The Man In The Tower (A Fairy Tale)

Author: Philip Peevy (knottyhead1)

Rating: PG15

Disclaimer: Characters owned by Marvel Entertainment.

"Shit--smells like an animal in here." The man before Logan held his nose.

"Thank you, Mr. Shinoff. I've figured that one out already," James Logan snapped back dismissively. "Now, what is it?!?"

"Well...." the man answered, " far as I can tell, I'm damned sure ain't no rat ate that. Not even in here. I know this is New York...but twenty-two stories up..."

With that, handyman Fred Shinoff examined the left portion of the huge, angular mahoghany office desk before him. He looked closely: Within a space of a few hours, some...thing had gnawed a neat, nine-and-a-half-inch deep gouge into the desk. Even the leg of the desk was gone.
Shaking his head, the handyman then looked at the desk's surface. Upon it were several stacks of important-looking documents inserted into portfolios.
All were half-eaten.

"Left ya a present, I see, " the handyman continued helpfuly, turning over one brightly-marked portfolio. "Man, if that is a rat, then that's the biggest fuckin' rat turd I ever--"

"Thank you, Mr. Shinoff," Logan repeated. "Now, get a flamin' broom, and get rid of it."

"Oh...right. Sorry, Mr. Howlett," Shinoff answered contritely. He had never seen Logan like this before; usually, the man was rather civil. "I can't tell you what it is. I'll clean it right up. Sorry." With that, he hurried about his business.

Watching him, Logan adjusted his tie--a necessary accomodation which always made him rather uncomfortable--and then went to the window.

As he stood there, the glass and steel and concrete of the room protected him, held him, surrounded him. Now, in his comfortable, high-rise office within the new foundation called the X-Corporation, James Logan felt finally stable. He was professionally secure now; in addition, he had acquired the one thing that had become most important to him.

He had become civilized. His dark periods of beserker rages, his feral regressions, his memory loss--all of these, thanks to his ex-wife and the old man, were finally a thing of the past. Now, he acted properly. Filled with a new sense of pride, Logan smoothed back his neat, dark locks, adjusted his tie again, and peered out of the enormous glass window again.

He looked down at his hands. The adamantium within his appendages had been removed years ago--Warren and Scott had said, "successfully"--and even the rough, sabre-like claws beneath his skin had been dulled, their once-sharp edges broken off and discarded.

Now, he was a man again. Twenty-two stories below him, the people on the streets strolled along, oblivious to him.

Just then--as the handyman hurried out--Logan's secretary stepped into the room.

"Yes, Ms. Brant?" he said to the young woman at the door now. So proud of yourself, Logan thought to himself. All that self-control.

"Mrs. Frost--for you, Mr. Howlett." the young lady said, half-smiling. She grimaced slightly, glancing about the room. "She...she's got a special T&R for you."

Track and requisition job, Logan thought, suddenly uncomfortable again. A nagging feeling rose in his chest. Wonder how long It'll be before the old man and the others notice. It's getting harder to hide it.

Thanking his subordinate--who still held her breath from the fetid air--Logan trudged past her wearily towards a cavernous room at the far end of the hall.

Once he arrived, he saw Emma. He drew closer and glanced at her.

His former wife was no longer beautiful; looking at her now, Emma Frost's aging face seemed to him to have grown narrowed, almost hawklike. She sat there before a computer in enclosed near darkness, with not a single window to illuminate her.


"Logan," she began. She did not smile.

"Emma," he said, and not very convincingly.

He looked at her face again and recalled old thoughts of her sweet sex and perfumed, white breasts. Now, she no longer drew even a cursory reaction from him.
When he first came to the team, he set his sights upon her, a cold, indifferent woman who became Scott Summer's second wife. He did not do this out of a sense of survival--to mate with her, as would have been necessary in the wild. He didn't need to; he had hardly loved Emma.

But the challenge of defeating his younger teammate overwhelmed him. After this, he even replaced her young husband in his position at the corporation--a victory that finally gave Logan a fullfilling sense of self-worth and meaning. Now, he had been given a new mission, and that seemed to give his existence even more meaning.

