Until that moment, Logan hadn’t thought that it was possible to hurt as much as he was. Every part of him ached and it was all centered around a throbbing pain in the base of his skull. Logan wasn’t entirely sure what they had done to him. All her knew for certain was that Magneto had implanted something in the base of his skull. So far, Logan had discovered the purpose behind it, but he was sure that he would before long.
“Marie....” Logan moaned as he curled himself into a fetal position on the rickety old cot which now served as his bed.
The only thing that Logan wanted at the moment was Marie. He wanted her to take him in her arms and soothe away the all consuming ache. He wanted to lay in her arms, in their bed and pretend that the rest of the world no longer existed. For the time being, however, all Logan had to keep him company was his pain and the last glimpse he’d had of Marie before they were carried off in different directions.
“Get the fuck outta here, Marie!” Logan shouted over the sounds of the battle going on around them. “It’s gettin’ real bad out here!”
“Which is exactly why I’m stayin’ right here!” Marie called back as she flung a black clad soldier over her shoulder using his own momentum.
The ground beneath them began to tremble suddenly. The air was vibrating so much that Logan felt his skin begin to tingle. Logan tore his eyes away from his opponent and glanced up at the sky momentarily. What Logan saw darkening the sky made his blood run cold.
Sentinels.
An entire horde of them.
“Logan, we have to get outta here!” Marie screamed from somewhere off in the distance.
Logan shoved his claws deep into the stomach of the soldier who was currently holding his attention. “Right behind ya, darlin’! Get back to the jet!”
“Only with you, babe!” Marie shouted back.
It was only Marie who had made it back to the Blackbird, though. Before he was even halfway to the jet, Logan felt being lifted off the ground. His limbs still shortly afterwards. Logan knew right away why he couldn’t move. The only person who could freeze him so completely was Magneto.
A Logan stained vainly against the older mutants oppressive hold, Logan could only watch as Scott dragged a struggling Marie towards the Blackbird. He could hear her screaming his name and for one brief instant, Logan was able to meet her eyes. For as long as he had known her, Logan had been able to tell what Marie was thinking by simply looking into her eyes.
This was no exception.
The desperation in Marie’s eyes was palpable. Her hands were flailing in his direction while Scott continued to pull her towards the sleek, black jet.
“I’m sorry,” Logan mouthed to her.
Seconds later, Logan felt a stinging sensation in the back of his neck. At first it was only an annoyance... until his vision began to darken around the edges. Logan cursed under his breath, but it did little good. Whatever he had been injected with was something that even his enhanced healing capabilities couldn’t cope with.
The last thing he saw before his vision faded completely was Marie. Tears streaming down her face as she repeatedly sobbed his name.
Only to awake to the feel of a knife slicing into the skin at the base of his skull. Conscious, but not fully alert, Logan screamed for Marie. It was an instinctual reaction on his part, his mind going back to the countless times Marie had been there for him when he was hurting. In the past few months, that pain had been an emotional one rather than a physical one.
A scant two months before, on a mission to free a group of mutants from a government test facility, Hank had accidentally come across files pertaining to what had been done to Logan when he had downloaded the facility’s mainframe into the Blackbird’s central computer.
Thomas Michael Logan had lived in British Columbia during the early part of the twentieth century, working as a lumberjack before joining the army in time for the first World War. According to official government records, Thomas Logan had been killed in action on a reconnaissance mission in the Italian countryside in the spring of 1917. In reality, he had been in a government test facility located deep in the Rocky Mountains. By the outbreak of World War Two, the Wolverine was the army’s personal plaything and would remain so until his escape on the ninth of December, 1986. As technology had advanced, so had his arsenal of weapons, culminating with the adamantium lining of his skeleton and the razor sharp claws which extended from his knuckles.
The only ones who knew of the file’s exact contents were himself, Marie, Hank and Xavier. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Thomas Michael Logan had died for his country in 1917. Only Logan Hunters remained.
“So the mighty Wolverine is none other than the infamous Weapon X,” Magneto declared, snapping Logan out of his pain-induced haze. “I had always thought that Weapon X was nothing more than a legend.... However, now that I consider it, there are certain consistencies. The strange metal blades that extend from the knuckles. The battle frenzy. Immunity to gunshots or any other wounds. From what I have heard, it took nothing short of a bomb to slow down Weapon X’s assault on a Nazi base camp in the Second World War... and even that only worked for so long. It’s really quite remarkable how well you’ve aged.”
With a growl, Logan hauled himself to his feet and charged towards Magneto. The older man didn’t so much as flinch. Rather, without even so much of a gesture, he stopped Logan in his tracks.
“Really, Wolverine, I would have thought you had learned by this point,” Magneto said with a resigned sigh. “Must we go through this every time we meet?”
