Unfinished Business, an X-Men movieverse
story by Glacis. Rated NC17, no copyright infringement intended.
For K - It was all her idea.
The Canadian Rockies were cold most of the time. February felt coldest.
It was old stomping grounds for
Unfortunately, he wasn't getting very far. He was beginning to wonder if
it had been worth leaving the warmth behind to follow an invisible trail on the
off chance that it might tell him who he was. Who he'd been.
Why he couldn't sleep at night unless he was alone.
He flipped a scorched, crumbling chunk of plaster away from the drift of
snow that had nearly covered it and stared
half-heartedly into the depression left behind in the ground. Staring at the
frozen mud, sunlight glinted off an ice crystal along the side of the hole, and
his mind flashed back. Fifteen years? Twenty? Before the now. Back in the then.
Water, only thicker, and it tasted bad, and it covered all of him. Pale yellow, or maybe that was the stuff they were drinking, he
couldn't tell with all the bloody bubbles.
All the blood.
Laser fire along his backbone, into his shoulders,
where his hair should have been on his skull, in the soles of his feet. Thick water in his eyes, on his tongue, in his lungs.
Bubbles, inside him where they hurt, outside where they were
hurting him.
Lights, then darkness and echoes of machines and
voices. Straps breaking, giving way leaving tracks of
blood and strips of skin behind, caught in the wires.
Wide brown eyes, startled, then staring, then bright red as the blood flowed
around them, dulling the flash of silver slicing through them.
Freedom.
Confusion.
Ice.
A shiver ripped through him, shaking him from his memories and bringing
him back to the present. He growled, low in his throat. As usual, the tiny
slivers of information he could remember didn't mean a damned thing and left
him no closer to the truth than he'd been when he started.
"Not getting anywhere here," he muttered under his breath.
Might as well head for what passed for home.
For warmth.
Besides. He had to check up
on Marie. See how she was doing. Pick up his dog tags. Tease Jean. See if Chuck
could give him any more tips.
Let Cyke visit his bike.
Grinning at nothing in particular, at least nothing he'd name,
Light splintered on the snow for an instant as the powerful engine
roared into the silence of the Canadian winter high in the mountains. It
skipped from the trail of the motorcycle to the debris Wolverine had picked
over. Muffled in fur and leather, a hand wrote a license plate number on a
small piece of paper and tucked it inside the heavy jacket, where the precious
information would be safe.
A clue. The
ass-end of a long thread. That was all he'd needed. Now he had it. Vengeance
had waited too long.
The wait was over.
"I can ... almost see it." Jean's voice was soft, strained
with effort.
"Control it," Charles urged her just as quietly. "The
power is there. But the conduit cannot be too broad. Fine control,
precision-wielded -- "
"Damn!" Her cry of pain interrupted his instruction and he
reached over, unclamping the Cerebro helmet from her
skull and pulling it swiftly from her head. Her hands reached up automatically
to keep her hair from being pulled out of her scalp along with the metal
helmet. She closed her eyes and sighed, tired down to her bones. "I
thought I had it."
"You were close, my dear," he reassured her, his voice as
gentle as she'd ever heard it. "You're pushing." Do you need to
speak to me about something?
She heard the mental voice at the same time she felt the indefinable
sensation of his mind checking hers for any damage the failed lesson with Cerebro might have caused. No, she denied, knowing
it was useless, also knowing he wouldn't probe any deeper. He wouldn't trespass
without permission, wouldn't expose the truth she was trying to protect.
"I'm tired."
"Then it would be best to wait until you're rested before we try this
again."
Her hand reached out and touched his shoulder, grounding herself. Am I ever going to get this?
Not if you don't believe you will. You have the ability, he reassured
her. You simply must work on your control.
"Not something that comes naturally, I'm afraid," she
admitted.
"Which makes the level you've attained all that
much more impressive." He smiled up at her and she returned it
helplessly. "Rest. Try again in the morning. It's
not out of your reach. Difficult, but not impossible."
"Not with you holding my hand."
"Always, my dear. Now go. I'll see you at
breakfast."
