Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to anything Marvel, Fox or even the title of this story. I'm simply a poor little girl who only rips people off when they're not looking...and hope they don't sue.
Sidenote: This is the last chapter and I want to know what ya'll think; was it a good idea for me to take time off between this one and my last story? Was it good? I need to know what ya'll think about it so I can know better for next time. Writing has always been something I loved and something I hope to do with my adult life, and ya'll have been a great sounding board for me as I've grown and gotten better over just the past year and a half. So thank you guys so much and I hope the last chapter is everything you want it to be and more. On with the story and please enjoy!
My eyes opened slowly, the dim light adding to the pain in my head. I looked around me. I was in a small room, from what I could tell. Aside from the light above me, everything was dark.
My hands were in type of handcuffs, each was attached to some sort of wire, the wires were connected to the floor, but neither gave me enough slack to move very far. I was away from any type of wall and sitting up straight. I couldn't stand or lay back; all I could do was sit.
I yanked at my restraints, trying to break free, but all I managed to do was cause the metal inside the cuffs to cut my wrists, making them bleed. The blood ran hot down my cold hands, dripping to the floor, making pools below them.
I didn't know where I was, how I had gotten there or even how long I had been out, but I was scared. My hair and clothes were damp, making my whole body shake with the coldness they brought.
"Help me! Help me! Someone, please!" I yelled out into the darkened room. I continued to pull at my restraints to no avail, my wrists only bled more.
I screamed and pulled at my cuffs until my voice gave out and there were two small puddles of blood beside me. I had given up hope of anyone being able to hear me when I saw a man emerge from the darkness. He was in black dress pants and a black dress shirt, with gray hair peeking out from underneath some type of helmet that he wore on his head. Although I had been screaming for him, something told me that he wasn't there to help me.
He continued walking until he was only a foot or two away from me. "Do you know who I am?" he asked. I shook my head 'no'. "My name is Eric. I am an old friend of Charles Xavier's. Perhaps you've heard him speak of me?" Again, I shook my head. "Then perhaps you've heard him call me by my other name; Magneto?"
"You're not a good guy," I blurted out hoarsely, too weak and tired to think of anything else to say.
He gave me a short smile. "No, but I'm not the bad one either."
"You kill people."
"So does your uncle, do you think he's a bad guy?"
"My uncle didn't chain me to the floor," I spat.
"Do you know why you're chained to the floor?"
"No."
"Because you are going to help me."
"No I'm not."
"My dear girl, you really don't have a say in the matter. You will be my tool in negotiating between Charles and his team."
"Why?"
"Because you are the link between the humans and mutants. If I'm not mistaken, your mother is quite active in the anti-mutant campaigns. You are going to help me in finding their rallies and stopping them. The humans will soon learn that if they feared us before, it's nothing compared to what we will make them feel now."
"I won't help you kill innocent people."
"Innocent? Do you think that what they are trying to do to us is innocent? They want to kill us as much as we want to kill them. Besides, if you don't help me, I will kill your uncle when he arrives. And make no mistaken, he will come for you."
"How do you know me?"
"As I said before; I am an old friend of Charles."
"So he told you how to find me? He set this up?"
He laughed. "He wouldn't even be capable of doing something like this. No, this I had to do on my own."
"How did I get here?"
"My partner Mystique brought you here," he said, then smiled at someone behind me. I felt a prick as a needle slid into my neck, causing my skin to sting as something hot ran into my veins. "Get some rest; we'll need you soon."
Then my eyes slid closed and I went to sleep.
The next time I woke, everything was different.
I was awake before my eyes would open. My brain felt as it there was a fog clouding it, making it hard for me to wake up and think. I heard sounds, but nothing made sense. There were grunts, swearwords, yelling, the sound of metal against other objects and feet pounding against the ground.
When I did finally force my eyes open, what I saw baffled me still. I saw a woman, who was blue, kick Uncle Scott in the head, knocking his visor off his face and sending it a few feet from where I sat, as he dropped to the ground unconscious. The Logan came up behind her and stabbed her through the back with his claws, causing the tips of them to show through her chest. As Logan pulled his claws out, he turned, ready to slice into Magneto, who was coming up behind him. But before his claws could even reach flesh, Logan was being lifted from the ground. I watched as he hovered in the air about teen feet above me, his outstretched claws separating and slowly pulling the bones in his hands apart, causing them to break. He swore a long line of words, cursing him and calling him names. He screamed as his whole body shook.
