"You've got mail." The Computer pinged, attracting the attention of a tall gaunt faced man. Blond haired, cut in a business like short back and sides, Doctor Donald Blake turned from the window overlooking Manhattan to his desk that carried an inscribed inverted v shaped aluminium name plaque bearing his name, his computer, and tidied pile of papers, topped with an antique ink pen. Blake lent on his gnarled walking cane, twisted in nature, the ash bough was stout enough to bear his weight, but delicate enough to be described as a stick. Even with the scant few steps to his chair Blake made use of it, his stiff right leg's weakness self-evident.
A mouse click later Blake paused deep in thought, keys tapped a short answer, Chess move; 'enter' sent the message electronically to the named recipient Doctor Steven Strange. Picking up a Tennis ball he lapsed back into thought.
A voice interrupted however. "Do you have time?..."
Blake looked up from his Desk. "Doctor Foster..." A pretty fair brunette lent her head through the cracked open door to his office; she gave every sign of being stressed by her day.
"Time?" He asked
"...to see a new patient, a family actually?"
"Jane I..."
"Please." She asked him, her voice heavy with frustration. "I know you hate inductions, but I'm swamped, with Wilson being called away on an emergency." She pushed the door open further. "Besides given all these leaves of absence you've taken in the last few months, it's the least you could do." She smiled adding. "And for some reason they've just made a point of asking if they could see you especially."
Blake laughed and shook his head denying her request. He then said. "Wilson could have asked me to help him out you know."
"He's still mad at you for that last stunt you pulled."
Blake nodded and aimed the tennis ball at the far wall; it hit loudly and bounced returning to him more or less directly. Don caught it and pursed his lips. "Everybody lies."
Jane pushed the door open. "Dating doesn't work like that. So she didn't tell him the whole truth, who tells the whole truth about themselves from the get go – not you Blake, we both know that."
He knew what Jane meant, there was an unspoken romantic tension between them, something that neither Doctor seemed able to broach.
He guessed they were both broken.
From the beginning, his first waking memory as an adult Blake had known something important was missing from his life, and this mental void coupled with his disability. It had driven Blake into melancholy many times, but despite this dark mental cloud, and physical handicap Blake had worked his way through college, then medical school. Where he had met James Wilson, together they had gone on to build a successful Medical Practise targeting the expensive and difficult to cure cases, charging high so they could help as many who couldn't pay as they can. Wilson called it his Robin Hood formula. Moving up on the back of their success to these offices on Manhattan Island, which given his less than privileged beginning as an amnesiac John Doe found sprawled in an alleyway in Hell's Kitchen was an achievement.
"Jane I..."
She waved her hand between them cutting him off. "I'll send them up directly." Foster said as she walked over, dropping a folder on Blake's desk, ignoring his earlier refusal. "And at least glance at their notes in the next couple of minutes before they arrive." Jane added as she left.
Blake sighed. Foster wasn't going to take no for an answer. He nodded and watched her walk out, there was no question Jane was a good looking woman; a professional, smart and accomplished. Wilson had persuaded Foster to join their practice when he spotted her career as a reconstructive surgeon moving into high gear. The tension between Foster and Blake had been evident from day one. She was beautiful, graceful, with a winning personality, a bedside manner that rivalled Wilson's own homespun charm, while he was a grumpy cripple in constant pain from his leg, angry at a cruel world, and his own weaknesses, frustrated with the constant demands of his patients. He'd been too self-absorbed, blind to the fact that Foster was attracted to him, then everything had changed and Blake realised it was too late to do anything about that.
Before that incident in Norway had changed him in ways neither Jane Foster nor James Wilson could hope to understand, Blake's approach to life had been obsessive, to the detriment of everything else. It was a miracle Wilson was patient enough to be his partner and his friend, in truth his only friend, it seemed impossible that Jane had seen through his ill-tempered exterior and seen instead the good he worked to do. Before Norway the only thing that mattered to Blake was the challenge – the journey into mystery that was diagnosis, and the sense of victory that he felt when his Patients condition was vanquished. It almost made he forget the pain from his leg.
