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Redemption


AnonGrimm

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Title: Redemption

Author: AnonGrimm

Summary: Sabretooth runs into Tabitha Smith, a.k.a. Meltdown. After a difficult mission in San Francisco, the mutant group X-Force disbands, and Tabby takes the opportunity to strike out on her own, ending up in Seattle. Running out of money, she tries mercenary work, but balks when her client expects her to kill up in Alaska. He gives her the job of stealing something from a bad man out in the Yukon instead, and she reluctantly accepts. To her shock, her mark turns out to be Victor Creed. Her hang-ups about redemption lead her into danger again, but what game is Sabretooth really playing?

Rating: Adult++

Pairings: Sabretooth/Meltdown

Feedback: I'd love to hear from you. If you have a question or would like to discuss the story, I will check here periodically and reply as soon as I can. Please review the story in the review panel, too; but I can't reply to you there, so look here for a response afterward.

Story URL: http://xmen.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600090727

Thanks!

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Hi OriginalCeenote, and thanks for reading and reviewing!

Since I just posted this story today, I was prepared to wait awhile until someone found it. You're providing an awesome "instant feedback gratification" that makes an author supremely happy!

I LOVE Sabretooth, have for years. He's my number 2 guy in Marvel (yes, Wolverine is number 1) and I don't know why it took me so long to write a fan fic tale with him. Watching X-Men: Origins again (and again and again, haha) got me into another mini-obsession with Sabey thanks to Liev Schreiber's fantastic portrayal of the character. However, when it came time to write, I knew I'd want to do my dear blonde psychopath as he is in the canon comics. He's wearing Liev's wardrobe a lot in tribute, but I gotta have the blonde version; that's my addiction.

I was actually beginning another Sabey tale called "Blood Song" when I started re-reading some X-Force comics in research mode, hunting for Victor's dialogue details. Reading all that about Tabitha bringing him milk in the Danger Room after Wolvie lobotomized him got to me, and the next thing you know, "Redemption" was born. Then the timelines (a necessary evil when trying to do authentic canon Marvel tales) dictated that "Redemption" would have to come first. Therefore, I will offer up "Blood Song" as a sequel to this tale when it's completed (kinda weird, since "Blood Song" has two chapters written already, but oh, well). Incidentally, "Blood Song" is largely slash, though there is a lot of Het going on as well. That story deals with mostly original characters, though, and Tabitha won't be in it.

Sabey as bi. Well, I agree with you that his misogynist tendencies makes it easy to see him as bi. Also, his physiological issues, too, and shear size. Sabey is 6'6, 375 lbs with adamantium bones, and pointy on most of his ends. I always believed that the reason he calls women "frail" is because they are - to him. A huge man can sometimes prefer a less petite lady due to wanting to have fun without worrying about breaking or hurting her (I have that on authority from a huge man I'm friends with, and he told me exactly that). So it's not so long a stretch for me to imagine that Sabey might romp with men to avoid having his toys break so fast. I tend to see him as not really caring about labels like "bi", "gay", or "straight", though. He takes what he wants, and if anyone teased him about being any particular label, well ... I wouldn't want to be that person. On the other hand, I think he'd be into his own masculinity, so I doubt he'd care to be called "gay" by anyone, either. That's why Perrin is "his type" (being the more feminine of the pair). I had fun with Sabey needling Brys, though; it's something he'd do for the gleeful ugly fun of it.

On the "he's psycho, not just a jerk" notion, I agree entirely. He's even more brutal in "Blood Song", actually, with necrophilia in chapter 1 and cannibalism in chapter 2. Hee hee, I likes my Sabey nasty! In this tale, though, I wanted to explore how it is when he gets seriously damaged; hence the meat of chapter 1 of "Redemption".

Enter the snow leopard: I needed a walking plot point, to be brutally honest, and I figured, why not put fur and a tail on it? Haha. Yeah, I like it when our feral boys make friends with predators, too. She was almost a Siberian Tiger, in fact, but I didn't want her to be too large.

I adore proper canon, whatever fandom I'm writing in. Marvel canon is harder than most, because I know so much of the history of the characters (collecting comics since the early 80s) and I'm hyper picky about "getting canon right". As for switching viewpoints, I'm addicted to doing that. The biggest challenge for me in writing Wolverine and Sabretooth is their accents. I love doing it, but it is an eye-crosser in the edit phase to make sure I didn't miss one! :-) Also, while they are very similar, I've made them slightly different, too, so I can tell them apart one day if I ever write a tale with both of them in it at once.

