Mercury Pool
by
Lady-T


Disclaimer: Usual stuff. Not mine. Do you think Marvel would do this? I'm definitely not paid.

Archive: Ask me

Author's note: I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. Didn't mean it to come out like this at ALL... It flits around a lot so I hope it makes sense to everyone

To Jaimes, I hereby apologise.

Thanks to Eek for putting up with me whinging about this the entire time and KAT for having to read it repeatedly and assure me that I'm not delusional. Not totally, anyway.

Thoroughly un-Beta'd. The typos are on me!

---

Chapter One

*~Morning comes too early and nighttime falls too late

And sometimes all I want to do is wait

The shadow I've been hiding in is fled from me today~*

There were no shadows. Light blazed above him in the synthetic daytime of the stark room. Night and day meshed together, little to distinguish the two save the need to sleep, and even that was usually denied.

Cold, hard lines and the incessant beep of machinery pervaded to the edge of his sleep-deprived senses, but his mind was elsewhere.

The man twitched viciously on the gurney, his voice spasming incoherently with the images pulsating through his head. The wires protruded from the base of his skull, stimulating his senses as the scientists made notes.

"Increase intensity point two percent."

He twitched in pain, his incoherent mumbling leaping in intensity as the dial was twisted.

His skin was on fire, an itch that burned as flames lapped up his arms. An invisible blaze crawled its way under his skin, biting like ants, melting body fat and roasting still-living flesh.

He could see his flesh bubbling and dripping like roasting meat, turning black and brittle.

The burning crept along his body in a white-hot inferno, searing skin and bone.

He could hear screaming but he was in such pain he didn't even know it was his own voice that cried out, couldn't feel the tears that streamed down his cheeks.

In his eyes he could see skin blister. The smoke thick and acrid but the flames invisible, lapping at his flesh with tongues of razor.

He struggled, tried to beat the flames away but they seemed to come from within him, blackening his very bones.

He cried out with the bitter agony, fire caressing his last sense and blind terror cradling his mind.

His body slumped into twitching stillness as he passed out.

The scientists compared notes dispassionately as his mind bled.

He was poked and prodded with only mild interest as the gurney he was strapped to rolled from the room, the wire unplugged from the back of his skull.

He lay passively, skin pink and raw, petrified tears streaking silently down his face.



Chapter Two

DAYS EARLIER

The dull ache pulled into slow focus as Logan opened his eyes. The weeping gash down his stomach still oozed warm blood onto his fingers and he winced in pain, holding his damp hand up to the thin beam of moonlight above him. He watched, bewildered, as the cloying red liquid dribbled down his wrist in long, slow drips.

Other than the one solitary window, the darkness was complete. Pitch black stone was edged with only the faintest of the moon's highlights. Shadow enveloped him as he lay there, biting hard on his tongue to stop from moaning with the bone-deep ache that seeped through him like ice-water.

The room was fairly large, but painfully cold and intensely dark. The moon picked out the edges of the cot he was lying on but very little else.

Blood still slithered from the tips of his fingers as he traced a slow line around the metal inhibitor collar around his throat, splashes falling onto his chest and merging with the dirt and sweat there.

A hollow emptiness filled his mind, echoing round the numb void usually occupied by his absent senses.

His sight and smell and hearing registered nothing save the grim darkness of the stone cell and the cold dripping of the rainwater cascading outside his prison.

He tried pushing the claws from his hands, but they too refused to move, the inhibitors locking them in his forearms.

He moaned and closed his eyes, trying to piece together the last few weeks but falling miserably short.

Darts of some kind, that much he remembered, the deadened swelling caused by the drugs still clutching part of his lower back.

The unhealing wound on his abdomen continued to ooze lurid red onto the ragged grey sweatpants that hung loosely around his hips. It soaked the material and chilled against his skin, sticking the cloth to his bare stomach.

The brown stain of dried blood seemed to cover him, clinging to everything. The sheets beneath him were mottled and dirty, smeared with his own handprints as he had clutched at them in his sleep.

He had been stripped of his clothes and incarcerated. He could feel fear and the desperation echoing from all around him as if it were pulsing from the very walls, ingrained by years of suffering. The pain of those just like him. The lost and alone. The different and the forgotten.

He sifted slowly through hazy and pallid memories, trying to link together any kind of reason.

A bar somewhere, and a fight. One of hundreds, but this time there was someone waiting afterwards. Someone armed with sedatives strong enough to take down a moose.

Kick a man when he's down and sell him when you're done. Someone had said that to him and then they'd laughed.

He vaguely remembered passing out, battling with the last of his strength to stay conscious long enough to claw his way free. But they'd caught up and pulled him back, pumping him with so many drugs it was like watching the world from the wet side of a fish tank. They talked of money and they talked of medicine. His stomach had sunk at their words, the last of his senses vaguely clinging onto swiftly vanishing threads of hope.

Pain still stung across his belly and he winced as he tried to move. A souvenir from a flick knife, he remembered, his body having made for them a handy, uncomplaining punching bag.

He raised bruised shoulders and stole a fleeting glance down at his battered body before he collapsed again, slumping back down onto cot with a pained grunt. His muscles felt dead and loose from the drugs and it took all of his remaining strength to try and staunch the flow of blood from his lacerated skin.

Unwatched in the darkness two pale eyes flickered open, woken by his stifled moan.

She blinked sleepily and closed her eyes again, pulling the sheets further round her shoulders.

Outside, the wind whistled through bare trees, branches waving knotted fists at the sky.

~o~

Seared red glistened within a boarder of cracked and flaking black, branding the number into his shoulder.

He had tried not to give them the satisfaction of a response, but it had hurt too much. He felt like he was being punished for something he hadn't done. Tortured for the sake of identification. Marked like livestock.

Pain raked through his body like a freight train but he had screamed all he could, left voiceless and numb by a morning in the processing plant. His eyes drifted closed as the neon fluorescent tubes streamed by above his head.

They charred black on red, body after body, and they laughingly called it processing. Nothing but processed meat.

Poked and prodded, he could feel the lump at the base of his skull where they'd implanted something into him. He could feel the grating sensation against bone as it had attached itself inside. Strapped down, but no anesthetic, everything had hurt like raw hell. He could still feel the bruises against the back of his throat as the endoscopic camera had gone down. They'd sealed his nose and levered open his jaws before ramming it into his throat, feeding tubes into his mouth as it wormed its way through him.

They had run test after test, taking sample after sample, looking at and testing and measuring everything it was possible to think of.

He'd started out fighting but for the first time in so long he had felt truly helpless.

"741"

"Take him away."

She'd gently fingered the marks on her arm as they'd wheeled him in, dumping his limp and whimpering body on the floor, dropping him into a crumpled heap like a broken doll.

She'd watched him shake and convulse on the floor, icy fingers crawling under his skin as physical shock ran its course. Some half-forgotten part of his head told him he'd been here before, years ago, that they'd found him again. The other part said this was something quite different.

Branded like cattle.

His voice trembled like his body as the sight of the yellow-hot metal nearing his skin came back to haunt him.

His mouth was parched, words just somehow beyond his grasp.

He remembered hearing someone screaming and the rank smell of burning meat, but the images didn't fit properly in his head. Someone was assembling a jigsaw in his brain, using a hammer and saw to make the pieces fit.

He'd felt pain before, but it had always faded. It was never like this.

This just went on and on.

His head throbbed and he curled into a tight ball, fighting the blinding loss and violent nausea that drummed within his own skull.

God, it hurts...

Long auburn tresses feathered against his skin as she gently leaned over him, rolling his tightly curled body onto his back. Cool, thin fingers lightly caressed his face, tracing the lines of his features with curiosity as unseeing hazel eyes stared up at her, waxy and distant.

He looked like his mind was lost.

It had slipped from him somewhere in the snaking, neon corridors of the institution. It had been ripped from him as they laughed and joked, scarring his body so they could tell him apart from the rest of their livestock.

He looked right through her as he lay there, staring blankly into the nameless middle distance. She took hold of his limp hand, peering at it closely with puzzled curiosity, pressing it against to compare the size.

She twined her thin fingers between his stronger ones as she examined the slowly closing wound shearing up his abdomen. She wiped at the drying blood that matted into the hair on his chest, biting her lip gingerly against the memories that threatened to push past the boundaries of her own mind.

He was so unlike anyone else she'd seen. His body was strong and well-built, so different to all the others.

So different to herself.

She lay her scrawny arm alongside his, marveling at the comparison.

She touched his face, but his beautiful features were pale and drawn, his body still in shock.

He was too heavy to move as he drifted into unconsciousness, so she did the only thing she could. She wrapped him in a blanket and pushed herself close into his side, chewing her lip as the cold concrete beneath them sucked the heat from his frame.

Her hand unconsciously caressed his stomach, unable to stop touching him. She closed her eyes at the gentle softness of his body as she rubbed her fingers soothingly over the healing gash.

She drifted into an uneasy sleep beside him, clutching his hand like it were the last thing keeping him with her.

Her new roommate was so different to the last. She'd be damned if she was going to loose him so quickly.

~o~

The new day dragged on and minute by torpid minute crawled past as gradual lucidity returned to him.

Logan woke slowly, feeling nothing but the hard floor under his body, the chill in his bones and the continuing, throbbing ache in his arm.

He was alone.

He pushed himself up on unsteady legs, feeling them wobble and bend beneath his weight. He wrapped the blanket around his bare shoulders tightly as the chilly winter air bit at him from the high cell window.

He froze as a sudden noise outside the room shattered the oppressive silence.

The metal door slid back with a sibilant hiss, a woman's thin frame briefly silhouetted against the dazzling light beyond. He squinted against the brightness, shielding his sensitive eyes from the angry neon glare. Just as suddenly the door locked shut with a clang, cutting away the light, cutting off the exit.

The comparative darkness was astounding.

A blur of muscle connected with the woman's chest, lifting her from the floor and throwing her back against the wall. The girl's heart pounded in her throat, the sudden rush knocking the breath from her lungs. She could feel him pressed close, cornered against his solid body as he scratched and searched against the door.

"It... it won't open from in here..." She stammered, straining against the grip around her throat.

He turned his eyes from the door to her, growling under his breath as his lip curled away from gleaming white canines. He dropped her unceremoniously where she stood and stalked away in disgust, back to his bunk.

She watched him as he walked, still slightly bent with pain but his pride refusing to let him acknowledge it.

He flopped sulkily onto the creaking cot and gingerly examined the gash on his stomach. It was healing slowly, but the sudden flurry of activity had burst part of it open again, sending it weeping onto his already stained clothing.

He grumbled and returned to cradling his arm, gently fingering the black, burned skin on his shoulder, wincing and biting into his lower lip to quell the quiet cry of pain as he touched it. He traced the numbers with his fingertips, 741 branded onto him like a serial code.

"Who are you? What do you want with me?" He barely kept the anger from his voice as he growled at the figure huddled in the far corner. Even without his senses she smelled like THEM, everything around here did.

"I'm sorry..." She whispered. She hugged herself as she cowered in the half-light, a small snort of terrified laughter escaping her lips. "It wasn't supposed to be like this..."

"Be like what?" He eyed her suspiciously.

"I never wanted to leave so long. I wanted to be here when you woke up, but it took longer than I expected."

"Well I AM sorry," he growled bitterly, "that I was unconscious too long for your personal convenience. The feeling is mutual."

She shot him a sad look in the gloom.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Sure, kid."

He was angry. Angry and injured and justifiably scared. She saw the way his eyes darted around constantly, playing over every surface and contour as if searching for an escape he may have missed in the thick, seamless rock.

"I... I got something for you while I was away."

She looked at him hopefully, finding nothing in his eyes.

"You come any nearer and you'll find yourself pinned to that wall, kid. I don't want it."

"You're hurt."

He couldn't deny it, but he refused to admit it. He grunted in response, not willing to show the weakness that still consumed him, making his body ache.

She picked herself up slowly, edging towards him as if she were approaching a wild animal. She was so small in the shadows and so frighteningly thin that he was half ashamed to have treated her so roughly. He'd almost expected to hear her bones crunch as he'd pushed her from the ground.

His deep eyes followed her every move as she reached into a pouch sewn into her clothes and pulled out a small foil tube.

She gingerly reached out to him, her fingers pausing in the air, hovering a mere inch from the injured arm.

