Logan and Adrienne - Backdated to Tuesday

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Logan and Adrienne have an encounter on the smoker's porch, and Logan expresses interest in Adrienne's powers. She offers to help him uncover some of his past, and he's offended by her request for payment in Garrison-gossip but they reach a suitable compromise. The trip down Logan's memory lane is not very much fun.


The self-imposed smoking ban Adrienne had attempted to institute on herself at New Years had lasted longer than those of previous years, so she wasn't terribly disappointed by the fact that she was sitting on the rail of the smoker's porch halfway through a cigarette, flipping her lighter around between her fingers. She actually felt rather good, failure notwithstanding, and mused happily as she puffed away. Kane had given her a baseball card for her birthday. Not just any baseball card- the hallmark, the epiphany of baseball cards. She hadn't thought he would even take notice of her birthday...

The lighter went over her ring finger and she tried to flip it around under her pinky but it clattered to the ground noisily. Huffing out an agitated breath, she dropped off the railing and bent to pick it up. Upon straightening, the psychometrist found a man approaching, close enough to indicate that she should have seen him earlier but hadn't been paying attention, and now his presence made her jump.
Logan took a certain degree of unholy delight at frightening the unobservant. He had one of his traditional stogies between his teeth, enjoying the smoke and what it did to his sense of smell. He didn't know this girl well - he'd seen her with Gar, which put her a step up from most in his book. "Mornin'." he said agreeably. "Dropped yer lighter." he observed.

Eyebrow arching skyward, Adrienne pocketed the lighter. "How observant of you. Thanks." She hadn't been introduced to this man, but had seen him with Kane, which made her extremely wary in terms of his personality. Still, just because he was a friend of Kane's didn't mean she shouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt. He might be normal, maybe. "You're a friend of Kane's, yes?" she inquired, gesturing to the cigar.
"Yeah." he said with a small smile. "I'm Logan." he offered. His dog-tags happened to have fallen out of his shirt - the ones that labelled him "Wolverine" and gave him a serial number. "And you are?" he asked. Something tingled his memory - was she the younger Frost? Great. More useless bluebloods. Just what this place needed.

"Adrienne Frost," she replied, offering a hand. "I teach math here. And defuse the occasional bomb." If he was a friend of Kane's, there wasn't much point in telling him she also had her own modeling agency and fashion label. He wouldn't care. She wasn't even sure why she'd mentioned the bomb- maybe because the dogtags he wore made her think of the silver medallion around her own neck. "Are you a new teacher here? Or a comrade of Kane's from the FBI, perhaps?" He'd been here a while now and she'd never encountered him as a staff member, but the school had some strange teaching positions so Adrienne didn't discount it. She glanced at the dogtags and wondered fleetingly what they would reveal if she wiped one of her hands and touched them.


Logan took it and gave her a fairly rough handshake. He was the kind of guy who judged someone's worth by their handshake. "Demo work, huh?" he asked with a curious look. "Interesting resume. And no, I don't teach anything formal here." he said. "I do advanced hand-to-hand for a select group of students, but that's not sanctioned nor is it in the official curriculum." She didn't strike him much as a fighter - too willowy, too delicate. Too concerned about messing up her features. "And no, I'm not FBI. Met Gar a few years back through a mutual acquaintance." he said. "Smoke?" he asked, offering her one of his dwindling supply of Cubans.

The handshake was firmer than what she was used to, but Adrienne respected that, because she knew he wasn't trying to hurt her, just judge her mettle, so to speak. "No thanks," she replied to his offer, and pulled her silver cigarette case from her handbag, opening it to show him a few cigarettes and a half-dozen cigarellos left over from her trip to Florida, "I've got a few of my own. You keep yours. I never really developed a taste for a proper cigar, to tell you the truth. I used to smoke them to try and intimidate men, but I found other ways to do that, preferable to cigars." She gave him her sweetest smile, leaning back against the railing of the porch. "So you're another advanced hand-to-hand man, then? I might seek out your services some day, Mister Logan. Right now I'm just taking lessons from Ororo Munroe and Jennie Stavros, and boxing from Morgan Lennox." She left out the trips to the gun range with Bishop.



