Taming a Beast

Logan yelled something incoherent to me as he pulled out the needle, and I swayed a bit. Logan caught me and sat me down on the table as I gained my balance again and smiled at him.

“I’m fine, Logan. Trust me,” I said to him. His jaw dropped a bit as he touched my face.

“Your... your eyes,” he said to me. I looked down at the reflective tray that had held the needle before it pierced my skin, and saw my eyes had shifted from their normal navy to a deep metallic blue. I looked up at him beseechingly, giving him an innocent smile as he backed up and shook his head. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”

“Loag, c’mon,” I said to him, stepping towards him. He shook his head and continued walking backwards. When I realized he wouldn’t be giving in, I sighed, focused my power, and transformed half of my body into Lady Deathstrike. Logan yelled as he sprinted towards me, but he was too late as I injected one of her metal claws into my own, unshifted arm. I winced as Logan ran over and pulled it out, holding me tightly and watching it with amazed eyes as it healed quicker than his did.

“Do not do that ever again,” Logan said to me, breathing heavily as he pressed his forehead to mine and looked own at me. “You gave me a heart attack.”

“Even if I didn’t heal, I wouldn’t die from the injury,” I said to him, leaning up as I placed my hands around his neck. He had his arms locked tightly around my waist, pulling my stomach to touch his. He looked at me and leant down quickly to press his lips on mine, lifting me back onto the table. The explosions got closer and the mutants outside were going to eventually wear down the door sometime.

For all we knew, this would be our last moment together.

My lips kept pressing harder against his, his tongue slipping into my mouth. His hands slid up my shirt, sliding across my bare skin as goosebumps rippled across my body. Minutes must have passed, and the battle was getting closer and seemingly more intense.

“Logan,” I said, ripping my lips away from his, not without regret. He looked at me and noticed the dent in the door, and how the explosions were shaking the windows now. I kept my hands tightly around his neck as we embraced, and he hid my face in his neck, holding my head and heart into place. I pulled away from him and our eyes locked, as I stood up on my tiptoes to kiss him. When I pulled away, there was a determined yet calm look on his face.

He met me straight in the eyes and said to me for the first time, “I love you.”

The words took me a bit off-guard, but ultimately, I wasn’t surprised. Logan didn’t stay with anybody for more than a week, never mind almost a whole year, unless he felt something very strong for them. He hadn’t even stayed with Jean for that long, although he had mostly broken things off with her with the knowledge that he was just a consolidation prize.

He was waiting for a response, and I wondered how long I had been in my own little world of private thoughts. I pulled myself up and eagerly kissed him, a tear escaping down my face from my right eye, signaling it was a happy tear. Although this would probably be our toughest battle yet, I would get through it with the knowledge that Logan was in love with me.

“I love you, too,” I said to him honestly, smiling. I was sitting on the edge of the table, and he pulled close to me as he crushed his lips down to mine. I wrapped my arms tightly around his waist as I heard Cyclops yelling something muffled-- something that sounded a hell lot like ‘The fight’s almost to you.’

“Well at least Scotty’s alive and running like normal,” Logan chuckled. I smiled at him, climbing off the table as I intertwined my fingers with his. An explosion bust the door open, and I was deafened by the amount of sound that then flooded in through the door. Logan quickly looked over at me, kissed me one last time, and reminded me, “Remember, I’m in love with you.”

I smiled at him, squeezing his hand once before we separated. “And I with you.”

We both rushed forward, Logan’s claws sliding out of his hands as he began to slice through people like they were just pieces of bread. I, on the other hand, began hand-to-hand combat with everybody I met, most of them surprised that I wasn’t using my power pretty much the whole world knew I had. But Xavier had trained me this hard in hand-to-hand combat for a reason, and I felt like this was it.

Scotty ran up beside me and asked, “What’s gotten into you?”

But as someone scratched my arm and my skin sealed itself back up again, I could see Scotty’s eyes lift above his sunglasses. He looked at me and asked, “Did Wolverine inject you with the iron?”

I rolled my eyes, swinging my leg and bringing a teleporter into a chokehold. I shifted for a second, stabbed my metal claws into their stomach, then shifted back, dropping their body to the floor. I looked at Scotty and said, “Yes, Logan did.”

He rolled his eyes, just like I had, and lifted down his sunglasses as his laser beam eyes cut into someone getting too close to Jean for Scotty’s comfort before saying, “You know why I refuse to call him Logan.”

“Because it’s too personal, and you can’t ever be on a friendly level with him because you hold a grudge worse than a teenage girl, yeah, yeah, I know,” I said as I took off running and dead-legged someone near Logan as I easily overtook them and threw their body to the side. Logan gave me a thankful smile as he continued his fight with one of Magneto’s top fighters.