"This is a special case," the woman began. "Cerebro detected it--several days ago. A pretty powerful one, too, from what we can discern. At least it's humanoid, we think. We want you to track it--"

"We?" he asked pointedly, cutting her off. "Who's 'we?'"

"We--Charles and Warren--think it's important," the woman continued, suddenly aware of him now as she tracked the myriad of data displayed before her on the screen.

Just then, he remembered the first meeting where she had introduced him as the "new'" Logan--a shining example of Xavier's success--and how she had successfully made him into a man. She then would drag him to seminars around the country, touting him to important members of the human community There, she would make her usual, plastic speeches about "acceptance" and "commonality," all while wearing her usual, plastic face. He hated these events, which, quite frankly, bored him to tears.

During these meetings, the old man would look at him without speaking a word.

"Why are you telling me this instead of Charles?" he asked now.

She rolled her eyes. "He assigned me..."

"I didn't ax ya that....!" he shot back, as if he was feeling his manhood again for the first time.

"Ask," Emma said disdainfully, "Not ax." With that, she again leaned over the computer console. She knew just how to disarm him--knew just what he wanted. "Still using the savage man's grammar." She shook her head. "Logan...you never truly learn, do you? Even when we were married."

"Oh, what did our daughter call you? Ah, yesss," she imitated, her thick, faux-British accent cutting through him as she spoke. "She called you a beast."

"In any case," she added, regarding him mildly now, "Charles didn't think it was necessary. I'm sending all the information we have to your computer." She answered him dismissively without glancing at him, as if waving away a fly. "You still have one, right?"

He felt humiliated, and he hated her for it. Years ago, he might have slain someone else for the insult; now, however, he said nothing, felt nothing--at all. Now, all he could do was to stand there before her--helpless in his impotent manner, all of his once-sharp edges worn away.

Grimacing, he turned from her wordlessly and left the cavernous room.

A day later, he sat aboard a special aircraft, relieved to be free of her. As he sat now, he adjusted the microscanner device on the craft's console. He had found his mutant where the signal was strongest; here, of all places--within the perimeter of New York's vast Central Park.
After exiting the craft, Logan signalled to his pilot--who remained safely above him in hover mode--and began to trudge through the eight-hundred acre park. He took careful note of the sculptures that he passed--the park held a myriad of them--so that he could find his way back to his original position. He once knew how to do this on his own, but now, he had forgotten this.

As he continued to walk apace, a light rain began to fall.

The nearer he got to his target, the faster the rain fell. Before long, the rain became an undulating deluge. He glanced benind him, but he could no longer see the craft--or any sculptures.

He kept on; the relentless, pounding downpour increased to a near gale, drenching him. Waves of water spurted into his mouth and ears, filling him--poured into his eyes, forcing them closed. The short, grassy trail beneath his feet became saturated, and the ground turned into a thick mud into which his shoes sank. As he advanced though the park's inner perimeter, he lost traction, and slipped twice; he was hardly able to see even a few feet from where he was. He was lost. All he could sense was the rain.

He struggled to his feet a third time, his hands muddied and cut, his handheld scanner gone. Wiping away the dripping deluge from his face, he surged forward, pulling his feet from the now-damp ground. As he did, he noticed that the temperature had dropped percipitously now.

Shivering violently, a feeling of arousal--he did not know why--grew in his breast; His chest rose as he breathed in deeply, and he could his own heart now, hammering against his breastbone as if it was trying to force its way out of his body.

Then, he spotted it.

It was a woman--a dark-skinned female, from what he could make out. She snarled slightly at him, baring a noticable set of incisors; then, before he could react, she retreated quickly into the thick, wet undergrowth.

Seeing her, his heart beat even faster; exhilarated now, he shot off after her. Slowed again by ever-increasing sheets of water, he did not get even a few paces forward before it struck him.

