Breaking
The first thing I remember when I woke up was the cold, freezing cold…
And then I heard Logan’s voice.
“Jean, where’s Jean?” he asked frantically.
I blinked a few times and rolled over, my hand landing on snow covered ground as it did.
"What happened?” I asked as I sat up and let my eyes get into focus.
My eyes about popped out of my head when I looked around and saw that we were surrounded by trees – No ship, no wreckage, none of the others anywhere around us that I could see…just a forest full of really big trees and a bunch of snow…
Logan was off to the side of me, his body still bleeding as he ripped the oxygen mask off his face.
(I would have stopped him but there was no oxygen tank connected to it, no recovery bed, no medical room, nothing but the two of us).
I went over to him and helped to steady him as he tried to stand up, but he fell to one of his knees in pain as he did. I held on to him, wishing I could take all that pain away from him.
He tilted his head up to the air and started sniffing…a terrible look coming on his face after a moment.
“It can’t be” he said in a horrified whisper.
“What?” I asked.
He put his finger to his lips, silently telling me to stay quiet.
“Someone is close by; I can smell gas, and hear some big engines… Over that way” he said pointing off between the trees.
I looked around us and shifted myself into a white wolf.
Logan nodded in approval at my disguise, and I went off in the direction he had pointed out, my nose picking up the smell of the exhaust fumes and my ears picking up the sounds of large tires on gravel roads somewhere close by.
The trees thinned out up ahead, and the ground gave way to a valley covered in snow and surrounded by trees and mountains, a huge compound sitting in the center of it all. A bunch of jeeps and a huge semi-truck came up the only road that led to the compound and they all stopped by a pair of huge doors. Men covered in armor and armed to the teeth with guns and knives jumping out with semi-automatic rifles in their hands, all of them going to the truck to surround it.
Out of the back of the truck came a bunch of people wearing what looked like hazmat suits and gloves coming out… With a man on a gurney… A younger version of Logan! A mask was over his face and tubs were coming out of his body.
That’s when Logan…my Logan… Came crawling up next to me, two words coming out in a low growl…
“Weapon X”
We watched as the younger him disappeared into the compound and we snuck off back to the clearing we had woke up in.
I shifted back to my base form and began panicking.
“What the hell is going on!” I asked as Logan propped himself up against a boulder.
“Given how long I’ve known Bishop and Cable, I’d say we went back in time” he said with a cringe as he wrapped an arm around his ribs.
I would have gone over to him quick as I could and held him or tried to make him more comfortable – but I knew Logan, the minute I started to make a fuss over him he’d quickly try to push me away… And his body couldn’t handle any sudden movements right now…
Not to mention he would get all growly, and he was so cute when he was angry… But the spike in blood pressure probably wouldn’t do him any good either…
I slowly walked up to him and knelt next to him.
“We aren’t going to become our own grandparents, are we?” I asked jokingly.
(Well… a little jokingly… I mean that couldn’t really happen… right…?)
“I highly doubt that” he said with a roll of his eyes. “But we might want to steer clear of our younger selves” he said more seriously.
“That should be easy enough for me… I’m not even sure if I’ve been born yet” I said, my brain starting to hurt at all this backwards, forwards, upside-down, ripple effect stuff we were talking about.
“My younger self is in there right now getting experimented on, so we don’t have to worry about me for a while” he said bitterly.
My head and my heart both sank at the fact that he had to relive such a terrible moment in his life.
Suddenly, he sat up with a strange look on his face.
“My younger self is getting his skeleton” he said, sounding almost drunk or in a trance.
“Yeah…” I said wondering what he was thinking.
“I remember a video” he said looking in the direction of the compound. “If the experiment was successful with me, they were going to give Sabretooth the same skeleton” he said, making me feel even more lost than before.
“Okay…” I said confused.
“They might have enough adamantium in there for me to get another skeleton” he said with an odd glint in his eyes.
“What?!” I said looking at him confused and surprised.
