Disclaimer: I do not own the Starks' for they belong to Stan Lee, Marvel and Disney (these days, I'm just borrowing the sandbox). Morana/Athanasia is my baby through-and-through.
Author's Notes: This is kinda a test fic/chapter for a story I'm writing. The story is present day with flashbacks and depending on feedback may post it when I'm ready.
(early 1971)
To the world, Dr Morana Grimston was a highly intelligent, hard, but elegant widow in her late twenties. Long straight midnight black hair would be held back in an elegant up do or at the nape of her long pale neck. Her flawless creamy moon-kissed skin contrasted starkly with any color she wore, and midnight eyes unreadable. She would be draped in rich designs of fabric and jewels, body shaped to wear most to their finest.
To her coworkers, Morana was a practical, distant, workaholic genius. Midnight hair pulled back out of the way, treated more as a nuisance than an asset. Pale skin looked near sickly in the institutional florescent lighting, highlighting an odd scar. Her clothing usually was long and shapeless, appearing more androgynous than feminine.
To the very select few who truly knew her, she was yet another person entirely. She was Athanasia, the Goddess of Souls and Gateways. She was thousands of years older and born to a civilization long forgotten by history. Her name changed with the decades, like most would change clothing.
Only a privileged few among and outside an organization named S.H.I.E.L.D. knew of her otherworldly nature. Through her "partnership" with them, she maintained the illusion of humanity. While she occasionally worked as an engineer and scientist developing many previously unimaginable devices, many of which could easily be converted to weapons, she was also a prestigious warrior. On the battlefield, she was known for her tactical genius and fierce agile grace.
However she was also doing something almost any who knew her would never imagine.
Athanasia reclined against her sleek suede sofa, rubbing her hands against the expanding flesh of her stomach. She felt the tiny drum beat of the baby's movement against her hands, tapping back in time with him. Her eyes could make out the soul contained with her belly that was now a growing baby, a soul that already felt beyond familiar, only second to her own.
Pregnancy agreed with her, she knew. Her harsh, anti-social personality was softening, the loving qualities she hid came more to the fore as the child with-in her grew. She loved him intensely already like any other mother did, perhaps more because of the psychic bond she held with him, as all her people did with their children.
This experience was one Athanasia was desperate to savor. After thousands of years of infertility, she had long accepted she would never be able to have children and now... The only thing that tainted this experience was that the child could not be hers. This son was not hers to keep. He was destined for Maria and Howard.
As much as the pain lanced her heart every time she thought about giving him up, she would do anything for Maria, a woman whom had become a dear sister and also another woman plagued with infertility. While Howard was turning her sour with his increasing distance and his steadily increasing vice, alcohol, she could do this for Maria.
Her only hope amongst the backdrop of despair at the inevitable separation, was that he was hers right now and that possibly in the future, should he need her she would be there.
End?