Thank you to my reviewers past and present. You make me smile.

This is fourteen pages long. Whew. I just edited this. I'm sorry it took so long, but, alas, FF has been messing up again. And their support email doesn't actually give responses. Their twitter doesn't actually answer. So little old me waited and waited and waited and finally, now that everything is fixed, enjoy the chapter.


4 Non Blondes - What's Up

Sarah Hartman - Monster Bring Me Home

lovelytheband - Maybe I'm Afraid

Imagine Dragons - Whatever It Takes

Miike Snow - My Trigger

OneRepublic - Counting Stars

Kongos - I'm Only Joking

Florence & The Machine - Shake It Out

George Ezra - Budapest


Chapter 5, What's Up:

It didn't happen often, these father daughter moments. Holly sitting with him while he worked on upgrades to a suit, talking about everything and nothing at all. No, it didn't used to happen often, but now that Holly was living in Stark Tower now, these moments were a lot more frequent.

Tony hadn't known Rosie long enough to figure out what about Holly came from him and what came from her mom. But, down here in his private lab, while she sang along under her breath to AC/DC, Guns n' Roses, or hell, even Whitesnake, he liked to think that was a little bit of him in her personality.

"How's therapy?" She asked without looking up from the pad in her hands.

Ah, therapy. The thing his daughter told him was unconditional necessity after the past New Year. Weeks later, alright, he could admit, he'd been erratic after the Battle of New York. If he wanted to see the grandkids - how on earth was he old enough to have grandchildren? - he needed to go to therapy.

When he didn't answer, Holly did look up. Green eyes just like her mother's watching him. "Dad?"

He was barely sixteen when he met her mom. Who was almost sixteen. Five long weeks before Labor Day weekend. That's all he had with Rosie. Normally his family went away to New Jersey for the entire summer. Memorial Day to Labor Day. What made his father stay in California that year, he didn't know. He never got to ask. Her father was there for work, not like his family.

Tony still remembered the minute he saw her. A pretty girl, sandy blonde hair with the most beautiful deep green eyes buying salt water taffy on the Santa Cruz pier. He'd been arguing with his father about something he couldn't remember and there she was. Rosalie Harper. A little taller than him, dirty blonde hair, bare feet with sand still clinging to her toes as she walked down the pier.

It took him two days to find her again on the beach. She wouldn't even talk to him. It took another two days to convince her he was more than money and a pretty face. Another day and a half and she let him kiss her. After that...well he didn't want to give up kissing her. They conceived Holly the night before they both had to go home.

He successfully avoided his parents finding out he had a naked girl in his hotel room. Not so much the nanny. It didn't take long after meeting Holly to figure out Rosie's letters were taken by the nanny. Where the letters went, he had no idea. Burned or destroyed somehow.

"Dad, you're staring at me."

She called him dad. His thirty year old daughter. "What do you want to do for your birthday?" It was almost comical, her birthday was nine days before his. The universe laughing in his face looking back on thirty years.

If only he'd gotten one letter.

Maybe he wouldn't have graduated from MIT at seventeen, it might have taken him until eighteen or nineteen, even twenty because he would have been a teenage father. Looking at Holly, remembering Rosie, hey, it wouldn't have been all that bad. At least he would have seen his daughter take her first step. Seen her first tooth. Paid the tooth fairy.

Been there when her mutation developed.

"Do? I don't know." she set aside the pad. "Party I guess. Friends and family."

Tony slid his hand across the screen, wiping it. "Just a party? Holly, you only turn thirty one once."

"What would you prefer?" And there was his snarkiness in her tone. "A trip to Paris to spend some of your billions?"

"Kid, do you know how much money you'd have to spend to put a dent in our family money?" He leaned back against the desk, crossed his arms over his chest with one eyebrow raised. "You could fly around the world, every day, for a year. Rent the most expensive hotel rooms in the world, every day for a year. Order the most expensive food you could eat every day for a year. Drink the most expensive wine, champagne or whatever you want every day for a year and still not put a dent in our family's money."