“They have two infusion chambers down there, and they might have enough adamantium that I can get another skeleton” he said, sounding and looking frantic now. “If we can sneak in after my younger self escapes, we can put the adamantium back on my bones, and I’ll be strong again” he said looking down at his bloody body.
“Logan, you just got the metal ripped out of you, you're still healing, and now you want to go in and put more back into you with some old barely tested machines that hardly worked the first time? And you want to go messing with the fabric of time on top of that?” I asked worriedly.
“Morph, look at me, I need that adamantium, I need the strength it gives me, I’m no good to anyone like this” he said pointing to his ripped-up body as he spoke.
“I think you’re perfect Logan” I said in a gentle tone…
Which seemed to make him angrier…
He took out his claws, made of bone instead of metal now and punched them against the rock behind him, the claws breaking apart like twigs instantly.
“What good am I like this?” he growled at me as he held his fist out towards me, the jagged ends of his claws barely sticking out now.
“You’re still healing” I said as I wrapped my hands around his fist. “You need to give yourself more time” I said as I carefully ran a hand up and down his arm.
“I need my bones back” he said as he pulled his fist away and slumped back against the boulder behind him. “I’m going in there to get that adamantium, with or without your help Morph” he said with a stone hard determined look on his face.
After a moment of tense silence, I sat down beside him and did my best to talk him out of this.
“Logan, we can’t mess with time like this, we could change the future, maybe reck it for the worse” I said.
“We would be taking a batch of adamantium away from a bunch of crazy scientists trying to make living weapons, how is that changing things for the worse?” he asked.
“We don’t even know if they have any extra adamantium in there, you could be risking your life for nothing” I countered.
“But if they do have an extra supply in there, you know who they plan on giving it to?” he asked with a frightening look on his face to match the eerie edge of his voice. “Sabretooth” he said, spitting to the ground to get the taste of that name out of his mouth.
That…that actually had me shivering.
Sabretooth was pretty powerful all on his own, the thought of him with an adamantium skeleton made me sick with dread.
“Think about it Morph, if they see how well the program worked on me, they’re all going to look at that pile of adamantium, look over to Sabretooth, and turn that monster into an even more deadly killing machine than he already is” he said in a disgusted tone.
“But what if we do something to mess up time?” I asked weakly, the thought of Sabretooth walking around with an indestructible skeleton making me more worried than accidentally causing the next apocalypse.
He gave a scoff at that and rolled his eyes.
“We’d probably be putting everything back to normal” he said with a huff. “Think about it, we take the adamantium way from those sickos, we keep it away from Sabretooth, or anyone else they may be planning to use it on. And if you and I get me in that infusion tank and give it to me I’ll bust out of there and destroy the only machine they have left to do it all over again. History might be set right if we go in there” he said, and he sounded very convincing to me at this point.
“I don’t know Logan, it nearly killed you last time, and that was when you were younger and healthier, what if it kills you this time? I nearly lost you just now, I can’t lose you again” I said with a strained voice, pleading with him to understand that I couldn’t risk this… not even for him…
“Morph, buddy I’m going in there with or without you, but I’d rather you were with me” he said looking at me with his own pleading eyes. “I don’t trust anyone more to keep me alive in there than you” he said as he laid his hand on my shoulder, looking at me with that look that I could never say no to… He could ask me to take on a thousand sentinels with nothing but an energy drink and a pocket pen and I’d do it, just because of that look. “Just do this one thing for me Morph, please” he said, the word hardly ever leaving his mouth and he was using it on me…
“All right” I said finally breaking down and agreeing.
Better we go in together, where I can keep an eye on him and help him if I have to, rather than sit back and do nothing.
“Great” he said with a big toothy grin. “Now they’ll spend the next few days testing me and getting me set up, but once my younger self escapes out into the woods, they’ll all be too distracted to keep an eye on the compound. We can sneak in then and see if they have any adamantium. If we find any, we take it all and put it on my skeleton with the other infusion chamber” he said.
