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I am moved by fancies that are curled
around these images and cling :
the notion of some infinitely gentle
infinitely suffering thing.

- Preludes
TS Eliot

This is the sound of snow-- a hushed flutter of dying butterfly wings floating down from the swollen chrysalis of a sky that has too long been dyed in gray. The butterflies have died, but their souls have not and she knows this because she sees the colors in the streaks of lilac and gold sparking at the horizon. She recognizes sunrise as the beginning of a new day, the symbol of new life and all that is pure and good and innocent. /Baby,/ he used to whisper in her ear, /you're the sunrise. All lit up like heaven and soft as butterflies, but don't you tell the secret. Don't you tell a soul./ So she'd promised. Only he would ever know how delicate a death lay wrapped up in her skin. Only he would know the true passion of the life that flowed beneath it.

But now all she can hear is the sound of dead butterflies, falling, falling to the frozen ground, and she is about to break a vow.

Six red candies burn on windowsill; she is burning on the windowsill, a scarlet wax girl who begged to play in the fire and is only lately discovering that it is hot, so hot that it will melt you into something strange and frightening. Don't play with fire, child. Don't fall in love. Tell me now, she begs the raven outside the window, tell me which would kill more.....the fire or the ice and emptiness that would certainly come without the passion of the flame? Passion does not always mean a kiss, or a night of kisses, but sometimes it means something better. Losing yourself into someone, melting like the wax until you can't remember where you end and he begins. This is the passion the candles understand. This is why they weep for her.

Mama always said prayers for her over candles, a host of lullabies or pleading to saints for protection from skinned knees and bullies in the schoolyard and strangers with lollipops. She remembers overhearing the last prayer, after It happened and she had began to become a freak...

/Hail Mary, Mother of Mercy, our life our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we come, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.../

And she had wanted to go in and put her arms around Mama and breathe in the scent of rose perfume and childhood memories, but when it had been discovered she was listening, the door had been closed. The candles blown out. Two days later she was on the road. Mama had been right. There is no place for children of Eve in the serpent's world. Unless you counted Eden, but the gates were always locked.

/We'll climb the fence, baby./ His voice, so strong and beautiful and blind with his love for the innocence of her. /I'll fight any angels that try to stop us and I'll pick you flowers from the stars./

She knows he could fight angels and win. Angels fight clean, fought fair. Demons, on the other hand.....they hit low and dirty, sliding talons into all the hidden wounds and scars. Laughing, always, when the blood spills.

The candles bleed, tiny red puddles of wax drip-drip-dripping off the window sill and onto her bare feet. The skin cools it to ruby ice before the pain can even fully sink into her mind. She sees instead his blood, the color of it a deeper red than should have been, the sacrifice a higher cost than should have been paid. Especially for her. It was a profanity; a sacrilege. An unforgivable sin, that he should bleed and surrender to the men of his nightmares when they had really come looking for her. After all, velvet could be just as deadly as steel. He knew this.

/Baby, you don't know them./ he had said, trying to answer the hurt in her eyes when she asked again to run away with him and was again denied. /It gives me nightmares at midnight, the things they'd do to you. I'd rather die than go back to that kind of hell, but I know for sure that I wouldn't want to live if I dragged you into it with me./

/We could be careful./

/Not careful enough./

But then she had been cruel enough to look him in the eyes, as his soul quivered for her to understand, and tell him that if he loved her as a person and not just a figment of his imagination, that he would find a way. The killing blow was, she had only meant it out of love. She had believed that life apart would kill them quicker than any horror together ever could.

She had been wrong.

In the first night after they had taken him, she had begged for penance. Oh, she would do it all, she promised-- walk from Mecca to Medina on hands and knees and broken glass, crawl up the stairs to the tombs of dead saints and place her lips against the rotted bone. She would dance through Purgatory barefoot, until the curse of her skin blistered and peeled from her body and she walked on clean bone.

Yet now that redemption is at hand, the path to Mecca laid out shimmering before her feet, she feels the fear. It is worse than claws in her chest, or Holocaust memories behind her eyes, or white hot energy burning white streaks into her hair. It is his words.

/You don't know them. It gives me nightmares at midnight, the things they'd do to you./

There is a reason she wraps her skin in silk and gossamer and satin. It is more than fear of harming others, or of discovery. It is the terror of nakedness. Bare fingers is an exposure far worse to her than a bare body would be too most any other woman. Only he sees her hands. Only he is allowed to touch....

