"Yeah, yeah. Don't get used to it. It'll be all mine next time." There would never be a time where Logan accept praise (even disguised as criticism) without deflecting it. He was not a man for soft favors or tenderness. Yet that could be hardly believed when he took his place beside her on the tarp so that her back was to his front. He rested one arm underneath the pillow, but the other wrapped around her abdomen so as to keep their hands together. It was a strange kind of intimacy, but war made for strange bedfellows. Literally in this case.
"God, but I could go for a smoke right about now."
"For God's sake, light up," she relented. "I don't care. Not truly. Only...blow the smoke away from my face, if you can manage it."
Laughable, really. The tender construction of their nearness -- their very touch -- had a broader (and chillier) negotiation bordering each soft gesture. Peggy's breath caught in her throat and to spare her lowest ribs she sidled his arm lower on her hip. Fingers linking between his with yet again another electric thrill, as though knowing about the razor-edged claws below inspired jitters in her stomach. Adrenaline surged, and she wondered if she could ever sleep. Spent though she was, there was little relaxation to be found tucked against someone's body.
She practically laid on the hand that was linked with his. Her other arm -- the one unpinned by her body still -- ventured afield, because she couldn't comfortably reach his neck any longer. Well-trimmed and red-painted nails caught the bottom hem of his shirt, twisting the heavy tactical material around her fingertips. But ultimately she went no further, uncertain of how to ask permission for something both so daft and clinical all at once.
"Would if I could." He hadn't brought more than the one cigar, which he had intended to make last as long as possible by rationing it. Logan was a professional soldier, but not a particularly wealthy one. He lived primarily by the clothes on his back and had little in the way of personal possessions. The cigar and the vodka had cost him more than they were worth thanks to the army base's general having a particularly strict policy of no tolerance when it came to certain vices. It had been a marvel Logan managed as much as he had.
But not even a smoke would have made this arrangement more comfortable. Both of them were hot and a day's labor under the sun left neither of the two smelling particularly pleasant. The thick tactical gear, much of it stained in blood, made it harder still to get comfortable. A soldier eventually learned to sleep in any position, but generally they had more freedom to pick one most suitable. The rumble from him throat was not a growl, but a thoughtful hum of what might be considered priority here. The twisting of his shirt suggested she might be coming to the same thought he was.
So he unlinked his arms from around her and sat up. The outer layer was unzipped and set aside. The second and third layer, a tactical turtleneck and undershirt respectively, were pulled over his head and piled up beside him. His bare chest was a thicket of black hair, but remarkably unscarred for a career soldier. It was a small sacrifice for him to make. As a man near impossible to kill, a few layers of clothes would not make a difference in a fight. If anything, he always fought better when he was allowed to cut loose. He said nothing about it, but simply took his place back along the tarp. The connection was severed in that time, but he resumed it by touching his hand to the nape of her neck.
She'd felt only a tentative want to skin her palm across his side. To settle it -- firmly -- where abdomen met waist. It would have been an additional point of contact: another saving grace. But a soft hum of her own admitted to his good intent and fine-planning when he stripped down to bare shoulders. Peggy felt no similar drive -- out of cultivated modesty, or else a desire not to show her blooming bruises and reddening cuts. Stripping down to her skin meant inviting infection; she stayed wrapped up.
But she twisted. Ginger-like, so the pain wasn't unbearable. But Peggy leaned into his touch so she felt hard fingers against her neck. And her own fingers curled almost possessively into the flesh of his side. A fistful of security, taken not out of lust or greed but because she knew they both needed to survive.
"You only brought the one," she breathed her laughter. Poor unfortunate soul. "We make it through this and I'll promise you a whole case of the finest."
Logan would have been dishonest if he claimed that he wasn't disappointed she didn't reciprocate the exposure. There were plenty of good and solid reasons not to, but he hadn't been joking when he told her what his idea of living looked like. It was not quite this, but it was damned close. Even so, he continued to scrape at those few loose hairs at the base of her neck. It was idle curiosity more than it was anything more intimate.
"You'll soon regret it. I ain't a cheap smoker." Though the cigar he had brought had been far from being described as the finest. "But there's something you've got me wonderin' about. How exactly do you receive pronouncing anyhow?"
Her laughter was a delicate thing. Head tilted, she watched as her breath stirred a loose fibre on the spare blanket beneath. "It's how the King speaks," Peggy explained. "Although I suppose the current example isn't an exceptional one."
She swallowed up her playful treason. Carter had been out of British intelligence for a long while, but that didn't make it any less awkward to begrudge His Royal Majesty any of her respect and due deference. No matter how much he stammered -- or how much trouble he had with his speeches. She weaselled her way through the joke's explanation in halting tones, as if pausing to enjoy the slight touch upon her nape between words.