She shifted a little, uncomfortable with that phrase. 'Our family's money.'

Dale Harper, his wife June, and Holly's mother Rosie were by no means poor but they had been staunchly middle middle class. Until Holly's mutation and the hospital bills began to roll in. Then Rosie got sick.

If he'd gotten one damn letter!

When Tony found out that Dale had footed the bill for Holly's stay in a psychiatric ward, of course he paid for it. Wiped the debt out. Paid for both of the mortgages on the Harper family home. It was the very least he could do after thirty years of being completely absent.

Dale was still warming up to him. After almost decking him for knocking up his fifteen year old daughter thirty odd years ago.

"I've never been to Paris." Holly said softly, "or outside North America really. I've been to Canada." She paused. "With Logan once."

"Anywhere you want to go. Anything you want to do. Anything Hol, just say it."

She smiled at him reaching out one gloved hand and taking his. "Thanks dad."

Tony's heart squeezed in his chest. She called him dad.

He was still thinking about her birthday, and what he could do for her birthday when Panic! At the Disco began to play. Holly must have added one or two songs to the playlist before she left to get her ass kicked by a Russian. He didn't actually hate Panic!. He grumbled about not liking the band because Holly, last year (pre-battle), opted out of a father daughter night of b-horror movies and pizza to go with Rogue and Stringbean to a concert. She did make it up to him with a full rewatching of the new Star Trek movies.

Tony, grinning to himself, had an amazing idea.


Holly was never going to be a fighter the likes of which some of the other mutants/humans she knew. That seemed to be a given thing as she looked up from the floor at Natasha, swallowed blood from biting her tongue accidentally and said, "I suck."

Natasha held out one gloved hand to Holly's own gloved hand. "All the muscle in the world does nothing if you can't defend yourself."

Back aching like she just went a round with Wade, Holly pushed up into a sitting position. "Tell that to my husband." She said, and for a brief moment there she forgot - she didn't have a husband anymore. Logan, her Logan, had been having her work out three days a week in addition to having Natasha kick her ass.

Natasha tapped her cheek gently with a gloved finger. "Up. Again."

With a grunt of pain, up Holly went. "You know, when I asked you to help me learn to protect myself, beating my ass wasn't what I meant."

"You asked me to teach you to fight back. Defending yourself is irrelevant right now. Fix your leg."

Holly moved her dominant leg back into position. "I feel more comfortable-"

The gym door opened. Steve walked in just as Natasha swept Holly's legs and the brunette went down. "Distractions get you killed. Up. Again."

From the floor Holly sighed. "I think you're meaner now that you don't have an audience of kids fangirling and fanboying over you."

Natasha almost smiled. Almost. Her eyes crinkled a little and the corners of her mouth curled up the slightest bit. She got down on one knee next to Holly and helped the other woman up. "I'm going to go harder on you because now you don't have a school full of mutants and a half dozen other superheroes to go through before someone gets to you and the twins. The odds aren't in your favor in Stark Tower. All someone has to do is wait until you leave the building." She squeezed Holly's hand once. "One more time and fix that leg."

Holly nodded, putting her footing back into position. "Okay, okay. Show me again." For the next hour Natasha ran her ragged. It was a combination of styles, a piece of this, a bit of that. Something that she felt like she saw in those Kung Fu movies Kurt liked, and she was pretty sure there was Capoeira in there somewhere.

"You have one advantage I don't." Natasha said finally handing Holly a bottle of water.

Holly, flopping against one wall, "Yeah, what's that?"

"You only need to touch someone once to put them down."

With a wry smile, "Yeah, turning someone's brain into swiss cheese is a real bonus." She swallowed a half dozen times, the bottle cracking and crinkling in her hand.

"When you're fighting to survive, putting your enemy down as fast as possible is what matters most." Natasha too sat down. "Have you ever tried incapacitating someone temporarily?"

Holly bowed her head. "I can't risk hurting someone that way. The brain," she circled her bottled water indicating Natasha's head, "is an extremely complex organ. If I touched you-"

"Not a good idea."

