Disclaimer: Nothing has changed…I still own nothing.
Alrighty now, no Russian thins time. Just good old fashioned English. I don't really have that much to waste your time on this go around. So I'll just get right to the story. I will say though, that this chapter has a very corny sounding ending, so for that I'm sorry. I just couldn't think of any other way to end this chapter. Well I hope you like it anyway…
Chapter #3: Confessions Of The Resurrected
The wind whipped the side of the old wooden barn, trying to sway it, to move it, to uproot it. But the little building held fast to the spot it had stood in for a great number of years. It was modest barn, a dirt floor covered by straw, bales of hey and troths of water sat by the closed stables that each contained their own tenets of horses, cows, sheep and other assorted livestock. It was a cozy building, gently lit be old kerosene lanterns, and heated by the warmth of the groupings of animals. Ana loved to sit in the barn. She had played and worked most of her life in the small building and loved it's sweet smell of hey and it's calming noise of a random bleating sheep, or whinnying horse. She could think of no better place to sit and recollect past happenings with one of her oldest and dearest friends.
"Nikolaievitch, I hoped you vould come like I asked." She said somewhat quietly as Peter entered the open end of the stable where she was nestled on to a bale of straw.
He nodded his head at her with a warm smile. "I should really be back at the house with the team. If they discover I'm gone they'll be upset." He said sitting down next to her.
"Oh, I think they'll be just fine vithout you for a little bit. I vanted to talk to you about a few zhings." Her voice had become serious at the end of her statement. Her eyes seemed to go distant as Peter's had once been on the jet. "I remember vhen you first vent to America. Mama told me you vere zhere for art old school. She didn't vant to alarm me, to scare me, for me to think zhere vas some zhing wrong vith you." Ana hinted at an ironic laugh, but her eyes were focused on her memories. "But I knew the truth. I knew the real reason you vere in America. You vere a mutant and you vere going to help a group of mutants at a school. You vere going to fight for peace and justice."
Peter had begun to say something. He had never meant for anyone to lie to Ana, he had cared about her and was afraid that she was angry at him for the trickery, but Ana continued her flash back in time.
"I knew because I saw you vone day in the barn. I had come out to the barn to return the chickens' feeding pail, and I saw you vere tending to a cow vith a broken leg. I vas about to say hello, vhen I saw you pick it up to move it. You vere…" she struggled for a moment, trying to find the right word out of the sea of words of a language she only roughly knew. "in your special armor. I vas afraid at first, so I hid behind a stable door, but I watched as you gently moved it and became normal again only to bind it's leg and move it. It vas zhen I knew. I saw who you truly vere. I saw that no matter the amount of raw strength you possessed, you vere still so kind," she turned to face him and smiled in an almost sad way "so gentle. That you vere truly a good man." She put her head down and starred at the ground.
Peter felt tense, if not almost frightened. Her words were meant to be calming, but in some way, they were more disturbing than anything else. She had told her story in a sorrowful way, as if she bared some kind of burden. There was something she wasn't telling him, and whatever it was, it was weighing heavily on her mind.
"Anastasia," he began, his face tinted with worry.
"I learned English for a reason Nikolaievitch." She turned to look directly in his eyes. "I knew you vere coming."
Peter's eyes grew wide at the Russian girl as she sat there starring hard at him. He opened his mouth to speak again, but again she cut him off.
"I have changed a lot since you left. It turns out you aren't the only vone in the collective that vas a mutant. No vone else knows. Not even mama. It vas shortly after you left, I started to have terrible dreams about people coming to visit me, only zhese people veren't ordinary people. Zhey vere people like you're Nana-"
"How do you know about her? She died before you were born, I barely even remember her myself!" interrupted Peter in a startled voice. He was shocked by everything the girl had sprung on him in the dim moments of the night, when he was already nervous about being home again.
"Dead people, Nikolaievitch. Zhose vere the people that haunted me in my dreams, but it turned out zhey veren't just dreams, but somezhing much more." She paused for a deep breath. "Nikolaievitch, I can speak vith zhose who have passed on. I can even make zhem tangible to the vorld for a little vhile. You see, I knew you vere coming because zhey told me. Zhey know zhings like that." Now finished, she watched for Peter's reaction.
His eyes were filled with disbelief, and even a little horror. She now carried the same burden he did only in another form. He had never really had trouble being a mutant, until he saw what it had done to his family, and especially his sister. He couldn't even bare imagining what it might do to Ana. She was now subject to the worlds' torment and other mutants' corruption, and in many ways he felt responsible. As if no matter how hard he fought, he was never truly on the 'right side'. Now Ana would be a part of all this mess too.
"I vant to help you Nikolaievitch. You and the X-Men. I have abilities now, I vant to join you in your mission. I vant to go back to America vith you and do somezhing amazing. I know vhat happened to your family, and I vant to put an end zhings like that." Her voice held conviction as she gazed off into the darkness of the barn above her, where the lamp light couldn't reach. She was dreaming of heroics, of saving the world. Dreaming as Peter once dreamt. Before the world that he had worked to save so many time took what he held dear to him. He couldn't let that happen her. He just couldn't.