I looked from Logan to the man causing him his pain, to the blue woman lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, to Scott who was knocked out not too far from her. And then there was me, chained to the floor, unable to stand as far as I could throw a person, which wasn't at all. The sights before me made me feel wide-awake and terrified.
I turned my eyes back up to Logan, who was still hovering in the air, only instead of separating his claws; Magneto had turned his attention to something much worse. I watched as he pulled at Logan's body with his magnetic powers, and I saw everything shift inside of him. The back of his body falling slack as he brought his skeleton forward. I saw Logan's bones press against his skin, making them visible to me. I gasped in horror as I watched, waiting for them to break free of his skin. He screamed in pain and I saw the skin tightening around his face, pulling it back until his cheekbones, jaw line, chin, everything protruded from his face. I could see his adamantium lined skeletal structure fighting to break free of his body and feared that soon it would.
"Stop it! Stop! You're hurting him, stop!" I cried. There are two types of crying; one means to weep and the other means to call out. At that particular moment, I was doing both. Hot, angry tears fell from my eyes, rolling down my cheeks and falling to their death on the ground. They poured from me as I stared up at him shaking in pain and I couldn't do anything to stop it.
Magneto looked at me, but didn't stop his torture on Logan. "Ah, did the noise wake you? I apologize; I was hoping to have a more civilized conversation, however, they obviously came here with other ideas."
"Leave them alone, you said you wanted me!"
"So you've decided to take me up on my offer?"
"If you leave them alone."
"No!" Logan yelled.
"I'm afraid it's not as easy as just letting them go. You see, in order for this to work, I will need full cooperation from you all. Do you hear that Wolverine?" Magneto said, pulling harder, causing Logan to scream out in pain again.
"What do you want from them?"
"You see, when you help your mother to organize the country's largest anti-mutant rally, and I'm there to kill them all, I need to know that Xavier's little team of X-Men won't be there to ruin it for me. If you don't agree, then they will die. It's simple really; give me what I want and everyone gets to live."
"Not everyone."
"Those who deserve it."
"It won't work," I said.
"And why is that?" he asked.
"My mother's dead."
"Do not lie to me girl," he said, strengthening his hold on Logan and pulling harder once again. Logan let out a loud scream.
"Stop it! I'm not lying!" I continued to cry. I couldn't stand to watch him in so much pain.
"Do you accept my offer then?"
"Don't…Delia…don't," Logan gasped through gritted teeth.
"I can't, she's dead. My mother is dead!" My lungs began to hurt from crying. I didn't know what to do. I had caused my mother to kill herself and now there were mutants whose lives were on the line because of it. "Please, just stop hurting him! Please!" I saw Uncle Scott stir and began to wake from the corner of my eye. If I could keep Magneto distracted, maybe he could stop him. "My mother's dead, but let me help you, I can do it on my own," I lied.
"How?"
"I know some of mother's friends, the ones that hate us. I could organize a bigger one, if I had their help. And you were right; they want to kill us as much as we want to kill them. If you leave them alone, I can organize rallies in other countries, too."
Scott opened his eyes and an optic blast shot up, blasting into the ceiling and causing debris instantly to fall. The surprise caused Magneto to lose his concentration. As he did, he lost his hold on Logan, who fell down fast, landing on me. My bones couldn't break, but as his heavy body landed on top of mine, I felt something shift and knew that something was wrong. Nothing could break, but my left shoulder could pop out of joint. Which it did.
Logan wasn't down long before he stood, sliced through the wires that were connected to my handcuffs and pulled me up. My legs were weak from sitting so long, but I didn't hesitate to grab for Uncle Scott's visor and throw it towards him.
"Scott, feel down by your feet!" I yelled, struggling to remain standing.
He did as I said and soon he had his eyes hidden safely behind his visor. He then turned it on and blasted Magneto with a low enough setting that it knocked him off his feet and unconscious.