She swallowed, as if she were scared of frightening him.

Her hands shook as she unscrewed the lid from the tube, squeezing out a white cream onto the tips of her fingers. He watched her closely, eyes piercing as she gently touched it to his skin.

He hissed audibly, twisting away with the sudden sting and she leaped back, fear edging into her face.

"I... I'm sorry..." Her voice was breathless with anxiety, her eyes wide.

Logan took a breath, the smell of antiseptic cream filling his head. He sighed and seemed to sag slightly.

His voice was softer now as he watched her chew her lip hesitantly. "It stings."

She nodded slowly and edged closer again, gently brushing the cream onto his burns as he stifled the hiss of pain that threatened to escape.

He slouched backwards as she stepped away, his chest stretching out as he lay on the bunk, taut muscles gliding under the skin.

"You're bleeding again," She observed quietly.

"It'll stop," He grunted.

"It's going to get infected."

"I don't need your charity, kid." He growled at her, almost spitting venom.

She watched him calmly, slowly spinning the antiseptic tube in her fingers.

"You're scared."

The almost child-like simplicity of her statement clutched tendrils of ice inside his chest.

"You don't want to admit it, but you've never been so scared in your life."

His head snapped towards her. "You don't know what you're talking about."

She stepped closer again, her eyes never leaving his.

Long dark hair spilled over her shoulders, unkempt and unruly, surrounding her pale, thin face. Over her cheek shadowed a large bruise in the yellow stage of recovery.

She wore little, only what she was provided with. A shapeless, grey tunic swung partially down her thighs like an oversized T-shirt. The gentle curve of her body showed she wore nothing beneath it and her bare limbs shone almost white in the gloom.

She knelt on the floor beside him, holding his gaze firm as she reached out to touch his stomach. Reflex made muscles flutter under the light brush of her fingers. His skin was hot against her hand as she massaged the soothing cream over the gash that oozed a thin welt of blood onto his body.

Something in her touch chewed with familiarity and he closed his eyes for a brief second, trying to place the sensation.

He slowly rose, looking deep into her face as if only seeing her clearly for the first time.

His voice was hoarse, his eyes confused. "I remember you."

He spoke quietly, muddled images trying to form into a picture in his brain, refusing to focus.

"I remember... this..."

He pressed her hand back to his stomach, imitating the movement of her hand the night before, trying to search her face for any kind of familiarity he could find there.

Her lips lifted into a small, sad smile and she nodded. Slowly rising to her feet she pulled away, returning to her own bunk on the far side of the cell. She paused to look at him one last time, noticing how tired and lost he looked.

"I think you should sleep," She murmured.



Chapter Three

THE PRESENT

Reality cut raggedly through his dreams, hauling his mind back from the days before.

The haze lifted slightly from his eyes as he felt sensations suddenly flooding back to his body. He whined pathetically, wishing above all else that he could return to the blissful numb sleep he had just been woken from.

He awoke in the cell once more, not quite remembering having left. The faint twinkle of moonlight again cast its presence across the unforgiving stone.

He groaned low in his throat, every inch of skin itching as he tried to lift himself from the cot.

He looked at his hands. They were raw like the rest of his body, pink and sore, making him grunt with the discomfort as he tried to move. He slumped back down into the sheets, their coarse weave scratching at his tender flesh.

Oh God it itches.

He had no memory of the flames, knew nothing at all, just the tickling incessancy of his skin as if it were trying to creep away from the rest of his body. It was like waking up to find you slept right through a war. His body had become tight and raw without him noticing, new skin soft and puckered as he looked at himself.

He rubbed his fingers over his stomach and grimaced at the sharp soreness. The itch felt like it was driving him mad, the curing scratch felt like it would flay him alive.

He mumbled in frustration, his fingers curling into fists as he tried to force his mind not to think about it. Not to think of the thousand tiny little feet that seemed to be walking along the inside of his hide, not to think about it at all...

But oh God it itches...

His face creased in annoyance, his brow furrowing as he grunted again, trying to press himself into the chill wall to ease the irritation.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and felt her hands gently pushing him back down onto the sheets. Logan tilted his slowly head to look at her through half-lidded eyes. His vision was partly clouded with sleep but he could still make out the pity in her eyes as she poured liquid into her palms. She pressed her touch to his skin, smoothing cooling lotion gently onto his body.

Pink Calamine eased the prickling as he closed his eyes once more, letting her hands thankfully ease away some of his discomfort.

It was slick and cold against him, her hands gliding over his body with infinite care.

He moaned slightly, almost blinded by the relief as she caressed the cooling liquid onto his chest and neck, then down his sides. Her supple fingers eased over his burned flesh, cooling them with her touch.

Slowly, his hand came to rest on hers, catching it against his stomach.

His eyes opened a slit, his sleepy voice mumbling "thank you..." before he slipped into exhausted blackness again.

She curled herself up on the foot of his bed, watching him breathe. Watching and waiting until he surfaced again.

He wouldn't be able to move for a couple of days yet.

They were clever.

Burned him enough to stop him fighting them for a few days, but not enough to be serious. A body can weather the big things, but it's the small annoyances that drive you crazy. Why chop off his head if you can drip water between his eyes for weeks on end? Why kill a man when you can have the fun of breaking him first?



Chapter Four

Time passes, but it's a hazy mess. Like swimming through aspic, everything looks real but distorted somehow.

Guess it's been about a month, but it's hard to tell. In and out the cell, remembering nothing, holes where there should have been time. It all gets pretty confused.

Leaves you a lot of space for thinking though.

The Japanese were a fucking inventive people, did you know that?

You hear stories about the things they did to prisoners of war. I don't know how much is true, and I don't want to ask.

They'd take a rat and put it on your stomach, covered over with a metal bowl. Then they'd start heating it up with a torch. Slow at first, them more and more, building the temperature as the flames licked over its surface.

The rat inside would grow ever more frantic, more panicked as its metal and flesh prison began to bake it alive. The poor thing would scratch at that bowl, never able to claw its way out, burning its paws as it ran in ever faster circles, ever maddened by the heat and by the fear. Survival kicks in, escape at all costs, so it did the only thing it could.

It started clawing at the soft flesh beneath it.

Inch by inch it would scrape a hole through the skin, claws dragging and pulling at still living tissue until it burst through into the soft insides of the victim.

The rat can't go back out because it'll burn to death and now, maddened by fear, total freedom is its only option. So it carries on down, pushing through blood and intestine, scraping past whatever comes in its way in a desperate attempt to escape death.

Down, under the soft underbelly and out through the scrotum, or up? Past lungs and heart and out through the throat?

Blood would cake its fur as it tunneled and dug its way through the inside of the living body, digging through fat and organs, pulling and chewing at whatever got in its way.

People would scream, the victim staked out and still conscious as it crawled around inside their body, desperately searching for a way out. Eventually it would once more meet skin, from the inside this time, and again it would begin to claw. Slowly, inch by inch, it would scrape its way free, emerging from the victim's body as they lay helpless against its claws. The rat would be thick with blood, insane from the heat, slick as it pushed itself through the skin, tumbling at last into blessed freedom.

As it took its first lungful of free air it would pause and look back at its prison...

And then they're recapture it and do it again.

Shit, I'm lying here laughing in my head because I can't think what else to do. I can barely breathe let alone move, so I don't know what's so funny.

So am I the rat or am I the prisoner, or is that just a rhetorical question?

I don't know where I am, because it's so fucking dark. Maybe they're trying to drive me out of my head, like in a hostage situation where they blare music and lights at the building in the hope that it'll drive everyone nuts enough to give up. Call it reverse psychology, but damn it's dark.

There's a rag stuffed in my parched mouth, soaking every last drop of moisture away from my lips. My wrists are chained behind my back, my arms tied at the elbows. There's a thick rod wedged horizontally between my elbows and my back, bending my arms in ways they really don't want to go. Maybe there's a dull ache from that now. To be honest there's only so much of anything you can take before you completely cease to notice. What's that saying? "I didn't realise how ill I was until I got better"...?

Something like that anyway.

Tug, pull. Legs free?

Nope.

Heavy and sluggish though. Whatever they're shooting me with it's sure as hell not legal.

I don't know what time it is. Part of me is tempted to say it's the middle of the night but I know that's just because of the darkness. Another part of me is saying that it doesn't care, it just wants out.

My stomach's rumbling so I'm going to say it's dinnertime. In the end it's all theory because I don't see anyone coming to tell me any time soon.

Tired now though.

It's so dark out there that it doesn't matter if my eyes are closed or open. Maybe I'll close them for a bit. Peering into the blackness is making me dizzy. At least if I close my eyes I can pretend there's a horizon to compare myself to...

*~Push the knife in...~*

She was curled into a tight ball on the bunk, dragging the flimsy fabric of her blanket around her body for all the warmth it could afford.

The night was bitter, the stone surrounding them somehow sucking the heat from his body, the last whispers clinging to him as he hugged himself.

He looked at the girl lying across the room, her body shivering as much as his. Her hand was curled tightly around her blankets and the dried tracks of silent tears stained her cheeks.

He crawled out of his bunk and scooped the blankets up in his arms. His bare feet padded silently across the floor to her bed and he draped the sheets across her, smiling sadly as she snuggled into them, sharing the meager remnants of his warmth.

She huffed and grunted in her sleep, muttering "Logan... I'm cold..." before submerging into silence again.

He stood, watching her still shivering slightly, then gently slipped in behind her, his bare chest pressed into the coarse fabric of her tunic. He pulled her close, encasing her fragile, frozen body with his own as they huddled under the blankets, fighting off the chill with the last reserves he could muster.

She nuzzled her head into his chest, basking in the comparative glow of his body heat. Her lips parted and she huffed, half awake now, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart.

"Mmpf, you're warm..." She mumbled sleepily.

He pulled the blankets round them tighter, feeling how frozen she was against him.

"Logan..." She whispered, breathing his name quietly. He looked down at her, about to ask what she wanted, but she was already asleep.

*~Deeper...~*

"I'm a runner," she explained. "I dunno, I guess... I guess they just quit doin' stuff to me."

She paused and looked at her hands curled in her lap.

"Guess someone's gotta' take care of this joint..." She forced a laugh, but it died on her lips.

"When I was little, I used to get real bad nightmares. They told me that I used to scream and thrash about so much that I used to hurt myself. Every day they'd come and take me away and tell me they were gonna' stop the nightmares, make sure I'd never hurt myself again, but it never worked. One day they just stopped taking me."

She shrugged and looked over at him.

"The nightmares stopped then too."

Logan just nodded silently.

"But now..." Her face creased in frustration.

"But now I gotta' sit back and watch everyone else go through the same, watch them go through what they did to me.

"I see it all, I see everything they leave behind because I have to do all the things they don't wanna' do themselves."

She trailed off, a stony look creasing her features.

"I... saw them one day. I know I shouldn't have. But they were making him bleed without even touching him. They were just standing there..."

Her sentence petered out as if she suddenly became lost, her mind lodged in some unforgotten moment. He looked at the weariness in her eyes, the forced age, and he pitied her.

"What are we doing here, darlin'?"

She looked at him, her face plain.

"Oh Jesus Logan, haven't ya figured that out yet? They have something and they need to test it on someone. They can't do it on real people, so they naturally figured no one would mind if a few of the lost ones went missing. A few homeless people here, a mutant there... We're fucking Lab-rats Logan."

*~Twist it...~*

Her body shook, muffled sobs being absorbed by the sheet she clenched in her fingers. Logan stirred, unable to sleep. Her tears carried across the emptiness of the cell, coaxing him from his bed.

He knelt by her bunk, gingerly reaching out a hand to rest it on her heaving shoulder.

"Darlin', what's wrong...?"

She screwed her eyes shut, burrowing her head into the coarse sheet that surrounded her.

"It was such a mess, Logan... it was such a mess..."

"What was?" His voice was low, trying to sooth her frazzled nerves. His hand gently smoothed the matted hair that trailed down her spine.

Her voice was a tiny whisper in the darkness. "So much blood... God, they were killing him and they just stood and watched... there was so much blood..."

He gently pulled her into his arms, the comfort of his embrace making her gasp with the sadness that consumed her. She clung onto him desperately, images pouring like a flood behind her eyes.

