Ana, in her first life, had been a rather lazy person; she had loved her sleep and enjoyed lazy days watching TV, reading books or fan fiction as well as playing games for hours on end. That seemed like a half forgotten dream now.
SHIELD had drilled into her the importance of exercise, of keeping in shape and working out and all that shit. Being trapped in a cell belonging to Hydra had been boring as Hell, the highlights of her life were training with Bucky and reading or playing whatever Duerr had gotten for her, that was almost the same with Schmidt just without the fun spars and such she had been able to do with Bucky.
Growing up decades before handhold game systems, even a few more decades before the brilliant graphics that she had known and loved would came on the market, kind of sucked as she would be decades without her beloved pokémon and all the other games she had loved to play.
Her hobbies now were working out and reading, her jobs were teaching brats how to fight, keep an eye out for threats and dealing with them.
And now she was attempting to do both hobbies at the moment.
Her shoulders and elbows supported most her weight as her legs lay straight up the wall and was doing her best to keep the book steady in front of her face.
"How are you comfortable like that?" Azazel asked as he tilted his head at her.
"I'm weird like this," Ana told him, resisting the urge to shrug.
Weird positions had always been comfortable for her, positions that made others cringe in imagined pain. If she had been a healthier person in her first life, her doctor said she could have been a gymnast as she was basically double-jointed.
Something that remained the same in each life so far.
Ana, Charles' voice didn't startle her as she was used to him calling her mentally. Alex is home.
Her book was discarded and she near-rolled to be on her feet, before she dashed from the room she heard Azazel;
"What's the hurry?" and then after a beat, "How the hell did you do that?"
"Alex," was all the warning he was given before familiar arms locked around him in a hug and something deep in him untwisted, unhardened, and his arms locked around Ana's waist as he buried his face in her hair.
"Welcome home," Ana told him warmly, and he smiled into her hair.
"Ana," and she stiffened, arms jerking in a way that told him she wasn't sure if she wanted to let go of him or hold him tighter before she slowly released him and took a step back.
"Logan," that look was back in her eyes, that odd look that years ago he couldn't place but now could.
Ana—his Ana, Erik's Ana—loved this guy—this Logan person—and Alex decided he hated Logan in that moment with all the immature jealousy of a boy who finally had to share his mother with someone else.
Behind him, Charles almost smiled.
Sharing memories was a very intimate act, it spoke of a deep trust. But it was very hard on the emotional well-being on the one receiving the memories as they would experience the memory first-hand as if it was their memories if they wasn't a telepath.
In truth, Charles could ease the emotional turmoil that Ana's rather traumatic memories were going to be for Logan but he wasn't going to. He would hammer it in Logan's head all that Ana went through, how she felt, and the depth of what she was sharing with him.
Erik would approve.
Emma didn't like Ana, and she knew the feeling was mutual. They were like fire and ice—Ana, despite, her glacier eyes was all fire and Emma was ice.
Ana's rage could become an inferno that would scorch the world without a care, while Emma's anger was cold and creeping.
The darker haired woman reacted on her instincts, though she had enough cunning and ice in her heart to plan and such. The fact of the matter was that Ana reacted more than she planned, while Emma planned for everything.
But just because Emma didn't like the other woman didn't mean that she didn't respect her, and it was because of that respect that Emma didn't pay attention to the memories that Charles was sharing between Ana and that new man. She also kept the twins from taking a peek by teaching them how to find important information—like banking information—from rich people's minds on a little day trip to New York.
Erik would be pleased with the amount of money they brought back though Charles may disapprove. Then again, he always seemed to disapprove.
Arms trembled with phantom pains, remembered pain that wasn't his own, as he braced his arms against the stone railing in the garden and stared over the grounds of the school, a place he would one day call home and had called home.
His head ached like someone shot him, his mind attempting to make sense of the sudden dump of memories.
Ana walked with near-silent footsteps, coming to rest beside him, and gazed around the grounds with him.