Without another word, the three of us ran. None of us was doing too good, but we ran as fast as we could. My legs were weak and it felt as if we were running through an endless tunnel. Everything was dim and I didn't know where I was at, I didn't know where I was going, I didn't even know really what was going on, I just followed Uncle Scott. After ten minutes of running down tunnel after tunnel, past body after body, some dead, some only unconscious, we stopped.
"This is a water way and we're going to go through it. It's going to be slippery, so just be careful, Delia," Scott said, lifting up the man hole. He then lowered himself down into it. I hesitated some, watching him disappear into the darkness below me, wondering if my legs were strong enough to not only climb down the small ladder, but to also continue running the length of the water way and probably more. My brain was still foggy from whatever drug they had given me and everything seemed more complicated than it needed to be in order for me to keep up with the two of them. "It's okay sweetheart, climb down and I'll get you," he called from below.
I let out a deep breath and prepared myself for the pain that would no doubt follow as I used my dislocated shoulder to climb down the ladder. I lowered myself down into the manhole, expecting the pain that shot through my body, but not knowing how to deal with it. I just gritted my teeth and continued down. Sure enough, Uncle Scott was there to help me. Logan then followed behind me, pulling the manhole closed as he did. Once we were all three down, we continued our running once again. As Uncle Scott had warned, it was slippery and every time I would slip, Logan was there to help me up. The water leaked into my sneakers as we ran, causing my socks to become wet as well, making my feet rub raw the more we ran.
The water way was shorter than I had thought it would be and soon we were climbing out of it. For some reason, I thought that once we were out of it, we wouldn't have to run anymore, but we did. We came out right at the edge of a wooded area and as quickly as I could, I tried to keep up with Scott. But I couldn't. I hadn't stood in hours and then I had run for about fifteen minutes almost nonstop and my legs just couldn't take it.
I stumbled to the ground and fought to get back up. Once I did, Logan came behind me and scooped me up in his arms. He ran carrying me for another ten more minutes until we came upon the other end of the woods. There was some sort of factory that looked abandoned with a lone care in the otherwise empty parking lot. Logan let me sown and we walked to it. Scott opened it up and got into the driver's seat.
"There's no keys; Logan can you start it without them?"
"Yeah," he said, getting into the passenger's side. I heard one of his claws pop out and a few seconds later, the engine started.
I numbly opened the door behind Uncle Scott's and climbed in before he threw it into reverse and we drove away. Only then did I have time to stop and really think about how much pain I was in; my arm was killing me, my legs were sore, my feet were burning, my back was hurting and my neck was stiff from whatever type of shot it was that they had given me. In short; my whole body felt as if it were on fire with the sensation of pain.
We were driving on some back road, paved with gravels and trees covering the sky. Everything was dark and I couldn't tell if it was becoming day or night. I realized as I say there that even though I had quit running some time ago, I was still breathing heavily. My body shook with the rush of adrenaline still surging though my veins. I clutched at my shoulder and looked out my window when a sudden idea came to me.
With some difficulty, I began rolling down my window and when it was all the way down, I placed my arm outside, lining my shoulder up with the windowpane. Then I began to roll it up, my arm still between it.
"What are you doing?" Scott asked, looking at me through the rearview mirror. Logan turned around in his seat and looked at me, cocking an eyebrow in agreement to the question.
"My shoulder's out of joint and I'm going to put it back into place."
"By rolling it up in a car window?" he asked.
"Yeah, I remember daddy doing it after a match once."
"I think you should wait until Jean can fix it for you."
"How far away is she?"
"About forty-five minutes."
"Sorry, can't wait that long," I said, continuing to roll up the window. I eventually had to stand from my seat as much as I could and when I got to my arm, my shoulder sandwiched between the windowpane and the top of the car, I braced myself for the pain and then gave one more strong crank on the handle. As the two pieces of the vehicle stretched to connect, they brought my bone up and with a loud 'pop' and an odd pressure and pain I had never felt before, my shoulder was back into place.
"Oh my dear word!" I yelled through gritted teeth. "That is not a good feeling!"
"I told you to wait until I got you to Jean," Uncle Scott said.
"She would have done the same thing."
"Only without the car window," Logan said as I rolled the window down enough to pull my arm back through. "Are your hands bleedin'?"