"It's considered quite posh -- albeit artificially so. I meant only that you shouldn't let the sound of it cause you to believe I'm anything less than hardy, Logan. Perhaps not so hardy as you, it turns out--"
But hardy. Hale. A laughable thing to argue now, curled up so tenderly beneath his touch.
Edited (forgot a sentence; caught it on the reread; so throw me in jail.) 2015-05-23 19:37 (UTC)
He continued to stroke her hair until his thumb began to stroke the helix of her ear. There was no intention in this gesture, only something old and familiar and thoughtless. Kings and speech didn't matter all that much to him, though he didn't feel her explanation truly answered his question.
"Yer hardy enough. Any dumb bastard can get a bullet in 'em. It takes nerves to heal the long way 'round. I've been shot, burned, stabbed, crushed, an' killed in more ways than I remember. It ain't never took me any longer'n a few hours to heal from the worst of it. Sittin' around waiting for it to heal the natural way? I ain't done that since I was a kid scrapin' my knees."
She liked it. His touch. Not in some crass fashion, though it would be foolish to deny a frisson or three down her spine when his thumb curled just so across the shell of her ear. No -- what she liked instead (to her slow-growing realization) was the simple existence of companionship. Once upon a time, Peggy had been more comfortable with the people around her. Freer with her friendship and her affection. The war had made her better and stronger and more faithful by far, but it had also hollowed out small and unexpected parts of her very self: the parts that once found it so easy to lean into a lovely touch. The parts that had blazed back into life so briefly only to be extinguished again.
Most importantly, she didn't overthink it. Just as he held no intention, she assumed none. But her breath evened out. And her fingers skated the skin of his side in sudden slow lazy circles -- their apex always matching exhalation.
"Kind of you to say, truly, but--" there's nothing brave about biology. There was nothing about this punishment she was choosing to endure. It was a thing that must be survived. Peggy sighed. "Does it still hurt? It does, doesn't it?"
She threw the attention back on him. A clumsy gesture -- but one that might as well have been taught in any introductory training for intelligence work. At least at the heart of the question was a kind of genuine concern -- for all he'd shrugged off his injuries, he hadn't ignored them. Not perfectly.
"When it happens?" He nodded in the clumsy and awkward way one does when their head is against a pillow. "Sometimes the healing hurts worse than the cause. People ain't made to live through the things I have."
Each event held its own trauma for him and by all rights, he should have been a broken man. He could not truly claim to understand what it was that allowed him and his brother to survive those things with their minds in tact. A romantic might claim it was these moments that allowed him to retain his humanity and if not that, it was the booze and vices that did it for him. It was possible that even a shattered mind could be made to stitch itself back together.
People weren't made to live through -- no. That path brought her to sour thoughts. Heartache. So much so that it threatened the precarious sense of peace that had until now pervaded the moment: the kind that comes only at rare times, where a moment of mutual surrender was shared with someone.
Selfishly, she wanted to let sleep take hold. If they slept, then she could pretend like the peace had never been disturbed by the crystalline understanding that his 'gift' was likely an ungenerous one. It took from him -- that's what she understood (feeling her by instinct) from what he said.
"So we will both of us be a little more careful from hereon in," she vowed. As though his transient pain was about as unacceptable to her as scars or bruises or wounds that would be harder to heal.
He feigned bewilderment. "Who me? I'm always careful."
Sleep would come easier for him however. He closed his eyes and began to run his thumb along her ear again. This was where he'd decided was the most calming for him. He had her most attention this way and though he knew she would not admit to it, Logan was convinced she was enjoying it. For all the trouble he'd caused her with the fall, it seemed the decent thing to do would give her a more pleasant distraction.
"Try'n sleep. If there's danger coming, I'll know well before you do, asleep or otherwise."
A second delicate chuckle, low and wry. Dovetailing into a sigh. Peggy wouldn't fool herself -- and she certainly wouldn't fool him -- into thinking this was anything but utilitarian. Or indulgence, at its most charitable. But as she shut her eyes, she realized the brunt of their earlier argument uncovered a kernel of thought worth thinking: he was indeed remarkable. This sudden surge of affection for him, built up in the wake of his mistrust and his blunt behaviour, was platonic. Redemptive.