"They musta' hurt him so much... Logan, I could hear him screamin' all the way down the hall."

Logan closed his eyes and sighed onto her white skin.

"He was just a boy, Logan... he didn't deserve to die like that..."

"I know darlin'."

He held her to him, gently rocking her in his arms as the patter of rain coursing down the stonework outside drummed its familiar beat into their heads.

She sighed, choking back the tears that still pounded in her mind.

"Doesn't it ever stop raining out there?" She looked at him beseechingly. "I been here so long and it always seems like it's raining..."

Her voice was tired, aged beyond what years she had.

"Every night I look up out of that window and always there's clouds where the sky should be. It gets to the point sometimes that I wonder if there's anything but blackness up there."

Logan smoothed her hair, letting her rest her head in the crook of his neck. She curled up like a child in his arms, her young life drained from her body.

She spoke softly, sending faint puffs of warm breath across his throat.

"I remember... it never used to be so dark. God, there were blues so vivid they were alive, so bright they made your eyes hurt... mountains and woods and fields and it's like it all slips through my fingers the tighter I try to hold it..."

Her fingers clenched and he felt the soft warmth of a tear trickling down his chest as she sighed deeply.

"Maybe... maybe if it stopped raining it would bring it all back..."

He gently cupped her damp cheek with his palm, bringing her face up to look at him.

"How long have you been here?" His voice was soft, almost afraid of the answer he would get.

She sniffed away the tears from her eyes and gently took his hand, rising from the warmth of the bed and pulling him through the darkness to the far wall. She let go of his fingers and fell to her knees before the cold, grey rock, gently brushing the stone with her fingertips.

She took Logan's hand once more and pressed it to the cold wall as he crouched beside her. His fingers brushed over a crudely scratched ridge in the stone about three feet above the floor.

"What's this?" His voice was tense as his fingers brushed the mark in the rock, not understanding its significance.

"Annie used to measure me when I first came here."

"Annie?"

"She was like my mom, even though she wasn't."

The words spiraled round his head as their meaning sunk in. He felt her hand covering his as he gently caressed the icy wall.

"She scratched marks in the rock to show me how much I'd grown."

She gently slid his fingers a little further up the wall, finding another scrape in the stonework, then another, and another.

She let go of his hand as his fingers slid up onto the cold, smooth rock.

"The marks stopped..."

"That's when Annie left."

He turned to her, the pain so obvious in his features. His hand slid from the lifeless rock, finding it too painful to touch any longer.

"I really miss her, Logan."

Clear eyes, wide with natural innocence gazed at him pleadingly.

"She said she wouldn't leave me on my own, but one day she never came back."

She shivered slightly, her gaze slipping to the floor.

"Then it got real cold and real dark and I was on my own for so long. Sometimes they'd bring people in here and they'd stay with me for a while, but I had to watch 'em grow thin, and they'd be in so much pain they'd scream in the night. I can still hear them in my head because I'd have to listen to them like that, and there was nothing I could do..."

A slow tear wound down her cheek as the words spilled from her lips and he instinctively pulled her close, holding her body to his as they knelt before each other on the chill concrete.

"They'd get real sick and one day they'd leave me too."

She clutched his shoulders, her hands shaking.

"It got so lonely in the dark... don't leave me on my own again..."

He gently caressed her damp cheek, resting his forehead against hers, his intense eyes filling her whole vision.

"I promise. One day we'll get out of here. I swear it to you, Darlin', I'm not going to leave you..."

She sniffed and smiled, wrapping herself round him as his warm arms surrounded her body.

He held her again that night, nestled in his embrace as sleep and exhaustion overcame her mind. Her head lolled dreamily onto his shoulder as he gently cradled her, soothing away the nervous tension that had coiled in her body like a spring.

As the sadness had left her she melted into his arms, liquid and warm, soothing his own exhausted bones.

He didn't remember ever being this tired...

*~Strung out, burned out yeah,

You're down on your luck and you don't give a "huh"

'Till the best part of you starts to twitch...

Ain't that a bitch...~*

I blink awake... I don't even remember falling asleep. There's light now though, but only stone to look at.

The sudden impact against my back knocks a gasp of air from my lungs, spitting blood onto the floor as it does so. Round, dazed eyes search slowly up the blank walls, a swollen black eye from earlier puffing gently over my face. Parched tongue slides tentatively over dry lips, searching for moisture I already know isn't there.

Been here before, I'd guess.

Must end up here every time I try and fight them. Bruises feel the same, but I don't remember the other times. When I get back to the cell I won't remember this one either. I'll be sick with the nausea and the emptiness in my head where they suck the memories out.

Every time I'm conscious enough to try and fight them, I do. I try and stop them hefting me onto that gurney. Because as soon as I'm on it I end up back in by bunk with no memory of where the fuck I went, but my body screaming like it's run a marathon.

But I can't seem to beat them. I fight but I'm sluggish and dazed.

Wonder how many times I've been here?

Body jars once more, the impact throwing me hard against the restraints that hold me up, spread-eagled in the centre of the room.

I just feel kind of numb.

Impact again, and this time it doesn't even meet with a grimace. I stopped caring when I couldn't even feel it any more. Guess they know that because they stop.

Either that or they just wanted to wake me up.

Ha, and I thought Cyke's revving motorbike alarm clock was annoying as hell. As novelty clocks go, this has got to be by far one of the most distracting ones I've seen.

God, I'm still so tired...

I hang my head forward, no longer able to take the weight of it, and blood trickles out between my lips. It slides to the floor in a crimson streak and smacks on the floor, smattering messily over the tiles. That's not good, is it?

For some reason I still want to laugh. Maybe it's desperation.

I hang there and wonder if it's possible to will yourself unconscious.

~o~

On the gurney, his eyes twitched under the lids, taped shut with surgical micropore. His lips were stained with blood, his skin stained with innumerable blossoming bruises.

A tremor flicked through his body as the wires simulated another impact wracking through his frame.

Observers scratched their heads.

"Interesting..."



Chapter Five

*~I lie awake with open eyes,

My love just died,

I'm cold inside...~*

He was here longer than most, but he was a fighter.

Can't face the thought to be alone again. Not now.

He asked me what my name was. I said it was 5192, the numbers in my arm. He looked angry and told me that it wasn't a name, that it was a barcode.

I watched something in him crumble when I told him that I'd been in here so long I didn't remember my name. I don't even remember my parents.

I know they must have been around once but I don't remember them at all.

He looked at me like he pitied me.

I don't need his pity.

You can't miss what you don't remember. You can't wish for what you don't even know exists.

I told him so and he looked even sadder than he had done before. He told me I needed a name, that I wasn't just some piece of meat and that, most of all, I wasn't just a number.

I just stared at him. He wanted to give me a name. No one had ever wanted to do that before.

He said he wanted to call me Freya, because it was beautiful. I could do nothing but sit and stare at him as he stood there. He almost smiled and he said that I was beautiful too.

I don't remember standing up and I don't remember running to him, but I remember colliding with his firm body and wrapping myself around him so tightly that he almost fell over.

He half laughed as he gently peeled me off, a sound I had never heard him make before. It was warm and enclosing like the rest of him, sending a gentle shiver down my spine as he kissed the top of my head. Then he smiled at me and I clung onto him again. This time he didn't even try to stop me, he just stood there and wrapped his arms around me in return.

I really miss him...

It hurt to see him like that...

They came for him in the night. Last night. He was asleep behind me, his body wrapped around mine like always, as he kept the chill from my bones. He always told me it didn't bother him, but I knew he lied for my benefit. He was cold too, and he suffered it because of me.

He woke suddenly, his movement nudging me from deep sleep into groggy stupor. They pointed and laughed as they dug their fingers into my shoulders, making lewd suggestions as they dragged me across the floor away from him.

I heard him call my name before he leaped at them, flying from the bed and into the thick of them without ever even pausing.

My name... the name he gave me. My heart almost stopped.

One of the soldiers kept his hand tangled tightly in my hair, keeping me firmly on the far side as I watched them, unable to do anything but look on as they went for him. I tried to struggle, but he yanked on my hair so hard it jarred my head back, making me cry out.

He tried to fight them, I know he did, but there were too many. They were angry too, vengeful, out to find some kind of payback for the trouble they accused him of causing.

Yesterday he'd refused to go with them again.

Every time they tried to take him he would fight, but that day he had seemed to explode with rage.

He'd said he didn't want to play their games and he had battled like his whole body was possessed by pure electrical power.

They always tried to avoid taking him while he was completely conscious, filling his system with something. You could see the track marks blossoming up the inside of his arms from all the times they'd done it.

Even sedated he fought them, but this time, for whatever reason, they either hadn't bothered or they'd forgotten.

Maybe they thought they were clever and had broken him already, but all they'd ever done was make him angrier.

I could see he was still in pain from all the other times they'd taken him, played their games and run their tests, but he battled harder than I had ever seen and they seemed lucky to escape with their lives.

For the first time, they didn't take him.

I... I told him he should have gone with them that day, that he had finally gone too far for their patience. They can't deal with anything not going to their plans and in here no one is beyond their grasp.

You hear stories... whispered in corridors or hidden in offices. Word of mouth that spreads from person to person any way that it can.

They can break you. They can make you do what they want you to do.

He's one of the ones that refused to follow their rules and I knew that they were not going to sit back and let it happen...

I tried to reason with him but, as they beat him across the back of the head, I'd already known for a long time that it was too late.

He slumped down heavily, knocked out cold and no longer able to fight them. They picked him up under his arms and dragged him out the door, his feet dragging limply behind them as they turned the corner.

Can't face the thought to be alone...



Chapter Six

The air was thick and close, saturated as though it had been breathed a thousand times. He woke in the utter darkness, twisted painfully in the cramped metal casket. Too small to stand or stretch in, and only just enough room to crouch. He was twisted up inside in the stifling air with his arms pulled out through two holes in the wall, handcuffed together on the outside. His body was boiling but his fingers were oddly frozen and numb, pricking with pins and needles from poor circulation, his blood cut off by the all too tight cuffs.

He pulled hard at the bindings but in his present state they were too strong, the metal of his box clanging hollowly as he moved within it.

His eyes felt like they were bulging, pupils massively dilated in the intense darkness, and he could feel the beads of sweat drizzling down his body from the stifling heat.

The sides were thick and solid, studs and rivets trailing over its joints and edges giving it more the appearance of a crouching man-sized metal trunk.

Twisting onto his knees offered the most relief for his strained shoulders but in their place his thighs began to cramp. His arms locked straight out into one wall he could not lie and could only barely sit.

Every muscle in his body screamed.

He needed freedom and he needed to move. Muscle and sinew cried to be stretched, begged to be unfurled, causing a wailing cacophony of frustration to pound through his physical form.

Something within him snapped and with a desperate cry it poured from him in a sudden explosion.

Thrashing like a captured animal he kicked and screamed, pulling at his chains and pummeling the walls with his flailing legs while he roared with anger.

The flurry just as suddenly sagged to a halt, his chest heaving as he gulped in lungfuls of useless, wasted air, short whimpers of desperation falling from his lips as he panted.

From the holes around his arms just enough oxygen got in to prevent suffocation, but the explosion of activity had exhausted his meager supply while gaining him nothing.

He sagged back down, closing his eyes and resting his head against the unforgiving metal as he tried to slow his breathing. He cursed himself as a pained and despairing whimper formed in his throat.

Not until now did he understand how Storm could be claustrophobic. Each exhale made it hotter, closer, wetter. Each second of utter darkness seemed to infiltrate him more. He tried to choke down the panic and despair that filled his belly but small sparks of it jumped around his mind, never letting him rest.

It reminded him of a fucking Oubliette...

A place to put people to forget about them.

He shuddered silently.

The metal sides ran with condensation, slimy an untraceable in the total darkness, one thought echoing increasingly round his head like a mantra.

"I've got to get out of here..."

The pens.

It was the kind of place you could lose your sanity, your life or both.

The kind of place where the creature inside tries to stir.

The kind of place where they break you.

After almost three days she found him.

Freya walked the long hallway, looking up the sheer vertical banks of identical metal pens. A little under 3' high, a little over that wide, gunmetal grey, vaulted, bolted and locked.