“You’re gonna regret doing this, old man,” Logan snarled as he vainly attempted to pull himself from Magneto’s invisible grasp.
Magneto laughed loudly at that. “My dear boy, even your threats do not change! Really. Have we not been in this position enough that you have learned those words have no effect on me. And since this time you have none of your little friends around to distract me we won’t be interrupted.”
“Awww, do you wanna be my boyfriend?” Logan sneered, his glare never wavering from the other man. “‘Cause as much fun as I’m sure that would be, I’m a married man.”
Magneto scowled at that and with little more than a quirk of his eyebrow sent Logan sailing across the small cell and into a solid concrete wall. Refusing to react, Logan withheld his grunt of pain as his head and body were smashed against the wall with incredible force. Before he even had time to orient himself, Logan found himself sprawled on his back, spread-eagle, staring up at the ceiling. No sound escaped from his mouth this time because he was unable to. Magneto must have decided that he no longer wished to hear Logan speak and has frozen his jaw along with the rest of his body.
“Now, my dear Wolverine, you and I must have a short discussion,” Magneto said, coming into Logan’s line of sight. The older man didn’t bend over or crouch in any was so that he would be nearer to Logan’s face as he spoke, but stood upright in a prominent show of superiority that could not be missed.
“I am sure that by now you have realized that I do not share the same dream as your beloved Charles,” Magneto continued, beginning to pace, but still staying where Logan could see him. “Charles believes we can live among the humans where as I... I am more of a realist. I know that our kind will never be able to live in peace with the inferior humans. Oh yes, they are inferior. They may like to think that they are better than us, but we have the potential that they can only dream about.... But I digress. This discussion was meant to be about you and your role in the coming war. With your strength and the knowledge those humans foolishly implanted into your brain, you will be a force to be reckoned with, my boy. Since I know that you would not willingly deviate from Charles’s vision, I was forced to take matters into my own hands. I will not be long on this earth and am determined to see my dream realized before I die. You are the means to that end, Wolverine, and I plan on capitalizing on it.”
Logan suddenly felt sick to his stomach. The aging mutant’s words, eloquently spoken as they were, carried with them a sinister message that Logan couldn’t help but catch on to. He knew that Magneto could carry through with his plans. The adamantium that had been bonded to his skeleton nearly forty years before would see to that. As it had in the past, the metal would allow Magneto to control his every move making Logan’s body into a prison.
With a few departing words that Logan was sure were meant to be inspirational to the mutant cause-- which Logan evidently didn’t catch on to --Magneto disappeared from the room. A few minutes later the tension that had been holding his body immobile vanished and Logan was once again in control of himself.
Curling in on himself, Logan began screaming messages at Xavier in his mind. A part of Logan knew that it would be useless to just shout random thoughts since Xavier had long ago learned to block out such panicked thoughts. Even knowing of Logan’s present situation, he didn’t think that Xavier would open himself to the possibility of his mind being overrun by unwanted thoughts.
Taking several calming breaths, Logan steadied himself mentally before beginning to relay messages to Xavier once again. Before Logan could even get out one complete thought, he felt an incredible pain building in his temples. At first, Logan tried to ignore it, but soon found that impossible as it grew with each thought he attempted to project towards Xavier. Logan’s final thought was cut off with a pained scream as he clutched at his temples.
“What the fuck... did he do... to me...?” Logan moaned, pressing his face against the cool floor, trying to ease the incredible pain that was throbbing in his temples.
Pulling himself across the floor, Logan made his way towards the cot he had been lying on earlier. As much as he knew he needed to escape as soon as possible, Logan was aware that he was in no condition to do so at that moment. Not until he found out for sure what Magneto had stuck in him.
Logan had found out one thing, for certain. He couldn’t send messages telepathically to Xavier. Granted, he could probably try... but Logan was quite sure it would accomplish nothing more than making his skull explode. Healing factor or not, Logan didn’t think he could recover from an exploding head.
Reaching blindly for the scratchy blanket he had knocked off in his attempt to get to Magneto, Logan pulled it over his aching body. It was a stark comparison to the king size feather bed he had at the mansion, but, at that moment, it was much more comfortable than the alternative. The cold floor.
Logan held his left hand up in front of his face and slowly cracked his eyes open. He stared intently at his ring finger and the indent that marked the place his wedding ring had resided for the past eight years. The only time Logan ever took it off was when he went on a mission. Marie did the same. Neither of them wanted to risk losing the rings that had become as much a symbol of their love as his dogtags had. To this day, Marie still wore the tags at all times and Logan had always found it incredibly sexy to walk into their bedroom to find Marie lying on their bed wearing nothing but a smile, her ring and his tags.
“I love you, Marie,” Logan whispered under his breath as he closed his left hand into a fist. “And I’m comin’ back to you. Don’t give up on that.”