Fighting Destiny ((Open))

[Mystique]

She slunk into the bar, ignoring the cat calls and fevered tension that swirled through the smoke clogged room. Let them drool. They were all dogs anyway. If they were lucky, she'd even throw one a bone tonight.

"...your love sticks like a turkey bone in my throat..." The tune deaf wailing of the half-drunk fool on stage proclaimed.

"You said it." She threw back her hair, a waterfall of deep red cascading down her back. This was the closest she'd ever get to stepping out in her own skin.

That didn't matter though. She tossed some bills on the counter and said with a wistful sigh,
"Whiskey. We're going for cliche's tonight."

The bar tender looked her up and down, finally holding out his hand. She placed an ID in it. After a cursory glance over the date of birth, he poured her drink.

"You look young for your age."

She didn't dignify the statement with a response, sipping quietly from the clouded glass.

"So, what's a pretty thing like you doing drowning herself in this cheap sh--." He asked with a kinder tone than she'd expect could come out of his mouth.

"It's my anniversary. I thought I should celebrate." She leaned back on the stool, tossing an arm over the back rest casually. "I'm sure if she were still here, my lover would join me."

"Oh, you're one of them," Them. She'd heard that quite a few times, but not in that context. "a widow." he continued.

Well, that was context she was familiar with at least. The bar tender plowed on.

"I know how you feel," he leaned forward, his husky voice low. "I lost my Chuck nigh on 5 years ago. Course, that cheatin' bastard deserved what he got. Hell of a man though."

"She was just a lover." The bar tender nodded stiffly, and moved on to other customers who had settled down.

She drained the glass, disgusted with her own lies. She'd loved the woman, as much as someone like herself could love. They'd been devoted to one another. And then she was gone.

But you found me.

A bitter smile crept up into the corners of her mouth. That was true enough. Surprising to say the least to see the woman standing there like a waking dream she didn't want to stumble from.

Why were you so cold? Why didn't you stay, instead of leaving me alone in Alamogordo with my dirt and schemes?

"Because you let me believe you were dead." She whispered to no one and let the tears fall onto the counter unheeded.

They said she couldn't feel. That she had no heart left in her, had never had any to begin with. Cold, calculating, and conniving. That's all they ever saw. But she was a woman beneath the masks she wore. She craved the touch of someone, anyone, to hold her in the empty nights and whisper the sweet nothings that could support a fragile soul. All she ever got were hotel rooms, bloody clothes, and the faint odor of gunpowder in her hair.

"Another." She barked at the bar tender. He obliged.

She sank this one for Creed. Then another for Wagner. Doubles for Logan. A few more for the others without names with faces she could barely call to memory.

At the 8th she was actively ablating the more dangerous effects of the drinks within her. If she wanted to, she could be sober, but there were just some things you can only do while you're drunk. She stared at the shadow of a figure looming over her.

"Whatever you want, the answer is 'yes'."

[Logan]

(taking place long ago, in what could be considered ‘another reality’)

It was a voice he didn’t know, and a face he didn’t recognize…but a scent never lies. With an unreadable expression, Logan sidled up next to the woman, knowing full well that it was Mystique in one of her many disguises. She seemed a little upset, though Logan knew that most of what you saw in Mystique was not what was actually real. Where most women were barely trustworthy, Mystique was even less. She wore so many faces and played so many parts that he doubted she even knew who she was anymore. She was a changeling…the actress of all actresses, and to Logan it made everything she ever did suspect.

Still, it seemed genuine.

“Mighty kind of ya,” he said to her offer. “So…right here on tha countertop then?”

With a wry smile, he pulled out a stool and popped a squat beside her. “Better be careful,” he said in a low and confident whisper, “or someone might start believin’ you actually have a heart.”

If he feared her, he didn’t show it. Logan had his own history with the shapeshifter. He knew she was the ultimate opportunist. He also knew she had killed more men than most serial killers ever get to claim. He slapped the bar twice for attention. The bartender uneasily came over, looking at Logan warily. “Why don’cha just bring tha bottle over here, Spanky.”

Clenching his jaw, the man grabbed the whiskey bottle and two semi-clean glasses and slammed them on the countertop before moving away.

[Mystique]

Whoever it was, whatever they wanted...no matter what. She wanted it too. To feel, to die, it all ended up the same once the year was done. Back in this slum playing out every country song's theme.

“Mighty kind of ya. So…right here on tha countertop then? Better be careful or someone might start believin’ you actually have a heart.”

The rolling timbre of his voice sent chills down her spine. Turning bloodshot eyes to study his face, she saw it was much the same even without the taut muscles of his release radiating throughout it. She matched his smile with a seductive one of her own.

"Well, now, maybe that's exactly what I want." She took the bottle as the bar tender slammed it down, moving her lips in the same inviting way a dog in heat wags her tail. With a choking gasp as it burned her throat she said, "I don't love, Logan. You should know better than that."

