Title: Yester Life: This Prison Of Skin part 1 of 2
Subject: Wolverine/Rogue non-brotherly/sisterly love. Which means that I
might explore feelings of a sexual nature so...
Rating: A definite R for disturbing situations and violence of a horrific
nature. Dealing also with past life regression hypnosis. So if your
religious views would be offended by sex, fighting and pastlife memory. Do
not read. Also, I am dealing with a time of world turmoil. Namely World War
1 and the Nazi Agenda. They aren't shown pretty in this piece so if you
happen to be German no offence.
Author: Kia Mira
Summary: Rogue has Regression Hypnotherapy with devastating results. Can
Logan get to her in time? Or will she be swallowed by the darkness.
FEEDBACK!!!! at kia_mira@bellsouth.net
Disclaimer: If I owned them I wouldn't be posting here. LOL so just keep
that in mind.
THANKS TO ANGEL FACE WHO BETA READ THIS ONE FOR ME!!!!
First a quote that gave me my inspiration.
"At times I almost dream. I too have spent a life the sage's way, and tread
once more familiar paths. Perchance I perished in an arrogant self reliance
an age ago. And in that act of prayer for one more chance went up so earnest
..so..instinct with better light let in by death that life was blotted out
not so completely, but scatters wrecks enough of it to remain dim memories.
As now when it seems once more the goal in sight again. "
-Robert Browning as read by David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in, 'The Field
Where I Died.'
This Prison Made Of Skin
Logan stared up at the massive school as he shrugged his leather jacket off
and flipped it over his shoulder. It was strange, but he felt an odd catch
in his chest. It almost felt like home. Not because he was welcomed here.
Or because he was looked at as a normal person. It was because she was here.
He tamped down on that thought. It wouldn't do for Jean or the Professor to
get the wrong idea about his feelings for her. Rogue was less than half his
age. Or at least less than half the age he thought himself to be.
Trotting up the stone steps he raised a hand to knock, but it wasn't
necessary. Because as he drew near the door opened and Dr. Grey was there, a
welcoming smile on her lips that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Logan, we were expecting you tomorrow," she said as he brushed past her.
"The Professor will be ticked he had it wrong," Logan said as he turned to
watch her shut the door.
"Actually," came the superflorious English accent, "I'm rather pleased you
arrived ahead of your schedule."
Logan turned and regarded the good professor. He too wore a thin mask over
his grim features.
"I'm glad to see you again Logan."
"Yeah," was all he said.
"You will see her soon, but first there is something you must watch."
"How did-" Logan shook his head. "Sorry, forgot for a minute there. Listen,
I came for Rogue. You said she needed me."
"Yes, but I'm afraid that for you to understand the situation you must watch
this video." Professor Xavier held up the tape. "Shall we go to my
office?"
"After you." Logan said, giving a slight bow and a mocking flourish with his
hand. He was becoming edgier by the moment. He couldn't put his finger on
the why
of it, but he figured the tape would answer it.
Logan took a seat at the large wooden table that stood to the left of the
door. On it sat a medium sized television and a video cassett recorder. When
he was seated, Jean took the tape from Charles and walked to the table.
Logan was surprised when another woman joined them and closed the heavy
wooden doors. His eyes narrowed on the newcomer.
"Logan, I would like you to meet one of my former students, Regressor.
Regressor, this is Wolverine."
"It's nice to meet you." Regressor said putting her hand out. Logan just
looked at her, his eyes taking in her raised hand and ignoring it. Then he
turned to the Professor.
"Your quite right Logan, we should ' get this show on the road.'" Charles
chuckled as he answered the other man's unspoken comment with his exact
words.
"Regressor has been working with Rogue trying to find some link from a past
life to her mutation. She has been doing extensive studies on the subject.
When Rogue read her dissertation in the New England Medical Journal she
approached me. She wanted to try and find out why she had the mutation she
had."
"We had several sessions, but they were all unsuccessful. Until we went back
over a hundred years past. Finally we were able to reach the life she lived
prior to this one. It began in 1895 when she was born to Claire and Joseph
Hatcher in Freemont, Georgia. We continued to jump in periods of two years
at a time, until the session in which this tape was made." She nodded, Jean
slipped the tape into the
machine and the tape began.
Logan watched as Rogue sat across from Regressor. 'Regressor, what the hell
kind of name is that, anyway?' he thought. Rogue was smiling as she lay back
against the leather sofa. Logan turned his eyes, moving to that same sofa
across the room.
"Okay, Rogue. You know the drill. I'll slip into your mind and take you
under. Once we are there I'll step back and allow you to tell me what you
see."
Rogue nodded, her eyes lowering. A blush moving over her pale cheeks.
"Thank you. I know it would be better for you to be there but after the last
time I-" she broke off and cleared her throat. "It is so..." she cast about
for a word. then settled for ". . .personal. It feels wrong for you to be
there with me. Like I'm desecrating it or somethin'."