"Mmm, I gathered." She swallowed again. "I could grab some memories and shred them. You'd know that you were missing a memory, you would know there was something there before but you'll never remember what. When I take things, when I'm in there and offensively putting someone down - I'm basically destroying what makes them tick. Eventually their personality would change because they lack the life experiences that made them who they are. If I took everything. Every thread of what makes a person, they're a vegetable. Eventually they die because their body just doesn't remember why it works."

"No temporary fixes then."

Holly sighed and rubbed her forehead in a move Natasha had seen Tony do repeatedly. "Yes and no. If it's a thought, maybe a new memory that hasn't had time to convert into long term I can grab it and remove it. Like this. I could make you forget ever training me today. You'd come to sitting there, no idea where your time went."

Natasha didn't betray a single eyelash. She sipped her water and attempted not to think about all of the horrifying implications that came with Holly's mutation.

"There's a reason I'm borderline class five mutant Nat." Holly looked down at her gloved hands. "I'm dangerous as fuck when I get my hands on someone."

Natasha side eyed Steve, who had tensed when he heard Holly curse. "Careful Holly, the fossil doesn't like foul language."

Holly snorted. "Steve isn't a fossil yet. When he reaches Logan's age and still looks twenty-five, then we can start talking." She pushed up against the wall. "Just show me that move with the elbow and knee combo again. I feel like I can do that a lot faster once I get the movements right."

Natasha nodded. "One more, then you lift for half an hour. Legs today."

Holly groaned. "You're so mean."

"You'll thank me one day."


The next time Steve saw Holly was a day later. She had a run away baby making his way down the hall. "Tommy!" Holly snapped the clip on Jamie's side of the twin seat stroller. She turned away for one second to grab a wipe. God.

Steve, being Steve, scooped up the diapered bundle of chubby cheeks and pink limbs crawling past his door. The baby boy squealed in delight, clapped and then grabbed Steve's face in his wet hands. "Hey kid, where are you going?" He asked while walking the baby back to his mother.

"We were going for a walk," Holly told him, giving him an apologetic look. She took the baby back and settled him back into the stroller with the harness clicking into place. "But someone is so excited he doesn't want to wait."

"And his hands are wet because?"

"Sorry!" Holly snagged a wipe and without thinking, because mom brain, grabbed Steve's face and began wiping at the spot where Tommy touched him. "Baby spittle."

With a small chuckle, he gently took the wipe from her. "I think I can get it."

Holly released his face. "Oh god. I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize Mrs. Harper."

"Holly," she corrected. "And technically it's Mrs. Logan. But, we're neighbors, and you're friends with my dad. You can call me Holly." She glanced down at the stroller, then herself and said, "I am forgetting something. Diaper bag, two kids, stoller… "

"Purse." Steve supplied.

She pointed right at him. "Oh you are good. Can you watch them for a second?"

"Sure. Take your time." Kids were on the list of things he was good at taking care of. He crouched in front of them, the one on the left was Tommy, so that meant the baby boy on the right was Jamie. He smiled at them both and began playing got your nose. Tommy reached out to grab Steve's hand, while Jamie watched with fascinated curiosity. Jamie thrust the red soft block he had been holding toward Steve. "Thank you." He tossed it up and caught it with one hand. The twins exploded into giggles and baby talk.

Unbeknownst to him, Holly had returned and was watching him. "You're good with kids."

He caught her eye over the edge of the stroller top. "I like children. The younger they are the easier they are to please." He handed Jamie back the soft cube. The boy gurgled at him and went back to squeezing it.

"Thank you for your help. Again."

"You're welcome Holly."

She began to walk toward the elevators, then stopped. Holly turned back, "Hey, what are you up to today?"

"I was going to take a walk around the city." He said, "Try to see if I recognise anything."

"Want to come with us? I promise we're a lot more fun that wandering alone."

He opened his mouth to say a polite no thank you. Then he stopped. He'd been walking alone or riding alone on his bike for months. "If you don't mind the company."

