Happy New Year!
Chapter 8, Possibilities:
Being both psychic (more than she knew) and precognate, Holly had never realized her dreams weren't always dreams. Sometimes they were entire life times lived in the space of six to eight hours. Later in life, as an older woman working with mutants younger than her, she would finally come to realize this. However, this is not that time. Right now, having just gone to sleep after a long day (and long, long emotionally draining week), her brain slipped from REM into the possible futures in her path.
It isn't quite the Robert Frost poem of two roads diverging in the woods. There are long strings, threads of fate perhaps, that cross at intervals. Each choice leading her somewhere else. Somewhere new. Choosing which one to follow isn't a conscious thought, or even an unconscious one. In sleep her defenses, both literal and figurative dropped and whatever came, would come.
In nearly every timeline Logan goes back to change the future. They almost always break up when he returns. In many, they get back together because they love each other even if it takes him a while to remember it. In one case years, in another, days. Some...never.
One of these threads takes her to the desolate landscape of a different world.
It all made sense now. Why Strange had said they needed her. Holly dropped her gloves, her jacket, stripping down to a tank top and then she sprinted. She jumped, landing on Thanos' back, one arm going around his neck to anchor herself. He had less than a second to react before they were skin to skin and-
There was yelling, Holly no! Holly!
Then there was screaming. A lot of screaming. Shrieking that sounded like her own voice. One scream faded into the next until it was a repetitive cacophony of wordless agony.
She gathered them like threads. Bundles and bundles of threads. A life, a life as long as his, a mortal life despite what he believed. She pulled and dug, searched and pried until she had them all. All that made him alive. Made him who he was. Made him. She saw him screaming out, the torture she was causing in his head.
If she lets go, millions, billions will die.
This may kill her. She might die, and she knows that, but her children will be looked after by those that love them. Her sister has only just begun saying her name. Logan...oh Logan...she loved him so much. So very much.
Her mind fathomed Tommy's beautiful green eyes, like hers. Jamie's happy smile that lit up the world. Logan the first time he said I love you with his hands on her stomach and the dumbfounded shock on his face. The feel of her father's lips kissing her forehead. Dancing with Remy. Rogue holding the babies so carefully, terrified she'd drop them. Ivy kissing Kurt first because he just kept pussy footing around it. The Professor's laugh when Jamie booped his nose. Storm's hugs. Colossus giving Deadpool yet another lecture. Deadpool making a crass joke that had her in stitches. Late night talks with Steve. Her dad and Banner bonding like the best of science bros.
The loss that version of her feels at losing her family permanently brings forth another thread. It takes her to the distant past. A past where she's met Logan before. Her name is Hope and the year is 1866.
James Howlette who would later call himself Logan didn't know it then, but he met Holly much the way he had her previous incarnation. He bumped into her. Albeit, this time he was coming out of the saloon, and she was waiting outside it.
"Oi, bloody hell, watch where you're goin' will ya?" A girl a bit younger than him held a baby in her arms, soothing the tears that came on when he'd bumped them.
"'S your son alright?"
She smoothed the baby's head genty, "Brother."
His brow contracted in a furrow. "What?"
Head back, chin up, eyes that were almost violet in the sunlight met his in a steady, almost defiant gaze. "He's my brother." She was a tiny scrap of a thing, and Irish to boot. Long, curling black hair that fell down her back, pale skin that would burn, a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. "Aye, he's fine. I'm sorry ta yell. I'm havin' no luck today."
A smaller boy, similar black hair with blue eyes ran from across the street. "Da's not in the shop."
She huffed in annoyance. "Then he's in the bar."
"You lookin' for someone?" James asked, if only to keep her around for another moment. He'd never met a woman with eyes like hers. They really were violet, a shade the sky made on those warm summer nights when the sun took hours to set and the night blanketed the world in crickets and lightning bugs.
She shifted the baby in her arms. "Me mum sent me to find me da. You seen a man, 'bout your height, red hair, some gray in it round here, at the temples? Big, Irish, loud laugh, hasn't seen a razor in near a year?"
He'd seen that man playing cards with Victor. James nodded toward the bar. "Third table on the left. Playing cards."