"You think you can keep up, you're welcome to set something up." he said carefully. "I'm the best you'll ever see." he said, not boastfully but confidently. "Wait. You're the baseball fan from the journals." he said with a pleased grin. "Red Sox, right?"


"Some day," she reiterated in answer to his comment about keeping up, heavily emphasizing the 'some', "as in, very far from the present date." She was still very much a beginner, even if the self defense, combat, and boxing classes had already greatly improved her self-confidence about being able to take care of herself. "Yes, I am the guilty party intent on annoying the hell out of people on the journals with my baseball commentary," Adrienne smirked, amused. She finished her cigarette and lit a cigarello off the butt of it. "And I tend to cheer for any team playing against Kane's Jays, as long as it's not the Rays or the Yankees, but my personal loyalties do lie with the Sox. Are you a fan, Mister Logan?"


"Think so." he said with a shrug. "Caught a few games on the TV here and there." he said. "Good stuff. Fun game." he admitted. "You play or just watch?" he asked. By the look of her she'd never swung a baseball bat in her life but something told him that might not really be the case. He wasn't sure in any case, hence why he asked. "So what's your ... thing?" he asked vaguely, wiggling his fingers at her.


"I only play the Wii version," Adrienne said with a smile. "I own my own company and I never really had the time to play before I decided to hand most of the running of the business over to my staff and become a teacher." She watched his fingers waggle and raised an eyebrow. "My... thing?" A little chuckle escaped her. "You say it as if this is a hospital for the diseased, Mister Logan. What's your... thing?" she asked instead of answering.


"I heal." he said simply. No point in going into the other, more frightening aspects of what was done to him. Best stick to the basics. He thought about demonstrating, but he was enjoying this smoke and didn't really fancy grinding it out on his palm.


Adrienne inhaled on her cigarello. "I read," she answered. "Timelines of objects I touch." She exhaled and nodded at him. "Healing seems fairly common around here, along with super strength. I suppose it comes in handy in teaching hand-to-hand combat classes. And in military work," she added, gesturing to the dog tags around his neck. "Unless those are just for show."

"No shit? Huh." he said, intrigued by the concept. "And no, they're not for show." he said gruffly. "Read my timeline." he asked, a cocky tilt to his body that Jean would have recognized instantly.

Smirking at the posture, Adrienne shook her head. "I can't read people. Unless they've died," she corrected, thinking of Doug, "which, since you have a healing mutation, seems unlikely. I only read objects. I can read your dogtags from their creation all the way up until their destruction. However, if you've worn the dogtags a long time and don't plan on losing them anytime soon, I could get a read on your past since you've worn them, and some probable futures." She shrugged, playing with her lighter again. "Of course," she added, meeting Logan's gaze, "the question I would have to ask would be what's in it for me?"


Logan barked out a laugh. "What makes you think I got anything you could possibly want?" he countered back with. "You ain't exactly straight and you got more money then I'll ever see." he pointed out. "You want paid, girly, you're lookin' to the wrong guy."


Adrienne laughed as well. "What makes you think I'm gay?" Christ, had Garrison said anything to him about their discussion in Florida? If he had, she would have to kill him. Garrison. Maybe Logan too. Not that she cared if Logan thought she was gay. It just didn't seem right to use the label, though, since she wasn't gay. It seemed like an insult to gay people. "I was thinking more along the lines of embarrassing stories about Kane, but if you want to flatter yourself and think I meant sex and have to defend yourself by implying that I'm a homosexual, that's perfectly alright."


Logan just stared at her. "No deal." he said gruffly. "I don't know who you're used to dealin' with, Adrienne, but where I'm from, we don't squeal on a friend because somebody's feelin' nosy." he said, disgusted with her and her attitude. "Who you're chasin' is no business of mine." he admitted. "Gar, Morgan, both, whatever floats your boat." he said. "But coming to me looking to get me to spill on someone I call friend and holdin' my past out as leverage? Fuck that. Reminds me of Stryker." he said, then brushed past her angrily to head back inside.