"Of course not." She waved him over, "come on Cap. Let's go see Balto."

Balto, as it turned out, hadn't moved a single inch since the last time Steve had been to Central Park seventy plus years ago. Steve looked up at the metal cast on a mount. For once when someone said something, he'd known where to go. Jamie, the calmer of the two boys, sat in his arms as Steve pointed up at the dog.

"Doggie," he said to Jamie.

Jamie kicked small chubby pink legs and tried for it. He was only forming a handful of words, give or take. But he did try.

Holly spun around with Tommy. "Who's the biggest boy?" He kicked his legs and giggled wildly. "You are!" She booped his nose. "Did Steve take your nose? Did he?"

Steve looked over with a grin. "I gave it back."

"Good. Now mommy can eat your nose!" She planted a big kiss on her elder son's cheeks and forehead.

Jamie was going for Steve's face again. Baby hands patted his chin and cheeks. Steve went for a spin in place. Jamie squealed with joy. He tapped Steve's face again as if to ask to spin again. This time Steve went the other way. Jamie giggled, clapping.

"He really likes you."

Steve tapped the baby's nose. "I like him too."

"Wait, let me get a picture." Holly, balancing Tommy on one hip, fished out her cell phone and opened up the picture app. "Smile!" She double tapped as Steve cradled Jamie and smiled at the camera.

"Would you like one of all of you?" An older woman asked, beautiful darkened Grey hair and an equally distinguished looking husband in tow.

"Oh, um," Holly's green eyes found Steve's blue. He shrugged in response to her silent question. Most people didn't recognise him without the shield and uniform. "If you don't mind, that would be great. Thank you."

The woman smiled at them. "Say cheese." A handful of pictures taken, she held the phone back out.

Holly, gloveless, hesitated to take it back.

Steve reached out and retrieved the phone with a smile. "Thank you ma'am."

"Such a lovely couple." She said before walking away with her husband.

The red crept up Holly's neck at the same time Steve's ears and cheeks began to turn pink. "We should, um… where are my gloves?" Holly settled Tommy back into his seat and clipped him back in.

"Purse," he supplied once again.

She shook her head. "Seriously, I need you around more often." She snatched the thinner cream colored spring driving gloves from her purse and pulled them on before taking Jamie back from him. With Jamie strapped in, Holly took the phone back from Steve.

He watched as she gingerly tapped through the pictures with the thinner pad of her gloved index finger. "You can't touch anything, ever?"

"Oh I can touch everything if I want to bleed to death and go into convulsions." She told him with chagrin. "But no, not if I want to survive. I was working with Professor X for a couple of years to get my power under control. I can slow down and stop most of the transfer now, even see inside the person's mind if I'm touching them. I get impressions of the future, very, very rarely." You're rambling Holly. "Everything was made by someone. Everything has a memory attached. People are full of memories." She frowned a bit, putting her phone away. "I was born in the wrong century to have this power."

That was...horrifying. Steve had no other word for it. Feeling pain when being touched, every time you're touched. He looked down at the twins. Going through it to be married and have children.

"I can get used to people," she told him as if reading his mind. "Like my husband, most of my friends, and my dad." She let out a small chuckle. "I think I probably scared about a year off my dad's life when he gave me the okay to touch him for the first time. He saw my nosebleed and my eyes roll back into my head and nearly had a panic attack."

She tilted her head at him. "You want to keep going or go back?"

Fully aware she was giving him a plausible reason to leave, Steve never gave in to fear. "Where to next?"

Holly smiled at him. "Hans Christian Anderson, then Alice in Wonderland. Maybe lunch after?"

"Sounds good. Though I don't know where either of those are."

"Over to fifth, Hans is between East 73rd and East 74th. Then up to East 75th and back into the park, Alice and her friends are there."

Now those were directions he could follow.

