FULL ADAMANTIUM JACKET
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters except the ones I invented, but I do know a lot about WWII. Still, no money for me. Oh well. I don't care too much for money, because money can't buy me dead Nazis.
Author's Note: I am not prejudiced against Germans, I am of German extraction, myself, and proud to be German. However, I. like a lot of people, am not too fond of Nazis. What can I say? I majored in history and watched a lot of war movies. Also Indiana Jones. Seriously, though, the attitude of some of the characters in this story are historically accurate as to the attitudes towards Germans and Germany during wartime. War is Hell. Especially this war. If you don't like it, don't read any further. Thanks.
Chapter 1: Blood and Iron
July, 1944: Western France
I: Eddie
He waited until it was quiet, and he heard no more voices coughing at each other in German before quietly crawling out from under a pile of dead bodies and twisted metal that had until a few minutes ago been a truckful of soldiers; his escort to the Invaders base camp.
The Comedian had done such a good job in the Pacific of killing off Japs that Captain America wanted him to join the Invaders, and kill off Fritzes.
Sure, there was more to it than that, but that was the bottom line, wasn't it?
Somebody had to go out there and put the fear of God into these Fritz bastards, somebody who had no remorse and gave no quarter.
Somebody even a fucking Nazi would fear.
And the first son of a bitch that came to Cap's mind was the Comedian.
Eddie got haltingly to his feet, holding one hand over his leaking guts, in which he'd taken a bullet.
It sure as hell was funny.
To survive the D-Day landing earlier in the month only to get killed because some Regular Army dickhead who never got out of his chair in Washington thought the Comedian needed an escort.
But, Eddie had a stronger constitution than most men, and he knew that when the truck never arrived, they'd come looking for him; he just had to hold out that long.
Some guys had dug in for themselves, but whether they were our guys or their guys, Eddie didn't know; the trench was abandoned and it was good enough for him.
He opened his knapsack and cleaned out the wound with a little whiskey, then did his best to bandage it up.
He had a drink, and lit a cigarette, decided he'd start a fire and break out his mess kit after he waited awhile and got some of his strength back.
Onions.
You were supposed to eat onions after you took a slug in the guts, and then, if you didn't smell onions coming out of the hole in you, you were alright.
If you did…
Eddie was glad he didn't have any fucking onions.
He must have fallen asleep, because the sound of a voice yelling out in English woke him up.
"Hey! Anybody in that goddamn trench?"
"Yeah, pal! Just me!"
"Well, lookout!"
Eddie heard the whistle, put his helmet on and flattened himself in the bottom of the trench, hands over his head.
He got covered with a spray of dirt and rocks, but when he peeked over the top of the trench he saw a body lying on the ground.
The other guy wasn't so lucky.
He looked dead.
Real dead.
But the twitching he was doing didn't look like the way a corpse twitched, and Eddie knew well that some people are a lot harder to kill than others?
"Hey, soldier? You still breathin'?"
"Barely."
"Awright. Stay still. I'm gonna come out an getcha."
Holding his belly with one hand, Eddie pulled what was left of the other man into the trench with the other.
The guy was hit, bad.
He had taken shrapnel in his chest to the extent that he didn't have much of a chest. The shell blew off his skin and tore open his rib cage; it was pretty much all blood and meat.
You could see his straining lungs and his weakly pulsing heart, all ridden with big, jagged pieces of shrapnel.
His hands were mutilated; he had two fingers and a thumb left between them both.
Blood bubbled onto his lips and sprayed out of his chest in a fine mist when he raggedly breathed, making a disgusting, gurgling sound, and one side of his head was caved in, you could see skull and blood and brain matter.
On top of all of it, the poor bastard was trying to hold his chest closed without having any hands to do it.
There was only one reason why he wouldn't be dead, and Eddie knew what it was right away.
His father had been a mutant, and so was his oldest sister.
But a hit like this, and he was still breathing?
This guy was some kind of fucking mutant.
"Don't try to move, pal. Lemme hold your outsides in for ya, I still got hands."
The man looked at his hands.
"Shit!"
"Save your breath pal. Just don't look at 'em. They gonna grow back?"
The man tried to sit up and couldn't.
"How…" he gurgled, coughing up blood.
"My Old Man was like you. You heal up good enough you're gonna make it?"
The man nodded.