And so it was no small wonder that her dreams were plagued by the last man of similar remark. Or else it was Logan's light touch, tapping into primal memories long since locked up. The dreams weren't sad. They weren't painful. A little melancholic, but no more so than usual. Glimpses of Steve Rogers and all that could-have-been-but-wasn't. The dreams didn't stir the surface. She slept soundly, lulled into a deeper slumber than she might have ordinarily permitted by the injuries sustained. Her body had begged to be put to rest, if only for a few short hours.
Once, she woke. There were no stars above but only inky darkness and shadowed spires. All was quiet, and she curled herself tighter against Logan. Cheek against his elbow, even breathing snaking down the half-length of his arm. By morning, the passcode would be well-charged indeed.
But before morning could break, there was a skittering of rocks some ten feet from the shallow cave's mouth. Activity in the riverbed.
Logan had slept soundly through the afternoon and early evening. As ever, his dreams were a max mix of the different lives he had led. As ever, there was the familiar mockery from his half brother. Yet not even that would stir him. He had someone to hold onto and so give him an anchor. He was ever a man without a home to go back to and so ever free to simply drift away and not be seen again. Often times he would wake to a new life, leaving the old one behind immediately. This time he woke being held and tethered, but with the rustling sound of danger to his new attachment.
Disentangling himself from around her was not easy, but he did so as gently as he could manage. One last brush of her hair and he was stalking away into the night, still as bare chested as he had been when he first laid his head down to sleep. From his wrists his bone claws slid free in a slick slicing sound, followed by a pop as they fell into place. Then he was on the move keeping to the edges of the cavern. Immediately he could smell something living out there. This was no metal automaton like they had faced before. This thing was alive, though it had no smell like anything he recognized. He moved forward until at last he was at the mouth of the cave. And then, there it was.
The shadow was man shaped, but larger than any person he'd ever seen. The creature had a stooped look to it like an old man might, but Logan could see nothing old and infirm in its wiry and surefooted movements. Though taller than Logan, it was spry and agile though it seemed to be choosing its footing carefully. Once or twice its head turned towards the cavern's mouth, but it did not seem to notice his presence. There was no sound, but for the sweeping of its feet that disrupted stone and dirt as it moved forward.
It didn't look intimidating, but Logan wasn't fixing for a confrontation just yet. Just keep moving, bub.
Peggy slept. Undisturbed. And from his initial silence, the stooped-man began to sing. As creatures went, he was a cautious one. Certain of his footing, but pausing now and then to cock his head. Listened. He walked and listened and walked and listened and then he thought he heard a thing. He had no name, but he had a tune -- and he pledged it little by little to the ravine around him in brief breathy whistles. Chirrups, really. None of his people had ever had names -- identified instead by sequences of notes. Humming; whistling; clicking of tongues. Bizarre music. But his was exceedingly sad, because he sang it for no one. He forever pinged a world that didn't ping back. He was the last, and his tune -- thrust out into the open air -- was something of a swan song.
-- Peggy slept, and music wheedled its way into her dreams. Brassy trumpets, kicking off at unplanned intervals. Music fit for dancing, her heart decided. The mind followed suit, and she barely knew she was alone in a cave in an uncharted city. She barely knew she was anywhere but the Stork Club, a week next. Dancing, as promised. Her heartbeat sped to match.
The Tuneful Fellow came to a sudden halt. His breathy whistle raised; echoed; presented itself. There was a body with a drum trapped inside of it, he realized. Somewhere near. His head cocked again. Maybe two.
It made for a melancholy melody, but Logan was not moved. He could not feel whatever the creature was feeling, though he felt more the prey than the hunter while he watched. Though the creature was purely alien, there were some things that were universal for all creatures. This one could sense life and it was reacting in kind. The pinging and guttural language adopted because something of a query as it continued to repeat the same set of sounds. Thum thum it went, over and over. It occurred to him after a moment that the sound was a crude imitation of a heartbeat. Logan swore under his breath.
There was no sense in being secretive now. He stepped out into the open and retracted his claws. "Alright big guy, you just keep yer distance and there'll be no need for-"
The creature moved faster than Logan could have imagined. He had scarcely raised a hand in alarm before his back was suddenly against the wall being pressed there by a thin but powerful arm. From the creature's chest, three slender fingering appendages began to explore his neck and chest and face. The Tuneful Fellow had never known a creature such as this, but he felt as well as heard. This creature felt wrong and foreign. There was something toxic about it and it was shaped entirely wrong. This was far from being one of his own people. The sounds it made were meaningless and from probing, the sounds seemed to be produced by pushing air through two moving flaps of flesh. It was an interesting discovery. But it was made suddenly short when one of the three appendages was severed. The Tuneful Fellow lost all sense of the world and reacted violently.
