Bones (Part Eight)
Written by RatMist.
Caution: Rated R for harsh language.
Hours later, Sarah sat up in the Medlab, hearing only the sounds of whirring machinery and the occasional scampering of Hank's pet lab mouse. Her head ached, but the rest of her body felt surprisingly refreshed. She glanced around the shadowy lab from the corner in which she occupied, but found the room to be empty of anyone else. The damned overhead light above her bed was still on.
She was alone, as always. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised, but after what Gambit had done to her, she had hoped to have awoken with him at her side. Preferrably close enough for her to kill him, the bastard.
She sat quietly, thinking and rethinking her current situation. So the Cajun had been the one to save her life that horrible night. She had never really thought about who had been her savior that night, and even just recalling that night in the least had always given her night terrors. Sometimes, when passing garbage cans or strolling through parts of the Tunnels, certain scents would trigger memories of that night, and Sarah would be reduced to a snarling ball of tears.
When the nightmares began to induce insomnia, she would excersise heavily in her basement or run her "Hill" program in the Danger Room. When the exhaustion of both would still not prompt her to sleep, Sarah began to think of more creative ideas to keep her nightmares at bay. At first, she began to program scenarios for the Danger Room which required a certain level of strategy and violent ruthlessness. Privately, she was very proud of those programs, and had even enjoyed the mental workout it had taken to plan some of the ones that could only be truly experienced with the Danger Room safeties off. She had yet to show them to Cyke, but she always told herself it was only because she knew he could not handle the programs' levels of violence and cunning.
Once the novelty of playing with the Danger Room had worn off, the nightmares receded for a while. Then the kitchen incident had brought them back into the forefront of her mind, and the nightmares increased in viciousness and continuity. One particular nightmare had been of a shattered mirror, whose shards had begun to carve into her body. In the dream, she had been on a pristine white linen table in the Tunnels, while the Morlocks hacked into her flesh and ate their fill. All the while, they had taunted her, telling her she was no longer a Morlock, that she had become a traitor as she assimilated into the X-Men. When Sarah awoke from the night terror, she found she had ripped nearly all the bones from her chest cavity and flung them across the basement.
That was when she had started her strange skeleton. Picking up the bones she had ripped under the influence of that nightmare, she began to carve as many of the faces that she could recall onto the bones. It hurt, so very badly, to remember them. The ache in her chest as she began to remember faces she could not name throbbed out of synch with the pain her body produced as it mended itself. She thought the pain was a justified penance for her living while so many others had died. She felt those 'others' were angry now, and needed to be laid to rest. As the months had passed, the nightmares had receded again, so long as she worked on the skeleton from time to time.
And she found it was true. She was no longer a Morlock. Sarah, the Morlock, had died in those tunnels, and was screaming to be laid to rest. Sarah, now the X-Man known as Marrow, was screaming to be born.
As she sat on the table, lost in her thoughts, she heard the shuffling sound of the elevator's doors being opened. Her head snapped up and she sniffed the air cautiously, and detected a faintly canine scent.
"Hey Old Man," she snarled quietly, a small smile gracing her lips.
The man stepped from the shadows into the pool of light around Sarah's bed. He came right up to the edge of her bed, deliberately invading her personal space and territory. Asserting his dominance, like any good alpha male. Dressed in casual clothes, his traditional blue jeans and thick flannel shirt, he nodded once to her.
"Marrow," he said as he glared at her, his piercing blue eyes never leaving her face.
She glanced down a moment, realized she was completely naked on the bed, but did not succumb to the sudden surge of modesty she felt. Instead, she answered his challenge of dominance, and she leaned over her bed slowly, her movements very cautious and questioning. Her small, roughened hand reached out from the pool of light into the edges of the shadows to touch his face. The scratchy cotton sheets pooled at her waist while her body painted a strange shadow on the wall. To his credit, Wolverine did not once glance below her eyes, preferring to keep an edge in case of a sudden surge of violence from her. His hands where fisted at his side, aching to pop the bone claws that lay beneath the skin.