I was fighting another fighter when I was stabbed through the stomach by one of their swords. I pulled it out of my stomach, which automatically began healing, and turned the weapon on my opponent, slicing off their head as it rolled along the ground. I heard slow applause nearby, and turned to see Magneto, flanked by Pyro, a mutant I had trained myself, and Mystique, blocking my only exit out of the hallway.

“I see that you fell right into my small little trap,” Magneto said. I noticed with a grimace that he was wearing his anti-power helmet again. “I left the iron right where you and your betrothed would find it.”

I stared at him. “But why? It made me stronger.”

“Because, I consider you to be a very useful weapon, my darling. And the more iron in your body, the more metal, and the more I can control you,” Magneto said as I flew forward, my body compelled to come stand right in front of him. Pyro’s lip lifted into a snarl, and I gasped for air as Mystique giggled like a schoolgirl. “And now, you are mine.”

“She will never be yours,” a voice growled. Jean, Gambit, and Logan were standing, facing the three Brotherhood members. Gambit took Pyro, Jean took Mystique, and Logan faced Magneto, who just chuckled and shook his head.

“My dear boy, did you not just learn that I can control you better than anybody else here?” Magneto said, throwing Logan from one wall to the other. Logan groaned and moaned as I slinked behind Magneto and slipped off his helmet, shifting quickly to Colossus as I shattered it into pieces with my fist. Magneto roared, “Not again!”

I felt myself pushed up against the wall, a hand circling around my windpipes and cutting off the oxygen circulation in my body. Then, I felt the flames against my neck. Pyro’s hand was lighting up against me, until he was pulled off of me and I fell to the ground, crumpling. Although I was invincible, a direct third-degree burn like that was nearly impossible to heal even with awesome healing powers.

The three Brotherhood members escaped thanks to my little drama show, which gained the apt attention of Jean, Gambit, and Logan. They all asked me if I was okay and Jean ran off, retrieved Iceman and the rest of the team, and came back as Iceman began placing his icy hands on my neck. Logan carried me to the plan while Iceman stayed by my neck.

“Why is this happening to her? She put the iron in her body, she’s supposed to be invincible,” Logan argued with Hank on the way back home as he stroked my hair, trying to keep me calm. As long as Bobby kept his hands to my neck, the pain wasn’t unbearable.

“She is. But the thing is, this is mutant fire, it’s not just any fire. It’s kind of like poisonous fire, one of the few things that, if the victim falls underneath the actual skin contact of the mutant, could be fatal. But because she’s invincible, she didn’t die on contact like she should’ve. So the iron did work,” Hank said, his gruff voice business like usual. He gave me a worried look, a bit of his overprotective, big brother side coming out to play. “As long as Bobby keeps his hands on her neck, she should be fine.”

We arrived back at the mansion, and although everybody wanted me to go the hospital, I begged them not to. One giant needle had been enough for me today, and I wanted nothing more than to lie in my own bed. Logan joined me like usual, keeping a close eye on me and pertaining to my every need, no matter how ridiculous like when my cravings wanted pickles from the kitchen.

Logan laid down next to me, pushing back my hair out of my face as I held an ice pack to my neck. He looked down at me and whispered, “I love you.”

“Fun to say, isn’t it?” I asked him, leaning up a bit and kissing him before laying back down and wincing as I did so, the material of my pillow rubbing up against my neck and irritating my burn. Logan’s eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“Don’t move again,” he said to me softly. I gave my head the smallest nod probably ever known to man, just to let him know that I agreed with his suggestion. He kissed me on the forehead and he said, “I honestly don’t know what took me so long to finally admit that I loved you. I mean, didn’t you already know to begin with? Or was it honestly that big of a shock?’

“I mean,” I said, sighing, “I knew you had immensely strong feelings for me, but you don’t say ‘I love you’ to anybody. Like seriously, there’s just no record of it anywhere. It’s so rare, it’s not even a myth.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” he said, and I kissed his arm, laughing into it as he smiled tiredly down at me.

“But no, I did know,” I said, surprising myself a bit with the truth in those words. I did know that Logan loved me, it was like a sixth sense. The way he held me, talked about me, looked at me... they were actions that were always labeled in cheesy rom-coms, but here was Logan, doing the same to me, of all people.

I rolled over and he laid down so our faces were across from each other. I reached out and pulled his face to mine, kissing his lips softly as I whispered, “I love you, and I always will.”

“Make that two of us, my darling,” Logan whispered, kissing me again. He then laid another kiss on my forehead, shushing me when I yawned. “You need to go sleep. I’ll be right here, so if you wake up in the middle of the night and need anything, just wake me up, alright?”

“You don’t need to...” I began, but he interjected by placing a single finger over my lips.

“I want to,” he said, pulling his finger away from my lips and placing another kiss on them. “Have I ever mentioned that I love you?”

“Maybe once or twice,” I teased him, yawning again as I shut my eyes, falling asleep against his chest while his heart beat to my own personal lullaby, since his heart only belonged to me.