Her hand tightened and she forced herself to unpeel her fingers and take
her leave. It was becoming harder and harder to disengage herself from Charles.
She'd known him most of her life, and for almost all that time she'd seen him
as a mentor, the father she'd never had the privilege to have. The past months
of intensive training on her psychic abilities, being allowed to share things
with him that no one else could, had altered her perception of him. She no
longer saw him as a father figure.
She saw him as a man.
And that picture was interfering with all her preconceived notions of
how her life should be structured. Charles was the person to whom she turned
for learning, guidance, leadership. Scott was for love. Togetherness.
Passion. Ororo was for
friendship, companionship, the closest she came to normalcy. Now those lines
were blurring. When she pictured the categories in her mind, Scott and Ororo blazed as friends in her thoughts. Charles was coming
to embody passion.
She was fighting with everything she had to keep that secret sacrosanct.
She would not inflict her confusion on anyone else. She would do what she had
always done; work through the conflict until the world was in its proper pattern
again. Until then, she would do what she must to protect the people she loved.
Even from herself.
She didn't notice, in the distance she attempted to create between
herself and Charles, that an even greater distance had formed between herself and Scott. Focused on the man who was becoming the
central point of her life, she didn't realize the one who had been her center
was withdrawing. She certainly didn't know that the withdrawal was as much on
his side as it was on hers, and had been ongoing for months.
She never looked closely enough to see.
Scott heard the engine before he saw any sign of the motorcycle. He'd
built that bike from the ground up. He knew it inside and out.
If only he could say the same of the man riding it.
"That's it for today," he told his students. They looked
disappointed. He stifled a grin. Nice to know he could do something well, even
if it was just teaching automotive class to a bunch of fourteen-year-olds.
"Now, I've got some business to take care of for the next few hours. The
garage is closed. For class Thursday, I want you to study up on suspension
systems. We'll be looking at the Jeep and the Explorer."
Watching them tumble out the door, chattering about cylinders and lunch
dates and physics and Victorian poetry, he couldn't help but compare the happy
sound of their chatter with the hell his own adolescence had been. He had so
much to thank Charles for, and his own life was just the beginning of it.
Shaking the thoughts off before he got too sappy, he closed and locked the door
leading from the garage into the house.
Then the sleek chrome wheel guard nosed in the outer door of the garage,
and the moment of truth was upon him, whether he was ready for it or not.
"Hey," he offered laconically as soon as
"Damn fine,"
He didn't back off an inch. If anything, he leaned closer. "And
where exactly would that be?"
Strong arms wrapped around him and he barely had a chance to bring a
hand up to anchor his glasses. When the spinning stopped, he found himself
tipped over the saddle of the bike. He couldn't stop the laughter that was
bubbling out, even though it robbed him of his breath.
The laughter wasn't all that it made him breathless.
A single claw, the middle one, he'd bet, slipped out and slit his
trousers from waist to crotch. "Oh, right about here, I reckon,"
The laughter mutated to a moan as hands still warm from leather gloves
parted the material and stroked the bare skin of his ass. His own fingers
clenched around the edge of the seat, careful even with his mind clouding with
lust not to touch the hot spots of metal all around him. Lust with an edge of danger : an apt description of his entire relationship with
Then two fingers curled inward from his buttocks to push into him, and
his thoughts scattered. "Good. God," he growled into the air, eyes
closing behind his quartz glasses. He prided himself on his control, but
When
Flesh hotter and larger than fingers worked into him, and he clenched
his jaw to keep from screaming out loud with the sheer sensual intensity of it.
Control of his body he could lose; control of his tongue? No. If he howled the
way he wanted to when
Himself tossed over the
seat of a motorcycle and screwed out of his mind by Wolverine gone primal was
definitely one of them.
Hard hands gripped his hips, holding him steady while
Leather felt even better on bare skin than he'd expected. Especially
leather that was still warm from
Scott's hair was hanging over his glasses, one
hand was holding them on determinedly while the other tried to brace himself on
the pedal. All he could see was a red haze, all he could feel was brute force
and pure need. All he could hear was the rush of his blood in his ears and the
muffled pant of
He'd missed this.
