Summary: Back at the camp, Lyall discovers what is wrong with herself with some help.
Notes: I was having a writer's block on writing this chapter for this month only to realise that I already had written a chapter. In a sorry for posting 11 days late, the next month I will try to aim for two chapters. :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
[()]
"Just over this hill, soldiers!" Steve barks, a small smile, although already waning, gracing his perfect face. The men roared, a light spring to their steps, tanks revving. The party had been going for over a week, yet none of the tanks needed to be discarded; the blue stuff that was powering them was extremely powerful.
We marched past a line of gaping men, uniform fresh and guns strikingly new. They scattered as Steve passed them, leaving room for a hundred men to pass. One races forward, yelling and screaming. A barrier of chicken wire rises from the ground, parting before the runner reaches it.
Clamorous voices shouted and screamed, an unleashed laughter joins the party. Men that I've never seen before swarm the scene, patting a blushing Steve on the back and even a woman with striking red lipstick weaves through the crowd to talk a few moments with Steve.
Bucky doesn't care that he's got a dead body on his back, he still shouts to the sky above and joins in on the dancing. An older man who looks like a whole weight was taken off his back stalks towards Steve, and with a few words, Steve is grinning, towards the women and towards Bucky. I flicker my eyes up to meet his for the first time, and he takes a step back, startled. Weakly, I form my hand into a thumbs up, and drop it again, the small sound of my hand hitting Bucky's stomach lost in the noise surrounding.
"Hey," Bucky quietly says, a tiny bead of happiness still intertwined in his voice. It breaks, and he tries again. "Let's get you to a real bed. I'm sure that this place has some kind of person that can look after you."
He steps out of the wriggling mass that is the welcome home party, and Steve appears out between two men, guiding Bucky to a white tent with a faded red cross painted on the side. The beds aren't even close to full, but some men are already quietly trooping inside. And despite their discomfort of their injuries, their faces are split with the biggest smiles I had ever seen.
They were safe, and they knew that.
A nurse walked over, aware of a new patient, but her face showed that she was a little confused. Women weren't common on military grounds, and I was obviously new, so why was I here, in this camp? Bucky tries to sit me down softly, but ends up nearly dumping on the bed, collapsing onto the bed.
When the nurse sees the lack of a leg, she immediately takes over, dipping a cloth into a nearby water container, cleaning off the dried blood. The gentle care and the softest bed I had been in since years ago made me smile, slowly slipping into sleep. But before I could finally rest, I motion for someone to come closer, and whisper "Stark. Get me a Stark" into their ear.
[x]
"I still don't realise why you need me here." A grumpy voice snaps from beside the bed, a chair groaning from the constant shifting.
"I don't know why either. Steve said that she said Stark and you're the only Stark he knows." Bucky snaps back. Amused, I plan to pretend to be asleep for a little while longer.
"Any idea why? Do you know her?" Bucky snorts at the questions.
"Nope. I met her in the experiment room; before that she was nailed to a wall with iron poles." A sound – half disgust, half curiosity, however that could be created – echoes from the other side of which Bucky stands. He pauses and I get the feeling he's looking down at me. "…she said that she needed energy, the last time she spoke."
"Energy? Why would she…" the other man cuts off, and an uneasy silence descends. It was evidently time to wake up, which meant all I did was open my eyes.
Even though dirt cakes the creases between my eye lid and my cheek, and sleep gathers at the corner, my eyes flicker open, momentarily stinging as harmful substances easily touch my eyes. Beside me a man with a dashing moustache slouches in the rickety chair as if it was a throne, eyes glued to the stump that was my leg.
He slowly draws his eyes up my body, a frown growing deeper by the second and his eyes stopping at my unscarred stomach, before landing on my eyes. He blinks, and leans forward.
"Holy – you're awake." He breathes, his attention now completely focused on me. I blink in reply, spending some energy to give him a greeting smile. "So, why did you call me?"
"You're smart, are you not?" I write on the sheets with the hand that is on his side, not another muscle moving an inch. "Can you figure out my puzzle?"
"Of course I can!" the man even sits up in reply, glaring at my fingers like I offended them. Smirking, I close my eyes, completely focusing on my fingers. "I can figure out your puzzle easy!"
"A human who can go years without sleeping, food, drinking, or anything of the 5 basic needs, suddenly finds himself exhausted. Why?"
"What kind of riddle is that?!" the man scoffs, but nevertheless returns to his poorly made chair. He hums, lightly scratching his skin with perfectly-manicured nails. "Does he feel any repercussions from forgoing any of those activities?"