"Okay. Well, lets get ya sittin' up so youse don't choke on your own blood. You want me to get these big pieces of shrapnel outa you?"
Another nod.
"Just yank 'em out?"
"Yeah."
Eddie pulled a rag out of his knapsack and wiped the blood off the injured mutant's mouth and chin.
He took a bullet out of his gun, and, understanding, the mutant put it in his mouth.
He made these strange growling sounds as Eddie took the big chunks of shrapnel out of him, and it was pretty amazing the way the wounds just started to heal up, right before Eddie's eyes.
Even the big wound across his chest; the one Eddie bandaged.
He sat back, breathing hard from the effort.
The mutant put his hand on Eddie's shoulder.
"Hey, take it easy, bub. You're hit. I'm gonna heal up, don't worry about me."
He had fingers again; his hands were healed, and so was his head.
Un-fucking-belivable.
It would have taken his father months in a hospital to get better from that shit.
"So will I, if I can get this bullet out. Just not so fast as you."
"Gimme about an' hour, bub. Then I think I can help youse. So, you're the Comedian, ain't you?"
"Yeah. That's me. You?"
"They call me lotsa things. Wolverine. Lucky Jim. Jimmy. But my real name's Logan. And I didn't need a goddamn escort to get to the Invaders."
"Me neither. Fuckin' high command sonsabitches got a whole buncha guys killed over nothin'. Well I got news for these Fritz motherfuckers. I didn't make it through D-Day so's I could die in this trench like a fuckin' dog. They're gonna pay for this. In fuckin' spades. I'm the goddamn Ace of Spades. They'll see."
"We'll make sure of that. Soon as you're better."
Eddie blacked out again, for awhile, and when he woke up, the bloody piece of meat he had dragged back into the trench with him was a man, again, stocky and hairy under the tattered remains of his bloody uniform.
"Did I go out?"
"Yeah, but I was watchin you. So, you think you're ready for the operation?"
"I'm ready. Just lemme have a little of that whiskey I got in the flask in my knapsack. You wanna drink?"
"No, Comedian. You need it worse than I do."
"Eddie. My name's Eddie. So, how you gonna get this bullet outa me?"
"With these."
Snikt!
"Holy fuckin' shit! Were you born with those?"
"Sure was. And there ain't no scalpel sharper."
Logan gave Eddie back the bullet he had bit on, and Eddie put it in his mouth.
Logan poured some of the whiskey over his first claw, retracted the other two, cut off the bandage, and poured some more of the alcohol over the bloody wound.
"Yeah, I can see the son of a bitch. An' I see you got fishing line and a sailcloth needle, here, so, I'm gonna take this bullet out an' sew ya up. That oughta hold you till we can get outa here. Alright?"
Eddie just nodded.
Logan worked as quickly as he could, knowing that the young superhero must be in agony, but he took it well.
Didn't thrash, just bit the bullet and swore around it, clenching at the dirt around him.
When he was done, Wolverine poured a little more whiskey over the closed wound and re-bandaged the Comedian.
He was surprised when the man spit the bulled out in two halves, and a mouthful of gunpowder.
"Tastes like shit."
"Well, here's your whiskey. You're one tough sunnuvabitch, bub."
"I hadda be, in my life. Or I'd be one dead sunnuvabitch. I got food, and a mess kit. There's enough for both of us."
"I'll make the fire."
***
They spent a long night over the fire, talking.
The two men instinctively knew they could trust each other, and spoke about their checkered pasts, Logan's long, violent labyrinthine and tragic, and Eddie's short, violent and equally tragic.
Eddie told Logan about how he raised his whole family, and showed him pictures of the kids at home.
"So what finally happened to your bastard Old Man?" Logan asked.
"I killed him. My sister and I. We didn't have no choice, and if I could, I sweat by Christ I'd dig the motherfucker up an' kill him again. Him and all the rat bastards like him I've sent to an early grave."
"You killed your own father?"
"He wasn't much of a fuckin' father."
"Yeah. I know what ya mean, bub. So did I."
Eddie was quiet.
"Jesus." He finally said.
"Yeah. Except my Old Man, he was like me. So I'm not so sure he's really dead. When this war's over, I think I'm gonna go back an' look for him. He wasn't like your father, he wasn't all bad."