"Hey!" Adrienne called after him, unsatisfied with the way things had been left. Dramatic exits were her thing- it was quite different being on the receiving end of one. "I never came to you looking for anything, and I'm not holding your past as leverage!" Where the hell had that come from? How was she supposed to know he didn't know his own past? She followed him inside. "How was I supposed to know you were trying to make an actual deal? And Christ, I never said squeal on him like I'm some NYPD interrogator! Learn how to take a fucking joke!" She didn't know who Stryker was, but it seemed he'd been misinterpreted when he tried to make jokes, too.


"I'm not laughing." he said, stopping dead to turn and face the brunette. "You do not want to push this with me." he growled. "Why would I give anything up on Gar to someone like you?" he asked ferally. "Who are you to even _ask_?"



"I'm his friend," she shot back before she could stop herself from using the dreaded 'f' word, "and you're his friend, so I thought we could make a goddamned joke about him. Jesus. I wasn't being serious! I wouldn't do that." Not when the topic was Garrison, anyway. Hell, he'd given her a birthday present; the first one she'd had in years. The psychometrist prided herself on the fact that she wasn't shaking or otherwise showing the nerves that had sprung up in her belly. "I don't know who you think 'someone like me' is," she stated quietly, firmly, "but you're wrong."


It was on the tip of his tongue to give her grief about being a Frost, how she'd demonstrated herself arrogant and vain, but he bit it back. No point to it, really. She wouldn't listen and this was turning into another Crystal Incident. And he'd just come back so messing up this rich girl's features would make him feel better but wouldn't solve anything. "You're his friend, huh?" he said tiredly. "Try acting like it."


He really needed a beer right about then.


"I'm not going to prove my loyalty toward him to you," Adrienne snapped back, turning to head back outside. "If you want me to read your past for you, get over your paranoia that I'm out to hurt Garrison and get in touch with me. I'll do it for you." Not because she thought he needed to know his own past, but because he was Garrison's friend. Of course, if she told him that now, it would just seem like a demonstration of her friendship with the Mountie, which she'd just stated she wouldn't prove. "I need to go find a ball game and a beer. And maybe another cigarette," she muttered grouchily.


Logan just snorted at that. "Fine." he said, taking his dog-tags off from around his neck. Dog-tag, really, as there was just one. Marie had the other one. "Enjoy." he said, holding them out to her. He made a bet with himself that she wouldn't be able to handle it. That she'd crumple, maybe go get Chuck to put her poor little brain back together. Which would be fine with him, so long as she hung on long enough to tell him something.


Shit. She hadn't meant she'd do it now. Adrienne hadn't honestly thought Logan would agree at all. But she couldn't back out now, pride wouldn't allow it. She just hoped the Professor's circuit breaker would be able to handle the reading so she could avoid another embarrassing incident like the one with Nathan. "I need to wash my hands; I have a coating that keeps me from reading everything I touch," she explained, more to hear her own voice and steady herself than to inform him of anything. She went over to the kitchen sink, ran one hand under the water for several moments, and shook it dry. "You're sure you want to know?" she asked him, holding out her hand, hoping he would say no. The images she saw stayed imprinted on her mind more vividly than anything she experienced in her everyday endeavours, like stains that she couldn't scrub away, and she wasn't certain she wanted his stains. She still had nightmares about Garrison's car.


The images came fast and hard, like they were eager for her to see. Dingy bar after dingy bar, a barechested Wolverine fighting for his supper in dingy cages and sawdust rings. Long miles on the road, endless expanses of highway through fair weather and foul. Violence - near-endless violence. Joy taken in its application - the joy of a master craftsman exercising his art. A shaggy figure in furs swinging a tree-trunk hard enough to knock even an adamantium-cased brain to Jell-O. And finally ... pain. Pain through the hands, pain through the entire body. The feeling of flesh crawling, knitting back together, mending, and breaking again. Shock. Freezing cold. Blood. Howling at the moon. Running on all fours, looking for safety. Shelter. Food.