It leapt upon him, ripping at his clothes and his flesh. In seconds, an attacker's sharp bite punched into the bones and flesh of his lower legs, immoblizing him instantly; he fell, and unable to fight the thing off, Logan quickly lost conscious--the thing still tearing away at him.

He awoke slightly to see the woman over him, gently cradling him. The deluge had ceased, but he still could not yet move.She gazed down at him; then, she seemed to disappear.

When he opened his eyes again, the pilot stood over him.

"Don't move, sir," the man now said to him.

"The...th' womman...did..." Logan slurred back.

"What woman?" the pilot answered.


**********************************

A day later--his wounds fully healed--he sat alone in his office. Distracted, he thought about the events of the day before. He felt at his chest, his heart beating again even as he sat.

"My apologies."

He whirled around in his chair, startled by the voice; before him stood his target--the woman in the park. She had been here the entire time. .

"It is called a Digger," she offered. "Again, my apologies--about what happened to you and your desk." She gestured, pointing to her right; in a dark corner of the room, just out of view, sat a hideous, small creature near the wall. "It is quite blind, but vicious when it is threatened."

Logan looked at her fully now. He had seen--and captured--other mutants for the old man before, but none like this.

He might have mistaken the woman for some obscene beggar, if not for her myterious poise and strange beauty. She was quite a sight to him; she wore only dirtied, floor length strips of ill-colored cloth that barely covered her naked, shimmering skin. Twigs dotted her wild hair, and a large scar rested over her right cheek.
Her skin engrossed him; silvery, slick, wet flecks covered every inch of her flesh like stars in the night sky. Her entire body appeared damp, as if she had been in a downpour; curiously, the wild mane of white hair that draped her shoulders appeared dry. The silver flecks on her body seemed to play about her dirtied, brown feet, surrounding her and covering her. It was almost like looking at a woman covered in painted glitter.

She stood there for a moment more, then, she strolled over to the adjacent window. As she did, her ample, brown buttocks undulated beneath the ill-colored rags. The delicious shock of this--her utter openness--aroused in him something that he had not felt in years.

Entranced, he had strangely forgotten about the desk, Emma, the park--everything but her now. After a moment more, he moved cautiously to another large chair before her and sat down.
Now, as he steeled himself for his speech, Logan possessed the well-practiced accumen of a top-rated salesperson: He knew the pitch well--after all, it had been used with great success on him.

At that point, he thought about the sight of her, still in the rain. Then, suddenly--he did not know why--he rose slightly.
He let out a deep breath; then, he began. "You're...you're inside the X-Corporation Towers Foundation. We keep mutants from being exploited by others, and we train them in the use of their powers. The idea, we hope, is to become more accepted by society...."

He paused for another moment, still not knowing why. Unsure, he began again. "Now--when you are trained by the foundation to live properly..."

She listened attentively now, not understanding a word he spoke of, but fascinated by him all the same. "Tell me, little man-in-a-tower," she asked finally. Silvery, shimmering lights danced about her sea-blue eyes. "How can you see the sky at night--hear the call of birds when you are here? How do you stand to live as you do--here, stripped of all that you are?"

He sat silently, not knowing how to answer her. Suddenly, he looked from her face to the ceiling. Tearing his gaze away, he looked again to the creature that was now eating the remains of his new desk.

The creature was manlike and small--no more than one-and-a half-feet in height. It possessed a child's huge head, a powerful, compact torso, and greyish flesh that covered it entirely. Eyeless and toothless, it nonetheless had enormous jaws that matched its voracious appetite.

"You did not even sense my arrival," the tatterdemallion said playfully. "Look, Digger--our friend has lost his sense of smell!!"

"Smell," the ugly little man repeated for her; then, he returned to nibbling on an adjacent bookshelf.

He suddenly found his gaze drawn to her legs--or what was between them. The woman held them open far enough for him to see her sex; it glistened wetly, like her skin. The woman's sex--and the Digger--had this smell; pungent, ripe, like the smell of the world. He was at once both excited and repelled by it.