"No. Nothing. It doesn't slow him down one bit. He suddenly finds himself exhausted, and in a few years he finds himself unable to move without great effort."
The man sits back, one foot tapping the floor in rhythm. Bucky finally stands up and leaves, not interested in two basically dead bodies stare off into the distance.
"…He's lacking energy," the Stark finally answers. "I wouldn't expect you to know this but –"
"Basic energy comes from everyday sources such as food, water and sleep."
"Yes!" he smiles, but abruptly is serious again. "Is there any reason why you called me out here other than to give me a nonsense riddle? I probably wouldn't have come out here if Steve wasn't here."
"Yeah. Could you please fetch me food I am able to eat? My doctor said I need energy."
It doesn't even take a second for Stark to get it. He stands up, splutters, and storms off, muttering angrily under his breath – something about confusing dumb people can be.
Although it doesn't look like it, with my face showing nothing nearly the whole time I had been awake, I felt relieved. Happy. Elastic.
All I needed was to eat – and I would've eaten something even if I hadn't called up a Stark or he has disregarded the idea of coming to the call of a women he did not know. It was no wonder why I was constantly falling asleep in HYDRA's hands.
Repairing cells took energy, and although I had a wonderful history of eating since my birth, the years of being in HYDRA's custody had finally taken its toll around the time Erskine and I planned the escape. Then in the next few months? Years? Zola performing constant examinations on my body, taking more energy than it could use all that it had stored.
The man who was the local Stark returned then, a cook and a nurse following his step. He was talking non-stop, complaining about a rude patient that hadn't eaten in years and may need extensive care.
"Hey you, when was the last time you ate?"
"Two days ago." The man opens his mouth to relay this to the two bewildered people at the foot of my bed.
"When was the last time you ate a full meal."
"… about 25 years ago." A strangled sound came from the man's throat, a mix between horror and outrage.
"You're telling a lie. Nobody can live that long without food!" the man snarls and storms out of the infirmary tent, leaving the two other people behind. They stand there in silence, until the man returns.
"Just get her a big feast. I don't care how you do it, just give her enough fit for five, no, ten people."
[x]
The first spoonful of food was soup with all sorts of mushed up vegetables and fruit, carefully slipped between my lips by the nurse. The Stark had hung around while the soup finally hits my stomach, around 8 hours after the first meal.
He later complained that he could literally see the life blooming in my body – a cold, pale, lifeless corpse that transformed into a twitching, blinking human being that could even open its mouth and hold up its own arm. He commented that it was like watching a zombie come back to life. Creepy, and he did not want to see it again.
With every meal I ate, growing from soups to little slices of soft fruit to fully blown apples and capsicums to a whole meal, I could feel my limbs growing lighter. With every meal, there was less time between them and the nurse stopped helping around the time I could bite into an apple without any harm.
Soon it was just me eating constantly, without a breath to spare for talking. My foot had grown back overnight, my first thought that morning of oh wow, finally not a cripple.
Stark had fallen silent when he saw my foot, wiggling, fully-formed, sat on the end where only a stump had been the day before.
Colonel Phillips had finally come in when I was eating for the sake of eating, rather than to gain back energy.
"Madam," he says in a moment when I'm reaching for my next meal. I look up at him and put it down politely. "May I ask who you are?"
"Lyall Howlett," I reply, able to use my voice for the first time since we had escaped the hideout. "You may know me by a lot of names – but a fellow like you might know me for my military heroics. Any Stark should bloody well know me."
Colonel Phillips doesn't recognise the name, although the Stark blinks in shock.
"No way." He stands, one finger pointing at me. "Lyall Howlett is a fairy-tale my father told to me as a child. No human could live since the American Civil War."
"Well I'm fucking right here." I smirk, before turning back to the Colonel. "Sir, I would like it if you could track down my family. My half-brother is called Victor Creed and my adoptive son is called Nick. They should be neck deep in the war fields somewhere in the world."
Colonel Phillips nods, all business, ready to complete my request.
"Oh, and, any relationship with John Phillips?" he startles at the name. "Got Sergeant in World War One, right?"
"My father, I am guessing." He clips, feigning faint interest.
"He was a fucking dick," I say and his face softens slightly. "Didn't even know the nozzle of a gun from the barrel. Utterly useless, although his humour was little charming if he wasn't insulting women and dark-skinned people all the time."
"I'll find what I can about your family, Howlett." He leaves.
