by Amanda Sichter
Marvel. They make an extraordinary amount of money out of them. I don�t. I don�t
make a cent. Therefore, I beg and plead that you don�t sue me.
Continuity: So far out of the Marvel timeline, it isn�t funny. Just some time
when Wolverine has adamantium claws.
Night Falls On The Mountain
By Amanda Sichter
When Wolverine moved through the forest, it did not seem so much that he flowed
through the forest, but that it flowed past him. These were his mountains and
they welcomed him, extended their leafy embrace and drew him inwards and
onwards. It seemed at times � especially now, in the half-twilight hour � that
Wolverine was a part of the mountain, a part carved off to roam the earth, that
now returned to whisper its stories of far-distant places. Wolverine, the
mountain, the forest, the night � they were one and they were wild.
But something else dwelt on the mountain now, something that had slipped past
wild and descended into insanity. It was an affront to the mountain and It was
an affront to Wolverine. It had come here because this was Wolverine�s mountain
and he was determined that It would not continue to insult him so.
And so he had tracked It � tracked It for days now across the mountains, his
nose following hints of scent, his eyes a whisper of a body�s passage, his ears
the promise of a footstep. But now, in the falling dusk of the fifth day, the
air was drenched with scent, a scream, a shout of blood in the night that drew
Wolverine on through the forest.
He didn�t burst into the clearing � he knew the forest too well for that.
Silent, near-invisible, he slid to a stop at the edge of the place where the
forest opened to the sky and inspected the scene before him.
Wolverine had killed and eaten deer in the past, when it had been necessary to
stay alive. But what It had done to the deer was not need for food, not
butchery, it was a savage barbarism that wanted pain and blood and death. The
only reason Wolverine could recognise that it was a deer was the head that was
impaled in the centre of the clearing. The body had been � shredded. Gobbets of
flesh and blood decorated the clearing like macabre streamers, and the smell of
the deer�s agony hung heavy in the air. It had not killed the deer quickly, but
had held it clasped close as a lover whilst it had bled and screamed and died,
and Wolverine knew that It had laughed.
He shut his eyes, a quick shutter-blink and saw the scene imprinted there, the
scene that had started this hunt. A room, a once-white room, now painted red
with ribbons of blood and gore, and in the centre of the room the impaled heads
of the whole family, mockingly placed to look as if they watched TV. On the TV
the video It had taken as It had murdered them one by one, the video that
Wolverine had forced himself to watch from beginning to end. The baby had been
last � and worst.
�Creed,� he said, softly, and it seemed the forest went suddenly quiet.
Wolverine waited, but there was no movement, no sound, nothing but the waiting
silence.
�Don�t think you can fool me, Creed,� said Wolverine. �I know you�re there and
I�m not going to walk into a trap.�
The laughter slid through the trees, low, mocking, echoing sinuously through the
forest until Wolverine felt as if ribbons of evil festooned his limbs. And then
Creed dropped from above, some place in the trees, to stand in the centre of the
clearing, straddling the mutilated remains of the deer. His smile was bright and
wide and utterly mad as he grinned at Wolverine.
�Didn�t think I could fool you, runt,� Creed said. �But I had to try.�
Wolverine�s clear blue eyes locked with the feral orange of Sabretooth�s and he
allowed himself to smile mirthlessly. He had known Sabretooth would be there,
but not because it was a trap. It had been too long now since Creed had killed,
Wolverine�s relentless pursuit driving him away from the easy prey. Creed had
stayed with the ravaged corpse of the deer because he needed to bathe in the
memories of blood, in the scent of terror and agony that still rode the air.
Creed needed murder like normal people needed oxygen. Wolverine knew it, even if
Creed did not.
�Come to take me down, Logan?� asked Sabretooth, his voice eager.
Wolverine allowed his smile to stretch, to thin. Creed didn�t know it, but Logan
was not there. Logan was who he was amongst friends, with lovers, when he was
most human. When Wolverine had watched the video, when he had seen Creed lift
the five-year old up by her shining blonde hair and then disembowel her slowly,
Logan had slipped away. There was only Wolverine now, the cold heart and mind of
the man who would happily dispatch Creed to the personal corner of hell that had
to be assigned to him.