While he didn't move, his glare was reduced to a questioning visage. Adrenaline pumped, as he searched her face and scent for any hint of aggression. It was almost a disappointment when she only let her palm gently touched his cheek, and the Mona Lisa smile on her face turned into a full-fledged smile of something very close to gratitude.
"This makes no fucking sense," he thought. "What the hell is she up to?"
"You can call me Sarah," she said quietly, "and I guess you're here to tell me Egghead wants to talk to me, right?"
He didn't say anything at first, but as he was about to break the silence between them, she said tiredly, "Just tell me what rule I broke while I was gettin' my beauty sleep." The palm withdrew, and Wolverine thought he felt his face was cold without her hand there.
"Ya didn't do nothin', this time anyway," he ground out. "Cajun's in the dog house though." He studied her face carefully, but no one could have missed the scowl her face turned into.
"Get dressed," he growled. "Chuck wants to see us both."
"Turn around, and I will," she challenged.
"You didn't have a problem with modesty a minute ago, darlin'. I'm sure ya can handle it now. 'Sides, aint nothin I haven't seen before, a hundred times or more." He casually lit up the last bits of a cigar as he taunted.
Her scowl melted into a grin, and she said: "Old Man, I can guarantee you ain't never seen nothin' like me."
And she hopped off the side of her bed, naked as the day she was born, and enjoyed the shock on his face as he saw her completely. He didn't mean to stare at her, but as she had bounded off the bed, her dusky pink body had revealed a sight almost physically painful for him to see. Her entire body was spiked it seemed, and he wondered if she had extra endorphins to endure the pain of her mutation.
Her collarbone sprouted beyond her body to form twin spikes. Another sprout had them rounding out eventually to form hooks encasing the top sides of her shoulders. Logan knew she would have to pull the whole thing eventually or the calcium would rot and poison her system.
Her breasts would have been high and full, but one of her ribs had decided to 'pop' through the right breast and continue to snake across until it formed a handle extended past her body. Remembering how tender and sensitive his beautiful dead wife's breasts had been, Logan speculated this incarnation had to have been especially painful. The wound it caused had healed, but it must have been fairly recently because blood was still congealing further down her torso. The other breast was completely covered by a 'bone cup'. It was simply sealed over by bone, probably for protection. It connected with her breastbone, which had risen above her skin to form a protective plate over her heart. Apparently, her body decided it would not take any risks with this last remaining heart. He wondered if it was her body's reponse or Marrow's limited control over her bone growths which had formed the plate over her heart.
The rest of her ribs sprouted long handles from her sides, while the two 'floating' ribs wrapped closely to her body protectively.
Her pelvic bones had mutated as well, pushing small spikes along the ridges of her hips and lower abdomen. Beyond that, however, the mutation around her lower abdomen and pelvic region had been relatively slight.
Both femurs had split and sprouted. Half of the bone still served the function of supporting her body weight while the other half came out of the sides of her thighs at a thirty degree angle, nearly touching her hands while they laid at an uneasy rest. If needed, she could pull these bones quickly, and since they were the heaviest bones in the human body, they could make formidable weapons. That is, if one could fight through the crippling pain of six inch diameter wounds pulling them would cause.
Her kneecaps were covered in bone, giving her natural pads. Her ankles and heels were spiked with sharp bones, very useful in fighting. Her arms, resting lightly at her sides, bore its mutantcy only at the elbows, where Marrow could rip whatever bones she needed. Her wrists, however, were covered in a thick bracelet of smooth bone. Small slivers of exposed bone flecked her entire body, like a spray of freckles. Scars of every dimension and length covered her skin, the most concentrated patches around the most evident bone growths.
She had never looked more inhuman than she did just standing before him completely naked.
"Told ya," her voice came through his senses.
He pulled his eyes from her body and really examined at her face for evidence of her mutant gift. Her brow was clear, her punky hair full, but her cheekbones were exposed for all the world to see. It was strangely haunting to stare at the young woman; it was like staring at someone already dead. He recalled seeing the bones of many of his opponents after maiming them in the kill; the young woman standing before him beared a resemblance to those mutilated opponents, so brutal was her mutancy.
"Speechless?" she sneered. "Just think, this is only my front side."
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The End for now.