They stretched up the wall on either side, most of the higher ones empty, but each had two holes in the front, and from most of those holes sprouted pairs of heavily manacled wrists.

The stench of fear and waste was cloying in her nostrils, turning her stomach.

She prayed he was somewhere down low as she scoured the rows of blank, faceless caskets. She'd never be able to reach him if he was higher.

Metal coffins for the living. It sent a shudder down her spine.

She was searching for his hands, the ones she clutched so desperately when he first arrived.

Now they hung loose and pale from the throttlehold of the manacles on the second layer of caskets. She gingerly brushed her fingers over the backs of his hands and winced as he recoiled from her touch, pulling as much of his exposed arms into the box as possible.

"Logan...?"

There was a long silence.

Inside the casket he opened his eyes, blinking blindly into the darkness.

"Logan?" She asked him again, gently wrapping her slender fingers around his retreating hand.

His heart thumped suddenly, a spark of recognition floating through the haze.

Somewhere he had lost all sense of time. Unable to move or sleep and painfully dehydrated, sensory deprivation had begun to kick in. His face resting, pressed against the front wall of his box, he had at first thought she had been another dream.

His voice was muffled and hoarse through the metal. "Freya?"

She heard him, distant and tinny from inside the thick casket and she held his hand tighter, letting his desperate fingers blindly interlace with hers.

"Freya, you have to let me out of here. You have to help me..."

"Logan, I can't."

"Please..."

She could hear the desperate panic that edged his voice and, swallowing back the emotion that burned her throat, she leaned forward to gently kiss his knuckles.

"I'm so sorry... I don't have the keys, Logan, I'm sorry..."

Logan felt a drop of moisture plop onto his fingers, a rapidly cooling tear snaking over his skin.

"I... I couldn't find them. I searched everywhere and I couldn't find them."

He felt the brush of hair as she brought his hand to her face again, guiding his fingers over her dampened skin.

"I'm so sorry.... Oh God, I'm so sorry."

She was whispering now, his blind hands following the contours of her face and smoothing through the long strands of her hair.

Inside, his face was a grimace of pain and frustration. He wanted to hold her so badly just to reassure himself she was real and not another dream. Even pressed up as far to the side as he could get he could never hold her to him, a solid inch of unforgiving metal holding them apart.

Pressing her lips to his fingers one last time she slowly pulled away.

"I... I have to go now..."

His heart lurched. "Freya, no..."

She could hear that edge of panic creeping back.

"I had to come and see you, but I have to go before they find me here."

His hands grasped out for her again, catching the tips of her fingers.

"Freya, please! Don't leave me!"

"Logan, I CAN'T! You've got to understand that. Just give them what they want from you and they'll let you go!" She wailed. Her voice was breaking with the strain, praying not to break down right here on the floor.

He called out again. "You can't leave me here! Please don't leave me here like this...!"

Her heart pounding like a pneumatic drill in her chest she started walking backwards, her whole body shaking as her fingers slid out of his reach.

He cried out to her then, grasping as far as he could stretch.

"Please don't leave me...!"

She turned and ran, tears streaming down her face and clouding her vision as she heard him screaming her name.

The pens.

The kind of place where they strip you of body and soul.

The kind of place where the darkness is never completely chased away by the sun.

The kind of place where they broke him.

Two more days they left him, delirious without food or water.

Two more days, hallucinating in the thick tar of blackness.

Two more days...

The loud, echoing, metallic thump of the lock being drawn back rammed into his skull.

Blessed delirium muted his mind as the front of the box was swung open, dragging his still manacled hands with it.

The bright, almost phosphorescent lights burned his hypersensitised eyes and he cowered away from them, trying to turn back into the darkness of his metal cage.

Strong hands pulled the door open further though, others clutching at his body and dragging him towards the ledge. Cramped muscles in his legs refused to work and he fell from his twisted foetal position, jarring his shoulders as he came to a stop, dangling from his arms still chained together on the other side of the cage door.

He cried out in pain, as every single muscle in his body seemed to catch fire.

A well-aimed kick to his gut and another to his kidneys knocked all the air from his lungs and he hung there, wilted and useless like a marionette without its puppeteer.

Someone released the throttling chains from his wrists and he slumped limply onto the floor, his sweat-soaked body shivering as he gasped in big lungfuls of air, nuzzling his face into the blessedly dry stones.

"Another successful treatment, Doctor."

"Excellent. Barbaric, but effective."

"They're still angry with him..."

"Let them do as they will. It won't matter in the end."

A sturdy boot collided with his testicles, making him curl up in pain, whimpering as frozen, numb hands and cramped, wasted muscles failed to help him protect himself.

They kicked him again and then laughed, his attempts to shield his genitals having no effect against a good, sturdy army style boot.

They roughly picked him up and dragged him from the pens back to his cell.

She had never seen him look so glazed... so defeated. She'd never have been willing to believe that they could break him, but then she'd never seen the pens before either.

She'd heard people speak of them, always hushed tones, always afraid. That way lay death or insanity.

As he had been hauled back in, he had looked like death.

As she looked at his wild eyes, for a second he had also looked like pure madness.

Her heart had cried and she ran to him, flinging herself around his body, clutching him as hard as she could. For a second he had just stood there, but a great weight had seemed to slip from his body, escaping with a sigh as he embraced her back. Her arms around his neck he pulled her as tight into his hold as possible, his eyes drifting closed, feeling the softness of her hair as he nuzzled against her bowed head.



Chapter Seven

It hurts.

They say time is a gentle mistress.

They lied.

They call it "Treatment".

There goes that laughing in my head again...

I can feel the itch, the burn. Worms crawling along my veins, eating my flesh from the inside. I feel the blood pooling around my mouth, hot and dripping as it bubbles from my lungs. It fills my nose as I inhale, spreading back down my throat in place of air.

God?

I'm going to die.

I'm going to leave her like she was afraid I would. Alone in the darkness. I can see her face in my mind and I can taste the salt of her tears on my lips.

God, you bastard...

I'm drowning in the crimson wash of my own life and this is when I choose to curse him? The irony stings.

Crawling sensation slithers past my brain and they laugh while I drown.

Their voices cut through me, a half conscious part of my soul feeling the thick blood trickle down my throat. The sticky redness smears across my cheeks as I lie face down in the sick puddle of viscous red.

God?

Look after her?

*~You let the time pass by,

Big boys don't cry,

Believe that lie...~*

I feel them moving me around, pulling me apart. I think I'm going to rip down the middle. It hurts like they're stretching me in every direction at once.

There was a time when they'd tie your limbs to wild horses and as they fired a gunshot into the air they'd pull you apart with their terrified need to escape. I'm strung out on the ground and they're ripping my flesh from my bones.

I pity the horses.

There is something cold under my back and for now they leave me be.

The horses, they recapture.

I'm boneless and dead and I can still taste her salt, reminding me that I'm not as dead as I'd like to be. They call him the surcease of pain but for now he stands watch, hollow sockets holding an entire universe where his eyes once were. They say you can see him, like a shadow when he's near.

They lied.

He's pitch black and as cold as eternity. He has the wings of an angel but as he embraces you he is solid bone. I feel myself limp in his arms, cradled like a lover in his embrace as he lifts me up. And, Christ, it all falls away right then...

But there's fucking salt on my lips.

It spreads over my tongue like a jackhammer in my skull. I don't want to feel it, I don't want to go back... There's too much pain there, too much fear.

But I slip through the arms of death like he is nothing but smoke and I'm falling so far it's frightening.

Simple salt.

I never knew it could hurt so much.

I wake, coughing and snorting, trying to push the blood from my nose and mouth as I lie face down on the floor. There's a deep ache in my chest as if they've been trying to bend my bones. They can't break them, but under the adamantium they feel like they've been twisted and curled.

She's there with me, hovering by my side. I can tell by the way her eyes are sunken that she's been crying. She's the one who brought me back. I know that I don't want to die... not here, not like this, but it was so tempting when he held me.

But I feel so beaten and so empty. I don't know how much more of me there is left, or how much more of this I can take before his embrace is too inviting and the salt is not enough.

I reach out for her and she falls into my arms, the same every time. I need her now even more than she needs me. She's a child of innocence trapped in here so long that her body grew up while her soul never could. She's the one thing that I need to cling onto, the one thing that stops me from giving up.

She needs me to stay, so I can't let go. She can't live without me, and I won't survive without her.



Chapter Eight

She smelled of Orchids. Somehow, over everything else, she seemed surrounded by them. She would curl up in his lap and rest her head on his shoulder while he wrapped his arms tightly around her body, breathing in the pure, sweet fragrance.

He would watch from swollen and bruise-blackened eyes as her face would brighten when he came back, and sadden as she saw his pain. Every day he would pull himself from the gurney or the floor, or wherever they had left him, and push himself past the hurt that numbed his body purely so he could see her smile.

Easing her pain somehow eased his, her needing embrace salving his wounds. He would sit and she would rest her head while he held her.

But he grew weaker. Time and punishment took their toll on a body not used to being without instant healing, and every day it became a little bit harder, and pushing through the pain seemed to take a little bit longer. His muscles would cry out with fatigue and her smile faded further every day. Now she would weep for him, her tears driving him through the last of the haze to rise and hold her...

Then there came a day when even her tears were not enough. When not even a soft touch and her pleading cries could pull him through the fog.

She called out to him because she missed his arms.

He slept so much now it had started to hurt when she remembered it. The warmth and the comfort...

Coldness ebbed towards her like waves lapping at the fragile shore, washing the strength from her being.

It was the chill of walking on someone's grave.

And silently she wept at his bedside.

He sighed through the blur, struggling for her touch but somehow always falling short.

Her fingers ran softly down his cheek, his limp hand resting in hers.

"Logan?" She brushed the errant hair back from his forehead with her fingertips. "C'mon Logan... Please?"

She pulled his hand to rest his palm against her cheek, nuzzling into him in the hope it might bring him round.

His eyes fluttered slightly under the lids, but they didn't open. His jaw was slack, air barely hissing past his lips.

She could hear the rattling breath grating in his lungs and she could feel the burn behind her eyes as she tried not to cry.

She couldn't bear to lose another, especially not him. He'd promised he'd never leave her alone. He'd promised he'd never hurt her. He'd given her a name...

But time had passed and his body had grown weak and thin. Abuse and malnutrition had taken their inevitable toll and his body had begun to simply waste away.

She tenderly kissed his cheek but he did not respond.

She was more than just meat to him. She was a real person for the first time she could remember and now he was going to do exactly what he'd promised he would never do. He was going to leave her alone again.

Hot, round tears formed at the corners of her eyes, plopping slowly down her cheeks.

She traced a slow finger over his dry lips, feeling the ragged, weak breaths against her touch.

She wrapped her arm under his neck, lifting his head to her as she bent over him, burying her face in his sideburns. Her salty tears spilled onto his face, leaving pale steaks on his skin, dampening his lips with the tears of mourning she shed.

He felt the warm moisture sliding down his face, her miserable sobs vibrating against his body as she nuzzled into him, kissing his closed eyelids gently.

Every muscle in his body burned, but somehow he lifted his arm to drape it over her shaking shoulders.

She gasped in shock and then joy, pushing herself into his weak embrace, her tears coming thick and fast.

Trembling fingers wiped her tears from his cheeks while she silently cried relief, her lips speckling his face with feather-light kisses.

"Oh God, Logan... I thought..."

She couldn't finish the sentence, silenced by the painful sigh that escaped him.

Freya gently ran her fingers down his face, soothing his tired and pallid skin. His eyes flickered and opened a fraction as he observed her from under dark lids.

"I told you I... wouldn't leave you... alone, huh, kid...?"

He wheezed the words, the numbness seeming to invade his lungs. He coughed violently, breaking out into a cold, greasy sweat as his body constricted, doubling over with the exertion before he collapsed backwards, landing heavily on the sheets.

She pulled the blanket over his breathless body, wrapping him in its warmth as he closed his eyes again, exhaustion overcoming him at last.

She kissed him gently, holding his hand as he slowly slipped into sleep.

They were seeing how far they could push him. How much he could take before he gave up inside. She looked at his sunken eyes, the almost sickly pallor of his skin, and she knew it wouldn't take much more.

~o~

"So explain to me Gansis. What exactly are we pumping our money in to? The investors want to know."

