Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel. I do own Etana.
This is a tie-in with my X-Men story Memories. If I get enough reviews I will post my two happy what-if stories .One where Cap isn't frozen, the other where Etana doesn't die.
I watch as they lower the coffin into the ground. They wouldn't let me see her body. She'd been dying when she sacrificed herself. Dying of a plague. They said it was better I didn't see her. I think they may be right. I've seen other mutants who had the Legacy Virus and I don't think I'd want to see her with those glossy black wings all ragged and that short midnight fur patchy. She knew she was going to die. She told me. But she lied. She said she'd die on the 19th. She died on the 18th. She knew I'd try to stop her.
I remember the last time I saw her alive. It was April and she turned up. Just knocked on the door. Then she told me that she had contracted the Legacy Virus. I told her that Hank McCoy would find a way of curing her, that the plague would be wiped out. She just smiled sadly and said that they would invent a cure. I'm human so I knew I shouldn't be afraid. That was before the human strain was released. So I hugged her and felt the short fur and the glossy wings and she left. Left before I could ask her about that day in Poland. I thought it was just a kiss. I wished it was more but she acted like it was just a kiss. Now I know she wanted it to more. But she was too kind to hurt me. Too kind…
I step forward and shovel the three scoops of dirt onto the coffin before slamming the shovel back into the ground so hard the metal is completely buried. We couldn't find her family tomb. We think it must have been destroyed at some point. So they chose to bury her here, in the USA. She was older than this country. I can see Logan holding back tears. She was his foster-mother. He doesn't remember that but she'd been looking after him for years. Nightcrawler looks shell-shocked. He was her uncle. And she was 3000 years older than him. He found out in the letter that she saved him as a child. She saved him and it cost her the thing she loved most. The feeling of air through her wings. They broke her wings! Those beautiful, powerful wings! She loved flying. I asked her about it in Poland back in '45. She tried to explain how it felt. To fly under the stars. To become a part of the air. She couldn't. So she took me flying. I felt those huge wing beats and saw why she loved it so much. That's why she didn't teleport.
They told me she died while flying. That's how she would want to go. Flying in the night air, feeling the breeze. Worthington caught her as she fell. Apparently her last word was "Adonai…" Hebrew. "My Lord". She was Jewish. And that's how I met her. How I met her on that freezing day in 1944.