I looked down at the shackles still attached to me. "My wrists were," I said, pulling at the cuffs. "Can you get these of me?"
Logan extended a claw. "Not while we're driving. What if we hit something? You could hurt her," Scott protested.
"Well if I don't take 'em off, they're just gonna' keep makin' her wrists bleed, so I'm think you oughta' just mind your drivin' and let me deal with her, alright?"
"We just all could have been killed back there and the two of you are fighting like an old married couple. This is pathetic," I said from the backseat.
"Come here, give me your hands," Logan said.
I moved in my seat until I was as close to him as I could be. He took the claw that he had extended by only about three inches and slipped it between my wrist and the cuff. In one swift move, he cut it off, sending it to the floor of the car. Then he repeated it with the one of the left.
I felt at the cuts on my wrist. They were sore. "Thanks," I said, sitting back in my seat and looking out my window at the still thick trees around us.
"Don't worry about it," he replied expectedly, sitting back into his own seat.
"What day is it?"
"It's Sunday morning," Scott answered, coming to the end of the gravely road and pulling onto a more paved one.
"I thought you were on a mission in Pennsylvania?"
"We were, but we finished early. When we got back, Professor Xavier said that he hadn't seen you since yesterday morning. He said he thought that you had left the school and we all got worried about you. Logan was the one who thought something was wrong, though."
"Why did you think that?" I asked.
"'Cause it was stormin' and I knew you wouldn't be out in it on your own."
"I was. I ran out into it and then when I stopped, someone knocked me out."
"Why would you run out in the middle of a storm?" Uncle Scott asked.
"I wasn't really thinking; I just had to get out of there."
"Why?"
"Right after you left, I called and talked to mother. There were a lot of things I needed to tell her and I did. But I also told her that…that I'm a mutant."
"What did she say?"
"She didn't. I told her that and then finished telling her what I had called for and hung up."
"So why was that a reason to go running out in a storm yesterday morning?"
"It wasn't. The Professor called me into his office as he was going off to classes because Bobby Johnson was on the phone. He said that mother died. She killed herself." Scott let out a deep breath and shook his head. Again, Logan was caught awkwardly as the two of us shared a pain that he couldn't understand. "I couldn't handle it, I needed out of there, so I just ran away." A tear slid down my cheek and I was too tired to wipe it away. "I knew that I never should have told her. I knew it would be too much for her."
"Hey," Scott said firmly. "What Katie died was her decision, not yours, okay? It doesn't matter what you told her, she was the one who decided to react the way she did. She was always extreme about things; there was no one you could tell what she would do. Not many people are brave enough to tell their families that sort of thing and with as much fear as Katie had put into you about it, I don't think hardly anyone would have been able to do what you did. Even though the results were less than desired, I'm proud of you Delia, you stood up for what you thought was right and did what you believed in. And you're going to be okay, I promise. I'll always take care of you."
"Will you always come rescue me when I'm kidnapped by psycho maniacs?" I asked through a mixture of laughter and tears.
I saw him smile at me through the rearview mirror. "Why? Do you plan on making a habit out of it?"
"No, I wasn't planning on it, but you know me; nothing ever goes how I plan it. Besides, it was quite nice to have two men come to my rescue." My voice was still hoarse and my crying wasn't helping it any.
"We're always going to be there, sweetheart, don't worry."
We continued to drive, none of us speaking, for nearly thirty minutes. At that time, the car died; it was out of gas.
"The jet's about half a mile that way," Uncle Scott said, pointing to the vast emptiness on our right. "I'm going to walk to it and have Jean and Rogue fly this way to get you. Just sit tight." He then got out and began walking in the direction to which he had pointed. After about ten more minutes spent in silence, he looked only like a moving speck in the morning's early light.
I opened my door and stumbled out of the car. I walked to the front and leaned back against the already cooled hood.
The sun had yet to rise, though it was trying, and the absence of it left the barren landscape bathed in a light of blue color. I didn't know where we were, but it was woods to my back and flat, dusty grounds to my front, where I could see the horizon.
I heard a car door open, close and the Logan was beside me, leaning back against the hood.
"How do you feel?" I asked.
He let out a sigh. "I'm alright, still alive. How about you; I landed on you pretty hard?"