Running away from the pain.

And just before the psionic circuit breaker engaged to stop the flood, a man being lowered into a tank of water, an air mask strapped over his face and each limb strapped down. Shadowy indistinct figures all around, sipping champagne and watching. Drills lowered, ripping into flesh, pumping searingly hot metal over bone, coating each one lovingly. Water boiling from the heat.

Pain.


When the circuit breaker kicked in, Adrienne transferred the dogtag to her other hand and swallowed hard, trying not to let the queasiness that had come up in her stomach show on her face. She was very glad she couldn't feel the emotions of the people whose pasts she saw in their possessions. It was bad enough having to look at the emotions that had been expressed on his features. "Fun," she said with forced cheerfulness, recognizing Sabretooth in furs and feeling her skin crawl, reminding herself over and over again that it was in the past and she couldn't do anything about it. "You're a fun guy. I can't wait to do this again. Can you teach me how to cage fight?" It took a moment for her to gather her thoughts into something remotely cohesive. "Did you volunteer to be dumped into a tank and have something injected into your body?" Not exactly cohesive thoughts yet, but she would get there.




"Very funny." he said, replacing his tags around his neck. "Got anything useful to add?" he asked, cracking his knuckles with a distinctly metallic sound. This was not looking good. As a Frost, she was probably now looking for ways to extort her knowledge eight ways from Sunday.


"It's a little bit difficult to tell you anything useful if I don't know what you already know," Adrienne pointed out, sitting on the kitchen counter. "I can give you a run down, but I don't want to be responsible for traumatizing you if I tell you something shocking." Not that any of what she'd seen would be shocking to him, necessarily; she was just saying it as a disclaimer. "A lot of cage fighting. Moving around. A lot of ass-kicking, and ass-kickings. Thank God you have the healing power," she muttered wryly. "Running around on all fours, but not in a kinky way. Sabretooth bashed you in the head with a tree." The crazy psycho who had hurt Garrison, Dani, Jay, and Pete. Adrienne's arms wrapped around herself as she shivered, though she continued speaking. "And then I saw you participating in some sort of medical procedure- well, maybe that's not the right phrase," she amended. "I don't know whether your participation was voluntary since all I saw was you being lowered into a tank of water and drills poking into you. Men were drinking champagne around the tank."



"Not a lot of new there." he admitted. "Fuck. Was worth a try." he said calmly. "Thanks, Frost." he said. "Owe you a beer." he admitted. "You see anything else, remember anything else, come find me." he said, grinding out his smoke against his palm. The wound healed over in seconds and an involuntary spasm of pain crossed his features briefly while the burn healed over.



Adrienne nodded, feeling a little disappointed that she hadn't been able to help Logan. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I can try again. I can control the timeline, move it forwards and backwards wherever I want, so I can find out more. I just... can't do it all at once. But I'll try again." Just... another day, for the love of God.



"What's it gonna cost me?" he asked, pausing to turn halfway back to Adrienne.


The fact that he'd been smashed in the head by Sabretooth endeared him a little bit to Adrienne, and the images of the animal howling at the moon made her a little bit inclined to help him piece together his past. Because that was fucked up. "Well, since details about Kane's love life are not something I'm going to ask for again, I wouldn't say no to another beer."



"Beer I can do. My kind of place or yours?" he asked. Only polite, after all.



"Harry's or Finnegan's?" Adrienne suggested. "Or some sort of biker bar if that suits you better? I look great in armoured leather," she smirked. "I wouldn't mind watching a cage fight, either..."



"New York isn't much for cage-fighting." he said. "Tell ya what. You come through with something, we'll head up north. I think I know a few places where they still do bare-knuckle brawling." he said with a grin. And wouldn't that be fun for a night?