But if she chooses to take her penance, to save his soul by forfeiting her own, she will be exposed. And not only her fingers.

She trembles, and wishes not for the first time that the snow would cover her, a lace veil of ice and crystals, that she can somehow close her eyes and no longer love him. But she is not made of ice. She is wax, and she is fire, and it hurts, though never as much as the thought of losing him.

Outside the window, the silent screams of falling butterfly wings continue to pile up snow drifts. She pulls the scarf he had given her-- a lingering caress around her neck spun in translucent colors of the sunrise she was supposed to be-- around her eyes and begs for darkness though it scrapes across her soul like the barren branches of the trees outside. But the material is thin as her sanity; she can see through it to the half-consumed candles waiting for her benediction. After all, no one enters hell without first pleading heaven's mercy. Maybe she begs for him. Maybe for herself, that she will not scream too loudly when they tear the gloves from her hands, that she will not flinch away in cowardice before the redemption is complete.

Most of all it is that he will forgive her, after she has saved his life and destroyed his soul. He used to tell her she was his soul. Perhaps it is a selfish prayer to beg he will love her anyway, but she cannot keep herself from falling to her knees as the memories start to come.

"Hail Mary, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope....."

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//Thirteen hundred miles and three weeks away from Charles and the light of his sanctuary and already there is no hope. You lie face down on the bed, trying to hide from his eyes, wrapped up in blankets and shivering from the very bones. He's angrier than Lucifer, slamming his fist into the wall and waving his claws like he wants to cut something. Like maybe that something is you. He's screaming over and over again...what were you thinking. What were you thinking....

"They can't know! I told you, they can't know about your." A crash, an obscenity, and for the first time you sense a bit of the fear on his words. "Why didn't you just run like I told you to? Like we agreed on?"

Because there were six of them, you want to tell him, and they all had electric guns and I know what that means to a man with metal bones. Because I would rather carry their minds within me than watch you try to fight them all. Because I lied when I said I'd leave you behind.

But you don't say anything at all.//

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"To thee do we come, poor banished children of Eve."

He would not let her back into Eden that night. He was too drunk on his own fear, on his own rage.

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// "And if you wanted to help, you could have used your gun. You could have used my knife. You could have done anything but touch him, Marie, right in front of the others and now they know exactly what to use you for."
"There wasn't time." You whisper, like it can actually erase the betrayal from his eyes. He begged you time and time again never to let anyone know, no matter what. That was his condition for taking you with him, for letting you into his life. And you broke it.

"And what about next time? And the time after that? They won't stop now. Not with two of us ripe for the picking." Another crash, another hole in the wall. You can almost smell the hate. "But no, you didn't think. You had to rush in like some kind of hero. Do you have any idea the kind of-"

"Yes, I do!" You can't take it anymore, and you let the scream tear from your throat, let it rip from the pores of your very skin. "I have seen it through your eyes a hundred times since you first touched me, and I have seen it again tonight through the eyes of one of the men responsible for doing it. Don't talk to me about not knowing. Don't talk to me about trying to be a hero. Would it make you feel better if I said it hurt? It did. How about if I tell you I'm scared?"

You hold up your hands so he can see them shaking. You stare him in the eyes so he can see the terror you can't put into words.

"All I know is that I couldn't let them take you from me." you speak softly. Something is breaking and if it cracks, you have no idea who will put it back together. "And it was stupid, and I'm scared, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Because I love you that way. If you don't want it, send me away, but don't tell me I don't know what I've gotten into. I do...I do..."

Then all the floodgates break loose and you fall back onto the bed, staring straight up at the ceiling and drowning as the tears fall from your eyes. It's a whisper when you speak again. It's the inversion of your soul, every ugly fear held up before him in the darkness.

"Oh God, Logan, I don't want them to see my hands...."

And that's when he falls to his knees beside the bed and holds you until you can't breathe. But by then, he's breathing for you and you don't realize it's a kiss until he falls to the floor, half-conscious. You cradle his head in your lap as he whispers that he will die before he lets them touch anything about you. This is the first moment when you realize what love is.

The moment you realize he would give his freedom just to keep your fingers hidden.//

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She twists her fingers together in knots of flesh and bone and sorrow as the stream of past rushes to a climax. As she is swept away.

"To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears."

Valley of tears. Valley of the shadow. She cannot find the light.