"Make sure you throw my name around a lot! That'll get them running!" I shout after him, happily returning to my meal. "Hey, Stark, what's your name?"
"…Howard." He grumps and I nod. Makes sense – there's only one Stark Steve knows and its Tony's dad.
"Say, did your father ever have a picture of you as a baby and a woman who had weird hair?" Judging by the unsettled face Howard wore, I had hit the jackpot. "I don't quite look the same, because the lack of hospitably HYDRA has is stunning… your father wanted to take that picture before I left and got captured by HYDRA."
"Oh," Howard blinks, still staring at the ground, before silently leaving the tent. Soon, Bucky comes flying in (with Steve in tow) just as I start the fiftieth plate since that morning.
"Lyall! I can't believe you're up and about!" Bucky sits exactly in the same spot Howard was before. "So, tell me, why can you heal yourself so fast now, comparing to before."
"Well," Steve visibly shocks when he hears my voice, although nobody but I notice it. "I haven't eaten a good meal since I was taken by HYDRA, so you know, back in 1918 or 17. But I had been living for about 80 years before that, so I had a lot of energy stored up. Then around the time I met Erskine I noticed that, hey, I was really tired, ya know?" Bucky seemed to be hanging off every word, while Steve wasn't even hiding the fact that he didn't believe one.
"So anyway, after Erskine broke out, Zola began to do those nasty experiments where he basically cut off a really important organ and watched it grow back. And it's not common knowledge, but healing takes up a lot of energy, and at that time I was already exhausted all the time. Anyway, Steve broke us out, and at that time I had no energy to speak, let alone move, so yeah, I can see why a lot of people thought I was a dead body. When we got here, I called up a Stark – because I go way back with that family – and Howard figured out my problem. I just needed to eat." I finish with a flourish towards the banquet laid out on the bed between my legs.
"Wow," Bucky says as he leans forward to snag a leg of chicken off a plate. "Is the army paying for this?"
"Yeah, with my army income, probably."
"You're in the army?" Steve finally speaks up, gingerly taking a single grape from Bucky's encouraging hands.
"It depends on which army you're talking about. In the American army before I left I was a Major, and in the Australian army I easily reached Major General, and in the British army I was awarded Deputy-General." I say and the two at the end of the bed reel back in shock.
"Liarrrr!" Bucky shouts, and draws the attention of nearly everyone in the tent, if they weren't already interested in the massive amount of food that is clustered around my bed. "You wouldn't hold your ranking if you disappeared or joined another country!"
"Hey, I have the approval of Queen Victoria to be in the American and British army at the same time – and as far as the Australian government is concerned I'm still MIA on the Western Front in 1917. Well, that means that we technically don't outrank each other if we're enrolled in different countries."
Colonel Phillips returns during an arguing match between Bucky and I over my ranking, Steve quietly supporting Bucky and slowly stealing more food from my plates until I shove one into his hands. He informs me that some people are working on finding my family and they are to be contacted as soon as possible. Another women enters as he exits, the pretty lady with the thick coating of crimson lipstick.
Steve jumps up to meet her, awkwardly realizing he still has his tenth plate clutched in his hands. They chat, a little too quietly for Bucky to hear, but I calmly repeat every word for word to the curious male.
"The government wants to award to a badge for your bravery," she says in greeting, and Steve puts on a pained expression. "They would be really grateful if you turned up to this one."
"But I really didn't do anything-" here the lady, Bucky and I scoff at the same time "- and honestly they're more interested in looking like they're doing something. I don't want to go back to America; I want to stay here in Europe and help people."
"Steve," the lady says his name with a touch of disproval. Steve rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.
"Peggy," He replies, copying her tone to nearly a scary degree. Huh, so this was Peggy. Her facial structure was a little different than the actor, but that was basically the same with every single familiar character – no, person – I had met.
"Anyway, the boys are going on a night out in town, and they're wondering if you'd like to join them, including Bucky and the other lady." She smiles, and turns to leave, Steve spluttering out a reply that was too late.
As soon as he sits down, he notices that we're wearing shit-eating grins (although with the way everyone spoke today nobody would phrase it like that) and hides his face in his hands.
"Ooooh, Steveie's got a crush," Bucky laughs, heavily thumping his friend on the back. "Anyway, do you still want that plate?"
[x]
Despite the fact that my body was back to its everyday state it had been to before the first world war, nurses still forced me to stay in the tent overnight, meaning I missed out on the night out and the forming of the Howling Commandos.
