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-the characters aren’t mine so neither are the lawsuits
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I Don’t Wanna Be Alone
By WolvieGal
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Daria screamed and the Prime Sentinels swarmed like giant bees. First I saw
them take down Cannonball. His scream began as Daria’s faded. The desert
stretching far around us didn’t even give the satisfaction of an echo, yet I
still felt suffocated. The computerized sentinel voices hummed and buzzed
like so many attacking insects. I wanted to scream in protest, to fight
back, but my voice was silenced, my body stopped, caught frozen in a hot
rage. Cyclops stood over what used to be Cannonball. He seemed to be
thinking, but it took too long. He disappeared as a half a dozen or more
Sentinels converged on him. He drowned in them. I saw his hand reach up for
one last desperate grasp at life. I stretched my own hand out to him. Before
he touched anything his hand went limp and sunk back into the pack of
Sentinels.
I looked up and saw Storm, silhouetted against the night sky by the flashes
of her own manifested power. Even as I looked on she shrieked. I felt myself
shatter at the sound that more closely resembled the cry of lightning than
any thunderous rumble ever did. Her body, suspended by the wind, arced, her
glorious hair stood on end. The sky erupted in solid flames of electric
energy all around her. Sentinels took hold of her limbs and began pulling
toward the four corners of the globe. I had to look away. I couldn’t watch,
but I could hear. Then her sudden silence deafened all my senses. I was
afraid of the stillness.
But it didn’t last long. I heard laughter behind me, but I didn’t turn
around. I knew whose laugh it was. “What do you think of your precious X-Men
now, Miss Lee? There’s not much left of them, is there?”
“Shut up! You just shut up!” I whirled on Bastion, but I fell on my face at
his feet. Once again I was restrained, as I had always been while in his
captivity. I spit the sand out of my mouth. “No! You can’t do this! They
never did anything to you!”
“Oh, can’t I? There are only two of your dirty mutants left. It seems I
already have done this. And I wonder what they would think of you if they
found out you were the traitor, the source from which we derived their
location and the weaknesses that enabled my Prime Sentinels to take them
down, forgoing even the slightest chance of their survival.”
“I did NOT! I did not let you into my head! No! I never betrayed them. I-I
love them. Please! Take me instead! Take me!”
“My dear Miss Lee, I already have you…and now I have them as well.”
“No!”
“Only two left. The red head and the short hairy agitated one. Well, you
have been a fairly pleasant prisoner, and a good source of information.“ he
smiled. I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up a finger to quiet me. I
didn’t want to obey, but I thought just maybe…. “Perhaps I should grant you
one request, as a personal favor, a reward for a good pet. Perhaps I’ll save
one filthy X-Man for you. But only one. Which one shall it be Miss Lee?”
“I-I can’t choose! You can’t make me choose!”
“Ah, but you must, or else they both die and all is lost. Quickly!”,/P>
Jean or Wolvie? I want— I want Wolvie! But he would want me to choose Jean.
But I can’t stand back and let Wolvie die when I know I could have chosen
him. But if I saved him and not Jean would he hate me for letting her die? I
couldn’t bear it if Wolvie hated me. So it must be Jean, then. But I can’t
bear to live without Wolvie!
“It is too late, Miss Lee. Now they both die.”
“They die. And you will watch.” His voice faded away into silence. My
restraints disappeared. I looked around but there was nothing, nothing but
desert. Stillness, creepy, almost tangible stillness and silence, devoid of
peace.
Suddenly a scream broke the stillness, and was stifled just as quickly. I
recognized the voice. It was Jean. I didn’t want to look, but it seemed I
had lost control of myself. A Prime Sentinel held her by the throat, her
feet dangling and kicking a foot or more off of the ground. Her face changed
colors as the blood failed to reach her brain, the air to reach her lungs. A
growl from behind me vibrated my eardrums. I felt the hair on the back of my
neck rise at that sound. Normally I knew that sound, that voice, to be the
herald of salvation, but something wasn’t right. I knew this time it
wouldn’t end the way I wanted it to, the way it should. I fought it with my
will, but my will had no power here. I wanted to stop him, but I knew that
was impossible. Wolverine lunged from behind me at the Sentinel holding
Jean. All three went rolling. Jean lay very still, her neck twisted
awkwardly. I searched desperately for signs of her breathing, as if my own
life depended on it, but to no avail.
All at once Wolverine was crouched over her wilted figure. He held one of
her hands in both of his, but she made no response. He called to her. She
didn’t answer. As gently as I’d ever seen him move, he slid one arm beneath
her shoulders while supporting her head with the other. He put his face
close to hers. In the silence he listened for breathing, for heartbeat.
