Okay – I've been reading over some of my older stuff and…I have a new plot … well not bunny, they frighten the kitty cat, we'll call it a Plot Squirrel for Victor's sake and actually this will be a sequel to Support. To summarize, Victor is a federal marshal who married the mother of his child who happened to be the only police officer who ever managed to arrest him, and hold him long enough to have to get a lawyer – and the mother of his only child to date, Natalie Creed.
There is one major plot change between this and the prior story and that is the origin of Victor Creed. For this story I am using the Wolverine Origins story, and will explain why he told the much harsher version of his early life to his wife and child during the course of this story…Lets just say Wolverine's not the only one that Stryker F**ked in the head.
I don't own them, I'm not sure I'd want to own Victor…what am I saying...but I don't more's the pity.
What Goes Around Comes Around – Again, and Again, And Again
Chapter 1
"DAD! Did you hear I got the job? This is the head chef's card. I can't believe I'm really going to get to work at Les Marseilles." Nat had been back and forth on what she wanted to do since college, and sending her to France to study and get her degree in culinary arts from the Cordon Bleu had been all Dana's idea. He'd growled, and groused, said he'd not had enough time with her yet, that he needed more time before she grew up, but it had been another one of those decisions that Dana made, and he had to regret.
"That's great." He smiled as he took the card she handed him. M. Burk. He shook his head a moment, It couldn't be? He shook it again. He hadn't thought of Maggie in almost…three hours. He never went through a day without seeing her in his mind, especially since the damned therapist made him drag all of the memories out of his head.
"What is it, Dad?"
"Nothing Nat – last name brought up a memory."
"You'd like her. Her name's Margaret, but she said call her Maggie." NO! It couldn't be!
"Dad, are you sure you're okay?" Nat sat down on the couch with him. He ran his hand over his face and then looked into her pitch black eyes.
"I'm fine…so no problems with you being a Mutant?"
"Nope, Maggie's one too…feral like me, we got along great." She was beaming at him and he wasn't going to try to explain why everything she was saying had him ready to run for the hills – and drag her with him.
"Do you really want to do this?"
"Yes, Dad, I know I'll have to move to Chicago, and I know you HATE the cold…"
"Hate it – I was born in Canada remember." He snarled.
"Yeah – and that's why we always took a long Christmas vacation to Australia. It doesn't even GET that cold here." She seemed to have forgotten his strange reaction, but he couldn't. He needed to get her out of there, back to her own place so he could think.
"I think its great, Trooper." She groaned at his childhood nickname for her and stuck her tongue out at him.
"You need to get out, Dad."
"I'm thinking about a trip home."
"Home? I thought this was home?"
"I need to deal with some stuff…my new therapist…he's got me thinking about things I remember that don't match up. I may do some investigating myself."
"Mom would hate that…tell you it doesn't matter, you have us." She leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Dana's dead…and as much as I love her…I can't let her make all the decisions anymore."
"Like you ever did, Dad." Nat kissed his cheek. "I'm going home…the kids should be back from Rick's mom's and I want to tuck them in." That was something else that was bothering the hell out of him…being a grandfather.
"Kiss the girls for me."
She bounced out the door, and he glared into the fire. The marshals had him on an administrative leave…he'd gone berserk when the accident report had come over the radio. She'd been driving to the doctor, both of them shocked at her late life pregnancy. She'd been forty-five, and had honestly thought she was going through menopause even after both he and Nat had told her she was pregnant. The drunk driver had run a red light, plowed right into the driver's side of the car, killing her instantly. He'd wanted fifty years with her, he barely had ten. He'd gone after the driver, ripped half the man's thigh off before the other officers had pulled him off. The only reason they'd not revoked his license – and his pardon – had been because they all wanted a piece of him, and she was his wife, as well as Chief of Police.
The new therapist had started using hypnotherapy on him, and there were some strange holes in his memory – not exactly holes, more like overlaps – and he wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't.
Dana and Nat were real, he knew that. The Runt was real, he knew that, but how they met and who'd killed Logan Creed, Victor's father was a very big question in his mind.
He had two different memories of that event, one where he ripped his father's guts out with his own hands, and one where Jimmy had done it after a sequence of events that even Jimmy hadn't realized were going on around him.
Dana had been wrong about one thing. She wasn't his first marriage, not the first woman he'd ever loved. There were three deaths in his life he regretted, one took the only woman who had ever challenged him completely away, and two at his fathers hand, his mother and
The door opened, causing him to wince as the light came down the root cellar stairs. He watched as she slipped in, and shut the door behind her as if she were hiding. He knew the feeling. It was the only place he could escape his father's drunken rages since his mother's death.