Later that morning, "Wait," she said, "what do you mean you have a list?" The boys were sleeping soundly, tired from the day. Holly was tired too, and they stopped to sit at a bench under the shade of some trees overgrowing the park's stone walls. She took apart a large soft pretzel and handed him half.

"Thank you." Steve pulled out a small black notebook and handed it to her. "I started making a list of things I need to catch up. People talk about something and I don't get the reference or don't have a clue."

Her head bobbed as she thumbed passed some crossed out things. Then she started giggling wildly. "You put, oh my god, every nerd in the world would murder you." She tapped the Star Wars/Trek on the last page. "These two fandoms are in a war of the ages. And you put them next to each other!"

Frowning down at the pages, "Why?"

"Because Star Wars is epic and Star Trek is epic and apparently people just can't get along when there are two epic fandoms in existence. Trust me there were fandom wars online when Harry Potter movies came out at the same time Twilight movies came out."

"Who is Harry Potter?"

Holly's eyes lit up. "You've never heard of Harry Potter?"

"We didn't really watch television or movie in my time. We read a lot, listened to the radio. Old habits die hard. I've been spending most nights reading books that Banner loaned me."

She knocked her shoulder into his. "You're in luck. Not only do I own all of the Harry Potter books so you can borrow them, I also own all the movies."

He pulled the pen from his back pocket. "I'll add it to the list." He wrote in Harry Potter with the word series/movies in parenthesis.

"Want to come over for dinner and watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone?"

"Tonight?"

"Absolutely. Come on, let's head back, these two are going to wake up soon and I'd rather they not be grumpy."


Trying to jog the other Logan's memories was turning out to be fruitless. Everything that belonged to Holly had been removed the day she moved out. The day he woke up. He had her scent on the pillows and on his clothes and not much else. He got to keep the cribs only because the cajun couldn't get them the day she left. Speaking of, there he was.

"You," Remy said from the open doorway, "look like a man who doesn't know which end is up."

A pillow hit the wall over the bed. "You want somethin'?"

"No, mon ami, but I think you do."

Logan glared at him. "Yeah? What do I want from you?"

"Help getting your wife to fall for you again." Remy waved off the angry look shot in his direction. "The Professor spoke to some of us. Explained why Holly left you. Makes sense, you look like her husband but you're not her husband. But you still got him up here," Remy tapped his own temple, "no?"

Some of the anger drained from Logan. "What's it to you?"

"One, Logan was my friend, two, Holly is my friend. She's also the only one that Marie likes to talk about relationships." And if he got Holly to talk to Rogue about this crap with ice-balls, maybe he'd get her back.

Logan gave him an impatient, irritated glare.

"Mon ami, right now, if you had not guessed; I know more about your relationship and sex life than you do."

Logan looked the cajun up and down. They were friends? Then again, he was married. He had kids. Stranger things had happened in this other timeline.

Remy ignored the way Logan was looking at him. His friend was supposedly still up there somewhere in that thick skull. "First date, very simple. Dress shirt. Blue preferably, Holly's favorite color. Nice slacks, the kind you probably only wore on your wedding day so go buy new ones. She'll know if you're wearing the other ones. You make a reservation somewhere nice, not too nice. Holly doesn't like money even if her father has more than God ever intended a human being to have. I'll teach you something about ordering wine, but your woman can shoot whiskey. Bad habit she picked up from you. Never learned to like the cigars though." He gave Logan a pointed look.

Logan, glowering, removed the unlit cigar from the corner of his mouth.

"You have children, the old Logan, he kicked the habit."

That explained having no ashtrays and why he had to go buy cigars.

"Listen, because I only say this to you once. You have the perfect woman. She's smart, she's kind, she's a good person, she is funny, she likes sex as much as you do, and she willingly gave you," he said the word you with a pointed finger, "children. If you fuck this up for my friend that might still be in your head, I will personally kick your ass and I know about two dozen others willing to help. That includes Deadpool. He will slice the parts that hurt the most. Holly deserves better than you, but she likes you. Only God knows why."

"Mystery of the universe." Logan muttered.

"Oh and you take the bike to your first date."

