Taming a Beast

After Gambit and I’s makeout session on the kitchen floor, I told him I was tired and needed to head back to bed. I fell asleep, but to say I got a good night’s rest would be a lie. I had the same nightmare over and over again, and I couldn’t wake up from it once. It was just Logan finding me and Gambit kissing, then slicing through Gambit before throwing himself into a fire that had conjured out of nowhere. The fire slowly, but surely, worked through his body before he laid in ashes, me screaming my head off, but otherwise frozen on the windowseat where I had been sitting the moment Logan walked in.

I woke up and stretched, rubbing my eyes and slowly walking to the kitchen so I could grab some coffee before my morning classes. When Gambit, who always subbed when I was sick or absent for another reason, said I looked sick and needed to go back to sleep. He offered to take my first classes, and I took the offer. Something deep in my stomach told me I needed sleep.

When I woke up from the amazing fit of sleep I had managed to fall into, it wasn’t by choice. The warning tritone was blaring for some reason, probably because Gambit knew I’d be asleep, and so did Professor X by now. I quickly got up, energized by my nap, and realized it had been three hours since Gambit had sent me back to my room. I took off through the hallways and changed into my suit, then headed down to the hangar, where everybody was assembled and waiting to be informed and instructed on what to do.

Of course, I’m the last one there.

Professor X rolls up from behind the airplane in his wheelchair, not reprimanding me in the least, to my absolute relief. He tells us about how he finally got into the mind of a mutant who sided with Magneto, and found out their position-- somewhere in the state, mysteriously close to us. He tells us to move fast, as they have just gotten there and are still settling down a bit, not very well acquainted to the area.

For some reason, we take two different planes. It’s weird having Gambit calming me down on a way to a gig instead of Logan. I shake my head and force his real name into my mind-- Wolverine. Because all he is to me now is a monster, my still slightly sore side tells me. But then all I can suddenly think about is him, and what happened to him after our last gig. I hadn’t heard his name, but many people around me were censoring their conversations for my benefit. I don’t imagine Charles left him with Magneto’s army, but where would he be in the Academy that I wouldn’t know about?

I shake my head and decide to go get immersed in all the technology of the plane. I excuse myself from Gambit’s loving embrace, and he lets me go, thinking nothing of it, and certainly not thinking that I was reminiscing about Wolverine. He knows how nervous I get going to gigs and riding planes, so he lets me do as I wish just so I can get myself to calm down. I take the co-pilot seat no one is manning and begin talking to Beast, and I get him going off on a rant that takes up the remainder of the trip about the ins and outs, tricks and tickles of the plane we’re currently riding in. I’m almost about to give up and return to Gambit’s arms when our plane shakes, signaling we’ve touched land. I had hardly noticed our descending altitude, a sign that I should never be a pilot under any circumstance.

To my surprise and pain, I find myself facing a building I thought I had said goodbye to many years ago.

“Magneto would be hiding here,” I muttered, looking up at my old asylum as old, horrible memories rush throughout me. Gambit squeezed my hand, and I saw Rogue’s fleeting glance of jealousy, although her gloved hand was intertwined with Bobby’s.

God, our love lives overlapped way too much.

“Jean, Shadowcat, take the back right. Gambit, Shift, take the back left. Jean, Colossus, take the front left. Iceman and I will try to infiltrate from the top, down after we get Beast into the security room, which will take us through the front right,” Scotty said. I expected him to clap his hands and yell ‘Go, team, go!’ like you saw in every TV show, but instead, we all split up our respective ways.

Gambit and I snuck in through a food service door, me first. I looked around the hallways and told Gambit to split up. He looked hesitant at first, but then reluctantly nodded as he went left down the hallway and I went right. I had my own reasons for wanting to split up.

Relying entirely on my elephant-like memory, I navigated the hallways until I came to room 609. I shut my eyes and-- involuntarily-- flashed back to where my darkest moment became my favorite.

I was waiting for the right moment to pounce, that moment when they would let their guard down and open the door. Then I could shift and attack.

Suddenly, I heard yelling and screaming, grunting that got closer and closer to my door. I jumped back as silver blades sliced through my door, cutting off the doorknob. I waited until the door was blown down by a hairy, but strangely attractive, man. He looked at me, then looked at me more fully. He asked me, “Shift?”

“Who’s asking?” I asked. He chuckled, and I heard fighting and gunfire in the distance.

“Now’s not the time to talk tough, sweetheart,” he said, putting out his hand. “Come with me.”

“First, who are you?” I asked the complete stranger, taking in all his features. His wonderful build, his flashing brown eyes, he looked like he could pull three trucks with his teeth alone.

“Wolverine,” he answered, a slight growl to the back of his introduction as he smiled, “but you can call me Logan. And trust me, that’s an honor.”

I took Logan’s hand as he led me to a place that would become my home.

Where he would become my home.

I touched the door, imagining Logan standing in the doorway as we looked at each other for the first time. I’d go on to learn he only let girls he was interested in call him Logan. Storm, Rogue, Jean... he’d all been interested in them at some point.

“I remember it, too,” I heard a deep voice say.

I turned and there was Logan, walking towards me.