"You hidin' from somethin'." He growled softly.
"Is that you, Victor?" Her voice trembled in fear.
"Yeah, Maggie. Master John catch you alone in the kitchen again?"
"I can't keep running away, one of these days he's not going to…"
"Maggie, you can't let him…what he takes, my father think he owns. He'd kill you." He stood up and crossed the dirt floor and pulled her into a hug. She had been a breath of air in the stifling atmosphere of the Howlett farm. She'd been hired about a month ago, Elizabeth had fired the last cook after she showed up pregnant, demanding money from Master John. Maggie Burk was the replacement.
"I'm a good girl. I don't want to…I just want to do my job and send money home to my mother."
"I know."
"What can I do?"
"We've got ta get you out of here. He won't keep taking no, and my father will figure out its you he's chasin and will be after you too." She cried against his shoulder, then wiped her eyes and glanced at a basket of late potatoes.
"Guess I should peel those for dinner tonight so I have an excuse to be down here." She said with a sigh. He sat on the step next to her and used the knife he used to trim his nails to help her peel enough potatoes for the house for dinner. "James is sick again, that nurse of his, Rosie, was sent into town to get the doctor again."
"Jimmy's always sick." No one knew he knew, the big secret that James was HIS brother, not John Howlett's son…that every maid that showed up pregnant was from his father…John Howlett couldn't sire a child to save his life. He whispered "I'm not going to let what happened to them happen to you."
I need to get back to the kitchen. Thank you, Victor. We're both only children, I wish you could really protect me."
"I will." He snarled it.
She turned and carried the basket of peeled potatoes up the stairs. "Coast is clear, I think your father went into town."
"I'll just go check on Jimmy then." He said. He waited until she was out of the cellar before sneaking out himself. No one knew he hid there and he liked to keep it that way.
He shook his head and picked up the card on the floor. She'd dropped it, in her hurry to leave the house. He sniffed the card, and was shocked to pick up a faint scent…familiar, from his long lost past and yet completely fresh. He snarled and pocketed the card…he had more than his past to investigate now.
XXXXXXXXXX
Six months later.
Maggie woke with a start. She'd had that dream again, of sitting on an old fashioned train in a small town, snow still packed between buildings on an early spring day. A hand had landed hard on the back of her neck, dragging her and her small carpetbag down from the car, onto the mud road and between two of those buildings. He'd been huge, dark red hair and beard; his breath stank of alcohol and hate. He'd said something in the dream but she never could remember what it was, just him throwing her skirts up, his foot on her belly as he unfastened his pants and knelt, hands forcing her knees apart, pouncing like an animal as he forced himself into her. She remembered the pain, remembered shame, and remembered a face…not the rapist but a young boy, a boy she knew she was going to disappoint, and a name…Victor.
She shook her head. The new chef was working out well at the restaurant and she was finally going to get that vacation she'd been planning. Nat was great, and it helped that they carried a similar mutant gene. She blessed the day that Nat Creed had shown up in her life, and if it wasn't for the fact that the dreams were getting worse, her life would be close to perfect.
She looked at the clock and realized that she wouldn't get back to sleep, the alarm was about to go off. She threw back the covers and turned off the clock. She wasn't going to be back for two weeks, and even though her neighbors wouldn't hear the vibration clock she still didn't like the idea of disturbing anyone.
She grabbed the bags, packed last night, and put them outside the bedroom door. She grabbed the jeans, sweater and boots she'd laid out and grabbed clean underwear and a bra from her drawer. She opened the bathroom door, and reached into the shower to turn on the water as hot as she could get it. She always felt like she needed to wash after that dream. It wasn't the act, or even the certainty that the dream ended in her death, it was what she did in the dream, what she said. She could remember only bits and pieces of the chant from the dream but she knew, somehow it was not a prayer, but a curse…and she woke up feeling dirty and ashamed every time she had the dream.
She scrubbed herself until she felt normal again, and then slipped out of the shower, drying the flecks of blood off her skin. She looked at the fresh growth of skin on her face and neck, one particularly deep cut from the hairline over her left eye, across her eyelids, nose and cheek to her right ear was still healing. She didn't know why but every time she woke from that dream she scrubbed and scraped and scratched, not wanting to look at herself in the mirror until she knew she had clean, new skin covering the horror underneath.
She turned off the water and pulled on her undergarments and walked out of the bathroom.
"That was a little harsh." She started at the sound of Nat's voice. The dream had her spooked, she'd forgotten that her assistant chef was coming by today to take her to rent a car, and hadn't caught her scent.