Shunting that thought off to the side as well, Scott concentrated on the
moment, losing himself in
There was no one else he trusted to get this close. Not even Jean.
Clenching his hands into fists, focusing on the weight of
She never had.
He was on the verge of coming when
"Are we?"
Scott nearly pounded his forehead into the side of the bike. Hanging
upside down with all the blood in his body pooled in his groin made logic
difficult, and following
"Taking up where we left off?"
"Doesn't it look like it?" he panted, wiggling his hips back
as much as possible against
"I wanna hear it,"
Scott nearly howled, "YES!" That must have been the cue, to what, Scott had no idea, too far gone to even know that he'd
agreed, not caring what it might have been about. All he knew was that he had
to come. Now.
Utterly wiped out, feeling boneless, Scott flashed back on the first
time
So much for predicting
Hands leaned against the saddle on either side of his hips, and he
cracked his eyes open far enough to look at one. He felt a certain satisfaction
at noting that the arm attached to the hand was shaking. Then
Back to square one.
"You gonna get up sometime today, Cyke?" His voice was steady and remarkably cheerful.
"Gimme a decade or two to recover, Wolvie," Scott grumped back. There was a moment of
silence.
"Wolvie?"
"You'd prefer Claw?" he asked, undraping himself with some
difficulty from the bike, absently rubbing the spatter of semen into the
leather. Examining it with a critical eye, he decided he'd have to oil the
saddle later. Salt wasn't good for leather.
"Hey," he called out.
"Shit," Scott grumbled, then took off his jacket and tied it
around his waist. Yeah,
He could always work on the attitude.
Drained from a long day of conflicting emotions, Jean burrowed into
Scott's arms and tried not to think about anything.
Confused by her own conflicting feelings, she found herself aroused by
Charles and comforted by Scott's closeness. Fortunately, Scott wasn't a
psychic, so he couldn't know she was thinking of another man as he held her in
his arms. Unfortunately, she knew precisely what she was doing.
She was using Scott as a shield against her feelings for Charles.
It was a coward's way of dealing with a difficult situation. It was also
the only way she could think to handle it. She felt unprepared to confront
either man, unprepared even to confront herself. She
loved them both, but that love had changed. There was something shameful in
making love to Scott whilst holding a picture of Charles in her mind.
It was a good thing that he was as tired as she, and perhaps as
conflicted about
Whatever the cause, he didn't say anything and she didn't ask. He didn't
initiate lovemaking, and neither did she. They lay there quietly, holding onto
one another. If there was a hint of determination in his hold, it was masked by
the desperation in her own.
"Jean," he said softly. She looked up at him.
He was surprisingly vulnerable with his shields off. Sans visor or
goggles, his face was all planes and angles, an upturned nose, long eyelashes,
soft lips. He was beautiful, and she'd loved him. There were times when she
thought she was insane not to continue to do so, not in the way she had before.
Before Charles had insinuated himself so fully into her thoughts that
there was no room for anyone else.
"We need to talk."
She stiffened. "About what?" She
tried to moderate the sharp edge to the question, but didn't fully succeed. His
brows drew together, and he took a deep breath as if to steady himself.
"Sometimes ... sometimes things change. And we can't really do
anything about it. Right? I mean, it's not our fault.
Things just ... happen. It's not that it's right or wrong, it just is.
Priorities, they get, well, rearranged, sort of. Feelings change, and maybe
that's not a bad thing, not really. People change. You know what I mean? Other
people cause us -- "
Her hand rose to cover his mouth. Guilt ate at her. He knew. He knew,
and she couldn't face the fact that he knew. Not tonight. Not in his bed.
In his arms.
"Please, Scott. I'm very tired. Can we talk another time?" Not
now. Not here. Not yet.
He nodded, pressing a light kiss against her fingers. She read
forgiveness and love in the gesture.
It made her heart break.
The wave of pure misery coming from Jean and Scott's bedroom was so
strong it literally pulled Charles out of a sound sleep. He stared up at the
ceiling, then closed his eyes slowly, pain forcing a sigh from him.
