. However, since returning from Kenya, he was left at the end of the day with all this pent up energy, his mind was seemingly so active at the oddest times of day, his already amazing reflexes seemed even more honed, if that were possible…and then there was his libido.

He’d known something was up when he caught himself admiring Rogue’s ass the day before while she was practicing yoga in the den. Marie was a beautiful woman, of course, but Logan could never remember looking at her the way he had that day. She wasn’t “Marie” or “Rogue” or “Belle” or his teammate. She was a piece of tight ass.

Sighing in resignation, he glanced at the clock beside his bed, noticing the time was getting later. Looking back at the ceiling, he thought of the true object of his attention. He couldn’t clearly see her face, but he felt like he knew her so well; like himself. It was impossible to explain to someone who hadn’t been there, but Logan could feel her with him at all times. It was like the sense he got when he entered a room and someone had just been there.

“Who the hell are you?” He sighed out loud, turning on his side to lean near the nightstand and open the top drawer. Carefully he reached inside, taking out a small cardboard box no larger than 4” around. Inside the box, resting on tissue paper, were the remnants of the blue flower he’d taken out of the desert. The petals were still amazingly bright and blue, despite the fact that they were almost a week old. It was the only thing he had to hold on to that convinced Logan he couldn’t have imagined the whole thing.

Could he?



TBC…
*[ ] (Translated from Swahili)





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