Work Text:
By the time Mystique got to him, Sabretooth was in bad shape. The drugs they'd pumped into him were enough to override his healing factor for the moment, and not only did he look completely fucking out of it, he was also covered in wounds; dark purple bruises, and wide, oozing gashes. He was bound down to the medical cot with chains as thick as two thumbs, and there were a series of tubes and needles in his arms.
Mystique's entire approach had been as silent as the room was now. The trick would be getting him out of the facility while keeping it that way. With him the way he was now, it was almost inevitable that she'd have to switch tactics and blaze their way out at gunpoint.
All without reducing him to a hive-like collection of bullet holes along the way. A pity—if he was lucid this would be so much easier. She sighed as she slipped forward, pulling a lockpicking set from her belt and meandering towards the locks holding the chain in place. "Try not to make too much noise, Victor."
His eyelids fluttered, and bleary blue eyes tried to focus on her her form. "Mmmm? Who…?"
He likely wouldn't recognize her as she was, some random mid-security guard she'd smothered and hidden in a locker, so she sighed and let it all melt away Ainto the familiar shape of her 'base form'. Blue skin, crimson hair, skull, severe glare—the shape she took when her powers first manifested.
"Don't say a word, Victor. I'm trying to keep this low profile."
His puzzled, wary expression melted into a soft, stupid one, his mouth hanging open in a slack smile. She watched him weakly struggle in the chains, moving as if to try to embrace her.
Victor couldn't even obey the simplest request. He said a word. "Mysty!"
Mystique looked quickly over her shoulder; no alarms yet, no security team hearing his voice.
"Yes, it's me. I know this must be like a ray from heaven to your drug-addled mind right now but I'm asking you to shh, while I get these damned chains off of you, hmm?"
She worked harder, fingers slipping into the lock itself as she molded a bone on the fly to work the pins.
The delighted look didn't leave his face, but he did, thankfully, clam up for the moment while she worked off his chains. They fell away, and before she could do more, he rolled his heavy, slow body upward. Needles and rubber tubes started pulling out of his body. None of the machines he was attached to had started beeping…. yet.
But she was ready for when they did. Her hand morphed back to normal, and she looped an arm around him to help him up as she tried to more gingerly remove the needles one by one.
"I know they dampened your healing factor—but think you can push through? I'll carry you if I must but I'd really prefer not to fight my way out alone."
Victor grunted, letting her help him stagger to his feet.
"Of course I can," he huffed, his words only somewhat slurring, "I can push through anything."
He tore the heart rate monitor off of his chest, and that was when the machines started to beep.
Mystique hissed. There was their timer. Soon those klaxons would start blaring and security would burst out of the woodwork. Dreadful. She unhooked a handgun from her belt and used her free hand to steady him.
"Then you'd better get ready to push through as many humans as it takes—those idiot guards'll be here any second and I think we'd best try and get ahead of them."
Sabretooth flexed his powerful hands, and his claws lengthened slowly.
"M'ready, Mysty."
It was anyone's guess if that was true, but they hadn't died yet. Probability, if not luck, was on their side. One day , maybe, it'd all catch up to them—but so far Mystique had yet to see that day. One more roll of the dice said it'd all be fine. She just had to believe that as she hauled her longtime …don't give it a name right now Mystique, not when you're still in deep shit here. Situation. Call it a situation…situation with a man she couldn't help but save. They can let any sappier nonsense take them after this place was far behind them.
She glanced back at Sabretooth—roughed up, healing slow, hurt and abused by this medical horror show around them—and felt that familiar stir of affection bubble up inside her before she pulled her eyes away and put every ounce of herself into escape mode, before this turned into a real shitshow of an egress.
The world was a swimming smear around Sabretooth. It had been a smear for a long time. He didn't know how long. A haze of doctors and drugs that dulled his rage.
But the world was getting clearer again. He had an anchor point. A pillar to guide him. A beautiful blue rock in a sea of uncertainty.
Mystique. She'd come for him. And now she was going to point him at who to kill.
Even like this, even drugged and weak, and with the pain starting to kick in, Sabretooth could kill. Sabretooth could kill in his sleep.
And now that the needles were out of him, he knew distantly that he wouldn't be dizzy and dreamy like this for long.