"I understand now..." Logan turned to the Doctor, tuning out the tape for a
moment.
"What?" he gestured with his hand.
"We happened upon Rogue-er- then Marie and her new husband at an in
opportune time. Rogue immediately jumped back to herself and locked me out.
It took about a week before she would try again."
Logan nodded his understanding and went back to watching the tape. Rogue lay
on the couch now, her hands at her side and her eyes closed.
"How do you feel?"
"I'm floatin' on air. We've been married for four month now. My father was
against me marryin' him. Said if I don't follow his word I'd be sorry. My
Mama understood though. She knew we were meant to be together forever."
Rogue's honey light southern accent deepened and became more profound, thick
as molasses on a winter's day.
Rogue shifted on the sofa. Her face glowing with the ethereal happiness of
love. Then a frown marred the sweetness that had cloaked her features.
" He's leavin' tomorrow." her frown deepened. "He'll be startin' his
trainin'."
"Training?" Regressor asked.
"He's joinin' the Canadian Army. He's a patriot to the Crown. Believes it is
inevitable that the world will be involved. Thang's been heatin' up ova' in
the European countries. He keeps a tellin' me not ta worry. That the
trainin' only last fer about a month, but..."
"But?" Regressor prodded gently. There was the muffled sound of typing in
the outer edges of the office, as Jean Grey searched for information about
that time period. She glanced up every so often to make sure Rogue was
alright. Then she looked back down at the keyboard on the massive wooden
desk.
"But ma soul, it aches fer him. He ain't even gone yet and it aches fer
him." she bit her lip. "It aches b'cause it knows..." she breaks off,
stifling a sob, her face a mask of grief.
"What? What does it know?" came the quiet yet insistent voice of the one
leading her through her yester life.
"That we won't be seein' each otha again. That I won't feel the touch of his
lips. That I won't run my finga's through that glorious hair anymore." She
smiled in her reclined position and bit her forefinger as she laughed just a
bit. "He hates when I say that, that his hair is glorious, but it is.
Thick and wavy like. He tries 'n' tries 'n' tries ta get it ta lay down, but
it won't and I praise God fer it. " Her happy face turned sad as though a
switch had been flipped, and her mind was suddenly aware of the unhappy
trail it must follow. "He'll neva' know 'bout our blessed baby." A single
tear fell onto her pale cheek. "I want so badly to tell him, but-I- I don't
want to keep him from doin' what he feels he hasta." Tears flowed freely
down her cheeks now and her hands had moved to her stomach, low and
protective.
"Do you need to go to the safe place?"
"No. I was goin' to tell him that day in the forest, but I- I just couldn't.
Oh, we were happy that day. I felt positively wicked. Out there under the
warm sun. I watched him stretch out and put his arms under his head and I
ached to whisper it in his ear. I even went so far as to put my hand
on his chest and get his attention. He started to open his eyes but I
covered them. I didn't want him to see me. I laughed at my own cowardice
when I decided yet again that I couldn't say them. The words that might keep
him here with me."
Logan felt the blood rush from his body, his dream flashing through his mind
with each word she spoke. It couldn't be. Clenching his jaw to keep from
uttering a sound, he returned his eyes and mind to the tape.
"Today he is still with me. Tomorrow, though, tomorrow I may not live once
he steps onto that train."
"I'm sorry, but we need to go to that train now. Are you ready?"
"No, I-I don't want to go there, but I have to. I would die if I thought he
would be hurt. So I go. I go to that train and I don't cry."
"Are you there now?"
"Yes," is the simple reply.
"What do you see?"
"I see him standin' there, the sun at his back. He looks so dashin' in his
uniform. I want to cry an' hold him to me and never let him go."
She smiles, her tears held in check. "I smile and tell him, 'I don't want ya
ta go.'"
"He looks down. I know this is hard fer him, too. He takes his mama's locket
off and slips it into my hand. It's oddly cold and hot in my hand at the
same time. Warm from his body's heat, but cold comfort." Rogue lifts the
scrape of metal at her neck, her fingers clasping it tight. Though it isn't
the locket she is clasping as her former self had, it is an old tag
inscribed with one word and eight digits."I wear it here ova' my heart.
Always ova' my heart."
"We need your name now," Regressor states. "Do you know your name?"
"Marie, Marie Woolf." she smiles a secret little smile. "No relation. That
is one of his favorite addendum." Regressor looks at Dr. Grey and she nods
and then begins to type faster.
" No relation? To whom?"
"Virginia Woolf, the famous authoress. His descendants ar' Canadian through
and through. Yet, very loyal to the Crown."
"Can I call you Marie?"
"Ahf course."
"Okay, Marie, we need to move ahead in time. Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Good. I want you to go to the next time you see your husband again."
"I can't." she moans.
"Why?"