Logan was soon facefirst in the dirt, broken and mangled. He was bleeding profusely and several of his bones had been broken and bent into directions they were never meant to go. He had lost sense of what had happened the moment he ripped off that freaky creature's tentacle. However much Logan might have desired for a peaceful communication, he was not about to let some alien asshole start frenching him without an invitation. After that, the creature had beaten the hell out of him before fleeing. Had Logan been any other man, he'd have been dead a hundred times over. Instead, he sat in the dirt groaning. From the top of the riverbed, the Tuneful Creature watched and wept because his own pain seemed unbearable.
Worlds away and dreaming, Peggy saw only stars and stripes. Red and blue with flickers of white. Feet so sore from dancing. Cheeks aching from too much smiling -- is there ever such a thing, Captain? -- and the newborn headache after a long and glorious night of drinking just a little too much. But as a screech tore open the pre-dawn glow, Peggy's body was forced to reacquaint itself with her injuries. She hadn't danced too much; she'd taken a tumble. She'd not drank too much alcohol but had certainly not had enough water. Her mouth felt dry and her heart felt fast. The shrieking had felt like a bolt through her head: like ringing, internal. Peggy whispered his name, and--
"Logan?" She sat up straight. The proper name was on her lips, now. But all she had was a discarded tactical turtleneck that had (somehow) gotten wound up in her fingers. She could chide herself for her sentimentality later; for now, she was far more concerned with a scuffle just beyond the cave's mouth.
Peggy came walking (carefully) out of the cave, her long-arm gun turned into a makeshift cane. But by then, the worst had been accomplished. He was a mess upon the ground, and a strange still-twitching fin or tail or something sat at her feet. Peggy swore colourfully -- only now began to realize that the crooning filling the whole ravine wasn't in her head but was a kind of echo bouncing off the rock.
It wasn't her first priority. Logan was: the man she'd silently vowed to redeem herself by, not keen to let another remarkable person slip through her fingers and be lost to the world. Three feet away from him (and her stomach churning to see the sight) she began pleading for him to do what he did before. Make himself right. Fix himself.
He was fixing himself, but his body was in such a mess that there was so much of him to be put back together. There was no true logic or intent behind how he was put together. It was the internal organs that were set to rights first. Organs that had been punctured or bruised were what went first. His heart began to beat again and then his lungs came to life. Immediately Logan began to move as he painfully coughed up the blood that had flooded inside. It was the bones that came next. Bones that needed to be set right had to be done so manually, for his healing factor could not draw together what had been separated. Broken ribs were mended the easiest, but his broken leg and twisted arm had to be pulled back into place.
When his lungs were cleared, he focused on the rest. He glanced warily at Peggy before he twisted his own arm back into place. The bone crunched and Logan's eyes filled with painful tears. His teeth were clenched tight enough to snap metal when he twisted his knee and foot back into place. His other leg split at the thigh was perhaps the worst of it, because the bone had pierced through flesh. But even that he had to manage himself, though he was near to passing out when he did. When it was all done, he fell onto his back. He was covered in sweat and blood and looked as though he had been through hell and back. Logan might have wept if he had the fluids for it.
"That... son of a bitch," he finally said it was only flesh wounds left for mending together. "Fucking dammit."
It was not much of any kind of explanation, but it summed up his feelings very concisely.
Wartime visited many a horror upon the soul. And many an affront to the sensibilities of mankind. Peggy had seen a lot. A lot. But these past twenty-four hours had vexed her heart something fierce. Her pulse quickened, and the keening from the cliff-tops seemed treble as frenzied. Until (all at once) it was cut silent. An emptiness yawned through the ravine, punctuated only by the popping of Logan's bones and the re-flooding of his veins. And when Peggy moved again, she felt a stiffness in every muscle for how tightly she'd been wound.
"--It doesn't make any sense," she ventured. By now, she was standing over him. Decency demanded that she offer him a helping hand, and she did, though she knew the ache along her ribs would pay the price for such goodwill. "How long was I --" asleep. "The code ought to have been well and truly charged. After all, we..."
Peggy's attention had been too rapt upon him as he'd knit himself back together. Only now did she think cast a wary glance 'round them. She made the mistake of thinking one of of the metal security machines had done this to him.
Logan did not take her hand. Not yet anyway. He rolled himself over to pick up the slithering tentacle and turned it over in his hand before holding it up for her to inspect. He picked himself up enough to be sitting while his eyes scanned the horizon.
"Whatever the hell that was, the code ain't got nuthin' to do with it." He didn't understand how, for surely that creature must be susceptible to the machines as well. And yet it seemed to have no problem going around making a racket. "The thing tried to get all friendly like with me. Cutting off whatever the hell this is sure pissed it off though."