"Hey, Jimmy?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm pretty sure I'm gonna make it, but if I don't, you can have my boots, and my knapsack, and my coat. I know it's too big for ya, but, until ya can get some clothes, it'll do. But there's money in the bottom of my right boot; I wantcha to send that home, to my sister. She's takin care of the little kids. An' look in the bottom of my pack. Under the lining. There's a letter in there to my girl, Sally Jupiter. If I die, I want her to have it."
"No kiddin', Eddie? The doll on the side of the B-52's? She's your girl? Shit, you're a lucky guy."
"Yeah. I coulda been. But we ain't on the best of terms, these days. When I was just a dumb kid, I tried to do somethin' real bad to her. Real bad. About the worst thing ya can do to a woman. Jesus, why the fuck would I do such a thing? I'm no rapo. I dunno what came over me, Bad blood, I guess. Fuck, I'm talkin' outa my head. Must be a fever. I dunno. Maybe, after the war's over…willya do that for me, Jimmy?"
"Yeah, Eddie. Sure. But I don't think you're gonna die. Lemme look in here an' see if you got some quinine tablets. For that fever."
Eddie just laughed.
"Whatever else I say, don't pay no attention to it."
"I won't."
***
Bucky had rarely seen Steve so angry.
He usually didn't have much of a dirty mouth; a few hells and a damn and a shit here and there, and the occasional goddamit, but he was really cussing a blue streak, driving the Jeep like a crazy man, jerking the wheel around.
"…dumb sons of bitches and their looks good for the newsreels bullshit, do you know they got twenty or thirty guys killed? And maybe the Comedian and Wolverine, too. Goddamnit, I needed those men, and I'm real sure that even guys like them got some family. And what about all those poor bastards, those dogfaces who got their asses blown to Kingdom Come? For what? For nothing! For bullshit, Bucky. Goddamn fuckin' bullshit, that's what…"
And that was the least of it.
Bucky was practically goggling in shock at the stream of profanities Cap was uttering, and then he saw what looked like a head in an American helmet poking cautiously over the top of a trench.
"Look over there, Steve! Is that a smile face painted on that helmet?"
"Sunnuvabitch, Bucky! I think it is! Hang on!"
***
Eddie had a little trouble standing up, he leaned on Jimmy, who was a foot shorter than him, but the man was built like a Sherman tank.
"Colonel Jim Howlett, reporting for duty, Captain." Logan said.
"Save it, Jimmy. What happened to your uniform?"
"I got blown to bits. The Comedian, here, dragged his ass out of the trench with a bullet in his guts and pulled me in and held my insides in for me while he was bleeding like a stuck pig. Bandaged me up. I got the bullet out of him and sewed up the hole, and bandaged him up, but he probably still needs a doctor."
"I don't need a doctor. I need a nurse. With great big tits." Eddie said.
Captain America started up the Jeep.
"You'll get the doctor first, soldier." Cap laughed.
"Yeah, but what if I die? Ain't we gonna pass one of those famous French whorehouses along the way? I'm fine. C'mon, I almost died, here."
Logan started to laugh.
"As soon as we patch you up here, you boys are going to London. I've got a job that requires your special talents. So you'll have to make do with English girls." Cap replied.
"Yeah, well, you can't watch me alla time. I never been ta London. What about you, Jimmy?"
"Yeah, I been there, bub. Just a few years ago; I know where all the best places in London are for guys like us ta have a good time." Wolverine told him.
This guy, he was alright.
"That's what I wanted ta hear! Whaddya think, kid? You look like ya need ta lose your cherry. When I get better, I'll take youse along with me. I may hafta pay for you, but you're Cap's sidekick. I'm sure he's good for the money."
Bucky looked even more flabbergasted, and the Comedian laughed.
"What do you mean, you'd only have to pay for the kid?" Logan asked.
"Shit, Jimmy, I'm the Comedian. I never hadda pay for a woman in my life."
"And how long has that been? How old are you, soldier?" Captain America asked.
"Twenty."
Wolverine and Captain America exchanged looks.
Twenty?
He didn't look twenty, and he didn't act it, either; but they both knew that if the Comedian was still just a young pup, that meant this war was about to get a helluva lot more interesting.
"Hey! If you're twenty, can't call me kid."
"That's 'Hey, Sarge' to you, kid. An' shut up, Bucky. You're a kid. I know all about you."
"You do?"
"Yeah. I'm from Brooklyn, too."