He looked over the files Foster had left him. It didn't take him long, and soon he was feeling pissed.
"Ms Prince." Blake said as he rose to feet, with the aid of his stick, he moved effectively if not gracefully from his chair, to extend his hand to the striking woman who had been directed to his office by their receptionist. She took it.
Was this Jane's idea of a joke, a test? Blake didn't know.
"Doctor, please call me Lyta." She answered looking him in the eye, unusually tall for a woman, a full head taller than Jane Foster.
Dark Blonde hair tumbled across her shoulders, her skin was bronzed but not lined, not sun kissed, but almost luminescent and flawless.
"My friends call me Blake." He stated. "This must be Diana."
Lyta Prince's daughter was fourteen years old according to her file. Her height and muscle tone meant she could easily be mistaken for a much older teenager, the kind who would have no problem been served in a bar in London, Paris or Rome. It didn't seem possible but with her blue black hair and vibrant sky blue eyes the younger woman threatened to be more beautiful than her mother.
"Welcome to Manhattan." Blake said. Gesturing to the chairs arranged to the right side of his desk, and sat in his own office captains' style swivel chair, which he turned around to face them. "From your file you are both in ridiculously good health." He smiled the best smile he could muster, while grabbing hold of his painful leg. "So what brings you to us?" He shrugged. "Because I have no idea what I can do for you."
Lyta smiled, her demeanour reminded him of another time and place, and a half remembered memory of a regal and commanding woman. Since his Norwegian vacation, Blake's long standing amnesia had begun to loosen its grip. What he remembered now only exacerbated however his sense of not belonging.
The stunning blonde woman spoke to him. "Doctor Blake can't do anything." She said. Pausing she extended her hand saying. "But the Mighty Thor of the Asgard, favoured son of the Allfather of the Aesir can."
Across the city in Forest Hills, Queens, a small boy finds his work interrupted.
"You shouldn't do that."
"Huh"
"Peter Parker. You shouldn't do that."
Peter looks up, his magnifying glass in hand, his focus shifts from the yard and upwards, he sees a girl, she tells him she's just moved into the house next door and they're to be the same class. She tells him at much. "I'll see you every day when school starts. I'm Mary Jane Watson. Your mom said you'd be here, she told me your name."
"She's not my mom. She's my Aunt Martha. My mother's dead."
Mary Jane Watson frowned, a smattering of freckles dashed across her nose, and her red hair shone in the afternoon sun. "I'm sorry." She said for the first time uncertain of herself. "My dad gets angry sometimes." She added for it seemed no real reason Peter could fathom.
"My dad's dead too, that's why I live with my Uncle Ben and Aunt Martha."
"Your Aunt seems nice."
Peter nodded still in a crouch with his magnifying glass in hand. "She is."
"You shouldn't do that." Mary Jane said for the third time.
Peter's confusion didn't lift. "Do what?" He asked puzzled.
"Use a magnifying glass to kill ants. It's cruel."
"I'm not." Peter replied indignantly. "I'm studying them. Any way they're not ants, they're baby arachnids." He said arachnids slowly as if mentally spelling the word. Mary Jane repeated it, but it came out garbled, more like "iran-na-kids?"
"Spiders! They have eight legs, ants are insects. Insects have six legs. That's two less."
"I know that." Mary Jane said. "I mean that six is two less than eight, are you seven years old too?"
"Ahuh." Peter answered looking at the spiders through his magnifying glass.
An adult voice interrupted them. "Do you two want to share some milk and cookies?"
Peter stood up, at this point in life Mary Jane Watson was a mite taller than he, testosterone would fix that in time, but right now it was simply two kids playing in the back yard of house in Queens. Both came running.
Martha Parker watched them coming. She smiled at their enthusiasm.
Turning to the gentlemen in her Kitchen
"Could I get you something Detective Jones?"
"Those cookies look mighty good."
"I wish I could say I baked them, but they're out of a packet." Martha replied passing the plate of Oreos to the plains clothes policeman.
"Thank you very much; I have to confess these are my weakness." He smiled brightly. "Yes even before Doughnuts." He added.
"In that case take two." Martha told him, and he did.