"They came to tell me he's dead today."
"What day is it?"
"It's November the thirtieth, nineteen hundred an fourteen. He's been gone
for nearly three month now. I wrote him to tell him about the baby. I
couldn't keep it from him anymore." She whimpered and started to rub her
cold pale fingers over the chain at her neck.
"What's the matter?"
"They said I had to come with them. That I needed ta see that it was him.
They wasn't sure, but-" She was growing agitated.
"Do you need to go to the safe place?"
"No, no. Not my baby! What are you doin'?" she was struggling with an unseen
attacker. Curling up on the sofa. Trying to protect her unborn child. Then
she was completely still crying silently.
"Marie, tell me what is happening."
Logan tensed as he watched the scene playing out on the tape. She was like a
wild thing one moment and then she was slack as a rag doll.
"They gave me somethin', a shot. Makin'- me- numb- all- ova'. The-ah wan' my
bab-he. Tes' on hi-m. See if mut-ha-sion is presan'. Ah can' tah-lk no
morah. To slee."
"Marie the drug isn't effecting you. Do you here me. You are perfectly
coherent." Regressor told her. "Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"We're going to move ahead again. To after you awoke from the drug you were
given."
"I don't want ta be there."
"I know, but you can go to the safe place if you have to." Regressor said.
"You are awake now. Tell me what you see."
"Darkness. I'm trapped in tha darkness." her hands moved to her stomach and
a heart wrenching wail escapes her lips. "My baby! Where is my baby! Oh,
sweet heaven they took my baby." She tenses and hides her face. "They are
back. The men from before. They opened the door and I'm blinded by the
brightness coming from it. My baby is gone, it is regrettable they say. They
say he wasn't special. They had to terminate hi-huhm. He was special.
Special to me." Rogue cried harder.
Logan's eyes filled with unshed tears, but he didn't notice. He didn't even
feel them as they trickled over his lashes and into the whiskers covering
his cheek.
"Marie, I'm going to put my hand on your leg and then you will wake up and
you won't remember anything you don't want to. Okay?" Regressor reached
close to her, putting her hand out.
"Don't touch me!", the shriek could be heard echoing through the halls of
the Xavier School For Gifted Children. "Never let you touch me again!" Rogue
lurched to her feet and edged past the psychologist, her eyes darting around
the room.
"Wake up!" Regressor stood and stepped toward her. "When I count to three
you will wake up and- No!" Regressor lunged for Rogue as the girl spyied the
open door leading to the terrace. Rogue's voice chanting over and over
again, "Never let anyone touch me again. Never let anyone touch me again."
Logan surged to his feet as though he could stop the wild girl on the
tape. His hands reached out in clenched fists. Only aware on a
subconscious level that he was helpless to stop what was happening.
"Jean! The door!" Jean reacted immediately and slammed the doors before
Rogue could reach them, but that couldn't stop her from her goal. She knew
what she had to do.
Charles Xavier sat stunned as the girl reared up out of her hypnotized
state. He glanced at the psychologist that had just moments before been
recording the idyllic memories of a not so distant past life. Then in the
space of less than a minute, she was crashing through the glass doors. Jean
and the psychologist followed her.
"Never let anyone touch me again. Never let anyone touch me again. Never let
anyone touch me again. Never let anyone touch me again." This was her mantra
as she clutched the stone rail of the the terrace and hoisted her leg over,
oblivious to the pain. She was ready to cast herself to the garden floor
below. Only in her mind it wasn't a garden floor on the ground's of Xavier's
School for gifted children. It was a cold, snow patched grey cement court
yard. That didn't matter, she was feral as she used her bloodied hands to
drag her torn and tattered body over the side.
It was on this picture that the tape stopped and began to rewind.
"NNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Wolverine roared, and with a sweeping motion of his left
hand cleared the wooden table of the offending screen. Then his right hand
punched through the table and swept across it, cutting three gouges. As he
became enraged his eyes turned on Regressor and he took one step toward her,
ready to slash his talons through her.
"Logan!" Charles Xavier's commanding voice broke through the air like a whip
cracking at the feet of a lion. "You mustn't harm her. She is the only one
who can help you help Rogue."
Logan stopped at that, but the part of him that was Wolverine protested. It
was thirsty. Thirsty for revenge on the ones that had let Rogue jump from
the balcony. Jump to her death.
"No, Logan. She isn't dead. She jumped from the balcony, but Jean was able
to support her and lay her on the ground."
"If that is true, then where is she?" He bit the words through his clenched
teeth. The bestial tone reverberated through the wood paneled office.
"She is down below. In the infirmary. We have had to take drastic measures.
As she won't allow herself to be brought out of the regression hypnosis."
The claws retracted with the sound of grating metal and he turned malevolent
eyes on the man in the wheelchair. "Take me to her! Now!" Then he turned and
walked out of the office.
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