His poor children.
He'd only been fifteen the first time he'd realized what the voices in his
head meant. It had been a terrible, frightening, alienating experience. In the
first few years after it began, he'd made frightfully stupid mistakes. Then
he'd met Eric, and learned to put the needs of another before his own. Learned so many things. Not least of which was when to step
back.
When to wait.
When to watch.
When to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the
inevitable eruption.
An explosion was imminent. Jean was learning at an amazing rate, and her
emotions were not keeping pace with the development of her powers. She was
confused, and would become moreso before she regained
her balance. Scott, his dear earnest Scott, was facing a moral dilemma unlike
any he'd ever encountered.
They had each fallen in love with someone else, and were too frightened
of hurting one another to admit it to themselves, much less each other.
The hardest lesson he'd learned from Eric was not to interfere. This was
not the time to step in. They had to find their way through the morass on their
own. When they had sorted the options to the point where they knew what it was
they wanted, he would be there.
For both of them.
Smiling somberly, he deliberately cleared his thoughts and settled down
to return to sleep. Love was the most difficult, exasperating and miraculous of
all emotions. He'd felt it once. It had nearly destroyed him. He would do his
best to ensure that his children didn't suffer to that extent, but they would
have to make their own decisions. They would have to be the ones to live with
the repercussions of those decisions. It was a harsh but necessary lesson they
had to learn, and they had to learn it on their own.
In the dim light of his bedroom, his mind a half century away from his
body, a tear trickled down the side of his cheek and into the corner of his
smile.
None of it made any sense.
Back in the relatively safe haven of the school,
On the contrary.
He'd spent some time catching up with Marie. Told her to keep the dog
tags on the off-chance he had to leave again. Flirted with
Jean, keeping an eye on Scott the whole time. Waiting
for another chance to get in his pants. Something about making
Control-boy lose his cool did it for
Scott, he just found himself wanting.
Refusing to look past the surface of that want, he stripped off, flopped
on the bed, and told himself to go to sleep. Two hours later he finally did.
Then the insanity began all over again.
The images were different each time, but the underlying fear and agony
were always the same. Flashes, like some noir filmmaker gone
nuts, barely enough to shock and tease, never enough to tell him what the hell
had actually happened.
Men in camouflage, automatic pistols in their
hands. Himself, confused,
frightened, enraged, shivering in a hospital gown. He was cold, but burning up
with anger. They couldn't take him! He wouldn't let them take him! He'd kill
every last one of them before they took him!
They took him.
Another flash, this time back with the damned thick water again. Lines
on his skin, fire in his bones. Laser scalpels and surgical
masks. Laughter and triumph outside the glass; silence and agony inside.
Drowning in pain, but always waking up again, to more pain.
He thrashed on the bed. His knuckles hurt, and part of him knew his
claws were snicking in and out, responding to a
threat he'd never had a fair chance to meet. Overpowered, conquered before he
could even start to fight. Impossible odds.
Flash of memory, and the water was gone. Laughter was gone. Crowds were
gone. Halls echoed, mostly empty, but not quite. His arms strained and the
straps gave. Freedom, trapped in a complex built for torture. Rat in a maze. A face before him, bodies at his feet. Pretty
but empty, brown eyes looking at him and through him. Not human, not him, not
her. His fist closing around her windpipe; finally, an
expression other than curiosity in her eyes.
Terror.
Pale skin turning ashen, lips turning blue. Expected pain of claws erupting through the skin
between his knuckles as he clenched his fist. Slicing through skin and
skull, hers this time, not his, and she wouldn't heal. Metal,
not laser. Fear disappearing into blood as the claws sliced into and
through her face, through those eyes, cleaving that questioning brain into so
much raw meat.
Escape.
Blood on his hands.
Hers, this time. Not his own.
This time when he woke himself with his screams, he knew he'd killed
them. All of them. Now, if he just had a clue who the
fuck 'them' was, he'd finally be on the right track.
Exhausted, eyes burning, body hurting from phantom memories,
Pretty much the same thing, from his perspective.
He'd been searching for almost sixteen years. He was a patient man. He'd
been trained to be patient. As well as deadly. It came
in handy.
