A/N: Back in 2009, I was working on an X-Men oriented fanfic titled Blood of Brothers. Crap happened and I abandoned it; I never really thought that my Victor Creed muse would ever pop up again and clamor for me to continue. Well...funny story. VNV Nation is one of my all-time favorite bands and I finally listened to their new album, Transnational, the other day. And upon this glorious album was a song that, when I heard it, reawakened my Victor muse like none other. I got about a stanza into "Retaliation" and thought, "this would be the perfect Victor Creed song." And, well...you know what they say. The rest is history and I am but a slave to the muses.
However, a lot of time has elapsed since I took Blood of Brothers down and I'm very different writer now. I decided to tie in this X-Men story with the world that I'm slowly creating in my other Marvel-centric fic, The Sun Hasn't Died. In fact, the two main female protagonists are twin sisters (unbeknownst to either one of them). The stories take place concurrently, so even if the Avengers/Catain America isn't your cup of tea, you might want to check it out as this story progresses. As 'Thena tells her story here with Victor, so will Mother Eli and Cap. I've never written two interwoven stories before, much less at the same time, but I think it'll be a lot of fun. Hopefully, Dear Reader, you'll feel the same way!
And for those of you who are reading Challenge, Accepted...don't worry! I'm on my spring break, so a new chapter will be up by Sunday! Until then, enjoy this new little prologue and check out The Sun Hasn't Died if you're so inclind.
Cheers!
"One of us the hunter, one of us the prey;
One of us the victor, one to walk away.
One who's left remaining, one of us who stands;
One who lies defeated, beneath the other's hands."
"Retaliation"
VNV Nation
Erik Lehnsherr – better known as Magneto – watched thoughtfully as a dark shadow slowly detached itself from the gloom of the forest in front of him. Of all the mutants in his acquaintance, this one was the only one that stirred disgust, pity, and fear within him simultaneously. Disgust, because Creed was the basest of animals – crude, vile, and willfully obtuse, despite his remarkable intelligence. Pity, because Magneto rather suspected the feral man could have been far greater than he was. Fear, because even the mighty Magneto knew that the only thing that kept him from becoming so much meat beneath Creed's claws, was his money and his more sophisticated powers.
Creed inspired humility in even the greatest mutants. This, at least, awarded the feral a grudging sort of respect in Magneto's estimation. Although, Erik was not at all inclined to let Creed in on the fact that he was anything except an efficiently brutal mercenary, hired to execute only the Brotherhood's dirtiest jobs.
Creed. Creed was who Magneto sent in, when he wanted to make a statement.
And in this particular case, Erik wanted to make a statement – a very visceral statement indeed. It also didn't hurt that the virtues of manipulation were not at all lost on Erik; Creed had failed at a similar mission almost 17 years earlier and he would be eager for a second chance to even the score. If there was one thing that motivated Creed more than money, lust, or blood, it was retaliation. Magneto was counting on Creed's pride to succeed where a more…elegant…attempt might otherwise fail.
"You rang?" Creed's rough voice cut through the quiet gloaming, as he stopped just short of the light that spilled out from behind Magneto's tall, thin form; the older mutant simply lifted an eyebrow beneath the confines of his helmet.
"I did," Erik clasped his hands behind his back and inclined his head ever so slightly in Creed's direction. "I've finally found an opportunity that might allow you to settle an old score."
"Wolverine?" the name was a growl, but Magneto couldn't help the crawling feeling that slithered down his back at the undertone of malicious hope in Creed's voice.
"Unfortunately, not that score," Erik wrinkled his nose in brief distaste; no love was lost for Xavier's pet feral, but Creed's unabashed eagerness to eviscerate his own brother was disconcerting, to say the least. "I'm referring to the young Palintol girl."
"The blood bitch?" the deadly growl dropped down even lower, into the deepest regions of Creed's massive chest.
"That would be one way of describing her, yes," Magneto stifled a sigh; there were times when he longed for a little bit of social grace from his followers. "As it turns out, she has a twin sister."
"A sister?" Creed surprised Erik by stepping suddenly forward into the light.
He was a sinister sight and Erik almost wished he had stayed shrouded in the twilight. The mutant was just as tall as Magneto, but nearly twice his width. Broad shoulders filled out the battered leather overcoat that Creed favored; broad chest stretched the black shirt to the point where some of its sable buttons strained dangerously in their respective holes. Creed stood with his feet slightly shoulder width apart, his knees relaxed, his hands hanging nonchalantly at his sides. Erik had never known him to stand any differently – he was always loose, always alert, and always ready to spring into action at the slightest possibility of a target.