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//Two nights later, fate is sealed. A blur of running through city streets, fast enough to steal your breath but never fast enough to get away. Half-memories of being shoved behind a dumpster and told not to move, not to so much as breathe.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to lead them away then double back. Wait here."

You clutch at his hand as he tries to pull it away. "Don't you dare walk away from me. All or nothing, remember? We stay together."

The hand pulls away. The voice does not argue, but pretend she has never even spoken. "Marie, no. Stay hidden until dawn. If I'm not back, call Chuck right away and get them to take you home. And stay with them until I contact you again."

"You won't come back." Your eyes are burning but it feels like tears. Desperate anger thickens your voice. "You know that."

"I do." A pause before his shadow joins the rest of the darkness. "But that's exactly why it has to be me instead of you."

And that's when he hits you in the head. A mercy blow. His mercy for your sins. It's your fault..... The pain is sharp and unconsciousness descends on swift wings, but before the blackness takes control, you feel him press a kiss onto your mouth, through the scarf. You see the love burn in his eyes.

This is the last time you see him.//

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"Turn then....thine eyes of mercy toward us."

Mercy is to die quickly, or not to die at all, or to neither die nor live but fly, fly up into the secret places of the stars and dance in his arms. Never to sleep in fear again. She does not expect such mercy. But she does crave it. She is still human. For now.

"Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, Regina...."

/Baby, you're the sunrise. All lit up as heaven and soft as butterflies./

"Pray that we made be made worthy...."

/Walk the fire, child. Kiss the flame. Either you will come out on the other side pure as fairy gold and deserving of his love, or you will not come out at all. Do you know how much death by fire hurts?/

"Yes." she whispers, aloud, as she rises to her feet. "Yes, I do."

Because she cannot wrap her mind fully around fate, because she is perhaps hoping this is still a dream and he is yet free, she picks up again the letter that calls her down the primrose path to hell. How they got the address, she'll never know, but when you have the resources of the world's most powerful military behind you, anything is possible. Even kidnapping and medical torture.

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Dear Marie,

Time is brief so we will not linger on formalities. You know we have the man known as Logan, alias Wolverine, in our custody. You know why we have him-- that his mutation is of great use to the cause of science and of national defense-- but as it is apparent you could better serve these causes, we are prepared to offer you a deal. We will release him if you will agree to participate in our research. There is no negotiation, no bargaining permitted. It will be a simple exchange....you for him. If you accept, come alone to the address given at the end of this letter. You have exactly twenty-four hours to respond. You do not need to be reminded, Marie, that if you jeopardize the research by informing any of your fellow mutants about the exchange, the deal is off. Logan will be executed the first moment we learn of any outside interference. You do not want that to happen any more than we do.

We await your answer.

Kindest regards,
Friends of Logan.

1013 Altman Dr.
New York, NY.
Orpheus Warehousing and Shipping.

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So it is true, after all, that demons sometimes wear the bodies of men and walk among the living world. They tear at the fears of men and rip the flesh and twist love until it causes good little girls to bow their heads and strip their innocence away piece by piece. Of course, their logic makes perverted sense, when perceived through their eyes. Logan is a liability. He has escaped once, and he will most likely escape again, sooner or later. He has the fuel of past memories to feed the furnaces of his hate and keep it stoked red hot. He does not care how much they beat him, just as long as he draws his own pint of their blood. Which they know he will. She is not such a threat. She is raw material, soft and pliable and untouched by needles or gloved fingers or the bitter drugs of pain. She knows she will hate them, but she does not yet know how much. They think she will not fight back because she will be too frightened, to terrified after the first few beatings to do anything but cower and submit. They think she is weak.

She looks in the mirror, the lines of her lip twisting into a broken glass smile. Frightened? Oh yes. She can barely breathe for the fear. But submission?

The smile scrapes across her face to crash into the defiance in her eyes. It is his defiance mingled with her own. So much of them is made of up of the other.

Let them try beat him out of her, if they think they can. Let them try.

She turns from the mirror to blow the candles out, the thin gray smoke lingering in front of the window like the ghosts of a prayer. She feels more like a ghost than she will let herself admit, as if the demons have possessed her soul even before she surrenders her body, and are dragging her deeper and deeper into the pit

Her fingers dig a crumpled white envelope out of her pocket and place it carefully in a dresser drawer. It is her confession to him, should he ever find it. It is a story of a wax-girl who fell in love with a fire-god, but who was not afraid to melt. She seals it with a kiss, a benediction, a prayer.