Especially when hunting mutants.
He hated the fuckers. Most real humans were scared of them, but he
wasn't. He just hated them. They were abominations, animals, mistakes. They had
to be put down. Before they hurt anybody.
Anybody else.
He lived for the hunt. Didn't have anything to go back
to now. The project was terminated when the last subject went berserk,
escaped and slaughtered the last remaining team of scientists during a holiday
break.
Including his wife.
He wasn't berserk. He was calm. Focused. Ready.
He'd been ready since a mutant freak went nuts and destroyed his life; his
patience was paying off. He'd discovered a few things. The killer wasn't alone.
He had a friend. A fuck buddy. The other freak was the
way to get to the killer.
He'd lost all he cared about. He'd return the favor. Then, when the
bastard knew what it was like to lose, he'd kill him, too.
He still had some contacts in the government from his own time in the
shadows. The plate had been easy to track. Settling in on a hill overlooking a
swanky big house, the man brought high-powered binoculars to his eyes and
prepared to wait. An opportunity would present itself and when it did, he'd be
ready.
Blood for blood.
About damned time.
"What did she say?"
Scott stared blindly at what he supposed was a nice green tree at the
edge of a clearing in the farthest reach of the school grounds. Everything he
saw was a variant of ruby red, but he remembered what green looked like. Sort of.
"I didn't tell her." He didn't want to have this conversation,
either, but for once the normally taciturn
"You don't strike me as the cheatin'
type."
He glanced over. Yeah, he'd heard right. The smirk was there.
Details were hard to see. The lightning in his eyes made it tough
sometimes, regardless of how much training he got in how to read body language.
But even he could see the uncertainty in
"I tried." Before
The smirk hardened. "Too interested in nookie
to worry about small talk?"
Scott turned back to the tree. At least if he lost his
temper and hit it, it wouldn't hit him back. Taking a deep breath, he
ran a hand through his hair and told the tree, through clenched teeth,
"No, we didn't make love."
"If you weren't fucking and you weren't talking, what were you
doing?"
He could feel the warmth all along his side as
"Don't sleep much."
"I wouldn't know," he found himself saying. "Even if Jean
did know, and we were really together, you wouldn't let me sleep with you.
Heck, the one time I did doze off you practically set land speed records
getting out of the room." The memory still irked him. Almost
as much as it hurt. "So what's with that?" He turned enough to
be able to watch
"Claws,"
"Huh?" Scott responded with a singular lack of intelligence.
He couldn't help it.
"Not safe."
"Are you afraid that you'll do to me what you did to Marie and
skewer me while you're in the midst of a nightmare?"
"Tell me about your nightmares."
The response was immediate. "I don't talk about my past."
"Especially to me, yeah, got it."
"I trust ya,"
"What do you see in your dreams?" Scott asked quietly,
encouraged by the fact that
"Guy with a wielder's mask and a torch, coming
at me. People having a party while I'm getting cracked
open like a fuckin' walnut. Thick
water trying to drown me. Killing people."
His voice faltered on the last words.
Scott swallowed. His hand didn't move, but his heart felt like it
skipped a few beats.
"Can you make any sense out of it?" he asked after a long
moment.
"Nah."
They sat there for several minutes. Scott waited, but there were no
further revelations. Inching closer, he asked, still quietly, "What can I
do?"
"Keep the nightmares away,"
It wasn't rough, like it usually was. It was slow, and curious, and
hungry. Always hungry.
He was pretty damned hungry, himself.
His arms went up around
They went over in a tangle of arms and legs as
"Damnit, Logan, don't rip my clothes to shreds this time. No way am
I walking back to the building naked."
A strange sound, a rumbling cross between a growl and a laugh, came from
the mouth pressed against his throat. Scott found himself grinning. Unwinding
his hands from around
The shoes would just have to stay. At least his ankles weren't tied
together by his jeans this time.
That taken care of, he attacked
Scott took
Then
He didn't know where
Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, Scott breathed through his mouth and
fought his incipient climax.
Not for long.