If you're a Wolverine fan, I invite you to read "Shattered Silence", my Wolvie/Jean Het fic. It's got a new chapter on it now, with only one chapter left to go before it's completed.

Thanks again for reviewing! I've been working on these Sabey tales off and on for three months while I was updating Wolverine and Doc Ock, and it's a treat to get a review on this one on the same day I finally get to post it! It'll probably be about ten chapters, give or take. Then I'll start posting "Blood Song" as a sequel.

Hugs, Anon

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I needed a few edits in chapter 1, dictated by chapter 2, which is now posted. I hope you enjoy, and please review and let me know what you think? Thanks!

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Hello MrsCreed, and thanks for such a great review! When I first read Mary Shelley Overdrive, I think I audibly gasped, and then I turned around and read it again about five more times in the same weekend. The Monty Python fandom is my favorite little detail given, and it makes perfect sense that he'd like that sort of thing (I love MP myself). Thank you for telling me I've got Creed pegged perfectly, too - that has made my day.

I just edited chapter 3, and expanded it here and there, mostly in Creed's dialogue. I realized last night that I hadn't made his explanation of why the telepaths ignored Tabitha's pain clear enough, or made clearer the similarity he was drawing between Rogue's situation and Tabitha's plight. Got that fixed now.

Onward and upward to chapter 4! Thank you again for reading and reviewing! - Anon

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chapter 4 is posted! Woo hoo! It's a longie, too (as opposed to a quickie, haha). It gets pretty brutal as well... good thing I have my bases covered in the warnings, huh? I hope you all enjoy it! - Anon

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Hello Ishani Nara, and welcome! You registered just to review this story? Awesome, thanks! Your review arrived right when I was worrying that my portrayal of Sabretooth might be getting "too brutal".... I've taken your kind words as proof that I shouldn't have worried. Serious Sabey fans like him for who he is, after all. I've gotten you to agree with Sabey's thinking? Brilliant! Thanks so much for your compliments, too. Getting inside Victor Creed's head has been a treat for me.

I've been a bit surprised at how much I'm enjoying writing Tabitha, actually. I've always been a Jubilee fan, and there was a time when I thought Boomer/Meltdown was a bit of a knock-off, being way too similar. Technically, after reading a lot more X-Force, I've decided their similarities are only skin- and culture-deep. Background-wise, they are vastly different, as well as their self-image and outlook on life. Jubilee thinks she's rad; Tabitha has a lot of secret self-hatred. Jubes lost her parents, Tabby lost a mom, but had an abusive father. Mostly what made me want to write a Sabey tale with Tabitha was all the rich canon story fodder Marvel sort of left on the floor. The whole "bringing milk and petting Victor in the Danger Room" situation was just too juicy not to play with it.

Actually, I started writing the sequel to this story first. "Blood Song" has two completed chapters already, but then I got inspired to mess with the Tabitha angle, and the timelines of the two stories dictated that "Redemption" had to come first. I have to admit, I love Sabey so much, I'm already tempted to do more after these two. Running him into Psylocke could be entertaining, to say the least, and I've thought about Rogue, too. What do you think?

I've gotten back to my sadly neglected edits on my Texas Chainsaw tale today, and I'm terribly overdue for a new chapter update on that one, but I'll get back to writing chapter five of "Redemption" as soon as that's done. Thanks again for reading, and registering just to review! - Anon

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Hi OriginalCeenote, great to hear from you again! I'm afraid, as a horror writer, I tend to lean in a gross direction, but I'm so happy you're enjoying the story! I've been having fun writing Brys and Perrin. I needed someone for both Sabey and Tabitha to bounce dialogue and action off of, beyond each other, and I enjoy inventing OCs that are (hopefully) fun. Thanks for letting me know they are! I feel sorry for Brys, too, actually. I love Sabey teasing him about being a "saint" just because he'd never been in prison or the military. Perrin is the way he is to outline/define a main plot point, partly, and otherwise, he's a good way to show how Sabey treats different people in varying ways. Since he shows a vicious streak, Sabey is amused to cultivate it. As a result, he's a lot "nicer" to Perrin, verbally and otherwise.

The snow leopard has been a ball to sprinkle through this story, and I loved doing the hunting scene with her and Sabey. So happy you liked it! As I've said elsewhere, in a sense, she's a walking plot point to get things rolling, but she also shows a different side of Sabey's nature (in a feral sense and in how he cares about her wellfare, unlike the people).