Peggy asked the question that didn't need answering. Merely looking at the bit-of-flesh gave her all the information she need, and yet she still plucked it gingerly from his hand and gave it a proper squint in the almost-dawn light. More and more of it was spilling into the valley with ever minute. The tentacle twitched still, thrumming along to a beat she soon realized came in concert with her own pulse. Perturbed, she let the appendage drop.
"Likely native. Or else another opportunist of the same calibre as you and I. I'm not certain which possibility I prefer least. Although--" Peggy paused. Watched him. "Can you describe it?"
Perhaps she wanted to know the dimensions of whatever creature could do that to him.
Logan was scratching his head, though it only meant rubbing in warm blood to later dry and flake there. He sniffed for the creature's scent, but aside from the creature's tentacle, the beast itself was long gone. But there was at the very least a trail, should they decide to follow it.
"Big. Ten feet tall at least. Thin and wiry, more leg and arm than anything else. The bastard didn't seem to have a face. Just three of these things in its chest. But he was fast. I ain't ever seen anything move that fast. The goddamn thing tried to french me."
Her attention lifted to the jagged cliffs above. Peggy wanted to look anywhere else but at him -- in a flash, she'd grown less transfixed by the horrors of his healing body. There was an unpleasant tension in her throat, and she was forced again to estimate how long it had been since she'd last lost the contents of her stomach. Long enough to make the prospect all the more unwelcome. Her guts weren't made of steel, and so she maintained a pedal note of distress.
"Our absentee landlords," she decided. Hosts; citizens; aliens, perhaps. So long as she wasn't looking at him, she could keep a kind of calm certainty about her words. Sentimentality was kept at bay. "--French...?" The SSR agent didn't bother turning her gaze while she worked through Logan's complaint. She damn well knew what such a kiss was, but her mind was at work and work had nothing to do with kissing. She sighed her mild hindsight's amusement through her nose when she realized the what exact wry comment Logan had been trying to make.
"I don't fancy a snog like that," she answered -- implying (of course) that the creature's affections had left him rather worse for wear. Perhaps she didn't yet understand the probing appendage had caused the kerfuffle, rather than assuming it had been the kerfuffle entire. "Bloody continental, isn't it? Kissing on the cheek when one first meets. Awful. Do you know which way it went?"
At long last she turned, leaning heavily upon the rifle.
Were it not for the taste of blood in his mouth, he might have been gagging at the taste of the creature being in his mouth still. For all the pain he'd just went through, he somehow found that aspect to be the most offensive. He'd never given much thought to aliens before, but he always expected them to be somehow more humanlike in appearance and mannerism.
"Up there." Logan pointed a bloodsoaked hand up the steep incline above the river. How the creature had made it up there so fast he could not say, but the two of them certainly wouldn't be doing it without the use of some rope and climbing. "The bastard's in a hurry. Probably warning his buddies."
Peggy clucked her tongue. Hurried was the last word she could ever hope to use to describe the nature of their theoretical pursuit. If he was right -- if this was some sort of forward scout now rushing back to raise an alarm -- then they might be overrun in due time. Only she'd thought the city was meant to be abandoned. Life-signatures clocking in at next to nothing. Only birds, Howard had assured her. Birds and rats and whatever vermin persist after the death of civilization.
"Then we should work on not being here when it returns. Can you--" she softened. It was one thing to know a man healed quickly, and quite another to take it on faith that he was ready to but out. Her own bruises were showing purple and blue on her cheek, and there was a stiffness in her body that couldn't quite be argued with. But she'd move, if she had to.
Logan hadn't been eager to pursue, but he liked the thought of hiding even less. He staggered to his feet and stretched his back and knees in the process. They seemed to pop into place as he did before he at last knocked out one last crick in his neck. His eyes settled on her with dull acceptance.
"I can move. But you ain't lookin' so hot right now."
He did not doubt she would make a solid effort of it, but she would certainly be slowing them down. Cut her loose, runt. The thought came without bidding and he worked his hand in and out of a fist. The two of them were in it for the long run.
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munebox2015-05-16 10:12 pm
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"God, but I could go for a smoke right about now."
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Laughable, really. The tender construction of their nearness -- their very touch -- had a broader (and chillier) negotiation bordering each soft gesture. Peggy's breath caught in her throat and to spare her lowest ribs she sidled his arm lower on her hip. Fingers linking between his with yet again another electric thrill, as though knowing about the razor-edged claws below inspired jitters in her stomach. Adrenaline surged, and she wondered if she could ever sleep. Spent though she was, there was little relaxation to be found tucked against someone's body.