Deadly hands, on a deadly man, bringing him nothing
but unadulterated pleasure.
Tension built along Scott's spine, in his
thighs as he thrust back to meet
Then
Scott folded his legs and carried
There was a time for talk and a time for action. Trust
In the end, they made it easy for him.
The killer took his freak friend into a grove of trees some distance
from the house, in easy range of his own position, and proceeded to fuck him.
He smiled.
Enjoy it while you can, bud. Life's short. Getting
shorter.
Bringing his rifle to bear on the entwined, oblivious couple, he sighted
through his scope. A broad scarless back filled his
field of vision. It gleamed with sweat, shining in the sunlight. Crosshairs
picked out a point mid-spine.
Didn't matter how fucking well he healed. Nobody, no matter what kind of
freak, healed from stone dead. Not even a mutant.
The body shifted, falling below his sight, and he followed it. They
rolled to the side and he caught a glimpse of brown hair, flushed cheeks, black
glasses. His smile widened.
First the heart. Then the gut.
The crosshairs traveled slowly down a lanky, toned body, slender next to
the bulk of the killer, but not weak. Not yet. A well-placed bullet,
and it would be. The target settled, the juncture of ribs over the belly,
panting under the killer's hand. His eye narrowed and his finger tightened on
the trigger. Time to finish this business.
For his wife. So she
could rest in peace.
For the killer and every damned mutant like him.
May they rot in hell.
The helmet was becoming easier to handle. Sorting through unique
patterns of brain waves was rather like sorting through fine embroidery
threads; the slightest variation in texture and color defined and contrasted
each from the next. Jean relaxed further. It was difficult, yes. It was also
fun.
"Try someone closer to home," Charles instructed her. She
thought immediately of him. "Not quite that close."
She could feel his smile as clearly as she could hear it in his voice.
Guilt struck her She felt his concern, but
turned away from it, her mind already seeking Scott. That seemed to have become
her pattern. Seek out Charles; feel guilty; seek out Scott. Caught up in that
realization, she was completely unprepared for what she found when she found
Scott.
Her mind ricocheted from the scene painted by Cerebro,
disbelief tearing her from it and sending her reeling. Vaguely, she could feel
Charles move closer, mental energy reaching out to steady her. She swung
wildly, settling on the closest mind she could find, then
exploding back out of it.
Charles. Taking Cerebro from
her as she lost all semblance of control over her mental gift.
Her psychic questing rebounded back toward Scott,
then veered away, ghosting through another presence, close to Scott but not
Logan.
Not
Boggling at the emotional knot she'd felt between the two men, the blast
of hatred from the new mind came as an even greater
shock to her, immobilizing her completely. All she could do was sit, screaming
in her mind, watching through an assassin's eye as he centered his aim directly
on Scott's heart.
Thankfully, Charles heard her scream.
She heard the echo as he called Storm, mobilized the defenses of the
school, invaded the mind of the sniper and took control of the situation.
Sitting, trembling, she watched from somewhere outside herself as Charles
mounted a rescue. Unable to do anything else, needing to help, she did
something she'd never tried to do before.
She screamed, with her mind, projecting as loudly as she could, every
ounce of fear and adrenaline running through her fueling the alarm.
Scott!
It was the only time his mind and his body ever really worked together.
Even when he was fighting, it was like his body took
over and his mind went along for the ride. When his brain took over, he had
nightmares and lost control of his body.
When he fucked Scott, everything went right. It was the only time that
happened.
He felt Scott spasm around him and fought to hold on, wanting to feel it
before he lost himself in his own orgasm. It was a hell of a fight and a hell
of a ride, worth every bit of effort he put into it. When Scott sagged, he used
his arms to hold them both up, letting himself go. Sweet.
Felt sweet. He lowered his head and touched his mouth to the hollow between
Scott's shoulder blades, right below the little bump his spine made where his
neck met his shoulders.
Tasted sweet, too.