Logan side eyed him. "The bike?" What bike?

"The vintage Harley the other Logan restored. You drive that down."

"Why the bike?" Not that he was arguing.

"Because Holly likes something big, powerful and fast between her thighs. Probably why she puts up with you."

"Yeah smartass, and how do I get her to go out with me? I had to fight her not to sign divorce papers today."

Remy tapped his chest. "You've got your own Cyrano, mon ami. And I am here to help."

Who the hell was Cyrano?


Steve stared at the credits, Holly having paused it. "No, no, wait." He had to watch the volume of his voice. The boys were sleeping in the bedroom. "I thought that Snape was the bad guy?"

Holly, much too entertained by his reaction, giggled into one hand. She snagged his plate off the coffee table. "Do you want more pie?"

He stood, "I'll help you."

Rolling her eyes she very gently pressed her gloved hand against his chest. "Sit down soldier. I'm just grabbing the last slice. We can split it."

Ever the gentleman he reached around her and grabbed the paper plates. "My mother taught me not to sit while the host works."

"Well, who am I to question the wisdom of your mom?" Steve went for the semi-full containers on the counter from the restaurant, and Holly began dumping the plates and empty containers.

"What do you want to do with this?" He asked holding up the chicken and broccoli.

"All yours. I can't eat meat."

Pausing for a moment he came to a realization that made him slightly green around the gills. "You'd see everything about the animals life."

"Including the day and the way they died."

He suddenly did not want the chicken and broccoli anymore. He decided to refrigerate it for now. Later he could take it back to his place and throw it away. "Where did you order this from?"

"Small hole in the wall chinese japanese fusion. Takes thirty minutes to deliver, but worth it." She pulled the pie from the fridge as he brought over the other containers. "This comes from Magnolia's Bakery. I don't know what they put in it but it is amazing and it doesn't trigger off anything. Someone working there must be a null." When he looked at her questioningly Holly said, "There are mutants with the ability to nullify other people's powers. It's not a super rare mutation, and it is one of the few that tends to repeat. There's a boy at the school with that ability." Jimmy would graduate this year. God. Jimmy was graduating and going off to college...and she wouldn't be there to see it.

Steve put the rest of the food in the refrigerator.

Holly slid one large knife though the last slice. "I should have just ordered a whole pie, but I didn't think we'd eat that much."

With a bashful smile, he bowed his head a little. "If I'm hungry enough I can devour a whole buffet in under an hour." Hands in his pockets, he gave her a sheepish shrug. "Super soldier."

"Right, next time you come over I will buy a whole pie." She held out a metal fork to him. He hesitated to take it. The other fork he'd been using was plastic. "It's fine, all I'll see you enjoying a pie if I ever use that fork again. Tiny memories like that don't hurt. They're just," she searched for the word, "a small look into other people's moments of time."

Carefully, even though her hands were gloved, he took the fork. "But a glass of water would have hurt."

Holly pushed herself up onto the counter next to the pie while his hip settled just on the other side. "Mmm, how many times have you used that cup? Once, okay probably wouldn't hurt. Twice, I might get something you were thinking about at the time, or a memory of what you were doing while drinking. Three, four, five, two dozen, everything compounds. People infuse their things with their daily lives without knowing it. I'm not used to you, and you're older than the average person that I've touched. That could have ended with you calling my dad because I was having a seizure and lost a pint of blood. Then he'd get pissed off at you and there would be a civil war in Stark Tower."

She waved her fork in the air with a stabbed piece of apple. "You need to be okay with me touching you first, and me seeing things you may not want me to see. I can control the flow, slow it down, but I will see things you might not want another person knowing." She pointed the fork at him. "When you're ready, you can tell me. I'm big on consent with my power. I have to be. Everyone has a secret they'd like to keep. I have no right to peek into another person's head, let alone life, without their express consent. I used to tell people to put things they didn't want seen behind a wall or door in their mind, but that was contributing to how negatively my power impacted me. Now I see everything."