Sabretooth still smiled happily at him, waiting for an answer. Wolverine flexed
the minute muscles in his hands and arms and allowed the adamantium claws to
slide from the sheath his own skin made for them. The quiet sound they made
seemed to echo through the forest louder than any gun-shot. For an instant there
was silence in the forest, even the small things knowing that mayhem had just
been unleashed.
�I thought so,� said Creed and laughed.
Softly, his footsteps making no noise, Wolverine began to circle the clearing.
Beneath the trees the darkness hung thick and heavy, its tendrils intertwining,
extending, as night fell. Only in the centre of the clearing, where Creed stood,
did the last half-light of day still linger, draining colour from everything
until even the blood of the deer seemed monochrome-grey. It was only Wolverine�s
exceptional vision that allowed him to watch as Creed turned to follow his
progress through the shadows.
�Come on, little man,� whispered Creed, and his blood-lust stroked each word.
�Come and try me.�
Wolverine ignored him, circled further. His nose tested the air and now, beneath
the over-powering scent of the deer�s blood, he could smell the first faint
touch of Creed. Wolverine had had to kill a rabid dog once, and the scent of
Creed reminded him of the stench that poor, mad creature had given off. It was a
wrongness, an admixture of the rage and hatred and insanity that burbled
constantly in Creed�s veins. It defiled the mountain.
Here, now, this was the place he had been aiming for, where the shadows extended
a little further into the clearing, where it would take Creed just a little
longer to pick him out of the encroaching darkness. Without a word, a sound,
Wolverine turned and charged towards Creed, claws extended, fury focussed into a
killing rush. For half an instant Creed was flat-footed, but not long enough,
not quite long enough for Wolverine. Bodies met, a jarring clash, but Creed had
shifted stance, and claws slid, not up through the heart, but sideways through
abdomen. And then Sabretooth�s claws were in Wolverine�s arm, momentum ripping
them through flesh as Creed turned and flung Wolverine across the clearing.
Wolverine, struggling, managed to turn his body so he landed feet first at the
edge of the forest.
�First blood,� laughed Creed and, lifting his hand to his mouth, licked
Wolverine�s blood from his claws. He acted nonchalantly, but Wolverine noted
that he made no attempt to continue the fight and hunched slightly over his
wounded left side. But Wolverine didn�t press the fight. His arm, too, needed
healing. Even now, he could feel the flesh starting to re-knit.
And then there had been enough time and he was racing into the clearing again,
dropping low this time, aiming to re-open the healing wound, to use his momentum
to toss Sabretooth down. Sabretooth countered again, moved sideways and away,
blocked his punch, claw sliding against claw. The move pulled Wolverine tight
against Creed, a savage embrace. The next few minutes passed in a grunting,
primal exchange of blows, a flurry of punch and counter-punch, of screams and
broken movements, of sweat and pain and blood. At last, Wolverine broke from the
clinch and slid back into the shadows. Blood dripped from a hundred secret
wounds, but as he stood there the flows slowed and stopped and flesh began to
seal closed.
He watched Creed, letting the running string of taunts wash over him. He hated
this man, hated him with an acid passion that seared his bones. All through the
long hunt he had been cold inside, driven purely by the need to see Creed pay
for the violence he had wasted his whole life on. But after the first blow, hate
had risen in him, slid down his veins and into his mind until he seemed to bathe
in it.
Night fell. Between one eyeblink and the next, the last wash of light faded from
the clearing and infinite blackness descended. For an instant Wolverine was
blind, but then his eyes adjusted to the darkness, used the faint light of the
stars to focus on Creed�s body, standing still and tall in the centre of the
clearing. In the darkness he allowed the hatred he felt to play over his
features, distort his face into a snarling grimace.
Hate drove him into the clearing, pulled his claws from his body, focussed his
thoughts on destruction. Hate whipped a snarl from his throat, extended his arm,
drove his body into the killing blow. Wolverine�s punch aimed at Sabretooth�s
ribs, claws twisted to slide between ribs and into heart, to rip the life from
this thing that he hated so much.