Strength draining out of him, he let Scott drop, controlling and
breaking the fall with his arms, rolling them sideways as they collapsed. His
claws retracted and his fingers spread over the soft skin just below Scott's
ribcage, above his belly, over his heart. There was sweat and sperm caught in
the hair there and he rubbed it absently into the fine grain of the skin,
following the line of rib until his palm was lying loosely over the rapidly
pounding heart just below the breast bone. The beat echoed through him.
Before he could say anything, supposing he had the breath for it and
remembered how to form words much less knew what those words might be, a brick
slammed into his head. Reflexes kicked in and he was rolling toward cover even
as the static in his brain translated into Jean's voice and his body recognized
that Scott was rolling just as fast as he was.
Covering him.
His mind flashed to another memory, a recent one. Barely
conscious, aware more with his body than his mind, usual state of affairs in
combat. Snow, and pain, and blood in his mouth, and the smell of gas
afire close by. Warmth along one side, and an arm braced
across his back. Long body angled partially over his, lying there in the
snow. Scott. Covering him.
Again.
Logan didn't know what the hell was going on, but he didn't need to. The
short hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. His teeth were bared in a
snarl. His claws were primed to slash. Scott was pressed up against him, one
sweat- and dirt-streaked naked arm raised, hand at the side of his glasses,
vainly looking for a trigger. Jean's voice was shrieking through his head, danger!
danger! and he had a gut
feeling Scott was hearing it too.
No more than two seconds had passed from the first alert to them finding
cover. He heard the whine of a high velocity bullet and saw a puff of dirt and
grass kick up. Right where they'd been lying.
Right where his hand had been pressed over Scott's
heart.
Rage filled him, causing his body to shake, drowning out Jean's call in
his mind. There was a threat. To Scott. It had to be
eliminated. He had to track it down and kill it before it could try to harm
them again.
Before he could act on his instincts, a gale force wind struck the hill
directly behind the clearing he and Scott had been in. Brush flattened, and he
caught sight of the source of the threat.
A sniper.
Seeing that the man was pinned down by the unnatural winds, Storm's
work, no doubt, Logan pushed himself away from Scott and grabbed his clothes.
With his peripheral vision he saw Scott doing the same. Scott's mouth was
moving, but the wind was whistling so loudly he couldn't hear a thing.
Probably just as well. Lip-reading, Logan knew Scott was telling him to
stay in place, keep covered. It wasn't gonna happen.
Not until the threat was eliminated. For himself.
For Scott.
Nobody tried to kill what was his and lived to walk away.
Drops of sweat slid down from his forehead, stinging his eyes, but
Charles didn't feel it. As often happened when he was engaged
in mental struggle, physical details ceased to exist. The only reality
was the threat and its neutralization.
Storm had the intruder pinned to a hillside at the edge of the school
grounds. Jean's warning had been sufficient to remove Scott and Logan from the
line of fire. Their doings at the time of the warning were irrelevant. Survival
was paramount.
With that edict at the forefront of his mind, he forced his way into the
thoughts of the intruder. He had no qualms at doing so. His children were at
risk. The man had brought the action upon himself with his attack.
Hatred boiled up from the bowels of the man's mind like the stench of a
sewer. Forcing his way through it, Charles froze the man's muscles in place, stopping
him from doing any further damage until the ground forces could get to him and
disarm him. Storm and Jean were on their way; with the warning delivered, the
threat made clear, Scott and Logan would be as well.
Thoughts began to form, images of a woman. A place,
with gray walls and tile floors; a military research institution. He
recognized the symbols emblazoned on the wall. The darkened splashes of liquid
were out of place in the sterile surroundings. Blood.
Vast quantities of it.
The image lurched, as the man's foot must have on the slick tile. It
shifted, and Charles saw several bodies scattered along the corridor in a
manner that bespoke immense strength and inhuman fury. Denial painted the image
dimly, then it surged back, stronger than before, to focus on a single woman.
There were two stars on her shoulders. Her hands were curled into claws.
Her head had been sliced into pieces. Her face was unrecognizable. The
man whose memories he plundered knew her without having to see her face.
Another memory image appeared, this one accompanied by feelings of pride
and affection. The same woman, intact, animated, sparkling.
Flutes of champagne and chests full of medals gleamed in the light of a
laboratory. In the background, a tank; in the tank, the body
of a man.