He thought about it as they ate the last of the pie. He didn't have a lot of secrets. None, really, save the one that most historians had figured out from the video of him with Peggy's picture in his watch. Setting the fork down. "How does it work?"

Very slowly, Holly set her fork down too. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"If I get a nosebleed or my eyes roll back into my head, don't freak out. That's normal. I'll be fine. We should sit."

"Couch." He said.

"Yeah, good choice."

They returned to the couch with the paused credits from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. "Okay, so," her heart beat kicked up. Holy shit. This was happening. Granted he wasn't as old as Logan, and she had much more control over her powers. "Clear your mind as best you can. I'm going to get a dump of your thoughts with the memories." Holly pulled off one glove. "Ready?"

He put his hand out again. She shook her head with a small smile. He dropped his hand. "Arm?"

Almost shyly, biting her lip, Holly reached across and let her palm hover over his left side jaw. She waited for him to nod at her and then, very gently cupped that side of his face. "The face is better, closer to the source- oh." Her eyes did roll for less than a second and a drop of blood did appear just below the line of her nose above her lip.

It didn't hurt. No, that's not right. It did hurt, a little bit, but not like touching other people. His mind wasn't a jumble of memories and thoughts that fell together incoherently. Everything was almost orderly and tidy. It was like… like walking through a neat and well kept home. Everything in its place. There were some cobwebs over older memories, fresher ones like the battle last year were vibrant and colorful like digital art, and a large, almost cavernous black area that started at- Oh god.

Holly sobbed when her eyes came back to normal.

Steve almost started to ask if she was alright, but he didn't move. He wanted to. The urge to put a hand on her arm and ask if everything was okay hit him hard. She dropped her hand then leaned over to hug him.

"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Steve."

He froze, not knowing what to do. Hugging wasn't something people back in his time. "For what?"

She pulled back, sniffing but not wiping off the tiny drop of blood. "I saw when you went into the ice. When you realized that might be it for you. That was," she swallows hard. Holly shook her head and wiped at her eyes. "No one should ever know what that feels like."

He barely remembered that. Being cold, being in the dark, knowing hypothermia was going to set in quickly. Then, nothing. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let you-"

She hugged him again without warning. "Shut up Rogers. Okay? Just take the sympathy."

Carefully his arms wrapped around her. He took the sympathy.

Somewhere a phone started ringing. Holly pulled back. "That's me. One sec." She got up, long skirt swishing as she walked.

Steve realized he'd never seen her wear jeans. Leggings under a somewhat shorter skirt that went to her knees like when she was moving in. Sweatpants that one day he saw her in the gym. He made a mental note to ask.

"Hi," her voice was soft. "I have a guest over, can I… a date? Like a date, date? Where you actually wear something other than a t-shirt and boots?"

Steve heard her go quiet for a moment.

"Friday night. Dress up? Logan you don't own... okay, okay. No, I mean, yes. Friday, eight thirty. See you then." Holly hung up bewildered. She and Logan hadn't dated. Ever. They were acquaintances, he had a thing for her, then lovers, that was it. He'd taken her out a handful of times after they were married to a diner or once a really quaint bed and breakfast where they nearly broke the bed. And the shower. They did actually break a desk. She set the phone down on the counter where it had been and went back to the living area. "Sorry, my husband."

How did he forget that she was a married woman? The lack of ring threw him off, and when she removed her gloves she hadn't been wearing one. Was that her mutation or leaving her husband? He cared because she was Tony's daughter and she was becoming his friend. "Everything okay?"

"Yes, well, I mean, yes but…" her brows furrowed. "Did you talk to my dad at all? Or Doctor Banner?"

"Not since a day or two before you moved in."

Holly brushed an errant tendril of hair out of her eyes. "Good thing you're already sitting. This one's a doozy." She turned off the dvd player and the tv at the same time. "Do you know what an alternate timeline is?"


Thank you! Thank you! Thank you in advance for the love. I got a lot of followers recently and that is amazing.

Go ahead and plot bunny this one out. I know you want to.