She made a frustrated sound. "Bloody eejit, gamblin' away our money." The girl brushed past him into the bar. It didn't take her long to find her father nor for him to notice her.
"Da," she eyed the stack of notes in front of him. "Where'd you get all of that?" Maybe his luck had changed? Not likely, but maybe God took pity on their family for once.
"Made a sale," her father said.
"Oh aye, an' what did you sell? A pig? A tree? Our cow?" None of which they could spare. The pig was for breeding more, the trees were for building and the cow they needed for milk and butter.
"You for all this." He gathered it in his hands, thumbing the short stack.
"You sold me?" The girl's voice a horrified rasp, tears filled her violet eyes. "How could you?"
The big red haired man waved her off as if it were nothing. "Go on with you, you ungrateful child. You're near twenty three. A marriage will do you good." He counted the notes in his hand, "And this will feed us through the winter."
"Aye if you don't gamble it away." She snarled in return. "And my mendin' business has been keeping us fed for months!"
"You see what I'm dealin' with? Her mother was the same, but I broke that filly." The red haired man howled with laughter.
The man she'd been sold to, a large portly lout with scraggly gray teeth, rank breath and nearly white hair grabbed at her, "Come here lass, let me see what kind of wife I bought myself."
Hope dodged him with quick feet and darted away. She hefted the baby onto her younger brother and moved around one table, then another. Men were laughing, attempting to grab at her. The handful of whores in the room made no attempt to stop her.
It might have looked like she was simply trying to get away to the other men there, but to James, he saw it for what it was. She was looking for a weapon. A small surge of pride welled up in his chest. He liked a woman who could and would defend herself. Someone snatched her skirt and she tore it to get away. The sound of ripping fabric only seemed to draw more laughter and jeers.
Finally Hope found what she was looking for. A man not guarding his weapon. She ripped the knife from his side and held it outward toward some of the men trying to catch her. More laughter.
"Come on lass, you don't know how to use that." One of them said.
She'd used similar ones enough times at home to know where the pointy end went. Though there was no way she could defend herself against the lot of them. Hope held the knife to her own throat where she often enough cut to drain blood from a dead chicken. "You think that I don't?"
"Ah now, Hope my girl, no need to do that." Her father sounded annoyed. "He's not a bad sort, are you Jack?"
Someone else laughed hard, loud and obnoxious.
Jack puffed his chest. "I'll make an honest woman of her, Micahel."
"Now see there? He's a good man."
Hope pressed the knife tighter, feeling the first drop of blood trickle down her pale skin. "I'd rather die."
James, unlike the other idiots in the bar, could see she was serious. Everything happened quickly from there. He crossed the room in a heartbeat and popped a claw. He put it under the father's chin. "Give the man back his money."
The entire bar, not including his brother Victor, went dead quiet. Victor let out a low, annoyed sigh and dropped his cards on the table. He wasn't winning anyway. He reached across and grabbed the man the girl had been sold to by the throat. "You heard my brother. Girl said no, take your money or I will."
The girl's father fisted the notes. "I already spent some it."
James genuinely didn't care. "Then he'll take it at a loss."
Victor squeezed. "You're fine with that, aren't you?"
Jack gave the briefest of nods. "Fine with it." He said in a rough croak.
Michael, the girl's father, shoved the money across the table. "We're going to starve this winter because of you." Though whether he was talking to James and Victor or his daughter, no one knew.
"I'll starve an honest woman than broken and abused like me mother." She snarled in return.
There was a soft, almost trepidatious knock at his door. James, having not asked for company like his brother, got up, annoyed and confused. He didn't want a whore tonight. He had an itch that could only be scratched by dark curly hair and violet eyes. One might imagine his shock and surprise when there she was.
"My name is Hope," she said before he could ask her what she was doing at his door.
Hope did the bravest thing she'd ever done in her life at that moment. She pushed up on her toes and kissed a man she barely knew.
One kiss turned into two, then three. They were in his room, the door closed by the time James' sense of self came back to him. "If you wanted to thank me-"
"This isn't a thank you." She replied quickly and began tugging at the buttons of his clothes. "Me da will sell me again, this time to someone worse, with the promise of my virtue. If I'm going to lose my virtue I want it on my own terms. You stood up for me, and you gave me a reason to live if only for a little bit longer."