Chapter 5 is well on it's way, with Tabitha's section already clocking in at 14 pages. I'm going to try to keep the chapters around 30-35 pages (makes life easier for me in the edits phase), and I'm going to try to split them more or less evenly between the two POVs. So far, this story is plotted out to be 12 chapters long, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sabey ends up squeezing another out of it before we're through (since it started as a ten chapter plan). After that, of course, I'll start posting the sequel, "Blood Song", of which chapters 1 and 2 are already written.

Thanks again for reading, and for reviewing so faithfully! I greatly appreciate it!

- Anon

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Chapter 5 is now posted! Yay! They aren't getting any shorter, either. :D Hope you all enjoy it!

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Gothicpug, and thanks so much for reading and reviewing! I'm actually finished with chapter six, but it's getting its final once-over edit prior to posting. I'm hoping to finish and post it before the weekend.

Typing Victor's accent, and Logan's on my Wolverine story, are a lot of fun, but also a real challenge in the editing phase. I get to writing fast and furiously, and accent mistakes go unnoticed the first time around. Now and then, I miss some and have to fix them after posting, anyway, but I try to catch them prior. Why do I bother with them? Well, I love doing them; also, I think it really makes the character's voice pop. I'm doing accents in my Texas Chainsaw fic, too, so maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. However, I've made Victor's accent more pronounced than the others, including Logan's; mostly because he's written that way rather consistently in canon comics. My main goal here (as in most of my fan fiction tales) is to be as true to canon as I can. Actually, this story may be the most canon I've done yet, except that its sequel will beat it for that title.

Thanks again for reading, and taking the time to review! I'll try to finish my edits and get chapter six up in the next day or so.

- Anon

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Hi OriginalCeenote, and thanks for your wonderful comment! That may be one of the coolest compliments I've ever gotten in my life!

As I was telling Gothicpug above, I'm almost through with an edits run. I found some accent typos, too, so I'm fixing those. I'm aiming at wrapping up edits and posting chapter six tomorrow (since it's 2am, and chapter six is lengthy). Thanks for reading and reviewing, and thanks for writing your stories, too! I've been reading them when I get the chance.

Also, I'm considering adding a new mark for my time gaps. I use a line of asterisks to show a change between POV characters, but for those points where I've been spacing three lines down, I may introduce a symbol like: ~~~ to indicate the time gap. Mostly due to the final chapter in my Wolverine story, which has a few of them, to say the least; also, when I check for typos on my Blackberry, it mashes the paragraphs together so you can't see where the time gaps are. No biggie, really, and if I weren't OCPD, I probably wouldn't bother. :) However, it won't add any time to the planned updates, per se, so yeah - no biggie.

Goodnight, all! - Anon

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Hello Gothicpug! I am so happy you are enjoying this story. As I've said before in here, for Marvel, Sabretooth is second in my heart only to Wolverine. The main difference is that Wolverine is All Over the place, and we Sabey fans have to dig deeper to find stuff on our favorite feral villain. For me, discovering that "Mary Shelley Overdrive" limited series was a revelation, and it's been influencing my Victor Creed stories ever since (I say "stories", because the sequel to this already has two chapters written). I loved the "Death Hunt" story, too, with Birdy, but Bonnie Hale showed us a side to Victor we'd never been allowed to see.

I'm actually plotting out a reprise, fan fic style, of "Mary Shelley Overdrive", where I'll cover what that story does, but also fill in the blanks, so to speak. That story was the first X-related title to receive a "Marvel PG+" rating, but I think it deserves a fan fic NC-17 treatment! (Mostly, I want to play with writing Victor in the midst of that harrowing night instead of just the fallout from it). However, muse permitting, I will probably wait until this story and its sequel are finished before I start seriously working on that idea. My HP: Severus Snape story, "Mens Rea" taught me that the more enmeshed into actual play-by-play canon story events I get, the more work it ends up being to get it right. "Mens Rea" happens during the fifth Harry Potter book, and touches on and weaves around most of the events in that book. At times, it was a canon nightmare! Happily, a four issues only comics limited series shouldn't be quite as bad as that....