"Nothing that won't heal," I said, looking down at my hands. They were cut, covered in dry blood and dirt with fading bruises from where I had hit him. It had been less than two days since it had happened and yet it seemed like it had been so long ago. So much had happened since then. "I'm still alive," I smiled, throwing his words back at him.
"I'm sorry about your mother."
I looked over at him. He was staring out at the horizon and watching as the sun tried to fight its way up. Although he was saying sorry because my mother had died, I knew that wasn't all he meant. He was sorry for how she had treated me, for how she had made me feel, for making me scared to be a mutant, for making me even more scared to get close to people. He was sorry that she had made me feel as if everything she had done was my fault. As if all of her mistakes were somehow mine as well. He was sorry that I hadn't had a better one, one that loved me. Though he hadn't said it all, that's what he meant, and I heard it.
"Yeah, me too," I said, looking back to the rising sun. "Thank you, though."
We both stood there, doing nothing but breathing, but we were doing something important, we were living. Mother had taken being able to breathe for granted and had given up her power to do so. She had willingly stopped the single most important thing to our being. She had given up. I had thought about it before myself, had contemplated the idea of ending it all to stop the pain, but I didn't.
When I met Logan, I was a scared little girl who wanted nothing more than to just go back to my familiar old routine. To go back to being in a situation full of pain, because I was too scared to be brave. I was tangled and trapt in a toxic web that I craved to be back in because I thought I belonged and deserved to be there. When we met, I was terrified of him because despite not remembering his past, he knew who he was, and I was lost.
The day I met him, I went to the woods to watch the sunrise, during which time I realized that I could breathe on my own. Without mother there to smother me with her overwhelming beliefs and lies, I could live. In a place were she wasn't, I was alive.
I realized that from then on, no matter where I went, she couldn't hurt me. I was free to live where I wanted, to do as I pleased, and yet I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else in the world.
I lay my hand down on the hood of the car and Logan covered mine with his. I lay my head on his shoulder and we watched the sunrise. It was beautiful, lighting up the emptiness the higher it climbed in the sky. No matter what happens in the world, in your life, no matter how bad things seem to be, the sunrise is always perfect. It's always beautiful. It's always there.
As we watched it together, I took in that moment. Nothing could ever beat it for me. Although so many bad things had led us to that point, I had never felt so at peace, so comfortable, so right. My life had led me there and I was entirely grateful for it.
As we stood there, I remembered something my mother had told me once. I had thought more about it in the past two months than I had in the seventeen years since she had told it to me, and I had wrote it off as a lie. After some of the information that I had found out about my parents over the past years, and especially in that week, I had just believed that she had no idea what she had been talking about. I believed it completely and whole-heartedly. She told me that when we're born, we're linked to someone, somewhere else. She said that part of our life's journey is to find and recognize who they are. They don't have to be romantic figures in our lives, or specific gender, or age. They can be our lover, friend, teacher, mentor, student, whatever, but the souls are perfect matches of one another. It's why we're attracted to other people for what seems like no reason. There's something we feel but can't see or describe. I didn't know if she was right, but believed that she wasn't because there was no way that she could have felt that way about my father. She without knowing it secretly hated him for something that he had been scared into hiding from the world. She had broken their marriage by cheating on him, more times than I wish I knew. She was emotionally void of anything good in her life and I believed what she had told me was just another on a long list of lies and disillusions she had fed to me since birth. That's what I believed. Until then.
Logan was my match. My missing link. My life had been a journey to meet him. He was everything I wasn't, I was the same for him, and I believe that we were meant to find each other. We were meant to make up for what the other didn't have. We were meant to meet. We reminded each other of the two most important people who had been in our lives.
He was my father, my friend, my strength, my weakness, my inspiration, my everything. He was the love of my life even though the only time we had ever kissed was in a dream. It was something I had never experienced. There was a connection between us that was nothing short of amazing. There had always been something about him that I never could quite put my finger on, something that drew me to him. That morning, I put my finger on it, snatched it up and held on to it as tightly as I could.
"Would you rather; it always be day or night?" Logan asked.
He was my soul mate and that I knew.
I let out a small, hoarse laugh, filling the silence around us. "I suppose that I would rather it to always be night."