"The Revelations Project, sir. Probably the finest example of military expertise in over 30 years. Not since nuclear power have weapons made such strides in directed destruction."

"That's not an answer, Doctor. What exactly does it DO?"

"It kills people, sir. Pure and simple. No casualties, no prisoners. It's swift, it leaves buildings and property intact, land unharmed... it's frankly astounding."

"I'm a busy man, Gansis. Your funds are assured, you don't have to sell this to me. Get to the point."

The doctor paused, clipping the lid back onto his pen. A pale, bony finger pushed his wiry spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he surveyed the suit that loomed before him.

"Mr Voss, The mind is an astonishing thing. The most powerful organ in the body, it is responsible for everything from greatest mathematical feats to the daily chore of breathing in and out. It affects the soul and most of all it affects the body. What would you say if I told you we had a way of producing mental images so strong, so powerful, it forced the mind to make it a reality?"

"I'd say you'd been sniffing the formaldehyde again, my good doctor."

His pale, skeletal face creased into the tiniest of smiles.

"You'd probably be right, but my dear sir, we are dealing with something very special here indeed."

Bony fingers flipped switches on the complex array before them, the window above fuzzing then re-focusing.

A small, sparse room lay beyond, a gurney in the centre occupied by the gaunt frame of a woman.

Her limbs twitched violently, yet her eyes were closed as if she were trapped in a vivid nightmare. Her limbs were restrained and her eyes sealed shut with two thin strips of surgical tape.

The suit squinted through the window, one eyebrow raised in slight confusion.

"Gansis? What, or indeed who is that?"

"Subject 5192," He murmured, flipping switches as he followed her readouts dancing across the screens.

"Who?"

The skeletal doctor paused in his work.

"5192. She's a very special specimen my good sir. So superbly receptive we took her out of general rotation. We've been using her as a runner until the right time arose to demonstrate our machine fully. She's a fine wine to be savored. Today she will make an excellent demonstration model."

"What IS she doing in there?"

"Dreaming."

They stood in silence for a few seconds, the emaciated body in the next room growing ever more frantic, her wrists straining at the straps that held her secure.

"Gansis? What's she dreaming about...?"

"She's running at the moment. Being persued through the back streets of some crumbling, monolithic cityscape." He smiled crookedly. "One of my favorite scenarios."

"In God's name, why?"

"So you can see."

White fingers lifted the cover from a small green button, his trembling hands hovering over the plastic.

"Watch her closely now..."

All eyes turned to the panting, frantic form behind the glass. Fingers slowly reached out to caress the plastic of the button.

It clicked.

Her head wrenched back, a shrill scream of tearful agony wrenching her body as her ribs exploded, flaming red splattering the outside of the window as her skin gave way.

Voss leaped back halfway across the room. The doctor merely smiled slowly, his lips twitching back like a snake about to strike.

"Jesus, Gansis, what the fuck happened?"

"She got shot."

Voss turned to his compatriot, his eyes wide with astonishment.

"What do you mean... 'shot'?"

"I mean exactly what I said. We have created... the Revelations Project. We have found a way to convince the mind exactly whatever we please. We can amplify that signal, forcing the subject to believe it so strongly, so certainly, that it becomes an actuality. In her case, we convinced her mind that she was being chased. When I pressed that button, I added a second signal to her scenario, effectively shooting her without a bullet. Her mind registered the impact, her body reacted accordingly. If you examine the wound, it is perfectly concurrent with being shot in the back."

Voss's eyes gleamed in the half-light cast by the computer screen.

"But it only affects one person at a time...?"

"At the moment, yes," The doctor paused. "But given time though, given the investor's money... The enhancers will become stronger, the signals more directed. You could wipe out an entire opposing army with the press of a button. You could kill them with no ammunition. You wouldn't even need to waste troops. You press one button and suddenly there's no more enemy, because the enemies have been killed by their own minds..."

He leaned back, crossing his arms contentedly.

Voss smiled, his eyes turning cold as the implications sunk in.

"My dear doctor... You are a genius..."

~o~

He woke in the silence of the room, sore and aching, and very, very alone.

The day passed without contact, slipping in and out of fitful sleep until the dark veil of night consumed the cell.

She never came back

He waited for her the next day, left alone in his cell. His strength grew by inches and, although they didn't take him away, she still didn't return. The feeble moonlight came and went, casting silver shadows across all it touched. Slowly, days evaporated into weeks. Her bed lay empty and he remained totally alone, seeing no one save the hands that shoved food through the hatch in the wall. Hope withered by millimeters as time floated past unmeasured.

His day passed in silence, a maddening void of noise. He slipped from fitful sleep to wild rage, his head aching groggily the whole while and still the door stayed shut and her bed stayed empty.

The heavy metal thunk of the lock being pulled back made him jump, the sound echoing loudly in the oblivion of silence that had surrounded him.

He sat up in his bed, a small spark of hope ready to welcome her back, but it was not her.

Clipboard and glasses appraised him skeptically.

"Subject 741."

The man uncapped a pen and ran it down a list of figures in his hand.

Logan growled low in his throat, his lip curling into a feral snarl of anger as he gently pressed his hand over the scorching numbers.

741. Not human, not even an animal. Just a number.

Glasses consulted their papers again, flipping over pages of statistics, graphs, lines and figures.

"Subject has shown no marked response to treatment thus far. Recommend increasing intensity again and shifting to scenario 9. Let's see how you fare with that one. Take him away."

The creaking gurney swung into the room, the piercing, shrill screaming of the wheels grating directly into the space behind his eyes.

He hunched in his corner, bristling like a cat before it bites, his lip curled up revealing shining canines as he growled. No one took any heed, the men behind the gurney pushing it fully into his room.

The same as always...

"Prepare subject for room number 5. I'll inform the technicians."

The man in the lab-coat ticked his sheet and clipped the lid back onto his pen sharply. He turned and marched from the room, leaving the door open and leaving Logan alone with the two men.

He saw his chance and took it.

He knew could take them easily. Even without his powers and his claws he knew he was an excellent fighter. He knew he could beat them.

There was a desperate primal need boiling inside of him once more. He needed to find her... He needed to escape.

He roared and launched himself from the far side of the room, barreling towards them, the strength returning to his limbs as the adrenaline coursed through his veins.

There was a silent rush of air and a brightly coloured dart powered into his thigh. He hardly felt it, but his leg suddenly sagged beneath him, unable to bear his weight. He fell to the ground, his legs useless as a cold numbness spread out of his thigh and up his vertebrae, the muscles in his legs twitching involuntarily. He struggled against it but his limbs seemed to ice over, freezing solid and then shattering into nothing.

One of the gurney-men re-holstered his dart pistol in the swathes of his surgical robes. The other shook his head and tutted as Logan collapsed limply to the floor, the drugs that coursed through his veins robbing him of the last of his strength.

"And after we gave you time to heal up again, too... some people have no gratitude."

~o~

"What's the rush doctor? I am a very busy man."

"Yes sir, I appreciate that. The study is going well, perfectly on schedule so far, but..."

"But, what, doctor? I don't like complications."

"It's not a complication as such. More a divergence. So far, all the test subjects have responded perfectly to the treatment..."

Bony fingers flicked a switch as the window cleared.

Voss peered through into the next room.

"But this subject...?"

The skeleton smiled.

"Ah, this is an interesting one. 741 is a very special sample. It appears that we are not the first to have got hold of him.

"Explain?"

"Serious skeletal enhancements... Massive physical as well as psychological trauma. His head is so full of holes it's amazing he still has coherent thoughts. He has metal physically BONDED to his entire skeleton... It's incredible work. I've honestly never seen anything like it."

"What's your point, Gansis?"

"The metal... it's not part of his original physical make up. It won't be manipulated like the rest of his body because essentially it's an unconnected foreign body within his system. We've been trying for months to get so much as a crack in a bone of his and it's just not possible."

"So you can't break his bones. So what?"

"Humour an old man, sir. Penicillin was discovered when someone left his lunch to go mouldy. Consider what we have here."

"What do we have? All I see is a man with the full-body version of a plate in his head."

"We have advancement sir. Our current weapon only damages the physical, but that kind of damage can only go so far. We basically can't kill him like that. This forces us to adapt and re-think. Come up with something better, something that can't even be noticed by an opposing force, much less discovered. If we can't kill him physically, what do we do?"

"Tell me."

"We find a way that is totally untraceable. Unexplained... No bodily damage at all. You take the strong, and you strip them of everything they have. Push them to the brink and then push a little bit further. Take them beyond the far edge of despair and sit back while they kill themselves from the inside out..."



Chapter Nine

He woke slowly, floating up into consciousness like a corpse floating to the surface of a lake.

It was cold and he didn't want to wake up, the tempting nothingness calling him back.

His eyes still closed he grimaced and moaned, feeling the aching muscles that bunched in his legs and arms. His head felt like it was drowning in cotton wool, all the sensations fuzzy and out of focus.

Coarse ropes held his arms down securely by his sides, bound to the elbow and secured to the hard table beneath him. His ankles were fastened too, legs slightly apart and strapped to the bench.

He tried to open his eyes but matter how hard he pulled, he couldn't open them.

He whined in fear, the last shreds of his hope snapping like dried twigs.

Under the two stretches of surgical tape that held the lids shut, his eyes flickered in growing panic.

He was naked and cold, bound down and denied even sight and simple movements.

If they'd wanted vulnerability, this was it.

The faint smell of disinfectant whispered past his drug-addled senses and he shivered again, unable to repress the images that slithered through his mind.

Images of his past, of the surgery, of the pain.

He'd barely survived it the first time. He didn't think he'd survive it again.

A sudden helplessness invaded him, his brow creasing as blind panic crawled through his body. A desperate cry escaped his lips as his body tightened. He didn't want to die...

He pulled at his bonds, muscles tensed to breaking point under his skin as the basest parts of his mind fought and clawed for freedom.

He pulled until his wrists and ankles were bloodied, scratched to shreds and friction-burned by the coarse ropes.

He was almost weeping with desperation, panting as he struggled against the suddenly engulfing sea of painful memories.

Phantom blades were against his skin and tearing him apart, the hiss of hot metal hitting something cold ringing in his ears.

He bucked against them, rearing against the table, viciously jarring back his shoulders as the bonds kept his arms pinned down.

He didn't feel it in the sudden intensity of the past drowning him, air exploding from his lungs in terror.

Then she slapped him.

The sharp thwack snapped him back, his sweat-drenched body slumping down again, crying out quietly in despair. His chest heaved, his nose huffing as his lungs battled to drag in oxygen.

He felt familiar, smooth fingers glide up his cheek, affectionately feathering his hair and stilling the desperate tossing of his head as he tried to shake away the images. He leaned into her touch, gasping with relief at the tenderness of the contact.

Freya?

It had to be her. This was real... this was secure... cling on to it...

He nuzzled her hand, letting the soothing fingers calm his racing heartbeat. She cooed affectionately, her thumb gently caressing the line of his lip.

His breathing slowed, the cries becoming a faint whimper that escaped his throat as his brow furrowed in desperation.

She was crouching over him and he felt her shift slightly over his stomach.

He hadn't noticed she was there before.

He could feel the ends of her long hair brushing lightly over his skin, gently tickling his chest.

If she was there then maybe she could help him, release the bonds around his wrists, or at least allow him his sight back.

He opened his mouth to speak but she quieted him with a finger over his lips and a gentle shush.

The hand caressing his cheek was joined by another on the opposing side, fingers slipping tenderly into his hair and running through the luxurious, black strands as she petted him.

"It's OK, Logan. No one's going to hurt you now."

He'd wanted to hear her voice so badly that he couldn't stop the joyous expression that lifted his face.

She was alive...

He'd thought she was gone, that he'd been unable to keep her safe... He'd prayed that she was alright and, like a miracle, here she was.

His doped up, drugged out body melted into her touch, not questioning her voice or how she came to be there. None of it mattered as long as she stayed with him.

He took the thin strand of hope and clung to it as hard as he could.

She was so gentle with him, so tender, that when soft lips descended on his he didn't even think about it. Never spared a second to question her. Didn't notice at first, when the chaste peck became something more.

She moaned quietly against him, her tongue playing softly over his lips.

He hesitated. Suddenly uncertain he half wondered why she hadn't untied him. He was about to ask, but her embrace became more insistent, her tongue pressing hard into the yielding softness of his mouth.