Perhaps he could hear something I could not. Nothing. I saw his nose crinkle
as the first twinges of the smell of death, of her death, reached his
enhanced senses. He threw back his head and made a sound like I’d never
heard before, a mourning, wailing howl, almost like a wolf, but eerily
human.
My heart broke instantly for him. I couldn’t think straight. How? How could
one man’s life be marked by so much pain? Why could his pain hurt me so
much? “Wolvie.” I called to him, my voice cracked with emotions I dared not
name. His ear heard me; his heart could hear nothing over the agony
bellowing in his soul. He began to cry, his tears blood-red like the rage
that glazed his eyes. He laid Jean gently back on the ground in front of
where he knelt. After his touch, she almost looked at peace, aside from the
unnatural ugliness death had marred upon her normally beautiful and graceful
figure. His lips moved, and though I could hear no words I could imagine
what he was saying. As his tears trailed down his rough angled face, they
made scarlet streaks, contrasting his tanned skin and matting in the
blue-black hair of his mutton chop sideburns. His tears collected in little
pools at the corners of his lips as he continued talking to Jean,
apologizing for not being able to save her in time, declaring his love and
respect for her.
But like their creator, Sentinels had no such respect. The one Wolvie had
tackled while strangling Jean alerted the remaining Prime Sentinels to
“assist in the termination of the mutant designate: Wolverine.”
“Wolvie!” I screamed to him to look up and fight back, but his concentration
was deep and overwhelming. The only other time I’d seen him so impenetrably
focused was when Mariko died and Gambit and the Silver Samurai and I had to
practically drag him from the cemetery in the rain at the “request” of the
Japanese government.
He didn’t look up until the Sentinels had surrounded him. SNIKT. His claws
extended, he lunged already swallowed by his own rage. They swarmed again
and I lost sight of him. “Wolvie! Wolvster answer me!” But all I could hear
were the metallic sounds of the Sentinels.
Then abruptly they were gone. Jean’s body was gone. All that was left was
Wolverine lying motionless where the Sentinels had attacked him. No
thinking. I just ran to him. The first thing I noticed is that he was clean,
no blood, no dirt, not even sweat. No wounds, healed, half-healed or
otherwise, broke his skin. His eyes were closed. It almost looked as if he
were sleeping…almost. Something was dreadfully amiss. Something was missing
from him, something vital. I took hold of his thick shoulders and shook him.
His body was flaccid, limp. The last time I had seen him like that was when
I first found him, when I thought I was just trying to make a dying man’s
last days a little easier.
Dying? Did I say dying? No! I pounded my fist on the ground and yelled at
him between sobs. “No! Wolvie—no! You can’t—die! You can’t. I need you!—I
need you.”
“S’okay darlin’. I’m right here. I’m right here. Shh, you don’t wanna wake
everybody else.” It was Wolvie’s voice and I was the one being shaken by the
shoulders. I looked up into Wolvie’s face, rough and stolid, warm and
friendly, a little dirty, and glowing with the spark of life. Behind him, by
the dying light of the fire I could see five sleeping shapes: Cyclops, Jean,
Storm, Cannonball, and their new friend Mustang.
“Wolvie!” I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck. It took
me a minute to realize that I was crying hysterically. “It was horrible. The
prime sentinels were everywhere and they killed e-everyone, I watched. He
made me. I-I didn’t want to. I tried to help, but I couldn’t. They killed
all of the X-Men, even you, because I couldn’t choose between you and Jean.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You were dead Wolvie. I thought you were dead
again.”
He put his arms around me and drew me into his lap like a small child. “I
think you were havin’ a nightmare darlin’. But s’okay, you brought me back
from the dead once and you did it again. Here I am, right here.”
I just hugged him tighter and cried. “I hate Bastion. I hate him, more than
hate him.” Fear, anger, confusion, helplessness, hate—I was shaking.
He rested his chin on my head and rubbed my shoulder until I was calm and
quiet again. “You fallin’ asleep Jubes?”
I moved my head out of the warm spot it had found nestled against Wolvie
just far enough to whisper in his ear. “I don’t wanna be alone. Please don’t
leave me.”
He gave me another squeeze as he lay back down on the ground beside the
glowing coals of the campfire, pulling me with him. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.
If you want it, my shoulder’s yer pillow darlin’.”
I nodded. He couldn’t really see me move, but he could feel it. “Mm-hmm.
Thanks Wolvie.” Then I curled up against his side and fell asleep to dream
of sunglasses, bubblegum, fireworks and rollerblades.