For all of you who have been waiting, its not as easy without a co conspirator to bounce ideas off of, but I've finally started something completely new, yes its Victor, a combination of Wolverine Origins Victor/Comicverse Victor.

I don't own them, and after watching the new Iron Man movie, I have Victor in my head after a long nap, awake and screaming so here we go again. They are the property of Marvel Universe with the exception of any original characters I create, and dear fans, you know I will.

Call this a Man Woman Wild with mutants if you will...well sorta, they aren't married and don't even like each other - yet.

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Chapter One

The jungle rain dripped down the back of her neck as she sat in the Y of the tree branches watching for any type of game to come down the small trail to the lake. She had over thirty mouths to feed, most of them small children, and one a big huge baby. She didn't know what was worse, the fact that she'd been the one that hadn't want to leave him behind, or the fact that in spite of his horrible reputation, he was such a frail patient.

She spotted the first wild pig and grinned as a large suckling sprinted from the underbrush behind her, at least they would eat tonight, and hopefully be able to move on by morning - if the big baby could move.

She waited patiently for the momma pig to start to root under the tree she was in, and when it was right under her, where she had a clean shot, she dropped the huge rock she'd carried up the tree with her down on the porcine head. It stunned the pig long enough for her to drop down and slit its throat with the small obsidian blade she'd made at the lake camp. The suckling had run back into the underbrush but the pig at her feet would still feed them.

She gutted the animal with her knife, digging a small hole in the jungle floor for the entrails. After cleaning out the body cavity she tied the feet together with strong jungle vines and slipped a strong tree limb under the vines and hoisted the tree limb up onto her back and shoulders. The pig weighed close to four hundred pounds, gutted, and she hoped the little girl that could start fire could start one in this wet rainforest.

She tromped as silently as she could back to the camp with her burden and watched a few moments from the underbrush as the smaller children, none of them under the age of twelve huddled around a small fire, the older children, she was glad to see, were following her instructions and finding large leaves from the trees and brush and making bed piles. It would be dark soon, and they were going to need their rest for the long hike in the morning.

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He woke up and groaned. The last thing he remembered was the lab, being strapped down, and the excruciating pain as they tried to bond the metal to his bones. He felt weak, something he wasn't going to admit to anyone, and tried to push himself up off his back into a somewhat sitting position. The pain was almost more than even he could stand and he blacked out for a moment. When his head cleared he was being supported by two young frails, barely at the edge or just out of their teen years. He snarled and tried to take a swipe at one of them, but she laughed and just helped him to his feet and over to a small fire. He was surrounded by frails - frails and cubs and he had no idea how he'd gotten here.

"Leave me alone." He snarled, or tried to, it came out as more of a whimper.

"I told them to keep an eye on you and when you woke up to make sure you made it to the fire and got something to eat." A voice said from across the fire. He sniffed the air but even his senses were not normal at the moment, he couldn't smell anything but roasting meat.

"Who're you?" He grumbled, trying to remember what had happened.

"It's not important right now, all you need to know is you're safe, the lab is a smoldering pile of ruins, and we're the only thing between you and starvation so you'd better eat." She stood up and walked around the fire and handed him a large piece of roasted meat on a tree leaf.

He grabbed the food, his stomach was growling worse than it had when waiting for execution in Vietnam. He filed that thought away, he was going to try to remember something more important but his mind was consumed by the protein he was forcing down his throat.

"Slowly, I don't need you sick again. I need you on your feet by morning Sabretooth. We're moving camp and heading north east like you suggested so I need you on your feet we can't carry you to the coast." She snarled at him. He was taken aback for a second - she snarled.

"Do I know you?" He asked.

"No more than you know any of us lab rats, we were all locked up in there together, you helped us escape."

"I can't remember."

"I know. They did something to you in there, all we heard was you screaming for hours."

"I don't scream."

"I beg to differ." She said blandly as she sat back down across the fire and grabbed a piece of meat for herself. "The kids are asleep, the older girls are on watch, I'm sitting watch overnight so eat and try to get some rest."

XXXXXX

He watched her moving across the fire, he couldn't believe some frail had killed the pig he was eating. She moved like a clumsy ox, at least while he was watching. Either she didn't realize that he could see in the dark or she thought the fire would blind his night sight because as soon as she was outside the radius of the fire, her movement changed, sleek and compact as she checked on the cubs, not making a sound to wake them, avoiding any loose stone on the lake shore. He sniffed the air and could smell her, like something native to these jungles, wild, raw, and deadly. He scented the change as she came back into the firelight. She just smelled like a human frail. His senses were still off - either that or...