“What if they don’t have any?” I asked.
“Then we take whatever gear and provisions we can carry and high tale it out of there. If they do have any, we give me back my bones, and then we take all we can carry and get as far away from here as possible. Sound like a plan?” he asked.
“Sounds like a plan” I said with a small uncertain smile.
I had to admit, even if we didn’t find any adamantium he was right, that compound was the best place to get supplies, and we had the advantage of knowing it would be cleared out any day now when his younger self went running.
But just because it was a good plan didn’t mean that I wasn’t nervous about doing this – he was still hurt and weak, and he was determined to get that adamantium, which could hurt him even more.
But we were out in the middle of nowhere in the wrong place at the wrong time… so we really didn’t have much of a choice.
“Let’s get some rest, we’ll talk tactics and plans tomorrow” he said as he adjusted himself against the rock.
“Shouldn’t we make a fire to stay warm?” I asked.
“No fires” he said adamantly. “I don’t want to tip them off that we’re here. We got the element of surprise, and I don’t intend on give it up for anything” he said firmly.
“You need warmth Logan; it’ll help you heal faster” I said worried for him.
“Ha, little cold never hurt me” he said as he closed his eyes, trying his best to look like he was sleeping, even though he was shivering.
I’d be shivering too with that many holes in me.
I rolled my eyes and decided to be the smart one… as usual…
I shifted myself into a polar bear and used my long nose to push him off the rock and place myself behind him.
Logan sat up and laughed when he saw what I was doing.
“Show off” he said in a good-natured tone as he situated himself against my side like a pillow.
The feel of him settling in, his body no longer shivering as his head lay close to my chest… it made me about as happy as I could be, even under circumstances like these…
I let his slow easy breaths lull me to sleep, my head trying it’s best to silence that little voice in my head that was telling me how crazy this all was and tried listening to the part of me that said that I had to protect Logan… No matter what happened, I had to protect him…
<><><><><>
We spent the next few days coming up with a plan and strategizing.
I tried to get Logan to eat something, but he wasn’t all that interested, all he wanted to do was keep an ear (and nose) out for anyone who might find us and listen for his younger self’s big escape.
Because he said no fire’s I had to shift myself into a deer from time to time to go looking for berries or anything else I could forage for. (It had a hard time settling, but it was better than starving).
One day as I had gotten back from foraging, we both heard this big explosion coming from the compound. I transformed into a wolf again and went sneaking up to the edge of the woods. I saw smoke coming from the compound and a lot of the guards running around. Logan came up behind me and took in the situation.
“I should come out of there any minute and just about every guard will go chasing after me” he said. “Remember the plan, you fly down as an owl, change into one of the guards, I’ll be right behind you. Once we get inside, I’ll lead the way to the infusion tank, got it?” he said turning to me.
I nodded and then crouched down to wait for an opening.
It only took a matter of moments before I saw the younger Logan come crashing out of the building, busting up some of the guards before making his way into the woods. Luckily for us he went running in the opposite direction of where we were hiding so it was easy enough for us to get to one of the doors and not be seen.
I copied one of the guards and the two of us snuck through the large hole his younger self had left behind, the place still smoking with exposed wires hanging out of the walls and ceiling as we walked in.
Logan led me up to a control center with a palm pad on the door, I tried using the handprint of the guard I had copied, but it didn’t work. This guy must have not had the clearance to get in because the pad flashed red at us.
I tried looking for another way in, but Logan took out his claws and punched the pad causing the doors to fly open… and his claws to snap off.
“Come on” he said as he opened up the door for me. “If I remember right, they kept the adamantium over… Here” he said as he found what he was looking for. “You go to the control center and see if you can figure out how it works, I’ll get myself hooked up” he said.
I shivered at how cool and calculating he was about all of this.
Ever since he came up with this plan, he had been acting different – like there was nothing else in the world that mattered than pulling this off and getting his skeleton back.