"It's illegal to spoil a woman." He breathed out in the dark air between them.
"You're not spoiling me if I say yes." His shirt was open her cool, soft hands sliding against his heated skin. "And I am saying yes. I won't have a bully be the first man that touches me."
"I'm no hero," he told her.
"I don't want a hero, I want a man who wants me." She tilted her head at him, large violet eyes watching him in the moonlit interior. "Unless you don't want me?"
Hell he wanted her. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her in, his mouth lowering to kiss her breathless. Her chest heaved against him when he finally pulled back. "I can't promise to be gentle."
The bravado left her. "Can you promise not to make it hurt too much?" It was a hopeful whisper.
That he could do. He was popular with the camp whores for putting their needs before his. And for pulling out before risking a child. He could do right by her if he took his time. "Dress off."
"Oh, um," she flushed crimson. This was happening. Her heartbeat rushed like runaway horses in her ears. "I…" the way he looked at her, with heat and desire, her underclothes dampened. She fumbled with the buttons of her dress for several seconds before he stilled her hands.
"I want to be a dressmaker," she told him sleepily. "Somewhere nicer than this. Boston, New York, maybe San Francisco where there isn't so much competition yet." She yawned, pressing closer to him. "Again, maybe? In a bit?"
He touched a bruise at her back, and another closer to her hip. "What are these from?" She stilled, eyes downcast and away from him. He tilted her head up, "Look at me."
Hope looked at him, violet eyes wet with tears. "He said I was going to marry the next one whether I liked it or not."
Rage built in his chest like an inferno. "I'll kill him."
She touched his chin gently. "Don't. Ma, she said he was a good man once. Then he took to the drink and…"
He'd heard that story before. James kissed her again, taking her mind away from things like an abusive father and helpless mother. In a few minutes they went again. And again. By early morning, well before the dawn, they'd had gone another a dozen times or more. He slept while she dressed and reveled in the wetness between her legs.
She was good and ruined. God forgive her she felt no shame in it. She'd do it again, longer this time. They'd have to drag her from the bed.
Hope leaned down, pressing a light kiss to his sleeping lips. She almost wished he would wake and ask her to stay. She might have stayed. Maybe they would eventually marry, and perhaps a child or two.
The birds began to chirp outside. If she was going then she needed to go now, before her father woke with a need to seek the drink again to sort his headache. She buttoned her self up and left as soundlessly as possible. The whores saw her, a couple of them cheered or clapped. Hope blushed furiously.
"Well now," the board said, "I was wondering who was making all that noise. If you're interested in a job little girl, I could give you one."
Head up, back as straight as possible, "I am a seamstress madam, no thank you." She walked out of the bar to the sound of further clapping.
She made it home within a quarter of an hour, and eased the door open to find her mother sleeping in a chair. There was a new black mark forming on her mother's cheek. Had her mum waited all night? No. It didn't matter.
Heart thundering in her chest, Hope when to her younger brother's room. The boy was curled up in a ball. Hope stroked his nose with her pinkie, and blue eyes opened. She put one hand over his mouth and a finger to hers. "Get dressed." Her words were barely audible and yet they sounded like shouting. "Pack a bag."
He dressed and packed while she went to the baby. He was two, and weaned, solid foods were enough for him. It would have to be. His things were fewer and fit easily into a smaller bag. She took her own things quickly. Her sewing kit, cloth samples, stitched materials. She hadn't lied. Her mending of other women's clothes, stitching dresses from scraps paid their way out west.
Hope paused looking at the door to her parents' room. She couldn't risk taking the money. He'd kill her and the baby that might be growing inside her from last night.
James said he hadn't finished inside her, that there probably would be no baby. But she'd taken him into herself so many times. She'd be lucky if there were no children. Once more Hope longed to go back to his bed.
It was no hardship to imagine herself a soldier's wife if he was the soldier she married.
A hand touched her arm. She almost cried out, but much as she'd done to her brother, her mother held a hand against her mouth and indicated silence. Her mother beckoned her follow and Hope followed. Outside her mother kissed her cheeks and hugged her tightly.
"My Hope, my only Hope." Her mother said in a whisper with tears starting down her cheeks. "You take this." She pressed a small roll of notes into Hope's hand. "And go. Make a better life for yourself and your brothers. When you're settled far away, you write me."