He gasped in surprise, the sound muffled by her invading tongue.

Her hands tensed against his scalp and pushed his head back, stretching the long line of his throat as her lips slowly slid from his.

He panted slightly, breathing her name questioningly.

As the word left his lips the sweetness of her touch seemed to falter slightly and he shivered as he felt the cold detachment rise through her body like mist.

Her fingers tightened hard in his hair, clutching thick bunches between her fingers as she kissed him roughly, bruising his lips as her tongue slid hard into the warmth of his mouth.

He resisted weakly, but couldn't fight her, unable to fend off the invading mouth forcing its way into his.

She pulled back, licking her flushed lips hungrily as she crouched lower over his body, resting herself gently over his groin. He could almost feel the cold smile on her face as an icy, sneering chuckle broke from her lips as she ground herself against him.

His heart hammered inside his chest again.

Too wanton to be Freya, too knowing and too cold, but everything else about her... Her taste, her feel, her voice...

He tried to struggle against her as her mouth descended to his bared throat, brushing the skin with soft lips before her tongue darted out to lick slowly along the line of his jaw.

It was like hot velvet against his skin, rubbing to just below his ear, her soft moans of pleasure sounding loud against him as she pressed her body against his.

The hands slid from his hair, trailing down his cheeks to the collar that still clenched at his neck.

She ran her fingers along its edge, tracing the pressure mark it had left in his skin, touching him so lightly it made him shudder.

"Freya, please darlin', you have to let me up..."

His voice was hoarse, still woozy with the medication.

He rolled his head to the side, trying to escape her slithering tongue, conflicted with the emotions in his mind. Battling halves knew it was wrong, but realised that it also felt good...

She began to gently nip and suckle against the tender flesh behind his jaw and his body automatically reacted to the gentle, undulating pressure she created against his crotch.

He grunted and struggled under her, but the smooth body against his was an alarming aphrodisiac.

It was like someone was controlling his responses, his head wanting to escape but his body wanting to stay.

Her hands traced gently over his neck, brushing the flesh like a feather, knowing lips moving to caress the hollow of his throat like a whisper against his skin.

He whimpered.

Her soft caresses over his face and neck were everything that he sought, perfect to the last detail, and he knew that that should frighten him.

She was too knowing.

She stretched herself along him like a cat, rubbing her body against him so he could feel the cloth of her dress against his skin and the soft swell of her breasts rubbing against his chest.

He struggled vainly but her lips latched onto him, suckling the crook of his neck just below the collar. His raw skin tingled as she pulled his flesh into her mouth, her tongue swirling over the trapped area. She devoured at his neck hungrily, sending arcs of sensation directly into his head.

All he could seem to think of was how much he wanted those lips wrapped around his penis, how much he didn't want that at all, and how the drugs just made him so sleepy...

He struggled pathetically against his bonds, not sure if he wanted to push her away or hold her to him and let her burning tongue devour his whole body.

The ends of her fingers danced over the moist, heated area of his throat, and her lips traveled down his shoulder, kissing bare skin.

He could feel her sensual touch wrapping through his form, the soft feather of her hands dancing over him. He could feel the warmth of her arousal hovering over his groin and he responded in kind, relishing every sensation as she pressed herself into him.

Half his mind seemed to fall asleep then, and he tried his best to quash the uneasiness because she tasted so good against his lips when she had kissed him. She felt so good rubbing herself along him, teasing him with her body, that there was a part of him that didn't want this to be wrong. The part of his head that argued suddenly curled up and slept and then it all became so clear.

She licked up the length of his throat and over his chin, the tip of her tongue flashing across his lips. His eyes fluttered under the tape that bound them shut, the warring factions now fully silenced.

His jaw slackened on instinct and she suckled his kiss harder, pulling his lower lip into the heat of her mouth. Her tongue played along the edge before releasing it to him, watching as he cautiously tasted her on his skin.

She smiled as she watched him, dazed and confused, suddenly unable to remember what had been holding him back in the first place.

Her tongue invaded past his lips once more and he reciprocated, her fingers brushing lazily over his nipples while he moaned into her mouth. Her delicious tongue caressed against his, making him sigh, aching for her touch.

The table, the bonds, all were forgotten because she was with him, tasting him, holding him...

She played her fingers over the sensitive buds of his nipples once more, stroking them lightly then catching them with the sharp tips of her fingernails. Her lips parted from his as she flicked against the sensitive buds, making him gasp with the arc of pleasure that shot up his spine.

His head swam, the pain and confusion lost now, morphing into exquisite gratification as her slim fingers teased at his flesh.

Grudgingly leaving his lips she crept slowly down his body, planting gentle bites down his chest, following the line of his breastbone.

The burning heat of her tongue wrapped around the hard tip of his nipple while her thumb absently played with the other, wet heat replacing her fingertips and fire cracking along his skin as an irrepressible arousal began to build in his body. It was warm and wet, and so soft it breathed irrefutable need into his mind.

He heard her moan as she rubbed herself over his growing erection before sliding away from him.

She wasn't wearing any panties and he felt the first traces of moisture slicking onto his skin from her.

The soft strands of her hair fluttered over his stomach as her head moved. Slowly caressing his hips with the palms of her hands she gently kissed down his firm stomach, tasting the warm saltiness of his skin.

Her tongue flicked out quickly, leaving a tiny line of wetness on his flesh.

Logan shuddered, suddenly so acutely aware of the aching arousal she was causing in his body as she dragged herself over him while she moved around.

He surrendered to it, needing her touch.

She gently lapped the salt from his firm stomach, her body brushing against his arousal with every movement.

The woman paused in her ministrations and smiled slowly. The gash on his stomach was long since healed, leaving a rutted scar the length of the wound. She gradually traced the length of it with her fingers, following with intricate care the line that marked his body.

She feathered kisses over his stomach once more, gently dipping the tip of her tongue into his navel. Sensual and soft, she felt good against his body, like she was meant to fit there.

Nuzzling her cheek against his stomach she moaned, embedding long fingernails into his taut skin. She suddenly flicked, leaving a slim, oozing welt on his flesh.

He gasped in shock.

Tiny droplets of bright crimson oozed along the edges as he hissed in pain.

Her hands clutched his waist as she leant down and licked the length of the scratch on his skin, tasting the strong, metallic flavor of his blood.

Logan's body flexed under her touch, writhing gently as her soft tongue rubbed at the soreness of his stomach.

"Who are you...?" His voice was a hoarse croak, barely audible over the sharp gasp that escaped him as her talons suddenly slashed at his skin again.

Thin ribbons of blood trickled from his shoulder and he winced, the pain of the cuts merging with the intense, heady pleasure of her hot mouth, teasing and cruel against his body.

She did not reply, instead only sighing like a satisfied cat as she finished at his shoulder and slowly licked her tongue across his lips again.

He could taste his own blood in his mouth, the hot metallic twang cutting through his senses as the coppery flavour floated over his tongue.

His pulse quickened in response, some animalistic part of his mind rearing its head at the scent of blood.

The woman still said nothing, her lips leaving his only to slink down his body again, thin hands suddenly grasping firmly round his erection.

He moaned slightly, growing dizzy with the heady onslaught of her hands lightly caressing his sensitive body.

His hips bucked as she gripped his shaft, pumping agonisingly slowly, darts of ecstasy shooting through his muscles as she idly toyed with the head.

"No, don't..."

His breath came in short, labored gasps, squirming under her experienced touch.

His stomach lurched as she gripped him harder, her hand beginning to pump more forcefully in an excruciating rhythm. His head rolled back and an involuntary groan escaped his throat. His spine felt like it had caught on fire, warmth spreading through his muscles.

Her hot lips burned a trail of fire up his stomach he surrendered completely, needing her more now than ever.

Her tongue flicked over his skin while her fingers teased and pumped, stroking against his hardness and causing an agony of pleasure to ram into his brain.

It lapped at his body like flames, her scorching mouth suddenly hovering over his throat again, sending a jolt of white electricity down his spine as her tongue grazed down his jaw. He gasped as his muscles tensed against the bonds that held him firm.

The slowness of her rhythm was driving him crazy. He was aching for release, writhing under her as his hands balled into fists against the onslaught of ecstasy that poured into his mind.

Her lips settled over his tightening nipple, suckling and kissing gently as she felt his hips begin to try and meet her rhythm, feeling the flesh of his manhood tighten under her attention.

He shivered as her lips pulled away, sending a jet of icy air across his hot, moistened skin as she suddenly let go.

He was getting too close. She didn't want that. She wanted to make this last.

She crawled up his whimpering body, the heat of her own arousal obvious as she lifted away the dress she had been wearing, exposing her naked flash to the chill of the room.

The cool, fresh air teased across her firm, round breasts, hardening the darkened buds as she crawled along him, dragging her sensitive breasts against his chest.

Logan could feel the heat of her uncovered sex hovering over his stomach as she inched higher, hot and wet above his body. Burning wet silk seemed to slide past his senses, making his body quiver with need, half mad from the way she had left him hanging.

Oh God he needed her... needed to be inside her...

She slithered forward, her thighs inching past either side of his shoulders.

He could feel the heat radiating from the apex of her legs as she reached down and brushed her fingers over his lips. He caught her fingertips in his mouth, hearing her purr contentedly as he sucked them, running his tongue over her cool flesh. She slowly pulled them from between his lips, dragging them down his chin and neck to the juncture of her thighs. She teasingly dipped them into the wetness of her sex, feeling the hot, slick centre of her opening.

She slid forward again, her fingers brushing into his hair as she pulled his head up from the bench, pressing his smooth lips her core.

The first taste drove him over the last edge of reason. The sweet silk against the flat of his tongue filled his senses as he licked out blindly into the wet heat above him, fueling every natural instinct in his body.

The scent of her arousal and the slick heat of her core drove him hard, the velvet softness begging to be touched, savored. He wanted to feel her, bury himself deep inside, taste her and fuck her and drive her over the edge again and again.

Her long fingers clutched at his head as she writhed against his lips, his tongue forcefully lashing out into the depths above him, trying to capture as much of her as possible. She moaned, pressing herself hard into him as she shivered, the delicious friction of his tongue making her whimper. Even blinded, his mouth found the swollen bud hidden in her core, a brief flash of contact making her ache with need as she gently bucked against him.

His tongue danced in her body, teasing the swollen, sensitive flesh, exploring every inch of her burning, sweet center.

Her hands came away from clutching at his head to find her own beasts, rubbing her thumbs across the tightening pink edges of her nipples. She pinched them hard, finding the rhythm of his tongue inside her and echoing it with harsh caresses.

She flicked the tips of her nails over the painfully hard buds, grinding her pelvis into him and whimpering as his teeth pulled at her aching clit.

A wave of ecstasy began to build in her body, bucking against his mouth as it boiled beneath the surface, her hand ripping into his hair to pull him closer to her core.

She came violently against his face, crying out in ecstasy as orgasm swept through her, leaving her panting and breathless.

She halted, frozen for a second as the sensations rose and then sank back down in her body. Gently she lifted herself away from him, her hot juices coating his mouth and her cries of pleasure still echoing in his ears.

Her fingers slid on a smooth, lazy trail down his stomach, static fire crackling between them.

His body was hard and ready, driven as far as it was possible to go. He felt her kneel between his knees, her hands lazily caressing up his thighs.

She smiled, her silken mouth suddenly descending on his agonisingly sensitive manhood, engulfing him in the fiery heat.

His whole body arched in sudden shock as he strained harder at his bonds. The bindings round his wrists and ankles pulling against his skin and holding him firm. The air was driven from his lungs, a cry of ecstatic arousal curling from his body.

Just once more... once more...

She paused, her perfect mouth pulling away from him as she looked at his panting, bound form, a cold smile creasing her lips.

"Does the Wolverine not like being touched?"

Sarcasm dripped from her voice as she bent her head forward again, flicking her tongue across the very tip of his penis.

His hips thrust towards her, an unconscious reaction to the fire in her lips, but she pulled back again, laughing.

His mind was hazy, the pleasure arcing through his body, blinding him to everything else. His thought was as obscured as his vision, and he half whimpered, half gasped with need.

He needed to feel her, the fire in her lips and the inferno that blazed inside her body. He needed release.