She practically laid on the hand that was linked with his. Her other arm -- the one unpinned by her body still -- ventured afield, because she couldn't comfortably reach his neck any longer. Well-trimmed and red-painted nails caught the bottom hem of his shirt, twisting the heavy tactical material around her fingertips. But ultimately she went no further, uncertain of how to ask permission for something both so daft and clinical all at once.
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But not even a smoke would have made this arrangement more comfortable. Both of them were hot and a day's labor under the sun left neither of the two smelling particularly pleasant. The thick tactical gear, much of it stained in blood, made it harder still to get comfortable. A soldier eventually learned to sleep in any position, but generally they had more freedom to pick one most suitable. The rumble from him throat was not a growl, but a thoughtful hum of what might be considered priority here. The twisting of his shirt suggested she might be coming to the same thought he was.
So he unlinked his arms from around her and sat up. The outer layer was unzipped and set aside. The second and third layer, a tactical turtleneck and undershirt respectively, were pulled over his head and piled up beside him. His bare chest was a thicket of black hair, but remarkably unscarred for a career soldier. It was a small sacrifice for him to make. As a man near impossible to kill, a few layers of clothes would not make a difference in a fight. If anything, he always fought better when he was allowed to cut loose. He said nothing about it, but simply took his place back along the tarp. The connection was severed in that time, but he resumed it by touching his hand to the nape of her neck.
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But she twisted. Ginger-like, so the pain wasn't unbearable. But Peggy leaned into his touch so she felt hard fingers against her neck. And her own fingers curled almost possessively into the flesh of his side. A fistful of security, taken not out of lust or greed but because she knew they both needed to survive.
"You only brought the one," she breathed her laughter. Poor unfortunate soul. "We make it through this and I'll promise you a whole case of the finest."
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"You'll soon regret it. I ain't a cheap smoker." Though the cigar he had brought had been far from being described as the finest. "But there's something you've got me wonderin' about. How exactly do you receive pronouncing anyhow?"
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She swallowed up her playful treason. Carter had been out of British intelligence for a long while, but that didn't make it any less awkward to begrudge His Royal Majesty any of her respect and due deference. No matter how much he stammered -- or how much trouble he had with his speeches. She weaselled her way through the joke's explanation in halting tones, as if pausing to enjoy the slight touch upon her nape between words.
"It's considered quite posh -- albeit artificially so. I meant only that you shouldn't let the sound of it cause you to believe I'm anything less than hardy, Logan. Perhaps not so hardy as you, it turns out--"
But hardy. Hale. A laughable thing to argue now, curled up so tenderly beneath his touch.
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"Yer hardy enough. Any dumb bastard can get a bullet in 'em. It takes nerves to heal the long way 'round. I've been shot, burned, stabbed, crushed, an' killed in more ways than I remember. It ain't never took me any longer'n a few hours to heal from the worst of it. Sittin' around waiting for it to heal the natural way? I ain't done that since I was a kid scrapin' my knees."
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Most importantly, she didn't overthink it. Just as he held no intention, she assumed none. But her breath evened out. And her fingers skated the skin of his side in sudden slow lazy circles -- their apex always matching exhalation.
"Kind of you to say, truly, but--" there's nothing brave about biology. There was nothing about this punishment she was choosing to endure. It was a thing that must be survived. Peggy sighed. "Does it still hurt? It does, doesn't it?"
She threw the attention back on him. A clumsy gesture -- but one that might as well have been taught in any introductory training for intelligence work. At least at the heart of the question was a kind of genuine concern -- for all he'd shrugged off his injuries, he hadn't ignored them. Not perfectly.
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Each event held its own trauma for him and by all rights, he should have been a broken man. He could not truly claim to understand what it was that allowed him and his brother to survive those things with their minds in tact. A romantic might claim it was these moments that allowed him to retain his humanity and if not that, it was the booze and vices that did it for him. It was possible that even a shattered mind could be made to stitch itself back together.
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Selfishly, she wanted to let sleep take hold. If they slept, then she could pretend like the peace had never been disturbed by the crystalline understanding that his 'gift' was likely an ungenerous one. It took from him -- that's what she understood (feeling her by instinct) from what he said.
"So we will both of us be a little more careful from hereon in," she vowed. As though his transient pain was about as unacceptable to her as scars or bruises or wounds that would be harder to heal.
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Sleep would come easier for him however. He closed his eyes and began to run his thumb along her ear again. This was where he'd decided was the most calming for him. He had her most attention this way and though he knew she would not admit to it, Logan was convinced she was enjoying it. For all the trouble he'd caused her with the fall, it seemed the decent thing to do would give her a more pleasant distraction.