But I did as he said. I shifted back to my base form as I went into the control room and looked over everything. Surprisingly most of the crucial components of the computer were still there. Buttons and switches and screens covered in smoke but otherwise in pretty good shape… It was times like these I was glad to have a diploma from MIT.
Sure, I wasn’t as smart as Hank, but I could get by with this, no matter how old it all was.
All I had to do was get into the panels and readjust some of the wires so I could connect to a backup power source, and we would be in business. I came out of the panels and pressed a few buttons to activate the power and…
“Yes” I said as everything came back online good as new.
“You all set in here?” Logan asked as he came walking in, practically naked (which was making me drool), and covered in all kinds of tubs (which had me worried).
“Are you sure you want to do this? It could kill you” I warned.
“I’m positive” he said with this frighteningly determined look in his eyes. “I need this, I have to be strong again” he said as he pulled out his claws, the broken one already healed.
I was just about to ask him why when he went on.
“And I am not letting any of these idiots use this stuff on Sabretooth, or who knows who else they got locked up in here. I’m not letting that kind of evil exist in the world” he said, causing me to stop asking if he was sure about all this. “Now Morph, when I get in there and you start up the program, I’m going to need you to turn it up full blast, and no matter what happens do not turn it off” he said firmly.
“But…but this could kill you” I said worriedly. “I can’t kill you Logan, I can’t lose you” I said as I started to feel like I was breathing through a straw.
“Morph, I trust you” he said as he grabbed my shoulders and looked at me as if he was peering into my soul. “Do this for me Morph” he begged as he held on to me tightly.
“What if I kill you” I asked terrified.
“Then at least those freaks out there won’t get to use this adamantium or that device out there on anyone else – and believe you me, that thought alone is enough to make me die happy” he said with a bit of a smile, but when he saw that I was still uncertain he tried again. “Do this for me Morph, please?” he said with that look that I couldn't say no to…
“Okay” I said, my voice thick with emotions and fear.
“You're a real pal” he said as he slapped me on the shoulder and put a mask over his face.
He went over to the immersion tank and climbed in, he put the wires and tubes that were hanging from his body into different places on the floor of the tank, and then he stood up and gave me a thumbs up to let me know to start.
I should have stopped myself; I should have been the responsible one that called this off…
But I couldn’t deny him anything when he looked at me like that…
So, I pressed in the sequence to start the program and turned it up to full blast.
The tank filled up and almost immediately he started screaming and contorting in pain as the huge needles dug into him, and I wasn’t doing much better…
Sinister always liked to twist my mind around with images of Logan and me being friends before he tried to kill me, being lovers before he turned into some sort of monster that I had to kill in order to save myself.
I was shaking from Logan’s screams now and the memory of all the things I would do to him to make my own pain stop when I was under Sinister’s mind control.
I was just about to break down and stop the program…but the panel overloaded, and the circuits caught on fire. I quickly got out of the control room, and I was just about to look for a fire extinguisher or something so I could get back in there and turn this thing off when Logan took out his metal claws and clawed his way out of the tank, glass shattering, and Logan fell out onto the floor, that nasty smelling liquid spilling out with him.
He was gasping and shaking and trying his hardest to get the tubes and mask off of him, but his hands seemed disconnected from his body.
“I’m here Logan, I’m here” I said as I took off the mask and wrapped my arms around him. “I’m right here Logan I promise” I said as I buried myself against his chest, my head resting under his chin.
His breathing was labored, but it was slowing, and I could feel his heart calming as his chest finally settled.
“I’m right here Logan” I said again as I held on to him even more tightly.
I felt him wrap his arms around me, and for a split second I felt like I was in heaven…
But then he threw me off to the side by a large pile of debris.
“Hide” he said, his voice rough from all the screaming and pain he just went through.
I pulled him in close to me and dragged us behind a bank of computers and machines, shifting myself into Jubilee as I did.
She wasn’t much for strength, but she could blast these guys out of the way easily enough and blind whoever was close enough so that I could change into someone else later and carry Logan away from here if I had to.