/Hail Mary, full of grace, be with us now and in the hour of our death. The hour of our death. The hour of our death./

His dogtags rattle loudly in the silence as she places them on top of the envelope. She will not allow the demons to find and corrupt this her first and last token of him. Already she feels barren without them. Already she feels naked even though her fingers are not exposed.

And this is the sound of snow-- a silence that smothers silence. A million tiny screams that no one hears. They are her screams. She has been shattered, broken into delicate fragments of lace and ice and she is falling from the sky, falling like a kiss of snow. Heaven is so far away and the pavement below is so cold.

The door shuts behind her and the sound is swallowed up by the frozen emptiness that remains.

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Three hours later, she is standing in front of a rusty metal door, the rapping of her fist against the steel not nearly as reverberant in her ears as the pounding of her heart against her rib cage, a slow steady battering ram of fear against the rusted steel walls of her defenses.

It's so strange how the light plays tricks on your eyes. When the demon opens the door, he looks human. His face is the face of a boy no older than she-- they do like to twist the young ones, don't they-- and his eyes rest strange against her. It is not hate. Hate is what her eyes spit at him. It is not fear. Fear is what her pupils hide from him. It might be sympathy, and that is something she almost shares with him, for a him. A pity at the other's fate. He believes it is better to wield the gun. She believes it is better to be human and bent than to be a monster and remain unscarred.

Then the light shifts again. He becomes nothing more than a demon, and as she follows him she remembers how much she hates them all.

When the others look at her, she sees no hate, or fear, of sympathy. Only greed. Hunger. It's lust of a different color, the thick rust-brown stain of corruption dripping onto the naivete of snow. Not for the first time, she fights the urge to tremble. They smile and the smiles are those of a man she remembers from childhood. A man who stood on street corner and offered to give children a piece of candy if they let him take their picture.

/The little girl who sat beside you in catechism class took the candy. They found her body three days later, but they never caught the killer./

She imagines these are all ghosts of that man. She does not have to pretend that it is the same kind of evil.

/Hey, sweetie./ The voice again calls her. /Come over here and talk to me for a minute. I've got some candy for you. Just for you. C'mon, angel. Let me see those big brown eyes up close./

This time, her mother is not there to pull her back into the car. She is alone. Again, the strangers offer candy, and she will take it.

It is very not to cry when they bring Logan in.

Very hard.

He is bleeding, and he is broken, and his eyes are red and swollen from too many hours under operating table lights. But they are also the eyes of a man laughing in the face of his captors. She knows why he was laughing. /I've got one up on you. My baby's safe; she's in Eden with the flowers and you can't touch her./

Now they are the ones to laugh.

That is why she cannot bear to meet his eyes once he sees her. She can bear a cross but she cannot stand under the sheer weight of his pain. It burns through the fog of the sedatives, and she can hear his scream. The words slip by her senses. To her mind, it is the sound of spikes being driven through the bones of wrists, through the bones of feet, all the way through to the other side. She is nailed to love, kept in place by guilt. It is the sound of pain, ten thousand fingernails grating across a tin roof, a raw and utter agony that is the most terrible thing she has heard in her life. As if his soul is tearing, straight down the middle. As if only now does he feel any of the pain of the last few days.

She cannot look. She cannot listen. She wants to stop her ears and run back to the snow and the candles and a place where she is his innocence rather than his Jezebel. There is no such place left. How does she beg forgiveness for a life time in five minutes worth of private goodbye? She does not know. But she tries, though.

She tries.

But he is still screaming when they take her, leaving him behind. Leaving him alive, although she is already dead.

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The light hurts. It burns her, this abyss of white, scalding hot, light. It scalds her eyelids; sears holes in her brain. This is the first examination and they all want to watch. Nothing will be secret anymore. The light relieves all.

She closes her eyes and tries to remember a time when white was beautiful. He gave her white roses once....left the petals scattered across her bed....

/Baby, you're the sunrise. All lit up like heaven and soft as butterflies. But don't you tell a soul./

It's a little late for that. The sunrise has been lost; a vow shattered.

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Her gloves are only the first thing they make her take off.

/There will be moments, yes, when you are allowed to dream of falling snow and when you pretend you were always pure. But only moments. Does he know how much you love him? Does he know?/

No, she thinks, as she stares down at her naked fingers. But he will.

He will.