Everything was incredibly hazy. It was almost like walking through a dense mist except for the fact that he wasn’t moving. At least not much. He was vaguely aware of his right hand twitching, but that was the extent of his voluntary movements allowed.
“Can you here me, sugah?”
Her voice lit up his mist filled world. The light reflecting off the water droplets that hung in the air.
“Yer really scarin’ me, babe. Can you please just open yer eyes? How ‘bout a little moanin’ sound? Ah’d settle fer one of those.”
The desperation and fear in her voice made the light dim. He didn’t want it to dim. He wanted brightness. He wanted a light so intense that it would make the mist go away. Only the mist didn’t go away. It got darker and darker until he found himself in the middle of a black landscape, lying prone on the ground. Whimpering in fear, he tried to move. Tried to get up and find her. But he couldn’t. Even his hand which had twitched earlier was still. Held fast to the ground by invisible chains that were more unrelenting that steel.
“Ah love you, Logan.”
In that instant everything came back into startling focus and he awoke gasping. Curled up against his side, Marie gathered him tightly in her arms, holding him against her slender frame as his body began to tremble as forgotten memories forced themselves to the surface. They thundered against his skull creating a blinding pain in his temples that threatened to pull him back under.
“It’s all right, Logan, Ah’ve got you now,” Marie whispered in his ear, her fingers soothing his tense muscles.
Logan was only able to nod his head against her shoulder, his hands clutching at her desperately.
“I don’t know why they’d bother with a filthy animal like you.”
As the unknown voice reverberated inside his skull, Logan stiffened in Marie’s arms and began to pull away.
“Logan? Sugah, what’s wrong?” Marie asked, dipping her head down so that she could see his face.
“No.... Touch. No. C-can’t.... No. Please.... Mmmm. No,” Logan stammered, still shrinking away from Marie when all that he wanted was for her to hold onto him and never let him go.
He almost sobbed out loud when Marie did as he asked and slid away from him, her body no longer touching his. This wasn’t what he wanted. Logan wanted Marie. He wanted to hold her, wanted her to hold him and make him forget the memories that he couldn’t remember.
“Where did I go?” Logan mumbled instead, his hand lying less than an inch away from Marie’s on the comforter.
Marie’s eyes got infinitely sadder at that and Logan hated himself for the tears in her eyes. “Ah don’t know.... You left fer work yesterday mornin’ and just didn’t come back. Ah was scared outta mah mind ‘cause Ah knew that you wouldn’t leave me willingly. So Ah made mahself stop panickin’ and got through the day tellin’ mahself that if you weren’t back by mornin’ that Ah’d call the police.... But you did come back,” Marie said wistfully, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “You came back to me in the middle o’ the night. Ah was lyin’ here, half awake, an’ wishin’ that you were with me.... Then Ah heard a loud thump at the door an’ you moanin’. So Ah brought you inside, cleaned you up an’ Ah’ve been waitin’ fer you ta wake up since.”
“I’m sorry that I scared you,” Logan said quietly, lowering his eyes away from Marie’s face.
“You could... you could tell me where you went,” Marie whispered, her voice thick with tears.
Logan opened his mouth to answer her but shut it just as quickly. The memories were not there. The only memories that came readily were the ones that he had experienced in the few minutes that he had been awake. Before that there was only going to bed with her presumably two nights ago. He remembered holding Marie in his arms. Hearing her moan and whimper as they both tumbled towards their joint climaxes. The way her eyes had fluttered as she reached that end created a warmth that surged through Logan’s entire being.... Beyond that, however, still lay the cold. The dark oblivion that held his forgotten memories. It had only been a day, but it was still a day that he could not recall. A day most obviously full of pain and atrocities if the aches in his body were of any truth.
“Nothing there. I can’t remember any of it,” Logan mumbled, curling in on himself. “I try bur nothing’s there. Not a thing.”