"Ben won't be long." Martha continued as she poured to glasses of milk for the children so they could follow the ritual that the cookie gods had commanded. As they leapt into the seats at the Kitchen counter, she growled, "cookies" in her best cookie-monster impression. Peter screwed his face up in embarrassment, as Mary Jane laughed.
"Do you mind me asking why you need to speak with Ben?" Martha asked. "If he's been robbing any banks I can't help you, but they say the wife is always the last to know."
"Now Mrs Parker, don't you go messing with me." Jones said with an effected serious tone. "Honestly you don't have to worry; it's really ancient history in a manner of speaking. I'm working with our cold case division."
"Actually that sounds fascinating, and a little disturbing."
"Hallo Hallo" Ben Parker breezed in, and paused his pork pie hat half way between his head and the hat stand. Martha saw his look of surprise as her husband caught sight of the tall figure in a dark leather jacket stood eating cookies in his Kitchen. "Who have we here?" Ben asked.
Introductions were made quickly. Jones showed Ben his shield. "Detective John Jones" the older man noted "What can we do for you."
Martha served more coffee. They sat down in the sitting room. From the kitchen the children's excited chatter was less intrusive. She took a chair closest to the hall, where she could keep one eye on Peter and the new girl from next door through the open door to the Kitchen.
"As I was explaining to Martha," Jones was saying, "advances in DNA recognition techniques mean that the evidence that has been in storage for years, even decades, can now can give up information that just wasn't available to our predecessors."
"So I've heard." Ben replied looking he way. "So what's the bottom line Detective – where do I fit in?"
"You served with a special ops unit."
Ben nodded slowly. He frowned Martha recognised her husband wasn't liking where this conversation was going.
"Went by the name Easy Company" Jones added.
Ben cleared his throat. "Okay, what's this all about, because my war ended nearly thirty years ago, and Vietnam both then and now is half a world away out of NYPD's jurisdiction."
Martha noted that Jones didn't appear surprised by Ben's reaction.
"I realise this all seems a little abstract, but bear with me." The Detective replied.
"Son, I'm an old man now, patience is something I have in abundance, but time isn't so get to the point. I'll answer if I can." Ben told him.
Martha hoped the Policeman understood that Ben couldn't breach confidence. His service record was still classified. She didn't know what he'd done for his country. She told herself that not knowing didn't bother her, not now, not after all that time. She thought of Richard and Mary, and the cost of secrets and service, and she knew that it did.
"You served with a Canadian Specialist, went by the name of Logan." Jones told them.
Ben shook his head. "Did I?
"My memory isn't what it could be, some things from that time I've forgotten, because I was ordered to – if you follow me."
"I understand Mr Parker. Really I do." Jones answered. "I have a letter here." The Detective reached into his pocket, and passed over a tri-folded paper..
"Well what do y'know Martha" Ben commented, "Detective Jones has security clearance." He gave back the letter to the Policeman.
"Should I go see to the kids?" She asked.
Ben surprised her, he shook his head. "It's been thirty years Martha, if this young man knows about my war, I don't see why you shouldn't hear what he has to say." Parker then turned to Jones, and asked. "Since when has the NYPD been working hand in glove with SHIELD?"
"I follow the leads to wherever they go." Jones replied. "Sometimes that means what they call inter-agency cooperation, ie strong-arming one of Washington's Alphabet Soup Agencies, until they cry uncle." Jones returned to letter to his jacket, and then reached over into the other inside pocket, and fished out another envelope.
"Do you recognise this man?" Detective Jones passed over a black and white photo this time. A head shot, the face was in focus against a blurred background, along with a second colour shot, head and shoulders this time, framed against the blue of sky. Both showed the same person.
Parker laid them face up on the coffee table.
Ben Parker nodded. "Sure I know this guy. It's Canucklehead, a hell-raiser that went by the name of Logan. Canadian Specialist on loan to us back in the day."
"You mean Easy Company"
"Robin Hood and his Merry Men" Parker replied, adding "Summer '71. We had just broken in a new co-pilot, name of Ben Grimm. You maybe remember the name?"