"Really?"
"Yeah?"
"Why?"
"Because you can create light, but if it were always day, you couldn't make it darker. Not easily anyway. Besides, look at me; my skin was not made for the sun to be up all the time. What about you?"
"Yeah, if I had to pick, I'd go with night, too."
I looked up at him and smiled. "I hope I never have to choose, though, because I really like watching the sunrise with you."
"Me, too darlin'."
"What are you going to do when we get home?"
"Take a shower and sleep. You?"
"I want to eat, preferably cold pizza and hot chocolate," I said and laughed at the disgusted look on his face. "Then I would like a long, hot bubble bath, to sleep until tomorrow and then get my stuff together and go to Connecticut."
He moved so that he could look over at me. "You're goin' back?"
"She was my mother, Logan, no matter what happened between us and I'm going to go to her funeral."
"What're you gonna' do after it's over?"
I looked over at him and smiled. "I think I'm going to stay here for the summer."
"I don't want you to stay here for the summer."
The smile fell from my face, but I didn't have time to reply. I felt the wind on my shoulder and turned to see the Blackbird landing behind us. We walked to it, up the ramp and entered the jet. I saw Uncle Scott, Jean and Rogue. They looked tired, their uniforms were ripped and torn just like Logan's and I knew that I looked probably just as bad.
With a word spoken, we both found seats and buckled ourselves in before Scott took off. We had been flying for nearly half an hour when Logan finally came down from the cockpit and stood in front of me. He had told me that he didn't want me to stay for the summer. I had spent that time wondering why. He had made such a big deal about it. He had been so adamant about me staying longer. Maybe he just didn't want me to go back to mother and since she was gone, he didn't care if I went back. I didn't know. I didn't understand.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked.
"Yeah," I agreed, standing and following him to the back of the jet so that we could talk privately. "What did you want to talk about?"
"When we were talkin' earlier, I said I didn't want you to stay for the summer. I meant it."
"But I thought-"
"No. I don't want you to stay for the summer; I want you to stay longer."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
A slow, small smile crept across my face. "I can do that."
He nodded his head. "Good."
I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. "Thank you, Logan, for everything."
He placed a kiss on the side of my forehead. "Don't worry about it."
There was more meaning behind our words than they conveyed, but we didn't have to clarify what they meant; we already knew.
"I love you," I whispered so quietly that if someone else were to have been standing there, they wouldn't have even heard it.
"I love you too, darlin'," he whispered back, "and I ain't gonna' let anything else happen to you. I promise."
"Hey," Uncle Scott called from the front of the jet. We both broke our embrace and looked at him. "I can see you, I'm right here."
"So what?" Logan growled.
"So, can you not put the moves on my niece in front of me?"
I rolled my eyes and laughed. "No one's putting 'the moves' on anyone," I said, walking back towards my seat. "We were just talking."
"About what?" he asked. "Because you didn't look like you were just talking."
"Leave them alone, Scott," Jean defended.
"I think they're cute together," said Rogue.
"Nothing's going on, like I said; we were just talking." I said as Logan growled, walking back to his seat.
"Then what were you talking about, if that's all you were doing?" Scott questioned as I sat down in my seat.
I looked around at the four of them, watching and listening to them. They were different, we all were, but it worked. We worked. We loved each other. We took care of each other. We were always there for each other. We laughed together and fought together. We could discus anything and everyone's opinions mattered. We were mutants, freaks of nature, homo sapient superior, whatever you want to call us. But they were my teachers, my mentors, my friends. They understood me like no others and had proven that at times, they had even known me better than I did myself. They weren't scared to hold up a mirror and show me the truth about my life. They wouldn't let me be scared and they wouldn't let me take the easy way out. They saw through my disguises and revealed the true me. They weren't scared to make me sit through my pain so that I could realize how much I was hurting. They gave me back the courage to trust and believe in people again. They had given me a life that I had never got to live. They taught me to speak up, the importance of being silent, and the knowledge of knowing which one I should be. For the first time in my life, I'm proud to say that these people, whoever they are to you, are most importantly, the ones who I call my family.
"Just take me home, Uncle Scott," Logan turned around and gave me the eyebrow and I flashed him a tired smile. "I just want to go home."
The End