"Ma," Hope's throat caught on a sob as she fisted the money, "he'll kill you."
"And if you don't go, he may well kill you. You smell of a man." Anne touched her daughter's face. "Did he treat you right? Was he good to you?"
Hope blushed a deep shade of red, "He was. He was gentle." Before she begged him for harder, deeper, faster, more. He obliged without argument. He made her mind and body shatter again and again until all she could manage was hoarse, wordless cries of ecstasy.
"Good." Anne told her, sensing as mothers are known to, that perhaps her daughter had been just a little bit in love with him. Whoever he might be. It was terrible that her daughter had given herself away, yes. It was even more horrible that Anne's own husband was willing to sell their eldest child to a stranger in a bar. "Go. Make a better life."
Hope, with her younger brothers in tow, left before the sun came up.
James woke a little after dawn. He hadn't slept nearly enough, but he was sated in a way he'd never been before. The bed was a mess of her, him, them. She was gone. No doubt off home before someone came to conclusions about where she'd been and what she'd been doing. Whom she'd been doing. He would ask around about where Hope O'Sullivan lived. Bring her flowers. Women liked flowers.
He'd have to make sure he didn't put his claws through her father. Women didn't tend to love men who murdered their parents. No matter how much an abusive drunkard her father was.
The door opened, Victor standing there with an expression that could only be described as smug. "For a man who doesn't like whoring, you sure made her scream."
Logan shot him an angry glare. "She wasn't a whore."
Victor's eyebrows rose. "You managed to get a woman into your bed without paying her? Who? Maybe she'll let me-" He had three of his brother's claws under his chin before he finished the thought. "Never mind."
The claws retracted slowly. "Keep away from her."
"I would if I knew who she was. The barmaid with the blonde hair?" James didn't react. He was dragged on his clothes. "That little redhead from the store? She looked interesting." Still no reaction. His brother liked them pretty, and headstrong. An idea occurred to him. "That black haired one that threatened to kill herself."
James stopped and glared at his brother. "Don't."
"She's all yours. I don't like a fight before I fuck them." He leered at his brother. "How many times did you fuck her?"
He lost count. He recovered so quickly and she never asked him to stop. She begged him not to stop. He was on top, she was, his mouth between her legs, her mouth on him. He got hard just thinking about her mouth and that talented tongue working his shaft.
He refused to answer which only made Victor smile wider.
"You! What did you do with her!"
James knew the voice. That was Hope's father. He hadn't said do to her, he said with her. Victor was out in front of his brother quickly, blocking the Irish man. "Who?" James decided to play dumb.
"My daughter! She's gone an' taken her brothers, and all my money!"
Smart girl. He almost smiled. "Black haired girl you tried to sell?"
The father swung at Victor. Victor caught it without effort, twisted the man's arm and shoved him away like he weighed nothing. The Irish have hot tempers though. Especially bullies, like Michael Sullivan, that had begun drinking at daybreak after not truly sobered from the night before. He came at Victor again, and again, trying to get past him to James.
"This is embarrassing," Victor muttered to James as Michael pushed himself up out of the dirt one more time.
James took the handful of steps toward Michael, and hit him square in the jaw before the man could get up again. This time he went down, hard, and landed wrong on something that audibly snapped. There was a groan of agony from the Irish man's mouth.
"I don't know where she went," he shoved the man over onto his back. "I told her to run while she could, before you try to sell her again to someone like you."
Michael spit at him. Cursing in what James assumed was Gaelic. "I'm ruined!" He finally shouted in common English.
James shrugged. "I don't care." He genuinely did not. James scowled at him. He walked back to Victor who eyed him almost proudly.
"Never heard a woman begging for more that many times. What'd you do?"
Again, James didn't answer.
He we went looking for her in Boston and New York a few times, visiting every shop he could find to see if she'd made it safely. Had he instead gone to Denver, he might have found her unmarried and the owner of a small shop.
Hope Sullivan died in her sleep after a nagging head pain in 1898. She never married and never had children.
He never did find her.
Dreams don't follow rationality, and it is the thought of a uniformed soldier that leads her past Hope's life to another timeline.