Noting his excitement, she grinned wickedly. "I have made you ashamed," she said. Turning in the chair, she closed her legs--hiding her glistening, silvery treasure from him. "Better now. Much more civilized."

At her words, he was shocked to see where he was now in the room. He had left the chair completely; he found himself crouched before her, monkeylike, his elbows resting on his knees, and his fingertips touching the floor. He had not even realized this.

"Can you feel it now, little man?" she continued. "The desire? The lust for life--like a hunger? The need to live."

"Live," the troll-man repeated.

She...knows, Logan thought. I've...lost my ability to track anything with my hypersenses. I've tried so hard ta be different, but now, I ain't even like an animal--like them anymore.

"We must go now," the woman said.

'Wait..."

"No. We cannot. But I will return one last time for you."


***************************************

Three nights later, she returned. Inside, a frantic Logan cavassed the floor of his office, pacing rapidly to and fro.

"You're here! Wait--stay this time..." he pleaded.

"No," she answered. "We have already waited. As I said, we are here to bid you farewell."

"Don't go--please. Please," he pressed. "I need ya....I...I been here...all this time...all o' my life, an' I'm ready...ta leave this place," he pleaded. "I am. Take me with you. Teach me everything...!"

She turned to him finally. "You already know everything. You've simply forgotten how. Logan...you are not ready yet...not yet. But you will be."

"When?!?" he begged feverently. "I've waited fer ya..."

"Soon," she answered. "It will come. But this will be our final visit."

"I have known you all my life, my love," the woman continued. "Known what you are--what you truly wanted to be. When you are ready--truly ready--come for us. But for now, this is the last time you will see me. We will not return here again, and we will not wait forever."

With that, she left out through the open window, leaving him alone.


Over the next few days, he paced the floor of his office, endlessly beating at his breast as if wanting to tear something out. It was as if a madman had taken control of the room; Logan now swore furiously at his subordinates and raged inconsolably; at times, he'd spend hours locked inside the room, pounding on the walls with his fists. On other occasions, he would remain inside; others could hear him talking to someone, but no one could ever be seen.

His appearance became equally disheveled; his smoothed, black hair became a unruly tangle that shot out straight from the sides of his head. His gaze became wild, and his smell....

It was during this time that word of Logan's savage behavior finally reached Warren and the old man. They arrived at his office door one morning, expecting a confrontation; however, the room--which before had remained continuously locked--was quiet.

Upon entering, the first thing that Warren noticed was the scent.

There was no one present in the room; the office itself was a shattered mess, with holes in its opposite walls and destroyed furniture scattered about. An adjacent glass window--with its encasement completely obliterated--stood open.

"What the...?'' Warren remarked, going over to the smashed desk. "What the hell went on here?!" At that moment, Emma Frost--who had heard about Logan's odd behavior but had chosen to remain indifferent to it--rushed in.


"Interesting," the old man said.

"Did anyone see him leave?!? You--goddammit, answer me!!" Warren roared to the poor, quivering subordinates who now lined the hallway before him. All shook their heads.

"Where did he go?!?" the young man railed on. "Emma?!?"

Stupified, the woman could not answer.

"Never mind," the old man said. "I have mentally scanned the room...he's gone."

Then, Old Man Xavier rolled over to the window and looked out.

"Interesting," he repeated.

With that, he quickly grinned. After this, he turned in his chair. "Excuse me, both of you...I...I'll be in my office."

Emma caught the motion. "Did you see that? Was the old man smiling?" she asked.

"I didn't see it," Warren said, oblivious to her. He glanced briefly at the ceiling; then, he adjusted his tie. "Twenty-two stories straight up--his door was locked from the inside, and no one saw him leave. Well, he didn't have the mutant power to fly, now, did he?"

"No--Logan never did have any real abilities," Emma offered. "He never wanted to better himself--never wished to be more acceptable, more human--not like we do."

"He never truly adapted," she added helpfully. Suddenly, she found herself glancing towards the window.