At the instant after the last possible instant, Sabretooth turned slightly,
moved a little, and Wolverine�s claws slid, not through ribs, but along them,
caught in bone, Creed�s arm clamped down, held his hand, used the suddenly
trapped arm to twist Wolverine off-balance and he turned just a bit, twisted
just a bit, and Creed�s claws were on his face, in his face, gouging through
bone and flesh, shattering cheek and nose, bursting his eyeball in a welter of
blood and fluid, and Wolverine was screaming and his other hand was punching
wildly, into Creed�s back, through his back, through ribs and flesh and organs,
slicing madly to try and loosen Creed�s grip on his face, he was crushing his
face and it was burning and it was bleeding and Wolverine was swinging, claws
lacerating across rib and his face was on fire and Creed was screaming now and
tears poured from Wolverine�s undamaged eye as he swung again, weakly now,
forcing his claws inward, and then he was free, Creed let him go, and he
stumbled across the clearing into the shadows and the forest and he fell to his
knees and wrapped his arms around himself and howled his agony to the
indifferent sky.
Wolverine�s consciousness slipped away in the dark.
He woke again to the moon looking down on him, a gibbous moon, bloated and
orange against the sky. Suppressing a groan, Wolverine lifted a hand to his
face, gently touched the wounds there. He was healing now, half-healed, but the
damage had been fearsome and his face was still an agony. He was still
half-blind � it took a while to grow an eye back. But there were more important
issues � turning, Wolverine gazed into the clearing, lit now by the moon shining
down. At first he thought Creed was gone, but then he realised the slumped thing
in the centre of the clearing was Creed, hunched in on himself, moaning so
softly that no-one but Wolverine would have heard him. It seemed the damage
Wolverine had inflicted had been at least as brutal as that Creed had inflicted
on him.
~He should be dead,~ thought Wolverine, and the fact that he wasn�t made the
hate spark up anew. He didn�t understand the hate. Wolverine didn�t hate � he
felt anger, he felt pain and rage and righteous fury, but only Creed did he
hate.
�Why do I hate you?� asked Wolverine, and his voice was thick and slurred with
the blood that still dripped from his shattered nose down the back of his
throat.
Creed heard and laughed, a whispered, laboured groan of a laugh. �You know why,�
he gasped and Wolverine heard the punctured lungs in that wheeze. �You know why,
little brother.� His laugh whispered on in the night.
Wolverine felt as if he had been suddenly doused in cold water. Little brother.
Little brother. Creed could not be serious. It could not be true. He couldn�t be
related to that thing. And then sanity returned to Wolverine, with understanding
nipping close at its heels. There were no blood ties between him and Creed �
there were only the bonds of their shared berserker natures. He hated Creed
because Creed was a reminder, a symbol of what Wolverine could be. Wolverine
could not become Magneto, could not become the Shadow King, but he could become
Creed, so easily become Creed, and that was why he hated.
He had to take Creed down, he had to kill him. What Creed had done warranted it
(shutter-blink, and the mother�s eyes as she had sat, bound and gagged, and
watched Creed pull her eight-year old son�s heart out of his chest and eat it),
but it was more than that. As long as Creed lived, as long as Wolverine felt
this hate, the closer it came to Wolverine becoming another Creed.
Half-blind, his face full of blood and hurt, Wolverine forced himself into the
clearing, forced his claws out, forced his leg up and out, to launch a stinging
kick at Creed�s face where he knelt on the forest floor. Creed swayed aside, the
kick missing his chin by a hair�s-breadth, but at least the laughing stopped.
And then Creed was lurching up to his feet, reeling slightly as shredded organs
shifted inside him, but into fighting stance and then counter-attacking.
It became a grotesque ballet, a lurching, shambling contest of two half-dead
men. The fearsome grace of Wolverine, the infinite brutality of Sabretooth, both
were lost in the treachery of shredded muscle, in the grasp of pain and injury.
Punches became pushes, kicks - lurches, snarls - whispered grunts. Even as old
injuries healed new ones took their place. At last, as if by mutual decision,
both men stumbled to a halt and then withdrew to opposite sides of the clearing.
Wolverine waited, propped against a tree for his body to heal enough to be used.
His vision was coming back now as his eye continued to grow in the nearly healed
socket. Fighting Creed was so hard. They were both too lethal � neither could
inflict a wound that didn�t almost kill. But both healed too quickly � there was
no advantage to be gained by having a healing factor, by being able to resume
the fight while the other person was still hurt.
�You can�t beat me,� came Sabretooth�s soft voice from the other side of the
clearing. Wolverine started to hear his thoughts echoed back at him, but did not
respond. �I know you too well, runt. I know every move you make, I can
anticipate anything you do. You won�t take me down.�
Defeat, cold defeat washed over Wolverine�s bones. Creed was right. The two had
fought too often � no move Wolverine made was not known to Creed before-hand. As
long as he was Wolverine, and as long as Creed was Creed, they were matched.