"Yes – Athena Valinaskov. It would seem that young Elinor's mutation runs through the family line. Athena is a blood…witch…as well," Erik paused delicately before the word 'witch', as if to make his point about verbal propriety quite clear.
Creed just snorted and flashed a canine in the lamplight.
"Bitch fit her better."
Erik refrained from commenting – Creed could nurse a vendetta like no other and it was entirely possible that 17 years wasn't long enough for him to forget his bestial rage at being bested by a 13-year-old. Magneto was in no mood to find out if that was the case or not.
"Regardless, I need Athena. For the same reasons as I needed Elinor. If I can't have one sister, I'll have the other. Plus, Athena seems to be more of our type here in the Brotherhood," it was Magneto's turn for a humorless smile. "She spent time in prison for killing a man."
"Ooh, a challenge," this time, both of Creed's canines slipped free from behind his lips.
The sight was more than a little disconcerting. If Magneto could have trusted any other mutant with the job, he would have preferred dealing with any of them to the one standing in front of him. But, as he suspected, Creed still nursed a festering desire to get even with "the one that got away". And with Athena's felony record – which had taken Erik no small amount of time and money to uncover – and her subsequent rise in social status, Erik was taking no chances for failure. A woman who went from a teenager doing federal time to a respected linguist at Georgetown University had more than just good luck and an unusually elusive sponsor. She was the kind of woman who kept breaking rules to get to the top.
That made her dangerous. That made her desirable. There was no doubt in Magneto's mind 17 years ago that Elinor Palintol was going to grow up to be a powerful mutant. The discovery of Athena Valinaskov proved that and Erik was not going to take "no" for an answer.
"I trust that 17 years is long enough for you to figure out how to get around a mutant who can stop your heart from beating by simply crooking her finger?" Erik jabbed gently at Creed's pride – just enough to get him good and riled up.
"I've given it some thought," Creed's grey eyes flashed dangerously; the light from behind Erik reflected eerily in the feral's pupils.
"Good," Magneto finally gathered his cloak around him and decided that it was best to bring the conversation to a close – Creed's attention span never seemed to go beyond ten minutes if he wasn't on the hunt. "I want her alive and unscathed," his eyes flickered meaningfully down at the feral's hands; Creed's claws weren't extended, but they were painstakingly unavoidable nevertheless.
"Well, now, sir," Creed's smile was as vicious as his claws. "What's the fun in that?"
"Athena needs to be…persuaded. By force, if necessary. By any means necessary," Magneto drew himself up to his full height and looked down his long nose at the mercenary, as Creed's eyes lit up with a perverted delight. "But, I do. Not. Want. Her. Harmed. Permanently, at any rate," he added as an afterthought, his eyes lingering ever so briefly on Creed's canines. "I want her whole physically and mentally, Creed."
"Then why the hell ask me to go bring her in?" Creed's smile slipped and he crossed his arms defiantly with a scowl.
"Because," Magneto answered simply. "I know that Victor Creed doesn't fail twice."
It was a sunny day on the battlefield. Athena stretched out her legs and leaned back against the gray granite boulder behind her. There was something so inexplicably familiar about the place, as if she'd been there before. She was fairly certain that this was the first time she had ever visited the famous historical town and its surrounding fields, but she felt a kinship for it that seemed to settle down deep into her bones. Sometimes, she had feelings about places – niggling little suspicions that somehow, someway, she'd been "there" before, wherever "there" was. But, this place felt a little different; the memory of it drifted just a little closer to the surface of her memory. She let her head drop back against her shoulders as she lifted her face toward the cloudless, late June sky; this place made her blood sing.
She had decided that the absolute best way to kick off her year-long sabbatical was to take a long-planned trip to Gettysburg. The battle had always fascinated her – as had the Civil War, as a whole – and she had spent nearly ten years just little over three hours away in Washington D.C. Yet, she had never once managed to find the time – or the finances – to take herself away from Georgetown and treat herself to the sort of hold-no-expense vacation that she had imagined all these years.
Most people would have spent that sort of money and time on something a little more exotic – London, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Helsinki, Dublin, Toronto, Buenos Aires. But, Athena liked to imagine that she was girl of humble tastes. It wasn't that her past would prevent her from getting a passport – no, her other employers would easily see to such a minor detail. It wasn't that she didn't want to go and travel the world…someday. It wasn't that she hadn't booked a flight to Edinburgh for Thanksgiving, a trip to Berlin for Christmas, and a jaunt to New York City for New Year's. No, it was just that she wanted to take this – the very first vacation of her entire life – to a place that had whispered hauntingly from the pictures of her old dusty textbooks and from the pages of her many historical novels.