Again, thanks so much for reviewing! - Anon

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Hello again, OriginalCeenote! I admit, now and then, I want to slap Tabitha too, which I guess isn't fair, since I'm the one writing her this way. Technically, I blame canon - her abusive childhood and low self-esteem, becoming a thief, etc. has all molded her. You are spot-on about her having a touch of Stockholm Syndrome, though, and I'd agree about the bit of masochism in her, too, at least in the sense of sticking around where she's being abused. The real masochist in this story is Perrin, of course - he physically gets off on Victor giving him pain, as well as being excited by the danger and power Victor represents. I figured a true pain-loving partner would be just the sort to gravitate to Victor, so he has a few of them he's collected in my stories.

Actually, your comment about wanting to slap Tab because she wasn't running away made me chuckle, because that's how chapter six got it's start. I pulled my head out and realized - hey, she is a survivor and rubs elbows with the X-Men; she'd try to run eventually, no matter how much he threatened her about it. Chapter six just happened to be the right time, plot-wise.

It is such a pleasure to have you notice the back issues references! In my quest to be as canon as possible, I've tried to put as much legit canon Victor into this as possible. For me, one of the weirdest moments is when I'm writing Victor grousing about Wolverine or putting him down. I love Wolverine so much that it's weird, but when I get into Victor's head, I can really feel his hatred and condescending attitude toward the "runt". I can't hardly wait to start posting the sequel, though. There's a Victor/"Logan" bit in there that was very hard to write for me, but it's so Victor, it had to be there. :)

Wasn't Birdy cool? Of course, the comics aren't going to show Victor in bed with her, but obviously, he wouldn't leave her alone in that department. For me, it would explain why she put up with his abuse the way she did, if she'd managed to get attached to him as a lover. Odds are, she'd have had a lot of the same background as Tabitha. I'm going to be referencing the Vancouver mansion he lived in with her here and there in the remaining chapters.

Your comment about Victor not trying to hide his "not-so-inner" beast is probably one of the chief reasons I'm so enthralled with him. He's just as honest as Logan in many ways, although he enjoys lying, double-crossing, and tricking for the ugly fun of it at times. Otherwise, he's very up-front about who and what he is, without trying to pretend to be anything else. Also, in spite of that, is another fascination for me: his ability to do just that - pretend to be something else. He kept up the childlike act for Tabitha in the Danger Room, partly for evil enjoyment, partly for how he could use her to either escape or kill. Yet that ability doesn't (at least for me) lessen his tendency to usually be exactly what he is, and as subtle as a slash to the gut.

That having been said, he is also a tragic figure. He's a monster who was made, though due to his feral mutant nature, one could argue he was partly born a monster, too, to a point. However, if parents like say, Jean Grey's folks had raised him, I believe he'd be a very different man. I'm delighted you like my moments of "sympathy for the devil". I've sort of always liked villains, though. Until I discovered anti-heroes, white hat heroes were rather one-dimensional and boring for me. The fascinating people almost always wore the black hats. Heck, that's why I love Wolverine - he's no Boy Scout.

One annoyance I have (and yes, I know, they have to be "role models") is that comics don't give Sabretooth a whole lot of time in his own stories. Yeah, I'm greedy, I want more. But he's a villain, so he isn't given tons of issues to star in like Wolverine. Deadpool, however, has been exploding lately! Still, to justify his popularity, the first thing they do is have him "trying to reform and be a hero". *sigh* I like Deadpool wicked. They did the same thing with Victor in other alternate realities, especially the Age of Apocalypse version, where he's friends with Wild Child, treats Blink like a foster daughter, and fights the good fight with Magneto's X-Men. That Victor has gone on to have all sorts of adventures with and without Blink. (Can you hear the "but" coming?) But, haha, I don't want Marvel to compromise. I want more Victor in his own stories without him having to repent or change first. At least we got "Open Season", which I loved.

It may be a long wait, though. Under Marvel's current leadership, no character can even smoke cigars anymore. No, I don't smoke, but for the sake of reality, people like Logan, Victor, the Thing, and Nick Fury would be smoking. Now they draw Logan sitting at a bar with a toothpick in his teeth. Ugh. It's like doing a Vietnam War film with Marines and not having them cuss; but I digress....

It's after midnight, so I'll stop and turn in. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and for the wonderful compliments, too! - Anon

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  • 5 weeks later...