But just because that may be true, it didn't mean she didn't want to feel the heat in his hands moving up her body, his teeth at her throat, the feel of his claws gently raking over her belly under the cool moonlight. Oh sure, the last time they'd parted she had been holding up two sub-machine guns and blowing up a jeep, but that was just a lover's quarrel. All couples had their artillery. Hers just happened to be live at the time.

Besides, here was a man who knew what he wanted and could give in kind. How many nights had they spent grappling with one another, teasing the flesh until the tent reverberated with growls? She laughed at the memory.

[Logan]

Seeing her go from red eyes and tears to suppressed laughter confirmed Logan’s suspicions that she might be a few pecans short of a fruitcake. Not that he underestimated her by any means. He remembered well the last time they saw each other, and pointed a finger in her face sternly.

“Still owe ya for that time in Argentina,” he said. Then he grabbed the glasses and flipped them over. Twisting the top off the bottle, he looked back at her. “But we got plenty of time for fightin’ later.”

Logan topped both glasses off and slid one over to her. “Ya look like you could use a stiff one.”

(ooc: the writer of this post apologizes for the bad innuendo)

[Mystique]

((no need to apologize))

Love? She'd meant to say feel. The word had stumbled drunkenly out of her lips, but thankfully he hadn't noticed. Her mind was wandering again to Destiny. Her pale yellow face gazing up into hers, the gentle touch of her hand against her skin...She caught the word Argentina and swung back to the current conversation.

Well, he had remembered their little spat after all. At least he wasn't going to finish it right now.

"Ya look like you could use a stiff one.” Only Logan could turn a tearful moment into a rueful one.

She cocked a brow and took the glass gingerly.

"I do at that." She made an exaggerated gesture of checking the glass for contaminants. "You sure you haven't slipped anything in there? You know it's not desti..." She stopped.

She was going to say "It's not destiny if it's forced." but the words stuck in her throat. The clawing feeling of loss washed over her again, and she couldn't fight back the sudden torrent of tears.

"Damn it!" She turned away from him, pushing the glass over the edge on accident, spilling it all over her dress. "Wonderful..." She mumbled into her hands.

It was strange, this lack of delicacy and grace, the stiff formality of her normal day to day actions lost to the Murphy's law fluidity of slight drunkenness. She shrugged off her jacket and draped it carefully over her lap. No need to call even more attention to herself by letting the world see what was under her white dress.

[Logan]

In all the time that Logan had known Mystique he had never seen anything quite like it. And frankly, he wasn’t honestly sure he believed what he thought he was seeing in the first place. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-smoked stump of a cigar. One end was scorched and ashen while the other end was punctured with various sized teeth marks. Winston Churchill once said about cigars, “They’re better when they’re resurrected.” Maybe that was true about a few different things.

His first inclination was to just light up the cigar and not fall for these damn feminine wiles. What he knew about women in general should have been enough, let alone this particular one. He turned half away from her while she sulked and took another sip of cheap whiskey.

But the thing about feminine wiles was that they were so damn effective.

“Aw hell,” he said finally with no small amount of irritability. “What’s eatin’ ya?” He still didn’t trust her, but at least he could hear her out. Clenching the cigar in his teeth he put a hand on her shoulder. "Come on. What is it?"

[Mystique]

"I'm drunk, Logan. I could not be drunk, but at this point in time it seemed appropriate to be so." She turned her head, letting only her eyes peek between her fingers, their natural yellow seeping in behind her tears. "There are...ghosts...in my head, in my life, that insist that they resurrect themselves. Most I can ignore, or at least push aside long enough to drown them out later, but there is one...there is one I cannot forget, no matter how I try."

She shuddered with the effort it took to drag it out into the open. So many had passed through her life, and none had ever been told the extent to which she clung to that distant memory of happiness. She was glad it was Logan to hear her because she knew he'd believe it all to be a ruse. But she would know she'd told someone. Perhaps then Irene's face would finally wither away into a sad memory and nothing more.

"She was...beautiful. She knew so much, but could not remember to close her robe on a cold morning. We had a life together...and I...me, Logan, of all people, I was happy. Not fleeting the way victory is, but enduring. She asked me to feel beyond my own petty desires, and I did for her...the first and last time."

Her voice cracked, but she was determined to have it all out. This was why she'd needed the alcohol. This was why it had to be here, in the dark, rank, slums of a dying bar. She could only say what mattered when it didn't. That was safest.

"We took on a mission, and I lost her...well, I thought I did. They never found her body, and I held out hope for years. Years and years...that passed me by in cold waiting, until I forgot what I was waiting for. Forgot what this was that beat." She grabbed Logan's hand gently, without warning, placing it over her heart. "And I found her again...after I thought I was dead here. I found her, and she offered no apology to me, no word of reassurance or compassion. She only asked for my skills to help her in her scheming. She only wanted the killer in me...I could not stand the sight of her, so I left."