And, well…if there was any time to plan a trip to Gettysburg, it was late June. The reenactments would start in a week and Athena was planning to stay for a week afterwards. Three whole weeks – most of a month – in a quiet little Pennsylvania town that history seemed to have left behind.
It was a glorious way to start a year-long vacation. She sighed happily again and opened her eyes. She squinted briefly against the sun and then titled her head to look out straight ahead, toward the dark tops of the trees that still densely covered Big and Little Round Top.
It was hard to imagine that where she sat – on a large jumbled rise of granite stones that was not that uncommon a sight in the Appalachians – was the site of such vicious bloodshed that it had earned the nickname "Devil's Den." The little creek that gurgled between the bottom slope of Little Round Top and the simple paved road that hugged the curve of Devil's Den had earned the name "Bloody Run", for the gore-soaked water that it had carried during the second day of the battle. One hundred and fifty-one years had passed since the infamy that had made Gettysburg a household American name; now it was a place full of shrieking children who clambered over Devil's Den like it was a jungle gym, and mildly bored parents strolled along Bloody Run, chatting amongst themselves of things that had nothing to do with war, violence, or death.
Athena spread her fingers and pushed her palms lightly into the sun-warmed rock beneath her. She could still sense the blood that had once washed the granite a slick and sticky mess; it was all but gone, but when she closed her eyes and focused inward, when she pulled hard along the edges of her often-subtle seventh sense, she could skim along the sanguine surface of a long-forgotten life.
She'd been to Antietam and it had been the same there; in a place like Gettysburg, where over 45,000 men died in just three days, it was hard to escape the reality of what she was. It was hard not to brush her hand against a tree trunk, or let her fingertips drift across the top of a stone, and not feel history rise up to greet her. In battlefields – and Athena, with her avid interest in history, had been to many – it was hard not to brush up against the ghosts of the past, silent and soul-achingly sad, with just a gentle press of her hand.
Blood tainted places. It changed places. Lincoln hadn't been a mutant, hadn't been a "blood witch", but he had known the truth of places like this – blood could consecrate a place, could make it holy. This was hallowed ground and after all the years, it had a peace about it that Athena wished she could find in the wider world beyond.
And speaking of the wider world beyond…
Her green eyes snapped open in irritation as the phone that she kept clipped to her belt at all times began to buzz like a hornet's nest.
"Ugh," there was no one immediately around her to make her displeasure known to, but that didn't stop Athena from rolling her eyes dramatically to the one lone, fluffy white cloud drifting lazily above her. "Really? Really?"
She dutifully unclipped the phone, however grudgingly, and scowled at the number flashing back at her for just a moment, before pressing the screen to answer the call. One did not simply ignore phone calls from her handler.
"Val," she pushed herself up off of her elbows and her eyes roved the rocks around her out of sheer habit, checking to make sure that no one was standing too close to overhear.
As it was, the nearest human body was a laughing pre-teen who was daring her young brother and their friend into a rousing competition of "who can climb up to the top the fastest". The nearest adult was well out of hearing; she relaxed ever so slightly and waited for her handler to acknowledge her voice.
It only took half a heartbeat for a voice to respond on the opposite end of the phone.
"Good afternoon, Val," the voice was male, smooth, and cultured in a way that could only be achieved in places like Oxford. "Enjoying your sabbatical?"
"You never give up on the pleasantries, do you, Ferin?" Athena – codename, "Val", after her last name – sighed dramatically.
"I'm afraid not," Ferin chuckled smoothly. "Pleasantries are what make us civil."
Athena wanted to add "so does not killing people", but she knew better. Ferin hadn't bailed her out of a women's prison in god-forsaken Florida when she was a teenager, but his employers – their employers – had.
When she was young, fresh out of a life sentence, she hadn't cared who had granted her a new lease on freedom, or at what cost. Every time she'd taken a life since, she wondered if she should have stayed in Florida, where she was doing time for the one crime of which she was innocent.
But, if it weren't for her employers – their employers – Athena would not be currently sunning herself on the rocks of Devil's Den, with tenure at a prestigious Ivy League college at the prime age of 30. So, as always, she bit her tongue and played the role her freedom demanded.
"You never call just to trade pleasantries. What's up, Ferin?"