"Try'n sleep. If there's danger coming, I'll know well before you do, asleep or otherwise."
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And so it was no small wonder that her dreams were plagued by the last man of similar remark. Or else it was Logan's light touch, tapping into primal memories long since locked up. The dreams weren't sad. They weren't painful. A little melancholic, but no more so than usual. Glimpses of Steve Rogers and all that could-have-been-but-wasn't. The dreams didn't stir the surface. She slept soundly, lulled into a deeper slumber than she might have ordinarily permitted by the injuries sustained. Her body had begged to be put to rest, if only for a few short hours.
Once, she woke. There were no stars above but only inky darkness and shadowed spires. All was quiet, and she curled herself tighter against Logan. Cheek against his elbow, even breathing snaking down the half-length of his arm. By morning, the passcode would be well-charged indeed.
But before morning could break, there was a skittering of rocks some ten feet from the shallow cave's mouth. Activity in the riverbed.
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Disentangling himself from around her was not easy, but he did so as gently as he could manage. One last brush of her hair and he was stalking away into the night, still as bare chested as he had been when he first laid his head down to sleep. From his wrists his bone claws slid free in a slick slicing sound, followed by a pop as they fell into place. Then he was on the move keeping to the edges of the cavern. Immediately he could smell something living out there. This was no metal automaton like they had faced before. This thing was alive, though it had no smell like anything he recognized. He moved forward until at last he was at the mouth of the cave. And then, there it was.
The shadow was man shaped, but larger than any person he'd ever seen. The creature had a stooped look to it like an old man might, but Logan could see nothing old and infirm in its wiry and surefooted movements. Though taller than Logan, it was spry and agile though it seemed to be choosing its footing carefully. Once or twice its head turned towards the cavern's mouth, but it did not seem to notice his presence. There was no sound, but for the sweeping of its feet that disrupted stone and dirt as it moved forward.
It didn't look intimidating, but Logan wasn't fixing for a confrontation just yet. Just keep moving, bub.
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-- Peggy slept, and music wheedled its way into her dreams. Brassy trumpets, kicking off at unplanned intervals. Music fit for dancing, her heart decided. The mind followed suit, and she barely knew she was alone in a cave in an uncharted city. She barely knew she was anywhere but the Stork Club, a week next. Dancing, as promised. Her heartbeat sped to match.
The Tuneful Fellow came to a sudden halt. His breathy whistle raised; echoed; presented itself. There was a body with a drum trapped inside of it, he realized. Somewhere near. His head cocked again. Maybe two.
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There was no sense in being secretive now. He stepped out into the open and retracted his claws. "Alright big guy, you just keep yer distance and there'll be no need for-"
The creature moved faster than Logan could have imagined. He had scarcely raised a hand in alarm before his back was suddenly against the wall being pressed there by a thin but powerful arm. From the creature's chest, three slender fingering appendages began to explore his neck and chest and face. The Tuneful Fellow had never known a creature such as this, but he felt as well as heard. This creature felt wrong and foreign. There was something toxic about it and it was shaped entirely wrong. This was far from being one of his own people. The sounds it made were meaningless and from probing, the sounds seemed to be produced by pushing air through two moving flaps of flesh. It was an interesting discovery. But it was made suddenly short when one of the three appendages was severed. The Tuneful Fellow lost all sense of the world and reacted violently.
Logan was soon facefirst in the dirt, broken and mangled. He was bleeding profusely and several of his bones had been broken and bent into directions they were never meant to go. He had lost sense of what had happened the moment he ripped off that freaky creature's tentacle. However much Logan might have desired for a peaceful communication, he was not about to let some alien asshole start frenching him without an invitation. After that, the creature had beaten the hell out of him before fleeing. Had Logan been any other man, he'd have been dead a hundred times over. Instead, he sat in the dirt groaning. From the top of the riverbed, the Tuneful Creature watched and wept because his own pain seemed unbearable.
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"Logan?" She sat up straight. The proper name was on her lips, now. But all she had was a discarded tactical turtleneck that had (somehow) gotten wound up in her fingers. She could chide herself for her sentimentality later; for now, she was far more concerned with a scuffle just beyond the cave's mouth.
Peggy came walking (carefully) out of the cave, her long-arm gun turned into a makeshift cane. But by then, the worst had been accomplished. He was a mess upon the ground, and a strange still-twitching fin or tail or something sat at her feet. Peggy swore colourfully -- only now began to realize that the crooning filling the whole ravine wasn't in her head but was a kind of echo bouncing off the rock.