She shot a look of helplessness straight into those unbelieving eyes. He would not pity her, but he would understand her at the least. That's all she wanted really, though the hand that held his trembled with something she could not place. Fear? Loathing? Lust? Something made her cling tighter to him as she told him the rest.

"All those years of waiting wasted...in the decades I've walked this world, I've only ever held out my heart to one, and she destroyed it...Do you see, Logan, what she has made me? I am cold now. I am precise. I am meticulous. I am a tool now, used for the carrying out of schemes and my own delusions, and I cannot seem to find any fault with it. She made me into the perfect soldier while severing what humanity was left in me...and I cannot even hate her. She won't even allow me that one small peace..."

[Logan]

Logan listened quietly to the story unfold, thankful that he had a full bottle of whiskey to help him through it. At the end he was left speechless and to fill in the awkward space of silence between her finishing and his expected reaction he took a hefty slurp straight out of the bottle.

The problem wasn’t so much that he didn’t care. The problem was that he’d listened to one load of crap or another from this woman on too many occasions. Being honest he knew he never let himself buy into it too much. Just enough to get what he wanted…which was what she wanted.

But the point was that it was all a game. And hell, he didn’t really give a damn.

“I’ll letcha hate me if it’ll make ya feel better,” he said with a wry grin.

He glanced down at the hand that clutched at him and then looked back up. “Or whatever makes ya feel better.” It was late. Not so much in the evening as just in life. He was tired. Not so much weary as just exhausted.

And he was lonely.

Logan didn’t have anything or anyone. By choice. Though sometimes he had to hold on to something, if only for one night.

[Mystique]

The rest of the crowd had drifted away, and the bartender seemed preoccupied with the boy on stage. He swayed in his tight leather pants, strumming his guitar in a mournful tune. At least he was more sober than the last man on stage. His voice was velvet, untrained, but remarkably mesmerizing.

"Love me tender, love me dear...tell me you are mine. I'll be yours through all the years, till the end of time..." he crooned. Elvis had sung it sweeter, and he'd filled out his pants a little better too, but the boy added an innocence that made her ache.

“I’ll letcha hate me if it’ll make ya feel better,” Logan finally said, the gruff humor of his voice soothing. An interesting ad lib to the song running through her head.

She smiled kindly at him. It felt strange on her lips, unfamiliar...a depth to the softness that was neither feral nor seductive. The tears rolled gently down now, the emotions slinking back into the abyss they'd erupted from. Studying the face caught between uncertain empathy and a weariness all too familiar, she was glad for the drink in her hand.

"Or whatever makes ya feel better." he finished, his eyes on the other hand still clasped around his.

Taking a sip, she let it do its work one last time, burning through the ache of something harsher. She found her thumb stroking the rough callouses on his hand, fingers lacing with his. Leaning against the sturdy warmth of this man who could easily gut her, she whispered,

"Stay with me tonight..."

"...and I always will..."

((OCC: It's nicer if you play this while reading ----> www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZBUb0ElnNY))

[Logan]

It wasn’t the usual way. Things were being played out in a way that he was unaccustomed to, and he wasn’t really sure what to make of it. But he had the music and the booze and the smell of her. So close.

It wasn’t the usual way. So what? Life had never been known for predictability. ‘Specially his life. If it had been he might not have turned into the sumbitch he had. He scratched at the stubble on his chin while considering.

Logan still didn’t know what kind of game this was.

Still didn’t care.

They could try to kill each other tomorrow. Not tonight.

Logan stood up and picked her off of her stool, cradling her gently while several more drunken patrons hooted and hollered at him, he carried her over the threshold of the door and out into the parking lot where his motorcycle awaited.

[Mystique]

Leather and cigar smoke permeated her senses as he deftly picked her off the stool and carried her. She was grateful. At this point, she wasn't sure if she'd have been able to make it past the second step. Cheers erupted in the background, and the boy on stage began the first chords to "Wild Thing." She wasn't sure if that was the most appropriate song to walk out on, but she liked it.

Once they reached his motorcycle, she unsteadily braced herself against him as he mounted. The engine rumbled exquisitely beneath her as she wrapped her arms around him, the night air kissing the naked skin of her back as her hair whipped wildly behind.

As they rode on, her skin melted into its natural blue. This was a mistake, asking him to stay, but there were worse ones to be made. Nearing the blinking neon sign of a tattered motel, she wondered...Whose face will I have to wear tonight? Jean's? Kayla's? Itsu's?

A wry smile twisted her lips. She'd known what lay ahead as soon as she'd let him sit down next to her. Destiny was a bitch.