X-Men: Dark Mirror (12 page)

"I'm going with you," Scott said. "No arguments."

"Fine." He did not look happy; Jean was surprised he did not put up more of a fight. Rogue, given the look on her face, was equally shocked.

"So it's all right to bring
him
along?"

Logan shrugged. "We're both chicks, Rogue. The only trouble we're going to attract is a drunk or a pervert. We look too innocent for anything else."

"Oh, God help us all," Jean said.

Rogue narrowed her eyes. "You're a sexist pig, Logan."

"Oink." He climbed out of the car, but leaned back in before shutting the door. "You kids be good. No fighting."

Scott turned and gave Jean such a grave look, she opened the back door and jumped out after him as he slid from the car. He had a tiny figure, his slender legs dangling over the pavement as he dropped from his seat to the ground. Jean towered over him.

"What is it now?" she asked.

Scott frowned and drew her away from the van. "There are a lot of unknowns about all this," he said in a low voice. "Our plan is solid, but you know how it is, Jean. Nothing is safe. If we're not back by midmoming— earlier, even—get out of here. Don't take the van. Clean it for prints, then walk away. Find a pay phone and keep calling the school until you get someone to listen to you."

"I love it when you patronize me."

"It's such a turn-on, right?"

"Only for you," Jean said. "I don't like this."

"Neither do I," Scott said, "but what do you want me to do? I won't risk all of us on something so chancy as breaking and entering. If anything goes wrong, the worst that happens is that Logan and I will be sent to jail or returned to the hospital. If you three are free, though, at least we still have a fighting chance of finding someone — Xavier, this Maguire—who can fix us."

Jean sighed. Scott touched her hand, her cheek.

"Come on, sweetheart. You know I'm right."

"I don't know anything," Jean said, "but I'm too tired to argue with you. Go on, then. Go with Logan and be a cowboy for the night."

"Cow
girl,"
Logan said, appearing beside them. It did not matter he no longer had his body or his mutant powers; he still moved silent as a ghost.

"I keep forgetting that part," Scott said.

"I can't imagine how," Jean said, shifting uncomfortably. Logan grinned, but Scott grabbed his arm and steered him away before he said anything inappropriate. Scott looked back over his shoulder and Jean tried to see her husband in that small feminine face, those large dark eyes.

"Bye," he said. Jean did not respond. She turned around and climbed into the passenger seat of the van.

"I hate this," Rogue said, but so quietly, so forlorn, that Jean could not bring herself to be irritated at her friend. "I don't like being left behind. I want to help."

'Yes," Jean said, tapping her feet on the floor. "Logan made a good point, though. All of us together would draw attention. Two young women, though?" She shrugged. "Less threatening."

"Really. Seems like a bunch of lousy stereotypes to me." Rogue pursed her lips; a familiar expression, much like the way she cracked her knuckles and then rubbed her arms, like she had something unpleasant under her skin. "I think Logan just likes playing it alone, but he's taking Scott along for the ride because he knows our fearless leader won't take no for an answer. We, on the other hand, are like a bunch of puppy dogs, sittin' pretty. Nice and obedient."

Kurt stared. "You are truly angered by this. That. . . surprises me."

"I don't know why," Rogue said. "Seems to me I got a right to be a little miffed. Some ... jerk... steals our bodies, takes our lives, and I can't participate in bringing him down? Not even a little bit?"

"No one is holding you here," Jean said, too tired to talk reason to her, especially when she agreed with everything Rogue said. "You can still catch up with them,
if
that's what you really want."

Silence. Rogue shifted in her seat and lay back her head, staring at the van ceiling. Kurt patted her hand, saying nothing, but adding to the atmosphere a quiet sympathy that was gentle and comforting. Kurt had that way about him, no matter what he looked like.

jean thought about her own appearance, staring down at her hands as she leaned against the cold hard window. Dark brown skin covered large fingers and sinewy
wrists,
thickly muscled forearms that felt strong, and no
doubt
were; she felt her face, the bristles and thick jaw, the
mas
culine features that were so utterly foreign. How
strange,
to know she was a woman, to feel like a woman, and
yet
be trapped in a man's body. She envied Rogue, and wondered just how Scott and Logan were handling their own displacement. Neither one had truly complained—
not
that they would—but it had to be just as strange and frightening.

Jean listened to the sound of her borrowed heart, beating slow and sure inside the chest she wore. Like
a
costume made of flesh, one that she could never
take
off.

Put inside this body because someone has a purpose for your face, your identity, and they cannot risk there being two of you.

None of them talked. They sat and waited, lost in thought, until Jean noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten and that traffic on the street behind them had increased. Worry spiked her gut. She lifted her feet off the dashboard and got ready to leave the van. Maybe walk up the street just a ways, and see if she heard anything unusual. Police sirens, rushing to pick up her husband and his crazy companion.

"Someone is coming," Kurt whispered. Rogue and Jean looked at him and he held up his hand. "Listen. There is a scuffing noise on the concrete."

jean listened, and after a moment, heard that light brush of footfall, even and unhurried. Only one, though.

Logan would be silent
, she told herself, but she did not open the door. A shadow appeared on the other side of her window. A man peered in. He had a nice suit jacket on, and his face was hard and thin.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello," Jean replied, wary of the look in his eye. He smiled, but it was cold, full of teeth. She could not see his hands.