"Well, you'll be pleased to know that this time, you don't need to neutralize any threats to the organization," Ferin said the word "org-an-eye-zation", with the prim accent that Athena had come to hear in her dreams right before they turned into nightmares.
"Be still my swooning heart," Athena hid her relief behind sarcasm; somehow, though, she suspected that Ferin wasn't so easily fooled.
He was a damn empath, after all.
"The Masters have recently come into possession of a most curious diary," Ferin continued smoothly, as if Athena had never interrupted him. "They wish for you to translate it."
"Translate? A diary?" Athena blinked owlishly in the noonday sun as playing children provided a bizarre soundtrack to her personal drama.
"Yes. I'm sure you'll agree with the Masters that it is most fascinating," Ferin actually sounded…excited?
Athena frowned. In all the years, she had never heard Ferin express any sort of emotion outside of "professional" and "deadpan".
"It's ancient Irish Gaelige – the dialect it's written in has already been dated to the 9th or 10th century…"
"Wait a minute," Athena's frown deepened until her brows had almost knitted together into one monolithic entity above her eyes. "Is it a religious relic? The average 10th century Irishman didn't know how to write. And we're talking as-old-as-the-Book-of-Kells here. I'm not even sure monks kept diaries."
"They didn't, unless you count the redactions that they wrote in the margins of their holy books," Ferin chuckled – again, with the uncharacteristic emotion.
Athena was starting to get a bit unnerved; her skin goose-pimpled, as if the cloud above her had blocked the sun, but she was still bathed in warm June light.
"But, it is, in fact, a diary. There are dates and a photograph inside of it that date the diary between 1861 and 1865. Between the battles of Bull Run and Appomattox, as a matter of fact – the writer was a soldier of the era –"
"Get out," Athena practically breathed into the phone pressed urgently to her ear.
" – And we believe the writer was a woman."
All that met Ferin was ringing silence; Athena truly had no words. But, her usual grudging obedience to follow the Masters' orders was suddenly replaced by inexpressible excitement. Her fingers practically itched with the anticipation of holding such a precious, impossible treasure between them.
She knew the ramifications of what Ferin was telling her – he didn't need to spell it out. There were rumors of mutants who near had immortality, healing agents that kept them alive for centuries until such events occurred that separated their heads from their bodies. Was the writer of this diary such a mutant? Surely, a mutant she had to be, if she wrote her battlefield diary in the language of her ancestors – a language that she wouldn't have heard in English-ruled 19th century Ireland and a language she certainly wouldn't have known how to write.
Her Masters wanted to know about these mutants; they wanted to hunt them down; they wanted to recruit them. Knowledge and power – those were the keys to the "organization" and its kingdom-to-be.
For once, she was just glad that she wasn't being asked to kill for that knowledge and power. A translation would go nicely with her sabbatical. Quite nicely indeed.
"Val?" Ferin prompted; apparently, she had fallen silent during her personal rumination.
"Uh…do I need to report anywhere for this translation? To pick up the diary?" she moved as she spoke, her excitement too great to stay sunning on her bit of granite.
"No, the Masters have already taken the liberty to send you the diary. You'll find it in your hotel room, when you arrive back."
Athena stifled another sigh – they always knew where she was, what she was doing. Once, it made her paranoid, but when she realized that she was going to live her whole life with Big Brother looking over her shoulder, she decided to shrug that growing sense of paranoia off before it consumed her. It was the price she paid for having a life outside of barbed wire fences.
"Is there a time frame that the Masters want this diary translated in?" Athena brushed the back of her pants off with one hand, as she began to look around her for the surest foothold off of the rock and onto the one next to it.
"They would like to have it translated before you leave Gettysburg, or at least enough of it to provide them with substantial information about the writer's identity. Oh, and Val," Ferin paused ever so slightly and if Athena hadn't been trying to negotiate her way down toward the ground, she would have frozen in her spot.
Ferin didn't just pause. He was about to tell her something she really wasn't going to like.
"The Masters have also arranged for another mutant to make your acquaintance. Based on the photograph found within the diary, they believe he may be key to providing information about the writer that she does not furnish herself."
There was a pregnant pause. Athena's gut twisted and her mouth ran dry.
"Who?"
"His name is Victor Creed."
Athena knew the name – anyone in her business did. So, she did the only reasonable thing she could under the circumstances.
She swore. Loudly.
"When the dust has settled, only one of us will see
Which of us was worthy, which of us was weak.
And when this time is over,
Only one of us will say:
Which of us the victor and which of us the prey."
"Retaliation"
VNV Nation