Not that it was that bad. The dreamlike haze made Mystique seem even more like an avenging goddess.
She hadn't shapeshifted out of her blue form, her finger on the trigger of an impressive gun as she ran through the halls at a speed that matched his, her head whipping around for danger and sending the crimson strands dancing across her cheek.
His gaze was drawn momentarily to the red light of the gun sight, like a cat with a laser pointer. But he pulled his attention away as he heard the sound of a dozen bootfalls coming from down the hall.
Sabretooth struggled to square his shoulders. "They're comin'. Any second now."
"I hear that," Mystique mused wryly. "You're fucking out of it, Victor. I'm trusting you to shatter the first one's gun arm as soon as he rounds the corner, then I'm opening fire."
She shifted, aiming the gun at the corner with a low chuckle. "The rest of them'll be like sheep to the slaughter."
Sabretooth became aware of how hungry he was.
"Haven't had mutton in a while," he murmured.
Faceless, jackbooted thugs swam into his vision.
Sabretooth had killed a lot of faceless, jackbooted thugs in his time. He didn't know who these ones were, or where they were, or what they were doing there. And he didn't care.
Like Mystique said, he was on the first one before they could even fire. His body howled in pain, and he howled with it.
And that was great because feeling pain meant that his healing factor was starting to kick back in.
Sabretooth grinned as arterial spray hit his face.
Mystique saw Sabretooth already covered in blood before she could get off the first shot at the goons coming toward them.
That was probably good—it didn't seem to be his own, that meant the plan was going off without a hitch. It meant he was okay under all the drugs they'd pumped into him. It meant he was pushing the poison out of his veins.
Which meant she could do what she needed to. She slid out from behind him and jerked her gun up to meet the next handful of men in line. Goons, the lot of them, undertrained dogs who she easily got in her sights before pulling the trigger with the sharp report of her gun. One, two, three bullets into high priority lethal target zones. More blood sprayed, the air was thick with the smell—but it was only going to get gorier until they were out. Their fault for capturing a mutant like Victor, and for pissing off a mutant like her.
They worked their way down the hall like that, through waves of goons— first with handguns, then with higher firepower.
By the time they were intercepted by some asshole in a small, industrial-style mech suit, Mystique was sure that Sabretooth was going to be fine. He was cackling now.
"Hey Mystique, get a load of Ripley here!"
"Please, Sabretooth, I like Ripley. Don't drag such a beautiful survivor down to this clown's level." She aimed her handgun at the jackass, her expression neutral as she sighed. "I'd really advise exiting the vehicle while you can still exit it with your limbs attached. If you let us pass, I won't even give you a new forehead piercing." Her finger tensed on the trigger—driving the point home.
This kind of threat always had about fifty-fifty odds of succeeding. This time, her target was smart enough to win the coin toss.
Maybe the deciding factor was the sound of his comrade's spine breaking as Sabretooth threw him against the wall.
Either way, they had a clear run down the passage— and to the exit.
"Come along Victor. The sooner I see the back of this place the better—It's starting to piss me off."
She grabbed his hand in a moment of impulse, feeling the hot blood slick against her fingers as she squeezed, and ran for the exit.
His hand closed almost gently around hers, and he gave her a soft look, like he had while chained to the medical cot.
When Mystique peeled Sabretooth out of the passenger seat of the second getaway car, and toward the safehouse, she saw that he'd left quite a lot of blood on the upholstery. She also saw that the wounds and gashes on his body from the medical cell still hadn't closed.
The upholstery would have to be cleaned—or the car would have to be trashed. Either way, it wasn't her concern for the moment. "You're still bleeding Victor. What in hell's name did they pump you full of for that? I'm going to have to patch you up myself at this rate."
"Ugh," he grimaced at the car as he got out, hanging himself on her shoulders. "Fuck if I know. Whatever it was, the healing factor's still so busy fighting it off it hasn't gotten to the unimportant shit yet. You know, like my meat."
"Your unimportant meat," Mystique drawled. "Which you need, because as far as I've been able to tell, Victor—you haven't surpassed your need for a corporeal form as of yet. Or have you ascended to some kind of energy being without telling me?"