Staring at her.
Death in his eyes.
The memory shifted again, to a single glimpse of hands covered in blood
and brain matter, fingers resting at the point where the collarbone dipped at
the base of the corpse's throat. There was no pulse, of course. Resolve
shrieked in a macabre duet with hatred. The man began to track his prey.
Charles could feel insanity pulling at him, lapping at his own iron
control, threatening to overset him. Pulling back, he concentrated on
maintaining restraint of the man until such time as he could be disarmed and
taken into custody. He would have to tell Logan what he'd discovered from the
man's memories.
Later.
They were up the hill in moments,
The winds eased as they came up beside the man, who appeared to be
paralyzed. Close up,
He recognized it.
Nightmare overlapped with reality as the blank expression and
hate-filled eyes staring up at him were replaced by an image of the same
stranger. Smiling, this time, drinking champagne, toasting a woman he also
knew. A woman who ignored his screams while she cut into him with a torch. A
woman who made notes on a chart then filleted his limbs with the emotionless
precision of a butcher preparing a cut of meat.
A woman he'd killed, strangling her then slicing her to pieces with the adamantium she had so agonizingly installed in him.
For the first time in his life,
Charles could see through the man's eyes, knew that Scott and Logan were
there, could feel Jean and Ororo
coming up the hill. Then a surge of hatred with the force of madness unleashed
behind it caught him unprepared, wrenching control of the man's body from
Charles in an instant.
A crucial instant.
Scott skidded to a halt behind
Ignoring, for the moment, just what it was he'd been doing when the
attack came, not to mention the fact that both Jean and Charles must now be
fully aware of it, he squared his jaw and snapped at the man, "Who are
you? Who sent you?"
The attacker shook, tremors running through him like an attack of palsy,
then launched himself at
Who stood there. Pole-axed.
Didn't make a move to defend himself.
Scott saw the hunting knife in the man's hand and reacted without
thinking. He had to protect
One uncontrolled blast. Something he hadn't done in two decades. For very
good reason.
The goggles were back in place and his hands were twitching reflexively
a second later.
Scott had incinerated him.
He didn't have the chance to ask
He was too busy throwing up on a handy bush.
The debriefing after the attack had been blessedly short.
Charles looked at him and replied, "We must talk. In the morning. When things have had a
chance to settle."
Who was staring at the floor.
Jean avoided Charles, skirted around Scott, stepped away from
My office.
She nodded agreement.
"Well, it's been a difficult day. I suggest we all retire for the
evening and try to get some rest. Further discussion can wait for
tomorrow."
Ororo went to check on
the children. Charles headed out of the library into the corridor. Jean looked
over her shoulder and saw
She shut the door silently and followed Charles into his office. She was
crying before the door closed behind her.
It's difficult, letting go. His thought was
gentle in hers.
She nodded. Knelt beside his chair and put her head in his lap. His hand
brushed over her hair, a light, soothing touch.
It gets better.
"Does it?"
He didn't reply.
"You okay?"
Scott didn't have any idea how to answer that, so he kept his mouth
shut.
"Thanks." He sounded like he meant it.
The mental image of a human being going up like a torch under the force
of his sight made Scott's stomach lurch. "Who was it?" he asked when
he could open his mouth without retching. He'd brushed his teeth when they
first got back to the house. It hadn't helped.
"Husband, I think."
He gave
"You remembered something." It wasn't a question. Scott looked
steadily at
"One of the butchers who worked me over. A big cheese. She was one of the ones who cut
into me."
A different kind of pain surged through Scott. "Son
of a bitch."
"The bitch part you got right. I broke out."
Scott moved closer. His shoulder touched
"I killed her."
He closed his eyes. "She deserved it," Scott told him without
a moment's hesitation. "She treated you like a lab animal. Worse."
"Yeah,"
Scott's hand settled over
"It's probably selfish, but I'm glad you didn't."
Scott felt himself relax. He'd have nightmares about what he'd had to
do, but he'd deal with it.
"Think you're gonna get lucky?"
"Think I already did."
As long as
end