Etana stands quite still in the shadows, shaking her head, clinging… well, we still haven't quite worked out what we're calling him. Steven sounds too big for someone so small, Steve just gets confusing and Etana put her foot down on Stevie, saying he wouldn't want to be called that when he was twelve. She's so stubborn. I stare at the Avengers.
"I found her."
Weak smiles.
"And I found out that she's been hiding up in Canada. Any one of you could have…"
"No Steve. They wouldn't have found me."
Etana steps forward, Steven Junior (What else am I supposed to call him? I didn't get any input into the name!) held close to her chest.
"When I want to be hidden, I am never found. Shadows are my birthright. As is the light, but I appear to have inherited more of the shadows, much to my eternal disappointment, seeing as I am only quarter demon and half angel. In the broadest manner of speaking."
Everyone is staring at the small bundle in her arms that she gently rocks. She smiles, her broad 'Ha, I've just run circles round you all' smile. She holds him out.
"Everyone, met Steve Junior. Well, that's the name he's going by just now. I've mainly been thinking of him as 'the baby' but I think he needs a real name now."
"Steve's a dad?"
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Because he only found out three hours ago, enough time for him to process the information and me to sock him on the jaw. Twice."
"How did you… You never saw each other for three months!"
"Er…"
War Machine looks embarrassed.
"Well… Actually…Er… Tony arranged for time alone. Like, super-secret time alone…"
And then Carol is cooing over him.
"Isn't he sweet! I could eat him all up."
"No Ms Marvel. He's a baby. I think that would class as cannibalism."
Somehow, Etana being slightly contemptuous about compliments to Junior (I really need to think of a name for him) doesn't surprise me.
"Look, if anyone makes remarks about Steve's appearance, I will thump them. He's a baby. Babies aren't meant to be cooed and coddled and squeezed. They sleep, they cry, they puke, they make a mess and they don't like being held by too many people. You should have seen the way he reacted to his dad."
Fine. Like my ego needs any more humiliation. Junior has only been handled by Etana and Tora and didn't exactly appreciate anyone else holding him. He cried, then tried to fall out of my arms, then cried some more. Etana thought that was funny. I swear, I don't know why she found it funny.
Her sense of humour confounds me at times. Wry, sarcastic, old, too old at times. She uses words like verily when she's half-asleep. One of my favourite pastimes when she's tired is to sit up and listen to what she says. I already have a whole textbook of highly original insults in over three hundred languages. Most are dead languages, so unless we come up against centuries old zombies; which given some of our opponents, isn't too insane an idea; I can only use about a third of them. I quite liked the one that translated, 'I would think up a suitable insult for your mother right now, but there's only so far you can insult a gelatinous mass of slimy, shivering goo.' In three syllables.