Gently she ran the tip of her tongue up the length of his straining manhood, shooting pleasure and need through his body like a drug.

"Beg me..."

Her voice was soft as satin, but colder than ice. He half groaned, half whimpered a reply, but her voice remained as calm.

"I said beg me."

She flicked her tongue against him for the briefest second.

"Please..."

His voice was shaking, cracking with the strain and the desire.

"Is that all you can say?"

Her fingers roamed freely up his body as she leaned over him, playing with his nipples while her eyes bored into his soul, filling it with a layer of frost.

"I said beg me..."

"Please!"

A hiss of desperation burst from his lips, his body arching with the need to feel her encasing his arousal again.

"Like this...?"

Her heat surrounded him again as he writhed against his bonds.

"Yesssss..."

The air leaked from his lungs as the steady suckling of her lips and tongue dragged him towards the edge.

His hips bucked as he neared blessed release, feeling her suck hard against him.

Close, oh so close...

And she pulled away.

He roared, his body on a knife edge as his throbbing flesh strained for attention.

For one blinding second he thought his head would explode with the agony, but the aching, tight heat of her core suddenly surrounded him, her arousal still obvious as she harshly impaled herself onto his stiff body.

He gasped as she cried out, the tightness and rocking thrusts of her hips grinding him into insanity. He felt her body tighten around his, her muscles contracting into a vice-like grip around his straining body as she rode him hard, fucking him into oblivion.

His head rolled back, his fingers curling as blinding orgasm exploded through his head, cascades of sparks shooting into his eyes as his body pumped.

And he slumped, exhausted, onto the slab below him, her body still impaled on his.

They watched on with impassionate eyes as his body shuddered. Made notes as they brought him to crying, pathetic orgasm, his body releasing against his will into an invisible woman. He lay naked and shaking, responding to invisible fingers that traced solely through his mind, his own cooling fluid spattered over his stomach and thighs.

"He seems to be enjoying that."

"Indeed."



Chapter Ten

Logan wakes as if from slumber, feeling her under him, his weight crushing her as he lays on top.

It's like insanity lifting from his mind as harsh reality floats through his skull, blinding him with sudden knowledge. His eyes open into hers and he sees the pain, he sees the fear and the betrayal and he sees what he has done.

Madness lifts the dark veil from his eyes as the room pulls back into focus. The squalid apartment is exactly as it has always been, but now it is silent with the horror of what it had been forced to witness.

Two sets of breaths, one harsh and one choking, the clock on the wall has never sounded so loud in the sudden silence, slicing the moments into frozen snatches of horror.

His home, THEIR home...

It takes him a second to place himself, filtering through his head searching for the sudden shift in existence.

And then it all comes flooding back to him...

The woman he loves, the woman he promised to protect and cherish...

Oh God... Freya...

She lies battered and sobbing beneath his weight, her legs stretched apart on either side of him, his hands gripping her thighs so hard he can see deep finger print bruises welting on her skin.

Numbly he looks around him, confusion seeping through every pore as his eyes widen.

"What... what did I do...?"

He looks to her and she sobs, pain mutely drenched with fear as she turns her head, shying away from him, exposing the bruises and bite marks down her throat as she does so.

He remembers a haze, the world going mad inside his head as he was held captive in his own mind.

A time and a place that have never existed hover just below the surface, still raw to the touch as he desperately seeks clarity. He remembers images had exploded in his head as his fact and reality had blurred. He remembers sensations he had been so sure were genuine...

He didn't even remember what he'd done. He'd lost control, he'd lost... his mind.

Horror overtook him, wrapping icy fingers around his heart as he slid off of her, their bodies parting in a slick of blood and semen as she curled into a ball, sobbing. Her cries cut through his brain like a knife, filling him with panic and fear, intense fear at his own actions making him press himself into the wall. Terrible uncertainty filled his already reeling brain.

Oh God, what had he done...?

His love lay bleeding at his hand and he didn't even remember why.

He looked around the apartment, broken furniture jutting from the floor where he half remembered throwing it, but only half remembered, because he remembered being strapped down while they had beaten him instead...

The jumble of images circled and swirled, dragging and pulling into half-truths.

And he didn't remember how he had got to this point...

He knew his love, he knew his home... he remembered nothing.

The sudden, clenching sickness in his head had made him see things that weren't real, making him do things, making the delusions in his mind like real life to him.

He'd raped her, but in his eyes that's not what he'd seen...

He clutched at his head, pulling at his hair as he strained to forget.

His hands were shaking, his whole body feeling like it was going to collapse and topple if he let go of the wall. He slowly raised himself to his feet, unsteady legs threatening to collapse beneath him.

The pain, the humiliation he had put her through, swam into focus as he surveyed the room, a muffled stab of despair falling from his lips as he clutched the door post. He screwed his eyes closed, his soul burning as he prayed for the vision to leave him.

He opened his eyes and it was still there. Glorious colour, lurid sensation, her bent, abused body accusing him with its very existence. His fingers clawed into the wood, the sickness in his mind matched only by the sickness in his stomach.

"His vital stats are going haywire. What's he seeing?"

"I have no idea."

Not safe, not to her or to anyone else... Too dangerous to live. He had to get away, get away from everyone before he could hurt anybody else.

He staggered from the room, walls hazing in and out of focus, space expanding and shrinking before his eyes. The world crumbled and he collapsed to his knees halfway down the hall as his mind seemed to fall apart in his hands.

"He's convicting himself of the worst thing he can think of, creating his own nightmare. We have no control over what he sees. It's tailor made by his own subconscious."

Tears flowed from his eyes, pure despair plunging its hand through sinew and bone and ripping his skin away.

Pure hatred, pure fear. His soul exposed and bleeding.

Pure pain.

It hazed into blinding white as his soul screamed, hurt exploding from his lungs as the agony poured through his throat, at last finding voice.

"I've never heard a man scream like that..."

"No one has. No one has ever suffered like that."

~o~

Inside my head there's been an explosion. I'm not completely sure where reality ends and fantasy begins. Where the truth wanders off and becomes something else.

I remember the madness lifting like a shroud from my eyes and I remember falling, hazing into whiteness.

It seems like time and space warps around me and I find myself in the dark warmth of a bar that feels strangely like home.

Even though I'm sure I've never come here before, it's a bar and it strangely feels right.

So I get drunk, because it's far too painful to face this sober.

The ultimate answer to everything, isn't it? To try and forget. The ultimate in deniability; if I can't remember then it can't have been my fault.

I'd give anything for it to not be my fault...

I look through the smoke and see I'm not the only one here. But there's just me and the old Pastor propping up the far end of the bar. He's looking so deep into his drink it looks like he's finally seen the face of Jesus down there, and these days he's advertising Jim Beam to make ends meet.

I drink but I can't do it. I can't forget. I can barely waver on the edge before she and sobriety fling themselves back into my mind again.

I wanted her to be happy; everyone wanted her to be happy. It was one of those things you could never deny her. I sit here now and I still want her to be happy... I would rather she was at peace for a single second than staring at the ceiling with the bleak, mute despair I had left her with. Unable to tote a moment without counting it against the ones she will not have because I stole them from her. But none of us can give her peace. She spent a lifetime giving to others, and now when we finally have to give back to her, we cannot do it.

I left her with nothing.

God, she was always so strong and I stripped every last shred from her. I ripped away her strength.

She always said that without strength of will, there would be no pleasure left, no goal, no target for her to reach.

No point in going on.

What did I do?

She always had to make me believe like her, that the carousel would continue to revolve until I grasped the ring. That everything would be so fucking perfect in the end that we had to keep going through life no matter what, because there was some greater goal we were always just inches away from finding.

Sometimes she'd make me so frustrated, so crazy. When things were as bleak as it was possible to get somehow she'd still be alright. She'd come through without a scratch while everyone else seemed to fall around her.

Suddenly I remember that I'd wanted to shake her and tell her what she never, ever, told me. What she could never tell me: that for once maybe it was not going to be all right. That maybe things weren't going to be as perfect as she just had to KNOW that they were.

That this was not a mistake. That we had to enjoy what we'd had and lean backward into the wind until it ebbs and lowers you down. You enjoyed the ride. Now it's over.

Please, none of this raging against the dying of the light. The light is deaf. It doesn't take requests.

But she'd never told me that, because without that belief, for her there was nothing left.

And... and I did it. I took it from her. I took all she had. I stole her belief in life itself.

I killed her.

I left her alive but dead, breathing but not living. She never deserved that, and I can never forgive myself for it either.

So, just me and the Pastor.

I'm in the mood for some theological fisticuffs. God won't take my call so you carry on down the chain until you find someone to listen.

Hey, padre. There's your poster girl for the faith. Not a bad thought in her life, not a single act of malice. So how come she's dying early in vivid pain? Hmm? Got an answer? Maybe there's something worse than evil at work here. Maybe the one thing worse than active evil is an absence of evil, an absence of good. Things just are. They have no value outside of what we assign them. No God, no Devil, just a blip in the head of a fucking psychopath who can do nothing but destroy the things he cherishes because he's too dumb to realise what he's doing. Hmm?

He looks at me before I even have the chance to speak, and shakes his head sadly, because he's as lost as me. Why else would he be here?

I stagger from my stool, because it seems the alcohol has only had any effect on my knees. Strange how my head is as clear as glass but the rest of my body is falling over itself. The only part I wanted to numb is the only part that still works.

I slowly look up and I see them there waiting for me. I can see it in their eyes. Big and angry, I feel like I should know who they are, but I don't.

But they know what I did, they can see the guilt, and I suddenly realise I don't have the strength to fight them. I don't even have the inclination any more.

As I topple to the ground I think of her twisted on the floor, shattered like glass, and I see them looking at me, violent hatred in their eyes.

I almost think it's strangely fitting as they drag me outside.

~o~

He feels the boot collide with his face, the cold, wet tarmac outside the bar supporting his prone body, chilling it to the bone as the rain cascades around his ears.

Thunder rolls and he feels someone on top of him, pummeling his still form with heavy fists, thick boots around him as his eyes swim in and out of focus.

He hears voices of hatred, voices of accusation and he doesn't fight back.

The cold rain washes the sudden tears from watery eyes as he hears them again, echoing the voices in his own head.

Voices of pure guilt

A boot crushes into his spine and he lays impassive, taking no less that he feels he deserves.

His flesh aches to the bone but it is mild compared to the ache deep inside his chest. His throat burns as he remembers, the vision that deluded him becoming fainter as the half-remembered details of his betrayal take dominance.

She'd pleaded for compassion; he'd not heard. She'd begged for mercy; he'd shown none.

It slipped to the blinding white once more and his eyes closed as the air was drawn from his lungs.

"What's happening?"

"Justice. Tried and convicted. Judge and jury..."

Something inside him had snapped, breaking him in two.

He lay, gazing blankly into the gutter, his blood sluicing away in the torrential rainwater that soaked him to the skin. He watched, emotionless, as it cascaded past in front of his eyes, whirling under his head as he lay sprawled on the tarmac. His face was slumped in the gutter, his body sprawled where he had fallen, drenched and frozen.

Eyes half closed, he raised his head, a thick glob of blood and spittle spilling over his lips as he tried to move, a cough hacking through his frame that shook him to the very core. The stab of ribs into his lungs toppled him back down as the breath grated in his throat.

This is the hour of Lead --

Remembered if outlived,

As freezing persons recollect the snow --

First -- chill -- then stupor -- then the letting go --

And he tried to let go, but the despair clutched at his heart and kept him down, his soul open as carrion to the circling vultures.

Dying in the lightening and the thunder, somehow he had to stop the pain.

His eyes closed, bitter grief pouring from his lips as crimson blood poured from his beaten body.



Chapter Eleven

He'd go in and he'd come out, and he wouldn't remember. He'd feel the pain in his body, but nothing more.

This time he did remember. He remembered what was carried in his head, emotions scorched into his mind.

He remembered the despair.

He remembered it because it was true.

The guilt and the hatred condemned him, and he remembered why.

For once he remembered what he'd done to feel so bad, to hate himself so much.

It gripped his stomach, its fingers twisting and pulling with the guilt. He staggered to the mirror above the cell's sink, his body as bruised as his mind, and he didn't even know the face that looked back. He didn't know the face of the man who could hurt the one he loved so badly.