He was always like this, but despite her snark she couldn't help but be endeared. She leaned back into him, leading him step by step towards the front door. "If not , it looks like I've got to waste the time patching you up. Exciting."
Sabretooth chuckled roughly, staggering along with her into the safehouse. His steps were sluggish, betraying the pain as he walked.
"Nah, not yet, Mysty. I'll let you know. I mean, the meat's important but the healing factor thinks it's low on the priority list, you know?"
Admittedly, Mystique had noticed that, with both Sabretooth and Wolverine.
Mystique looped an arm around him with a huff—steadying him, holding him close, as she unlocked the door and pushed them both inside. It was a quirk of their healing factor—one she supposed she could understand with her own abnormal physiology.
"I suppose it's harder for you to bleed out with your body the way it is."
"Yeah, I mean it's kinda just a temporary inconvenience," he admitted, looking around the little room blearily as they entered. He let her help him over to the couch, where he immediately collapsed and started staining it like he had the car. "Bleed out and I just kinda gotta sit there and wait until the body makes more blood. Well, I mean, sometimes I can push through it."
It wasn't exactly the Ritz. No safehouse was. It was a little place, furnished with the bare minimum—though it did have a television and a stereo she'd had dropped off sometime around a half decade ago. Unadorned walls, beige paint. Nothing all that distinctive until they made it home for however short their stay would be.
"I've seen that a few times, actually." She leaned over his shoulders, brushing his hair out of his face with a wry smile "look. Get comfy. I'll get you some alcohol or something—not like it'll do much, but it might give your body a fun, new poison to fight instead."
Sabretooth chuckled again, laying his head on the arm of her couch, his long, blood-matted locks hanging off the edge of it. He looked even more like a cat than usual. One that had gotten itself into a fight with a car, perhaps.
"You know me, doll. That's my favorite poison. Maybe I'll actually feel it while my healing factor's so busy, eh?"
"An exciting experience," Mystique smirked down at him before blowing him a lazy kiss and sauntering towards the kitchen. "A rarity for quite a few of us—you know it hardly effects me."
"Yeah, usually we gotta pretend to be drunk for fun," he teased.
Sabretooth's healing factor had neutralized most of the drugs by now, and was presumably working to get it fully out of his system. Despite this, he still felt somewhat woozy and dreamy. Maybe it was the blood loss.
Maybe it was the nostalgia of laying beat to hell in a safe house with Mystique. It had happened so many times now. More than he would have guessed a few years ago, now that he knew all the masks she'd worn around him.
Sabretooth had always loved being around Mystique. Loved the way it made his blood race.
Lately, here, now that they were both older, more open— now that they'd both moved at least a little bit to the side of the so-called good-guys— he felt something new around her.
He felt safe.
Mystique was moving around the kitchen—bottles clinked as she hummed a familiar tune to herself (La Mer—from the safehouse in Berlin, when she called herself 'Leni'), the fridge door shut with a thunk and a mutter of 'having to brave town to get something halfway edible that wasn't out of a can' interrupting the notes.
A moment later, she dropped on the couch beside him and offered him a full bottle of rum, a bottle of vodka balanced in her other hand.
"Here. A stiff drink for the annoying cat."
He grinned at her, a warm feeling flushing through his body— and not just the pain.
"Thanks, doll." He leaned over and kissed her cheek, as he took the bottle of rum from her. "I heard you humming in there. Makes me want to get up and dance."
"In your condition? Your leg might snap in half." Mystique didn't flush, she had extraordinary control of her body, he knew that, but there was a fond flick of her eyes that betrayed she'd only just averted it.
She lifted her bottle to her lips and took a long sip "But i could be persuaded."
"Gimme a few minutes and we'll see how fast these wounds start healing." He grinned widely and took a long drink of the bottle she'd given him. "Either we can start dancing, or you can start the unique experience of trying to give me first aid."
Either one would be nice, admittedly.
Mystique stared at him for a long moment, before she sniffed with a wry smile.
"Fine. Fine. I'll dance with you till you collapse and piece you back together when you do. For old times sake, hmm?"
He raised the bottle with a fond smile, only wincing a little as he pulled one of his injuries.
"For old times sake, Mysty."