“What happened?” I heard someone say.
“The other immersion tank is destroyed” I heard another say.
“We have no way to try again with the other subject” I heard the first voice say.
“Forget about all that” said a third voice. “I want all of you out there getting Weapon X now!” he ordered. “He’s the only one we got now and I want him found!”
“Sir the other test subjects have escaped” another voice said from the outside.
“What?! Get after them!” the last voice said.
I heard a lot of footsteps leaving the room and then a whole lot of silence before I carefully looked around from our hiding spot.
When I saw that everyone was gone, I shifted back into my base form and turned to Logan.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I tried to put my hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine, I’m fine” he said gruffly as he slapped my hand away.
I was never so happy to see him so grumpy in all my life.
“We need to go and get supplies” he said as he tried to get up… And immediately fell back to the ground after he tried.
“We need to get out of here” I said as I took a hold of his shoulders.
“We need supplies” he said in a strained voice as he tried to get up again… only to fall down again.
Just then, I looked out of the large hole we had come through and saw that it was clear from where we were all the way out to the forest line.
“Do you think if I shifted you could hold on to me?”
He looked at me and then out to the forest, and he reluctantly nodded.
I shifted myself into a horse – making sure I was all white so that I could blend into the snow. Logan climbed on top of me. The effort hard on him, and I knew me running out of there at full speed wouldn’t do him any favors, but I was getting us out of here as fast as possible.
I galloped across the compound and into the forest, I had to shift into a deer to fit between the trees, and when we were far enough away, I shifted into a polar bear again. Logan fell off me at that point and I crouched over him doing my best to blend into the snow.
I heard a group of guards coming our way, causing me to get ready to pounce at any moment to protect him.
“This way” I heard one say, and I heard them disappearing deeper into the woods.
I took a moment to shift back into my base form so I could breathe for a minute.
I looked down at Logan and he looked up at me, his chest moving hard and fast, his nearly naked body pressed up against me as I knelt over him, his eyes looking up at me adoringly as he smiled at me.
“Thank” he said breathlessly, my heart about ready to jump out of my chest.
I could have stayed that way forever…
But Logan passed out in the snow, causing me to panic.
I checked his pulse, his heart was going strong in his neck, but that was about all I could check for. I looked around and knew we couldn’t stay here, so I shifted into Colossus, his Russian blood could handle the cold, his metal skin was bullet proof, and he was strong enough to carry Logan for as many miles as I needed in order to make sure we were both safe.
I picked Logan up and started heading in the opposite direction of the compound, the thing giving off one last explosion as we went, and I hoped that it was the last we would ever see of the place…
<><><><><>
It took a few hours, but I got us away from the guards and found us a cave to hide out in for the night. And I didn’t care what Logan said I made a fire, if he didn’t like it, he could wake up and tell me… Which I wish he would do…
The sun had set not too long ago, and I just watched Logan in the fire light, sitting with him resting on my legs, holding both his hands in one of mine as I kept the other hand against his shoulder, letting his head rest in my elbow, trying my best to keep him warm. I would have transformed into something with fur to help him, but I needed my hands to check his pulse whenever I wanted, and I checked on his limbs and abs to make sure nothing was bleeding internally or healing wrong.
He seemed to be doing fine, but I was worried for him…
As time went on, I was more worried about his mind than his body – what if he woke up and didn’t remember me, or what if he started having nightmares about the first time this happened and he started running from me, not knowing that he was safe with me…?
Eventually he woke up, his eyes slowly opening and closing and then settling on me.
“Morph?”
I smiled so big when he said my name I thought my face and my heart would split apart.
“What happened?” he asked as he sat up next to me, my body missing his in an instant.
“You have your adamantium skeleton back” I said, hoping that I didn’t accidentally trigger an episode of PTSD by reminding him.
He looked down at his hands and pulled out his claws, the metal shining from the firelight.
He smiled down at them like a pair of old friends.
“How are you feeling?” I asked worriedly.