"So metal claws, huh?" he asked after a few beats of easy silence between.
Something that shouldn't have been there considering what he had seen—lived through—she had been through, the realisation that she actually really loved him despite both not knowing him and knowing him at the same time.
"Metal coated bones too," she added with a half-smile.
"It looked useful," he admitted as he glanced at her. "Can 'Beast' do that to me?"
"It'll hurt," she warned without real need because he had gone through with it with her. "We'll have liberate some of the metal your old team found. You'll be able to cut through almost everything easily, and almost nothing can cut through it."
"Alright," he nodded.
"You seem rather calm," she almost seemed surprised.
"It hasn't sunken in yet," he told her and she nodded.
Bone claws sunk through flesh, blood bubbling out, and Logan stared wide-eyed up at Ana. She grimaced as he slowly sheathed his claws, the claws retreating from inside her torso and scarping against her bones.
"I had forgotten how much that stung like a bitch," she commented almost off-handily as she pulled one of her tops off, she had worn two tops just in case this happened, and used it as a towel for the blood. "You better?"
She glanced up when Logan didn't answer and saw him staring at her with a strange look on his face.
"Why…?" he trailed off, perhaps not knowing what he was asking.
"We all have nightmares," she shrugged. "Some of us have dreams that can only be classed as night terrors and we all need someone there to remind us that we survived that, that we're okay for now."
"I'm not your Logan," he told her and she looked at him calmly.
"You know the one thing I could always count on?" she asked, her head tilted to the side. "You, you're always constant and don't change much. You are James Logan and always will be."
She moved so she was resting against his headboard. "We're basically immortal Logan, but we're still human. The core of us, the one that makes us who we are? That doesn't change much," she nudged him with her shoulder. "Forever is a long time to be alone, I bet it's easier with someone who knows you and understands."
How many people long for immortality? Who doesn't want to live forever?
We romance the idea of being immortal, of finding our one true love to spend eternity with, and watching the world change around them. We picture it as a glorious thing—how many stories have we told of vampires and other such beings that were able to live forever? We're in love with living, we're afraid of death, and wouldn't it be wonderful to see the world change? Wouldn't it be magnificent to watch our people develop, to discover the wonders as the years go by? It seems like a dream come true, huh?
But it isn't like that.
The world is always changing, and things that were once familiar disappear to make way for better and newer things, music constantly changes and humans continue to strive for more. More crisis happen around the world, wars break out and change how people view others, changes history, changes the world.
Attitudes change, things once taboo can become accepted and other things are still look down upon with disgust and hidden away behind closed doors.
People will get close to you, creep under your skin and dig their way into your heart, and you'll love them because, underneath it all, we're all human and all long for companions, for love. Even the most twisted of us, the ones who seem to enjoy being alone, or like they don't need anyone will always need at least one person in their life that they will love. But in the end they will die, death comes for us all—it is what makes us human in a way.
We strive all our lives to do something, to make our marks last on the world. We strive to make better things, a better world sometimes, and to leave our touch on the world after we die. We do this mostly because we know we have limited amount of time that we only so much time to make people remember us when we're gone.
People go about it in different ways. Some become everyday heroes like policemen and doctors, they become soldiers that go out and risk their lives in the name of keeping others safe. Others become artists, writers and singers or reporters who make their name by reporting other people's acts. Some become villains, killers of others and made immortal because of their acts of depravity.
Most decide to become parents so a little piece of them could live on as long as their family line continued to live.
We do this because we're so very human, fragile and breakable, stubborn and strong in different ways. Always so curious, always searching for something, always changing and always unique.
I don't want to be immortal, I don't want to live forever, I'm more afraid of living forever than dying. Living opens you up all the hurt, all the pain, all the loss. Living is both painful and wonderful, it wouldn't be life if it wasn't, huh?
AN: As you probably can guess, I'm stuck. Help?