In this one Holly is on a date that isn't a date with Steve.
He's much too noble for his own good. He waited years to be with Holly, keeping silent about the way he felt. He was there while her marriage fell apart, and the divorce papers were finally signed. He's been her friend through everything, keeping his own feelings a secret because he had no right to burden her with any of it.
It is Halloween night and she's dragged him to a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Holly decided they'd go as Janet and Brad, and the costumes were easy enough to put together. She throws popcorn at the oversized screen, singing, and smiling like she hadn't in the last few years. Holly turns to him when he takes her hand, her bare hand, with his.
He waits until her eyes have rolled and the glitch is over.
"I love you Holly." He's never said that to anyone but his mother. Not even Peggy. "I've loved you for a long-"
Holly - with Meatloaf singing on the screen about Saturday night - leans over and kisses him. "I love you too," she whispers while the crowd, and a motorcycle, roars.
They are married the following Halloween, her in a white dress with an orange sash and him in a pure black suit with an orange tie. Only family and friends. It is a fight to keep it out of the papers.
They have a daughter named Sarah Rose who is in utter awe of her aunt Natasha. Over the years somehow Holly's self defense lessons morph into ballet with her daughter and Natasha. Holly's not too bad but Sarah...Sarah is amazing. Dark blonde hair, blue-green eyes, tall like her father. She's human, or at least as human as a child who is part supersoldier and part mutant can be. By ten she's accepted to Julliard. By seventeen she's dancing in a professional ballet company. Holly and Steve are so damn proud of her. Aunt Natasha is ecstatic.
Natasha...
There is a familiar head of red hair seated nearby as Holly shoves a thick binder of papers across a table. She's accusing an official looking white haired man of using parts of the Mutant Registration Act to create regulations for powered people. They call it the Sokovia Accords. There are people she doesn't know sitting around the table.
Steve is there. He takes her hand in his and squeezes tightly.
Her father is there. He will sign.
The X-Men refuse to sign. When it comes down to the line in the sand, there are a lot more willing to defend then there are willing to sign. Eventually Holly and Steve settle in Canada. A lot of mutants move north. The flood gates opened to allow mutant registration in the States.
God bless Canada.
Sarah Rose spends the first ten years of her life there.
In another, very distant, unlikely future, Holly and Steve never acted on their mutual attraction, and Holly never went back to Logan. She's not an Avenger, but in the civil war among the Avengers, she sided with Steve against her father. Years later she's waking up with the sun next to a blue eyed dark haired man who only she seems to be able to get through to. He has mental scars she can see, and repair if she gently unwinds the stitches HYDRA put in his head.
His mind is a crisscross patchwork of brainwashing, self loathing, anger and a lot of old memories mishmashed together. The first time she touched him she knew he needed her. With his metal arm locked in a press, him looking at her like he was scared of her. Who was she to tell fate no?
Sometimes she laughs. How on earth did she end up falling in love with another man named James that goes by his nickname? He laughs too, kisses her soundly and, while slipping talented fingers under her shirt, asks her to come to bed. Their daughter's name is Winnifred Rose and she spends most of her childhood in Wakanda. She only meets her grandfather, and her aunt Morgan when she's accepted to Oxford. She's going to be an anthropologist.
Holly and her father don't speak in that timeline. He can't reconcile the man that murdered his parents married his daughter. Of all the timelines Holly has seen in her sleep, that one is one of the darker ones.
Though not quite as dark as some.
There are some in which Apocalypse won back in 1983. Holly's power is a tool Apocalypse uses to an extent that he doesn't let her out of his sight. He controls every moment, every breath of her life. She knows no other family than him.
In others, Holly doesn't exist. Though she can't see those clearly.
In all of these are all possible futures, or pasts, only come when Holly sleeps. Her waking mind can't take this much information. Not yet anyway. Perhaps never, if she doesn't continue to work with Professor Xavier on her powers. Which, according to several timelines, could quite possibly happen.
Though she doesn't know that.
By the time she's waking up to the twins bawling their heads off, Holly doesn't remember a single moment of her dreams.
I tried something new.
I wanted to give the Steve cinnamon roll crowd a smile. :)
This a lot of stuff from sparks of ideas over the past ten years (with Marvel's evil influence).