Steve found me exercising next to one of the trees that lined the edges of the camp the next morning and just stood there watching. He seemed to searching to what to say, but all he did was watch as I pumped out push-up after push-up.
"You afraid of me?" I finally say, standing up to face him. "I don't mind if you say yes. I've lived through decades of that type of hate, whether it's because of my mutation or my gender."
"I…" Steve pauses. "How can you live for over 80 years?" He finally asks, idly fiddling with his strange formal suit. He was probably going to meet Stark after this and kiss that gossip girl.
"I'm a mutant." Steve just looks at me, and if I could, I would've laughed. "We're a very small portion of humanity. Some can fly, others can create fire. I'm one of the first. There's even a smaller group in the world population of mutants who are immortal – and probably will live forever. My healing ability allows me to live in my middle 20s forever. I know a man who's just bones, and it doesn't look like he's dropping dead anytime soon."
Steve seems generally interested; he leans forward a little, face lighting up as he learns.
"…Bucky said you said you had another ability." He squirms in his shoes, discomfort of asking such an invading question doing his polite personality in.
"I do have another," I flex my hands, a small smile gracing my face. "It's been years since I've be able to do this – didn't want HYDRA to discover them after all – so I might not be able to control the speed."
I'm not sure what Steve is expecting me to do. Conjure a dancing skeleton? Spit fireball? Transmute the ground? Slowly my claws extrude, slowly enough that it takes Steve a few seconds to realise that bones are not supposed to be extruding from my fist.
"Whoa," he steps forward, calmly taking my fist into his hands. They slide back in, jump back out and in again. My other hand joins in, and the muscle memory jumps back, allowing me to draw them out one at a time. "That's… really…"
"Weird? Strange? Creepy?"
The adjectives seem to shock Steve into reality, and he drops my hands, and looks me in the eyes.
"Howard said he wanted you to come with me when I visited him today," is all he says before he stalks off. I follow him, inwardly amused, but I don't bother letting it show on my face. "Colonel Phillips says that Victor has been discovered, although your son's whereabouts is still unknown."
"He's probably with Gerrant or the royal family." This doesn't seem to be the correct answer for Steve, because he freezes up and refuses to talk until we reach Howard's building.
When told to wait while Howard was finishing up on his most recent experiment, the gossip girl makes her appearance. She seemed to be a little off put by my existence, although it doesn't deter her on her mission to kiss Captain America.
Peggy comes and goes, barely sparing a glance at my sulette slouched against the wall, leaving in a fuming mess. Stark appears, calling Steve over, not acknowledging my existence.
Steve finds his vibramium shield and Howard has it taken away for it to be painted up once Peggy is done shooting Steve. I must say, his reflexes are good and it would be good to fight against him.
Once the two love birds leave, Howard finally stops in front of me.
"… With your hair up like that, it is easier to tell that you are the woman the picture." He finally says, referring to the petite victory rolls one of the nurses had done with my freshly cleaned hair. In the 1910s I hadn't styled my hair in any shape or form, but my hair had taken to forming these little lumps at the top of my head, much like the strange ear-shaped hair style Logan had. The nurse put it up like this to hide those strange deformed lumps and I was quite liking it already.
I told Howard so, and lightly pat the iron-hard rolls. He rolls his eyes.
"So – you're the Lyall?" his eyes seem to be staring at nothing in particular. It would be weird to have a fairy-tale suddenly appear in your life. In answer I silently draw out my claws. Howard draws in a shuddering breath and abruptly stalks away, leaving me alone in the cold room.
[x]
Within a few hours returning to the camp, the rest of the Howling Commandos appear, demanding to see the strange bones hiding in my forearms. They express a perfect mix of awe, curiosity, and shock. One of them starts speaking in French, and nearly everyone there is surprised to find that I can understand it.
Then it dissolves into a contest to see if they could find a language that I wouldn't know one word it. Luckily, all the languages they knew was in Europe and HYDRA had taken to capturing soldiers from nearly every country.
Steve and Bucky silently appear, Bucky cheerfully joining in on the loud conversation. Howard slinks around the outskirts until Steve remembers that he would be smart enough to know a few languages.
I want to tell them that I had travelled across the entire world, visiting places that over people haven't been in.
Then Colonel Phillips interrupts with –
"Your brother is on his way with your son."
[()]
Notes: When Steve said "That's… really…" at Lyall's claws I first wrote 'awesome' and 'cool' until I realised that 1940s!Steve wouldn't say that. The struggle is real.