It wasn't her first priority. Logan was: the man she'd silently vowed to redeem herself by, not keen to let another remarkable person slip through her fingers and be lost to the world. Three feet away from him (and her stomach churning to see the sight) she began pleading for him to do what he did before. Make himself right. Fix himself.
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When his lungs were cleared, he focused on the rest. He glanced warily at Peggy before he twisted his own arm back into place. The bone crunched and Logan's eyes filled with painful tears. His teeth were clenched tight enough to snap metal when he twisted his knee and foot back into place. His other leg split at the thigh was perhaps the worst of it, because the bone had pierced through flesh. But even that he had to manage himself, though he was near to passing out when he did. When it was all done, he fell onto his back. He was covered in sweat and blood and looked as though he had been through hell and back. Logan might have wept if he had the fluids for it.
"That... son of a bitch," he finally said it was only flesh wounds left for mending together. "Fucking dammit."
It was not much of any kind of explanation, but it summed up his feelings very concisely.
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"--It doesn't make any sense," she ventured. By now, she was standing over him. Decency demanded that she offer him a helping hand, and she did, though she knew the ache along her ribs would pay the price for such goodwill. "How long was I --" asleep. "The code ought to have been well and truly charged. After all, we..."
Peggy's attention had been too rapt upon him as he'd knit himself back together. Only now did she think cast a wary glance 'round them. She made the mistake of thinking one of of the metal security machines had done this to him.
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"Whatever the hell that was, the code ain't got nuthin' to do with it." He didn't understand how, for surely that creature must be susceptible to the machines as well. And yet it seemed to have no problem going around making a racket. "The thing tried to get all friendly like with me. Cutting off whatever the hell this is sure pissed it off though."
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Peggy asked the question that didn't need answering. Merely looking at the bit-of-flesh gave her all the information she need, and yet she still plucked it gingerly from his hand and gave it a proper squint in the almost-dawn light. More and more of it was spilling into the valley with ever minute. The tentacle twitched still, thrumming along to a beat she soon realized came in concert with her own pulse. Perturbed, she let the appendage drop.
"Likely native. Or else another opportunist of the same calibre as you and I. I'm not certain which possibility I prefer least. Although--" Peggy paused. Watched him. "Can you describe it?"
Perhaps she wanted to know the dimensions of whatever creature could do that to him.
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"Big. Ten feet tall at least. Thin and wiry, more leg and arm than anything else. The bastard didn't seem to have a face. Just three of these things in its chest. But he was fast. I ain't ever seen anything move that fast. The goddamn thing tried to french me."
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"Our absentee landlords," she decided. Hosts; citizens; aliens, perhaps. So long as she wasn't looking at him, she could keep a kind of calm certainty about her words. Sentimentality was kept at bay. "--French...?" The SSR agent didn't bother turning her gaze while she worked through Logan's complaint. She damn well knew what such a kiss was, but her mind was at work and work had nothing to do with kissing. She sighed her mild hindsight's amusement through her nose when she realized the what exact wry comment Logan had been trying to make.
"I don't fancy a snog like that," she answered -- implying (of course) that the creature's affections had left him rather worse for wear. Perhaps she didn't yet understand the probing appendage had caused the kerfuffle, rather than assuming it had been the kerfuffle entire. "Bloody continental, isn't it? Kissing on the cheek when one first meets. Awful. Do you know which way it went?"
At long last she turned, leaning heavily upon the rifle.
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"Up there." Logan pointed a bloodsoaked hand up the steep incline above the river. How the creature had made it up there so fast he could not say, but the two of them certainly wouldn't be doing it without the use of some rope and climbing. "The bastard's in a hurry. Probably warning his buddies."
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Peggy clucked her tongue. Hurried was the last word she could ever hope to use to describe the nature of their theoretical pursuit. If he was right -- if this was some sort of forward scout now rushing back to raise an alarm -- then they might be overrun in due time. Only she'd thought the city was meant to be abandoned. Life-signatures clocking in at next to nothing. Only birds, Howard had assured her. Birds and rats and whatever vermin persist after the death of civilization.
"Then we should work on not being here when it returns. Can you--" she softened. It was one thing to know a man healed quickly, and quite another to take it on faith that he was ready to but out. Her own bruises were showing purple and blue on her cheek, and there was a stiffness in her body that couldn't quite be argued with. But she'd move, if she had to.
And had to trust that he would too.
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"I can move. But you ain't lookin' so hot right now."
He did not doubt she would make a solid effort of it, but she would certainly be slowing them down. Cut her loose, runt. The thought came without bidding and he worked his hand in and out of a fist. The two of them were in it for the long run.
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