Marie inched her way closer to him, but still not touching him. “Maybe that’s best. Somethin’ real awful might o’ happened ta you an’ at least now you don’t hafta remember it. Yer mind is savin’ you from the bad memories.”
“But I get this feeling that I should know what happened. It could be real important.... I just can’t remember any of it,” Logan said forlornly, staring at Marie across the expanse of their bed that separated them.
There was just so much pain in Marie’s eyes that Logan couldn’t stand it. He knew that he was causing her the pain and it was making him feel that much worse for it. He didn’t want Marie to hurt because of him. He wished that he could make that pain go away and it was made all the more intense by the fact that he could do nothing about it. At the moment, Logan could not bear the thought of having to uncurl from the protective circle he had created for himself with his arms.
“Do you want somethin’ to eat?” Marie asked, staring at him sadly. “Ah can fix you a sandwich or somethin’. Or maybe some soup? You look like you could use somethin’ hot.”
Logan nodded his head, cautiously loosening his grip on his knees. “Soup sounds real good, darlin’.”
Even though Marie smiled, it was a sad smile that didn’t go all the way to her eyes. It seemed like an eternity since he had seen one of Marie’s full smiles despite her telling him that it had been little more than a day. Those smiles had always been able to warm him from the inside out. Now he only felt cold. So very cold even though he was covered in several layers of very thick blankets.
“You just sit tight, sugah, an’ Ah’ll get it fixed,” Marie told him as she crawled out of bed.
As soon as she was gone from the bed, Logan wanted to tell her to come back. That he wanted to hold her and wanted her to hold him. Though he knew that he would never admit it to anyone except Marie, his favourite place in the world was in her arms. He was Logan Hunters, the meanest sonofabitch around and it was enough of a shock that he was married and had settled down. But he loved Marie more than anything in the world and nothing was going to keep her away from him. Not ever.
Lying on the bed, staring blankly at the wall, Logan tried once again to draw up those lost memories. A part of him knew that Marie was right, that his mind was blocking out whatever had happened to him. And while he was grateful for the reprieve from the supposed terrors, it worried him greatly that he did not know what was coming. It was highly unlikely that someone would pick him up for less than a single day then drop him back off at his front door. Things like that just didn’t happen.
A quiet sob pulled Logan from his thoughts.
Marie’s cry.
Logan forced himself to rise from the bed and pull on a pair of jeans. His body was trembling slightly and it was all that Logan could do to push aside his rising fears. That part that angered him the most was the fact that he was afraid of something that he did not know. Nothing in his life had ever scared him and Logan refused to allow this unknown entity to do that.
As he made his way into the kitchen, Marie’s sobs picked up in intensity. Not simply because he was close, but because of the sheer volume of her tears. Logan squeezed his eyes shut, willing the tears to stop before they fell. He hated what this was doing to Marie. He could not image what he would have been had he been in Marie’s place the previous day. He wasn’t strong like her. For all his muscle and physical strength, Logan was the first to admit that Marie was the stronger of them.
Willing himself to push his unknown fears aside, Logan came up behind Marie and wrapped his arms about her slender waist. “I’m not leaving you, Marie. Not for anything. I’d fight through hell itself to get back to you.”
“You don’t hafta do that,” Marie whispered, leaning back against his broad chest as she stirred the soup. “Ah don’t want you gettin’ hurt because of me.”
“I’d do anything for you, Marie. You’re everything to me,” Logan told her, sliding his hand up and down her stomach as he spoke.
“Fight all you want, there’s no getting away from us.”
Logan tensed at the unknown voice in his head. Marie stilled as well, stopping in mid stir. Steeling himself, Logan refused to react to it and once again took up rubbing Marie’s stomach through her thin cotton blouse. Logan wished for the day when Marie’s stomach wouldn’t be quite so flat. When he could feel their child growing inside her stomach. Even after two years of marriage they were no closer than they had been when they’d first met. According to the doctor, Marie wasn’t able to have children. As much as it saddened Logan that they would be able to have any children, he knew that it was much worse for Marie. She’d told him once that she felt as though she wasn’t good enough for him.