“Better, stronger” he said as he retracted his claws and stretched his large arms overhead. “I feel like I can really protect her now” he said, causing me to look at him funny.
“Protect who?” I asked.
“Jean” he said with a warm smile, my heart sinking at the way he said her name. “I heard her Morph, when I was on the ship, I heard her say she loved me, to come back to her” he said looking up longingly at the stars as if they were her eyes…looking the happiest I had ever seen him before…
I tried to swallow down the lump I had in my throat and turned away, my heart racing and aching as I played with the sleeves of my uniform.
“What?” he asked suddenly, causing me to about jump out of my skin.
“N…Nothing” I stammered, “just trying to stay warm” I lied as I looked at anything but him.
“You’re lying” he said, his voice a low growl “You and I practically have the same healing factor, and you’ve never complained about being cold a day in your life” he said looking at me suspiciously.
The gulp I swallowed down did nothing to help convince him.
I can hear your heart racing Morph, spit it out” he said, an unnamed threat hanging behind his words.
I guess unless a hole forms in the center of the ground and swallows me up I’ll just have to tell him…
“It wasn’t…exactly Jean you heard…” I said timidly.
“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?” he asked through gritted teeth.
I shifted into Jean, my voice changing into hers.
“It was me Logan” I said before I changed back into myself.
He started shaking with rage, his hands going into fists.
“I’m…I’m sorry” I whispered.
Quick as a snake strike he opened his claws and stabbed at me.
I barely rolled out of the way, his claws landing in the cave wall right where my head had been!
(I know I have a healing factor, but that would have hurt like hell…)
“You lied to me!” he yelled as he took his claws out of the rock and turned to me, his face full of anger and disappointment.
Just then, he leapt forward, his claws aiming for me again. I ducked out of the way as his claws sunk into a tree behind me, the whole thing falling down beside us a second later, causing the ground to shake under my feet as I backed away from him.
“I…I wanted you to fight to stay alive” I said weakly as I backed up into another tree. “I wanted to give you hope.”
“And what do I have now!” he said waving his hands and claws at the cold open air. “I have nothing! Absolutely nothing!”
“You have me” I said in a small voice. “I love you Logan” I said shaking and trembling as bad as my voice. “I may have used Jean’s voice but those words were mine” I confessed.
He stared at me, eyes wide in shock for the longest time.
“I love you Logan” I said after the silence became too much for me to handle. “I just… I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t want you to leave me” I said, my voice thick and raw as tears ran down my cheeks.
“ ‘Love’? You don’t know the meaning of the word you snake” he spat out, his words full of venom and bitterness. “You used my love for a good woman, used her voice and her image to manipulate me” he said causing my heart to break. “You used my love for her and twisted it up for your own selfish needs!” he bellowed out as tears formed in the corners of his eyes. “I travel the world, looking for you, me and the others doing everything we can to help you and save you, and this is how you repay me?! By manipulating me on my sick bed and tearing me apart with a lie! By making me think I have a chance at happiness and then pulling it away” he said the tears going down his cheeks as his shoulders shook.
“I wanted to help you” I said barely above a whisper, tears pouring down my face and neck.
“I’ve had it with you” he said, his voice and eyes burning. “If I can’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth. If you’re just going to take everything I say and use it as some weapon against me when I’m at my weakest, then I don’t want to have anything to do with you ever again” he said, his words feeling like a hammer to my heart and soul.
Just then, Bishop opened a portal and came through it.
“You two looking for a ride home?” he asked waving his thumb behind him at the open portal.
The two of us stared at him for the longest time until he got fed up waiting.
“You two coming or what?” he asked in a light good-natured voice looking between us.
“I’ll go, but you better make sure this one doesn't stab me in the back before I get through” he spat out as he went past Bishop and into the portal.
Bishop looked between us with a confused look.
“What?” he said to the back of him as he disappeared from sight.
I wiped the tears from my face before he turned back to me and I quietly walked through the portal, leaving my shattered heart and broken soul back in the snow.