As long as he was Wolverine. The thought moved like a lover, shy at first, and
then ardent, compulsive. What if he was not Wolverine? He was not Logan anymore.
Need he be Wolverine?
He fought it � fought the seductive notion until his teeth gritted. But in the
end he could not resist � his need to destroy Creed was too strong. He did not
have to be Wolverine � he could be something else. Something more � or something
less.
He had two choices. He could retain his humanity � but become Creed, amoral,
uncaring, a killing machine. Or he could lose his humanity altogether � become
feral, less than human, but not Wolverine.
Torn, Wolverine slipped further back into the shadows, his eyes filled with
bright tears as he contemplated the loss of his humanity. He had fought so hard
to be human, fought against the feral animal that lived inside of him, fought to
retain his links to the normal world. If he let it go now, let it go to defeat
Creed, here, in the mountains where it was always hardest to hold on, then he
wasn�t sure he could ever be human again. Whereas if he held his humanness, he
would have to be like Creed and that thought terrified him.
(Shutter-blink, the baby, crying, uncomprehending, Creed�s hands lifting it up
from the blood-spattered couch and pressing his mouth to its middle like a
loving uncle making silly noises and then biting out its belly)
In the end it was not hate that drove Wolverine to make his choice. It was duty,
it was honour, it was his own desperate, loving, terrified, humanity that made
the choice for him. With a sigh, Wolverine let himself go.
If there had been any of Wolverine left afterwards, he would have been horrified
at how easily his humanity slipped away. Something faded behind his eyes, and
something else grew, a feral something that had nothing left of human in it. At
last, the thing that had been Wolverine lifted its head and sniffed the air. It
was hungry and it smelled meat.
It padded forward towards the scent of blood, but then stopped in shock. Beneath
the blood, it smelled something other, something evil and wrong. The forest
clearing had a wrongness in it and it raised the hackles on its back. The
wrongness had to be dealt with before it could feed.
It moved into the clearing and saw the striped thing on the other side of the
clearing, the striped thing that the scent of wrongness rolled from in waves.
The striped thing looked up at him. �C�mon, runt,� it said. �See if you can take
me down.�
The thing that had been Wolverine did not understand the words, but it
understood that the striped thing had to be destroyed. A snarl rose up in its
throat and it flexed its hands. Metallic claws sprang outwards and then it was
leaping forward, running for the striped thing and it was charging back, a roar
in its throat like thunder.
At the moment after the last possible moment, that which had been Wolverine
dropped to the forest floor, ducking beneath the claws of the striped thing,
falling flat beneath its feet and then, driven by the instinctive movements of
the wolf, reaching up with shining claws and slashing hard, once, twice,
ham-stringing. The striped thing fell and the thing that had been Wolverine
moved forward, twisted it over on its back and the striped thing laughed and
said, �Try it, little man,� and then his head dipped and his teeth fastened in
the striped thing�s throat and he smelled its surprise and sudden fear and then
he was biting, tearing and his mouth was full of blood and flesh and still he
ripped and chewed until the striped thing was still beneath him and then he sat
back and spat out the clogging flesh and reached down with claws and slashed and
slashed at the striped thing�s throat until, at last, its severed head rolled
away.
The thing that had been Wolverine moved away from the body then, his own body
shaking. Something in its mind swam up, suddenly afraid, and it seemed for a
second it tried to rest in his mind, take him over, but he fought back until the
swimming thing went away and troubled him no more.
That which had been Wolverine found himself standing in front of a gobbet of
deer�s meat, hooked in a branch of a tree. He sniffed at it warily, suddenly
aware of a ferocious hunger. He vaguely remembered fighting for a very long
time, and healing, and he was hungry. He smelled the meat again, but it was cold
and old and curdled with terror.
That which had been Wolverine moved back into the clearing, up to the striped
thing�s body. He scented long and hard at it, but the wrongness was gone now,
fading even as the heat faded from it. Hot blood still pooled at the ravaged
neck and the flesh was whole and firm, death too quick to sully it. The thing
that had been Wolverine�s mouth filled with hunger and need and saliva dripped
from its jaws.
It dipped its head and began to feed.
The End