"I've been watching you for a while. There a reason you're parked here this time of morning?" he asked.

"Is there a law that says I can't park here?"

"Maybe. Depends on the why, and those girls you're waiting on."

"Girls?"

The man rubbed his chin. "I got a little something going on down the street. This is a high-class neighborhood, you know? Takes a certain kind of girl, a certain kind of connection and know-how. You're doing it all wrong; the car, the clothes your girls are wearing. Keep this up and you'll bring the cops down on us all."

"We're not here on business," Jean said, finally understanding. "Those . . . girls . . . simply went to visit a friend."

"Friend." The man laughed, low. "Right. We ail got friends we have to visit early in the morning, don't we? Thing is, I'm not the kind who likes to share my . . . friends. My girls don't, either. Which is why, right now, I'm gonna ask you real polite to move this ghetto-ass car of yours, and get the hell out of my neighborhood."

"I can't do that," Jean said, not bothering to make any more denials. "I have to wait for my girls to come back. I'm sure you understand. I'll leave when they arrive."

"Not good enough."

"It will have to be." Jean felt Rogue and Kurt shift quietly behind her. She wondered how anyone, even in this, altered state, could mistake her for a pimp. She wished she could read this stranger's mind, or take over his body with nothing but a thought. Make him crawl back to the hole he lived in.

Again, that cold smile. The man stepped away from the van and finally Jean could see his hands. He held a gun.

"Oh, darn," she said.

It had been almost ten years since Logan walked
these streets, and like most old neighborhoods, nothing much had changed. The houses still had their irregular steep-pitched roofs with patterned shingles, the lawns were still immaculate, and the view of Elliot Bay and Lake Union still managed to take his breath away. Or maybe that was just his body. Patty, whoever she was, had terrible endurance, and these hills were the steepest in the city.

"I don't like leaving them," Scott said. His breathing seemed far more regular; Logan envied him for that.

"They'll be fine," Logan said, still trying to grow accustomed to the high squeaky tones of his voice. "You seem to forget that you're dealing with X-Men here."

"Powerless X-Men."

"Gimme a break, Cyke. You think Jean's telepathy or Kurt's teleporting are all that makes them strong?"

"Of course not, but it does give them an advantage."

Logan shrugged. He couldn't argue with that. Then again, there was no use crying over things that might never be changed. You just picked up the pieces and kept moving. Did the best with what you had.

And what he had was the flabby misused body of a twenty-something woman who looked far too cute for
his
taste, and who was pierced in several areas that should never know the touch of hard steel. Two of them
were
rubbing against his shirt.

Kid really was crazy. It had taken a legion of scientists to stick metal in Logan's body. He didn't understand anyone who would do it voluntarily.

They passed only one other person during their
walk,
a bespectacled older man with a golden retriever,
who
smiled at them both, but made eyes only at Scott.
Logan
did not mind in the slightest. Scott give him a hard
look
and said, "Don't even think about it." "What?"

"You know very well what."

"Aw, hell. You need to get in touch with your feminine side, Scott. Ain't no time like the present."

Scott grunted. "Doesn't it bother you at all that you're a woman?"

"Would bother me more if I was still in my own body and missing certain ... parts."

Which had been his first thought upon awakening
in the
hospital. A bad place to go, if you were a man.
Very
bad.
Discovering his young perky breasts, seeing that unfamiliar face reflected in the glass of his window, had made him
feel
immensely better because this was clearly not his body.
And
if this was not his body, then somewhere out there
he—
Logan, Wolverine—was still a whole, healthy man.

"Okay," Scott said. "I see your point."

Logan grunted. "We're getting close."

"Thank God. My thighs are killing me."

"Don't complain too much. You want to stay toned, you know. Keep those legs smokin'."

"Logan—"

"Why do you think Jean gets on that StairMaster every day?"

Scott sighed. "You are totally out of control."

"You say that so much it's practically habit. Gotta find a new line, Scooter."

"Right. Is it possible that becoming a woman has made you even more obnoxious?"

"That's just you. Must be PMS."

"Bad joke," Scott said, but Logan did not give him a chance to say more. He stopped walking, gazing from the numbers on a gray mailbox to the house behind it, perched like a fine diamond, one of many, in the crown of Old Victoria Hill.

Jonas Maguire's house was a large white Victorian set off the street and surrounded by trees. Perfect cover. Logan and Scott walked up the front sidewalk like they owned the place, which in his experience, was the best way to act when you were trying to set up a con. A little confidence went a long way, especially in the city, where no one paid much attention to the private lives of their neighbors, and odd comings and goings at night could be ascribed to some quirk of behavior, rather than any criminal wrongdoing.

"He must have a security system," Scott whispered, as they stepped on the wide front porch. Hanging pots bobbed with the outlines of geraniums and ferns. Rocking chairs sat at the very end of the porch, and over the antique mail slot was a wooden carving of a fat cow. It was all very innocuous and country.

"Yeah, this one's a real mad scientist," Logan said. "Wonder if he knits."

Scott peered around the edge of the porch. "The garage is detached, so no go through there. Do you think he has a house sitter?"