#dark!cat

Cat woke, screaming. She was in a room, high tech, no windows, looked medical. She herself was on a cot of some sort with an IV dripping into her arm, and it was only then that she realized she was trying to sit up and someone was holding her down by the shoulder.

“Let me go!” she said, slashing at the arm with her other hand, watch claw marks appear, and then heal, almost instantly. It was only then that she looked up at the owner of the arm.

She recognized him, them as one of the people who had broken her and Bear out of the Weapon X facility. The one she hadn’t trusted. The one who smelled oddly like Victor Creed. There was a nurse standing well behind him.

“You’re…” she let the sentence hang. When she lay back down on the cot, he took away the hand.

“Logan,” he said, in a gruff voice. “Name’s Logan. I’m…Victor’s my half brother. That’s why you keep smellin’ ‘im. He’s nowhere near here, though, kid, I promise. An’ I don’t take after him much.”

“Logan,” she repeated. “I’m…Cat.” She looked around. Someone else had entered the room, a large, blue-furred person wearing wire-rimmed glasses. She had seen him on the rescue mission, too, but not with the glasses.

“Cat, huh? Works. This is Annie,” he gestured to the nurse behind him, who seemed to be gradually calming down. “And that’s Hank. He’s a doctor.” She nodded, but looked back at Logan. “I recognize you…you’re Wolverine.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Welcome to Xavier’s School for the Gifted. And yeah, unfortunately you and I share a past with Weapon X. That’s over now, though. You’re safe here, kid.”

The one Logan called Hank had made his way over, introduced himself as “Dr. Hank McCoy,” and starting looking over the monitors they had her hooked up to.

“So,” she asked, because there were a lot of beds in here and she was the only one in one of them. “Where’s Bear? You know, the big guy who was with me?”

No one had really been talking, but they somehow managed to get quieter.

It was Dr. McCoy, who she now recognized from the news as “Beast,” who finally spoke. “He didn’t make it, Cat. I’m very sorry,” they were all looking at her, she supposed it made, sense, but they were all looking at her, and she didn’t like it.” Dr. McCoy placed a large hand on hers.

“But, how could he not have made it? I know I was unconscious at the end, but we were like ten feet away from the plane. How could he not have made it?”

“He wasn’t…killed in combat,” continued Dr. McCoy. He was…I don’t know if you knew, but Bear was very sick, from what they had done to him. He was part of a new experiment, you understand. His body couldn’t withstand the adamantium and other chemicals they were using. We did everything we could for him, I promise.”

“But…” and all of a sudden she felt very shaky and like she didn’t, in fact, want to get out of the bed. “Bear and I were in the same experimental group. That’s how we got out together. So…am I very sick?”

“Well,” said Dr. McCoy. “Bear was further along--”

Logan reached out and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, “Hank.” And then he looked down at Cat and said. “You’re gonna be just fine, kid.” And she appreciated the gesture. But she knew exactly what it meant.

“Hey darling, what’s your poison?” She turned and scrutinized the man with slit-pupiled eyes. He was drunk, not particularly interesting, and his heartbeat spiked when he saw her eyes.

“Not you,” she said, turning away.

“Mutant bitch,” he muttered before turning away. Oh well. She had been thinking of not hurting anyone tonight. Without even looking, she had a clawed hand on his shirt collar, pulling him back.

“I really don’t like being called ‘bitch,’” she said, sounding almost bored. “It’s not just the insult. It’s the poorly thought out irony. And then he was airborne, clearing the bar, crashing into the oddly color bottles they advertised behind.

She put a twenty on the counter and got up to go. Of course at this point the entire establishment was looking at her. Let them. The question was, would anyone attempt to stop her from leaving? The man had friends, of course. Most of them were intimidated with a hiss, baring her silver fangs, but there was one stupid enough to try. She dislocated his shoulder and crushed half the bones in his left foot.

The next obstacle was the bouncers, who were understandably unhappy about the property damage. There were two of them, both probably triple her weight. The first one she put in the hospital with a concussion and lacerations that were described by the doctor as “a wild animal, if one learned to sharpen its claws.” The police had been threatening for a while to charge her with assault, but amazingly none of the victims ever wanted to admit to being beaten up by a twenty-five-year-old, 5’6” woman enough to press charges. There would be the property damage. Perhaps it was time for a new city again.

The other bouncer she ended up going home with. All in all, not a bad night.

Cat always appreciated that while Loki could probably teleport them, and a number of similar groups had flashy vehicles like the X-Men’s X-Wing, they often drove to missions. It was grounding; it gave her a sense that they were here, on earth, doing something real.

Tonight’s mission was challenging, and none of them were really speaking; mentally preparing instead. They had found a Chitauri cell, and there were a lot of them; a stretch for the four people in the car. It was one of the missions where she wondered, is this it? Is this when it happens? She hadn’t joined the “Hell Patrol” just to save the world, after all. She had joined to die saving it, and although she never fought anything but her hardest—anything else could put the rest of the team at risk—missions like these, she wondered.

She was wearing what she sometimes called her “red dress,” which was neither red nor a dress. Her fighting gear, made of flexible black fabric with enough light body armor sewn into it to give her some protection while also allowing for flexibility. It wasn’t that different from what Natasha wore, except she carried a great deal fewer weapons. She was her own weapon. She called it her “red dress” because it was for special nights, and the black didn’t particularly show blood.

There was a strange camaraderie to this small group. She and Hogun rarely spoke, but sometimes they sparred, and he occasionally nodded politely to her. Natasha watched Netflix with her when there wasn’t a mission to be found. Loki, well, that had gotten complicated, but they got along, obviously. She’d seen groups like this before, the X-Men, the Avengers. They simply worked well together. It was a thing she’d never particularly had since Weapon X and often actively avoided, on a theory that was proving to be quite true.

Dying was much more difficult when you had people to miss you.

I know a raven-haired man

I’d give him a green-handled hairbrush

For his days of peace

and a green-handled dagger

For his days of war

And hope the hairbrush

Was the first to wear out