"Bad dream again." She pulled on her jeans and sweater, and then sat in a chair to pull on her boots.
"Have you talked to anyone, my dad swears by his therapist."
"No, they wouldn't understand…"
"Yeah that's what he used to think – 'til mom died. Even before…when he had to do some therapy for work, he'd not opened up like he did to this guy."
"Your mom died last year didn't she."
"Yeah about six months before I came to work for you. I never was big on the whole college thing, so mom did the course in Paris for a year after I dropped out of the second school. I'd just graduated and come home when…it happened."
"You said your dad took off?"
"He did – for a while, said he had to go home and figure some stuff out. He's been in touch, keeps sending stuff to the kids, but I haven't heard from him in about a month. He said last time he called that he'd found something disturbing and he'd let me know how it went when he had the chance."
"You're worried about him?"
"Yeah – he's my Dad…I know I shouldn't worry, he keeps telling me he's been doing this since Noah grounded the ark, but I don't always believe that old story. He's not as tough as he wants everyone to believe sometimes, and Mom's death was really hard on him…and the baby."
"Your mom was pregnant, you never told me that?"
"Yeah – on her way to her first doctor's appointment when the driver hit her." Nat's eyes were welling up.
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you think about it."
"It's okay; I just miss her so much." Maggie stood up and hugged her.
They stood there for a moment, then Nat said "Let's go get you that car."
XXXXXXXX
Five Days Later
She couldn't believe the damned car had stalled, in the middle of a blizzard, no where near the resort she was going to. The GPS couldn't even get a signal where she was, lost in the Canadian wilderness. She stayed with the car, waiting to see if someone would come along to at least help her get to a town, but so far no luck.
The forest came right up to the road on both sides and she kept looking to see if maybe there was a house or some kind of lights somewhere, someplace she might be able to get warm, maybe call a tow truck, but so far no luck.
She opened the driver's side door, to try to clear the drift against the side of the car, but it was already halfway up the sedan's side. She groaned and moved to the passenger side of the front seat. That was when she saw the light flickering in the distance, and made her decision to strike for it. Even with her healing, this cold could kill her if she got too cold. She'd had one mistake, when she was younger, right after the healing developed. She'd thought she was invincible and dared a friend to lock her in a walk in freezer. Her core body temperature had dropped so low she'd been in a coma for a month. After that she tended to avoid the cold. The only reason she was in this godforsaken place was the promise she'd made to meet her brother at the resort. He liked to ski, something she hated but he'd made her promise to meet him that she wouldn't have to get out in the ice, the resort had a heated pool and hot tub and spa, his treat.
She moved slowly through the snow, losing sight of the light, and then it would flicker again, still in the same place. The wind was biting and she could feel her toes going numb. She hated the damned cold, but the light seemed to be getting closer. The way it flickered, and stayed in one place made her think it was a fire – or fireplace through a window, and that meant warmth.
She staggered out of the woods and nearly collapsed in shock…it was a fire – of sorts, it was a small church with candles lit inside, the door open. She walked towards it, barely noticing, in the blowing snow the outlines of other buildings around. She walked inside and held her hands out over the candles, the slight heat they were putting out a welcome reprieve to the bitter numbness of the cold.
There were several more candles around a book, sitting on a pedestal, but not any bible she'd ever seen. She glanced at it and stopped in shock, it was a registry – marriage registry, the month of April, 1845 the page it was open to. Three quarters of the way down the page she looked in shock at the names Victor Creed married Margaret Burk, April 16, 1845.
"Who are…MAGGIE!" She turned and saw the horror from her nightmare, dark hair and beard, wearing a long dark leather coat, pants and shirt…and held her hand up to try to fend him off. He charged down the aisle of the church, and the last thing she saw were his lips moving as she fell.
XXXXXXXX
He'd seen her stagger of the woods, he could tell she was half frozen, but he kept getting a strange scent. He was used to the scent now, he'd tracked down anything and everything Maggie had ever touched in her short life, and it surrounded him in his new home – cabin really. He'd bought the whole place ten years after she'd died, forced everyone out and locked it away like a time capsule, doing all the maintenance himself, not letting anything change…for over a century. Finding it again – and finding the truth about so many things in his past was an investigation he wasn't finished with.
She was standing at the book when he pushed open the half closed door to the church. He wanted those doors open all the time. He came here a lot to remember that day…and what he'd lost. Seeing her – smelling her standing there he'd rushed forward, and made it just in time to catch her as she fell. She looked like Maggie, smelled like Maggie, but he knew his Maggie had died on April 16, 1845; he'd buried her broken bloody body himself.