“You’re the best person in the world, Marie, and I’m never gonna let anything happen to you,” Logan told her, voicing his thoughts out loud.
Turning around in his arms, Marie wound her arms about his waist. “Ah’m only gonna let you promise that if Ah can promise the exact same thing.”
“You really think you’re up to keeping an eye on me?” Logan teased, relieved to see Marie smiling once again. All the way to her eyes.
“Ah think Ah’m up ta it,” Marie told him, nestling her head against his chest.
“Need any help with anything?” Logan asked, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
Marie shook her head and pressed a kiss to the center of his chest. “Nope. Why don’t you go let Boris in, though? Ah know he’ll be thrilled ta see you.”
“This is your attempt to get rid of me, isn’t it?” Logan teased, pulling away from Marie and grinning down at her.
“Yep.”
Smirking down at her, Logan turned and headed towards the front door of their cabin. He could hear Boris barking outside and was less than eager to see what the rotweiller had gotten into this time. The last time Boris had been barking like that he’d come home with a part of some animal that he had yet to identify.
Behind Logan, there was a loud crash as Marie undoubtedly dropped a pan.
“Hey, buddy, could you help me out?”
“Sure, what do--”
He was cut off as a bat was slammed against the side of his head. Turning everything to black in an instant.
“Logan, are you all right?”
“I don’t see why we had to wait for him to wake up to do this,” the same voice grumbled.
“Because I want to have some fun,” an obviously female voice said.
“You’d have fun even if he was dead.”
Logan whimpered, unable to speak around the gag in his mouth.
“Stay still, fuckboy, I plan on enjoying this,” the woman murmured.
Marie’s hands cupped his face, her face streaked with tears. “Logan, talk ta me. What’s happenin’?”
“Mmm... mrreeeee....”
“We’ve got enough sperm samples to last till the end of the next century,” the man grumbled. “How about you let me take his blood now?”
“How about you shut up and let me finish what I’m doing. You’ll get your blood samples in due time.,” the woman said as she ground down on Logan. “Besides, he’s not the one Daniels wants. If this guy was really some super human he would have gotten free by now. So I feel that I should take this time to enjoy myself. Wanna help?”
Marie held his body tight against her own, murmuring nonsense in his ear. Logan couldn’t understand a word that she was saying, but he could clearly make out the desperation in her voice.
“I don’t wanna remember anymore....” Logan moaned against her shoulder. “I wanna forget. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened.”
“It’s all right, sugah, Ah’ve got ya. Nothing’s gonna hurt you anymore,” Marie said softly in his ear as she continuously ran her hands up and down his back.
BANG!
At the sound of the gunshot, both Logan and Marie started. Boris’ yelp brought a startled cry from Marie. Pushing her behind him, Logan rose to his feet and crept cautiously to the front door.
He never made it all the way to the door when black clad men jumped through every window in the small cabin. Before Logan even had time to react, the armed men took aimed and fired.
At Marie.
Screaming in horror, Logan dove towards her, cradling her in his arms as she coughed up blood. “No, Marie. Baby, please don’t die on me. Please don’t. Oh god, no!”
“L-l-llllooovvve....”
“I love you too, Marie. So much,’ Logan sobbed as he held her dead body in his arms. He couldn’t bear to let go of her even knowing that her blood was slowly staining the ground beneath them.
Logan felt something slam painfully into his back, jerking him forward. “I’ll find you again, Marie,” he moaned, fully believing that he as about to die.
Very soon he would become to wish that he had died in the living room of the cabin he had shared with Marie for two wonderful years.
4.5km and nearly 100 years away
“So what kind of name is Rogue?”
“Ah don’t know. What kinda name is Wolverine?”
“My name’s Logan.”
“.... Marie.”