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?" she said as she flopped back down on the log she was using for a chair.

"Hide it like that?"

"Hide what?"

"Your mutation, stupid."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bullshit. Every one of these frails and cubs is a mutant, I can smell it, and yes I remember the lab now, and everything in there was a mutant, including you."

She just shrugged. "It's a long story."

"It's a long time til dawn, and I ain't got anything better to do."

"My dad, he's in the Army, career. When I was a kid, we were his ornaments, to show off, to have this picture perfect family, be there when he came home from a deployment, forget about while he was gone. My mom, she dealt with it with booze, she was a functioning alcoholic, we never were in any danger from her, my brother and I. She mostly drank at night. When we were little, it was fun, going to the parties and welcome home events, and when Dad was home, Mom paid more attention."

She looked into the fire. "I guess I was about ten when it started, I woke up one night and could smell the alcohol from her room. She was always very careful to hide it from us, but I could smell every place she had it hidden in the house. I never said anything about the smells, but everything smelled different from that point on. My dad came home about a month later, and we started the family camping trips."

She grabbed a stick and poked the fire a bit, then threw some more wood on. He leaned back against the log behind him and stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles. He didn't know where this story was leading, but as he'd said it was going to be a long night.

"It was on one of the camping trips the hearing kicked in, I could hear my parents inside the RV they used. My dad wouldn't camp on the ground for fun he'd say, that was for us kids. I could hear them, hear him inside the RV, hear every word, every blow, every whimper from my mom. He was yelling about something that had happened years before, while he was on a deployment, something about he didn't care what she said, it was still an affair and how could he know that brat out there was even his."

She looked at him across the fire. "I found out later my mom was raped while he was on one of his deployments, but he blamed her for it. We came back from that trip, to a mess in base housing, one of the guys in his unit was being discharged, because his son had sprouted horns and a tail. My dad made sure we knew that any oddities would meet with swift punishment in our house. My brother...he joined the Army to keep Dad from finding out he was gay. I was about fifteen when my dad decided that as a girl I was a good punching bag too. The first time I guess he thought he hadn't hit me hard enough when I got up and went to my room. I learned lessons quick, and I don't know if it was desperation, or to keep him from killing me the second time, but somehow I had control over the healing. I could heal the internal stuff and leave the bruises so he'd think he'd done a good job, and it kept him from hitting Mom as much, so when he was home, I'd pick at him, keep him pissed at me, to give her a break."

"He wasn't your father was he, biologically?"

"No, my father is a rapist." She said softly.

"Did they catch the guy that raped your mom?"

"Yeah actually. He's in prison. He'd raped several women that summer, I know of at least three other kids, and all of us are some kind of mutant."

"So you just hide it?"

"Yeah. If Dad ever found out, he'd kill me."

"You're an adult now, why should he care?"

"He still wants his picture perfect family. My brother's funeral was last year, he had done everything in his power to prove he was just as good a soldier as my dad, all the way to throwing himself on and IED to save the guys in his unit. My dad never found out that when he was home, and away from dad he had a partner he'd been with since high school, at least he didn't find out 'til the funeral. He disowned my brother at the funeral, in front of his unit, his partner, my mom...and I know my brother was his child. He'd kill me if he found out I was a freak."

"You're not a freak." he hissed over the fire.

"Yeah, that's why we were locked up and used as lab rats...because we're not freaks." She hissed back. "Get some sleep, its going to be a long walk tomorrow."

"Why, this is a good place."

"Yeah - you seem to remember the lab now, think about it. You killed them, all of them, freed us, and don't think we won't hold you to your promise to help us, but someone has to know what that lab is for, someone is going to miss them - and us and come looking. I'm not going to sit here like a sitting duck, waiting on them to come round us up again."

"Good reason." She glared at him.

"Besides it was your idea to move on in the morning..." She snapped.

"Fine we moved out in the morning." He closed his eyes and leaned on the log.

He could hear her moving around, far less clumsily and hid a small smile. She might think she was a freak - but she moved with the grace of a jaguar, he decided that he would call her that.

"Hey Jags...I ain't the only one who needs sleep."

"Jags?" She snapped.

"You'll figure it out. I sleep light, nothin's gonna sneak up on us. Get some sleep. Its gonna be a long walk tomorrow."

He listened until she settled down and her breathing became even. She was a smart one, and that skill of controlling the healing of the mutation, and being able to hide her scent was a good one, and something he'd never thought possible.