Hi Gothicpug,

Thanks for the compliment! I do have 12 pages written on the next chapter, with an average of 17 planned pages yet to go. For now (though Sabey may have other ideas) I plan to make chapter seven a slightly shorter one. I blame Tabitha; she wanted to play with fire for 12 pages instead of letting Sabey go to work. It ended up laying the groundwork nicely for both plot and character development, though, so I let it run. However, it upset my chapter time table, so I pushed the original chapter seven to eight. So now my original 11 chapters plotted out story has pushed into 13 chapters. My, Sabey's a greedy thing, isn't he?

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that I happily got a new job! (Being unemployed sucks, especially in this economy). I've also been asked to run the author panel track at the Spooky Empire convention in Orlando, Florida the weekend of October 8-10! Very cool, and a lot of work to organize, with two schedules to put together as well (with a September 8th deadline).

Obviously, all of this means that I now have a lot less time to write fan fics. I am remiss in not updating my Texas Chainsaw tale in ages, and my Wolverine story hangs there, needing only two chapter edits and the last section of the final chapter to be written before it will be finished. Doc Ock got updated, but needs another, and Sabey keeps running away with my muse (he's threatened to do terrible things if I don't hurry up with chapter seven!) *sigh*

I will endeavor to get updates done in the midst of all this, but they may have some time gaps in between, and I apologize for that. As always, I promise to finish them, it just may take me awhile to do it.

Incidentally, I also need to go back and do some edits on my older and completed stories, but I will wait to do that until after the current ones are done (all but Sabey, perhaps; if he's going to keep hijacking my time, I may work him in with completed story edits after his peers are wrapped up).

Well, that's it for the update on "all things Anon". Thanks again for reading and reviewing, everyone!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, sorry for taking forever on this chapter; I got employed again (Yay!) and therefore had to cut out a lot of my writing time. Chapter 7 is now posted, after a brief crisis in which I picked the definite wrong symbol to type to show my Japanese language dialogue! Yikes! It's fixed now, and re-posted. I hope you all enjoy, and please let me know what you think? Thanks! - Anon

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  • 3 weeks later...

Chapter 8 is posted! Yay! Hope you all enjoy it!

Gothicpug, thanks for reviewing chapter 7; I didn't forget to respond all this time, I've just been killer busy with the new job. I'm so pleased you like the Bonnie hints! I'm planning to do a reinterpretation of the "Mary Shelley Overdrive" limited series comics, maybe after this one is done, or after it's sequel is done, I'm not sure. Basically, I want to run through the story as it is, but add the "between the lines" (yeah, the "dirty bits", haha) that Marvel couldn't show us. Bonnie has captured my mind as a new way to explore Victor Creed, and I want to play with that first hand and write it out. So it'll be a prequel, technically, to my other Victor tales (putting that in plural, since I have about five of them outlined in notes now). Yeah, Victor ate my brain. However, I will finish editing Wolverine: Shattered Silence (two chapters left to edit) and then I will finish the last chapter (one section left to write...). If I don't finish it soon, Logan may wander over here to pick a fight with Victor for his fair share of my time! Heh heh heh.

Thanks to everyone who is reading, and those who are reviewing, especially! I love hearing what you think!

Hugs to all,

Anon

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Hi OriginalCeenote! I'm so happy you are enjoying this story (and so faithfully reviewing, you're awesome)! I tend to write pretty dark stuff, and I often wonder if some folks are going to find it too gross. Of course, if I'm not pleasing myself, it won't get written at all, and what pleases me is horror, so....

Thank you so much for the insightful comments, too, and for noticing what I'm up to with Tabitha. Funny thing is, Victor started out just wanting to screw her and then break her before killing her, after all of their personal history together. However, years after that history, he's had his life tossed off the rails by his encounter with Bonnie Hale (from "Mary Shelley Overdrive", for those of you just joining us). Tabitha's ability to step up and sass him, remaining coherent and a strong survivor, has started to change how he sees her, as you said. He's not fully aware of it until Tab points it out, but he was starting to think of her as a possible replacement for Bonnie. It's logical in some ways (she was trying to be a mercenary, she likes having sex with him, she's very disillusioned with Xavier's and Cable's dreams and goals). Then, of course, Tab points out why it wouldn't work; she couldn't forgive him some things, and he couldn't feel the same for a reluctant captive as he did for a willing partner. Yet his unconscious will has been moldering her as you pointed out.

However, she has really wounded him psychically by bringing all of that up, as well as pointing out some ugly truths to him. How will he react, and how will he explain about Vaughn? We shall see.... I hope you'll continue to brace and read! Your reviews always make my day, too! - Anon

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