He reached out, running his fingers across the reflection in the unforgiving glass, hollow eyes watching his every movement.

The wires weren't in his head any more but, as his body carried the wounds of the physical made real, so his mind carried its wounds too. A genuine memory given life within his head.

It made no logical sense, but it didn't matter. It was real...

A memory so full of pain and guilt.

And he knew it was true.

He fell to his knees, his hands gripping his head as he tried to cradle away the pain, holding himself in the darkness. The cell grew black and cold, the only light coming from the faint moon glancing through the high window above him, dancing in a frozen arc along the far wall.

He crawled to its beam, curling into himself as he reached the light, the scratches in the stone picked out by the silver, luminous moon. He wrapped his arms around his body, his wild hair falling over his face as he slowly rocked, the sound of the constant rain outside lulling him into a gentle rhythm of despair.

"This tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling..."

It spun in his head, mixing and forming before they evaporated again. Things he didn't remember whirled from his unconscious to lodge in his mind, thundering their presence in his ears, echoing the tempest that raged beyond his window.

And he longed for the pain.

He longed for the icy fingers of the rain tearing into his flesh, the clash of the thunder that exploded through his body, the hail and wind that could punish his form because, when the pain outside was enough, maybe it would distract him from the pain inside.

The physical suffering to take from his mind the turmoil that raged there. The vitality of his own shed blood to salve the wounds in his soul.

And the storm rolled on, the night growing unforgiving in its darkness.

~o~

His beaten and bloodied frame lay slumped limply in the far corner. The soulfulness of his intense brown eyes was now glazed and distant, virtually unrecognisable. Pulped flesh ached through his body as he lay there. The once proud and fearless warrior now closed his eyes and silently begged for death.

In his heart he deserved no less.

He'd killed her...

"Scott, quick, there's one more over here!"

Her voice carried into his mind. A familiar sound, so sweet in amongst all the pain.

His eyes flickered open for a brief second, a haze of flame coloured hair sweeping into his senses.

"Jeanie..." He breathes.

Her clinical hands freeze in her inspection of his wounds. Slowly they come to rest gently on his shoulders.

"Logan...?" There is uncertainty in her voice. Uncertainty and fear.

"Is that really you...?"

His eyes flick open again, intense brown flashing directly into her memory.

"Oh my God, Logan?" Panic in her voice now.

"They..." His voice is a whisper. "They couldn't break my bones, so they broke the rest of me instead..." He breaks into grim, rasping, humorless laughter. It degenerates into a grating cough that seems to shake his whole frame, his hands desperately clinging onto her uniform as he tries to steady himself.

"Scott!" She screams for him, both vocally and mentally.

She cuddles Logan close, pulling his head to rest in her lap. She gently caresses his pained face, all others in the compound forgotten as his massacred body clings to her with the grip of a child.

She fingers the collar he has on and traces the numbers scorched into his shoulder.

"Oh Logan... What did they do to you?"

His eyes close and the expression on his face says it all.

"I let her down, Jeanie..."

She presses her palm to his head as he opens his eyes, briefly meeting hers before slowly opening his mind.

She gasps, choking back the flashes that flow through her fingers.

She senses not even half his agony before she is forced to pull back, her face pale, her eyes wide.

Hot, salty tears seep through the gaps between his eyelids as everything he was, and everything he now is, collides before him. His world crashes around his ears and all he can feel is his heart beating in his chest. Every beat pumps blood, every pump springs pain.

"Scott, I found him..." She looks up from his shaking form into the ruby lens of her lover. He stares back with disbelief, shocked at the state of the man once so proud now weeping in a woman's arms.

He sees the look in her eyes and he knows not to ask.

Her shaking fingers fumble at his collar, a small metal tool twisting into the back of it.

There is a loud snap and the parts separate, freeing his throat from the strangling grip it had held over him.

A ragged sob escapes his lips as soft fingers gently brush the raw skin. The halves of the collar clatter to the floor as Jeanie drops them, her shaking fingers smoothing at his cheek as his head slumps limply into her hands, falling into unconsciousness.

Despite his healing factor, in the darkness of his mind, his soul still bleeds.



Epilogue

It had been hard at first, harder than any of them could've imagined. His wounds had healed, not even a scar left on his body, and within days Jean had been forced to release him from the medlab.

But every line of communication had been severed. He became an isolated soul in a sea of people.

Pitying glances pelted him from all angles and in every innocent pair of eyes, he saw her face reflected.

He could smell her in the halls, hear her in every kind word spoken to him. She was everywhere, like the rustle of the wind through his curtains at night. Her presence seemed a deserving phantom, reminding him of his guilt towards her. A fitting torment for his crime.

Jean watched in silence as the days dragged on, the professor unwilling to help against Logan's will.

But he had come to breakfast that morning just as Rogue had received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Remy.

Logan had frozen in the corridor and stared at her, sniffing the air.

"What's that smell?" His face had been black, every muscle in his body bunched as he surveyed the hallway.

She'd looked at him and smiled, and when she'd said "They're orchids, Logan. Do ya like them?" he'd looked at her with such deep betrayal in his eyes it had burned a hole right through her heart.

It was a look filled with so much pain that it made her wish Remy was home just so he could hold her and tell her everything would be alright.

It was a look that made you want to find the ones you love, just to be certain they were still there.

It was a look desperate for peace of mind.

He'd disappeared to his room and locked himself away, no one seeing or hearing from him for over three days. He didn't sleep, he barely ate. He was going to drive himself insane and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent it.

Jean watched and despaired. No one knew what had happened to him in the compound, but she knew that whatever it was, it was slowly killing him.

She summoned him to the medical bay under the pretext of routine checks. He maintained stoic silence as she worked, her actions stalling for time as she worked up the courage to confront him.

She wrapped her stethoscope around her neck and sighed as he stood, heading for the door.

"Why do you insist on torturing yourself, Logan?"

He turned and stared at her, his eyes piercing with the frustrated, impotent anger that curled in his body. His voice was cold, but his body radiated heat as he stepped closer to her, hard as stone, only inches away.

His hand hovered above the surface of her cheek, a molecule of air separating them.

Her eyes met his and he locked her gaze with ice, his whisper as dark and cold as the depths of night.

"Have you ever looked in the mirror, and not known what was looking back at you?"

She blinked, unable to respond.

"And I am a 'what' because when I look in that mirror I don't even know if I'm human any more."

Their eyes stayed fastened together for an eternity, his self-hatred almost oozing from his skin, palpable against her cheek.

He moved his hand away and stepped back. Jean inhaled sharply, only now realising that she'd forgotten to breathe.

He stepped away, holding her gaze as he walked backwards towards the door, then he turned sharply on his heel and stalked away down the corridor.

Jean shuddered at the sudden chill his presence had left in her heart.

She watched his receding form, his shoulders hunched against the weight that seemed to permanently reside there.

"Let me into your mind, Logan. Let me help you."

She whispered it to the sudden emptiness of the room, and either he never heard her or he chose to ignore it.

~o~

It's late. Everyone else is sleeping.

I lay on top of the sheets, my brain in a thousand places at once, yet I'm still thinking of nothing.

I wondered in the darkness one time if it was possible to will yourself unconscious. Tonight I wonder if it's possible to will yourself even further.

It's all too hard...

They mean well but they can never understand. I lie here, unmoving, a single orchid resting in my grasp, stolen from Rogue's bouquet.

It is wilted and dead, limp in my hand, and a skeletal touch will pluck it from my fingers again. Her life snuffed out in so many seconds.

He watches me with those skeletal, empty eyes of his, a universe inside each socket, his wings of angels spreading slowly across the night sky.

An angel of death.

How long has he been waiting for me?

Someone pointed out that it's ironic to discover that the person who knows you best is always the one you considered to be your greatest enemy. Because with every great adversary, like every great friend, there is intense emotion and total respect.

A true friend and a true enemy. The line between the two is as thin a razor's edge.

Oscar Wilde once said that a true friend always stabs you in the front. The same goes for that enemy. No raving and no glory. A simple end because there always existed an unspoken connection between the two that brought everything down to pure rationality.

They did what had to be done. Rational thought has no place for glory. It does what it must.

My angel stands before me tonight and it's as if he hands me the knife. Eternally silent he stands waiting until I make my own decision.

It all comes down to the rational thought.

If you can will yourself to live then you can will yourself to die. You can make it fast. You can be your best friend and your greatest nemesis in one.

You can end the suffering and the emptiness.

The problem comes when you cease to care.

With the last of my strength so drains the last of my emotion, and I come to my decision.

There is nothing left, nothing at all... So do it.

Take me.

Let me feel nothing.

Take it all and let me rest...

Let me die.

His touch is cold tonight as he takes me in his arms, dancing under the stars. The physical falls away as his wings expand away from us, pushing into the infinite blue dome of the sky until the ground is a far below. His cloak is made of the pure night time and comes to fold us together as I slowly feel him lift me into his embrace.

I felt the frozen bones of his fingers wrap around my consciousness, piercing my skin with sculpted ice, and I do nothing to resist...

Take me...

The ice whips against my body and I feel it pushing me closer, pulling me towards the inevitable abyss that waits for me. The last of sensation and the first of oblivion rolling and combining into one.

Beneath his cloak lies pure blackness as he opens himself for me to step inside. To end it all.

I stand on the rim and I can feel him watching me... waiting for me.

There is a drawing chill on my face and I know what's coming.

The final step. The last show of courage before it all ceases to matter.

In the compound they took their pound of flesh, now he takes the rest of me. Incomplete.

Broken.

A part of me can feel my heart beat hollow in my chest, the rhythm dropping like the temperature. Soon there will be silence and emptiness where it once was, the last beat echoing through my ribs like an explosion as I die.

So I step into him.

For a second there is blissful emptiness and then agonising cold.

I reel from it, but it's been too late for a long time already, and I feel myself falling...

Falling...

Sinking...

Screaming...

The sensation...

My God, the sensation...

I close my eyes for the frozen, numb impact but a sudden heat explodes through my veins. I cry out because it is like nothing I have ever felt before, yet it is everything I had searched for. Gentle and caressing, it's like the arms of a lover pulling me back from the brink and I shudder uncontrollably as I am pulled out of his grasp.

I hear him scream with anger, a shrill, piercing noise that grates through my whole being as he peels away, destined once again to wait as he leaves me in those arms.

Arms I had missed so much...

They should hold condemnation for me, but they do not.

"Freya?"

~"Yes?"~

"You came back for me...?"

~"Yes."~

"Why?"

She does not answer.

Gentle breath on my neck, so familiar and warm, filling me with a peace I hadn't felt since she left me, the softest of kisses brushing over my mind as she wraps her arms around me.

The gentlest of forgiveness.

~"Because they still need you."~

The quiet sigh fills my senses.

"Please don't leave me...?"

And she smiles.

~o~

Just below the surface of consciousness I float. I can feel my heart in my chest, thumping at the inside of my ribs in a slow, steady drone as I grudgingly allow her to force me to take back the physical place I had abandoned.

She is my greatest friend for making me live and my greatest enemy for not letting me die.

Her soul caresses mine like the lightest breath against skin. There she holds me for a second, floating a kiss across my face.

"I hurt you so badly..."

She shakes her head

~"You never hurt me. You never killed me. They made you bleed for a life you never stole."~

Her voice appears in my mind, unspoken and unthought, just there.

As she drifts she leaves me with something I had been searching for for so long.

Forgiveness.

So different from the blackness and emptiness of death it's almost like being overwhelmed with its beauty.

Under it all, I can still feel her there somewhere, at the very edges of my mind as I reach out to her one last time, my heart beating strong inside me.

Freya?

*beat*

I'm sorry...

*beat*

I loved you...

*beat*

Stay with me...

*beat*

Forever...?

*beat*

...

*beat*

Please...?

...

~"Only forever?"~

~o~

Jean found him the next morning, fast asleep on his bed, sleeping for the first time in weeks.

He had curled up into a tight foetal position as he dreamed, clutching the pillow to his chest like a comforter. She spared a glance at the vivid orchid blossom in full splendor that rested atop his blanket and, as she watched him breathe, for the first time she could remember, a peaceful smile slowly lifted the corners of his lips.

Silently she closed the door and left him to his dream.



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