The Detective responded after a brief pause for thought "Sure if y'mean the Astronaut?" Parker nodded an affirmative as Jones said. "As I recall he's piloted several Shuttle missions over the last few years."
"Yeah that's our Ben; he gave him -Logan, the handle Cannucklehead. Back then I was Big Ben, on account I was older, and of course Grimm was Little Ben, even then the kid outweighed me by about a hundred pounds."
Martha relaxed she hadn't learned much that was new, apart from this Canadian called Logan, which wasn't surprising since he wasn't a member of Ben's Unit. These were men she had met over the years; she knew their faces, if not the details of their adventures together.
"What if I was to tell you that the first picture was pulled from a negative dated 1945." Jones pointed to the black and white print, while this one was is from a stake-out, surveilling a gang operation in the city last week."
Parker sat back in his chair, he shook his head as he chuckled to himself. "There's an obvious explanation, father like son, but you wouldn't be here asking me if you thought that was it?"
Jones shook his head. "I hoping you can help me confirm a theory."
"Surely your lab reports carry more weight than my recollections." Ben Parker coughed "DNA doesn't lie."
Jones nodded. "If you're guessing that our lab has run blood evidence from different crimes scenes, and those results tell us we're dealing with a matched samples then you'd have guessed right." Jones paused tapping Logan's picture. "And they belong to this man only the incidents occurred decades apart." Jones lent forward. "Look Parker, I know you've seen things with Easy Company which don't make a whole lot of sense, let me tell you that while I was called into this by our Cold Case Division, my real brief is dealing with those kind of cases; those kind of people. It's how I come to know Director Fury. It's also how I know about the Wiesinger Effect."
Martha feigned disinterest. She glanced back to the Kitchen to look at Mary Jane and Peter. She however listened to Jones. The conversation had become very interesting.
"Detective I haven't seen Fury or our Lieutenant since the late seventies." Parker replied "not since Sergeant Rock's funeral, if burying an empty casket really counts as one. As for Logan, yes the things I saw didn't make sense.
"If you're here then I think you already know this hasn't anything to do with the Hawk-eye initiative, or the Infinity Formulae, because not only was that before my time with Easy Company, but I'm equally sure Logan wasn't part of those operations; that whatever keeps him going isn't that."
"Meaning?" Jones asked.
Ben looked up at him, his expression spoke of a heavy heart, he smiled as if relieved to be able to talk about this, and addressed the Policeman. "I saw him take a clip from an AK47 in the back. Up close and personal, because he was shielding me from those bullets. He shrugged that off like a kick in the pants. I mean he staggered forward, and we kept running, while he returned fire with his M16. The Colonel, our, Lieutenant and our Sergeant were both looking good back then for World War II vets, but even they couldn't do that, whatever happened to them after D Day kept them young, but they were still human. Logan was – is something else."
"Was he a good man?" Jones asked.
"If you object to drinking, chasing women, and smoking big cigars; cursing, and facial hair, then he's Satan himself, but if you count 'good' as being a loyal and effective soldier, then Logan was very good indeed."
Jones nodded. "Okay. I'm about done for now." He paused. "Can you tell me the whereabouts of Jonathan Kent's widow?"
"Washington – last we heard." Ben looked at Martha.
"Yes her last Christmas card was from the same Washington address." She confirmed.
Ben continued. "I don't think I've talked to May since the funeral. But knowing Jonathan I expect he'll have told May even less than I have told Martha about Easy Company's war, I'm sure she won't be able to help you."
Jones nodded again. Martha felt the Detective wasn't so sure about that.
"Final question" he said "did Logan ever show any signs of excessive rage, excessive violence?"
"It was war." Ben replied. "Individuals, on both sides, did horrible things, sure we all got called baby murderers and worse when we got home, but I didn't see Logan being like that, like I said he was a good soldier, even if the Canucks weren't officially in that fight."
Jones nodded, and stood up.
"What is it you're not telling us?" Martha asked. She saw it in the Detective's face, or perhaps more his manner, it was maybe women's intuition; whatever she felt compelled to ask.
Jones ran his hand across his close cropped hair. "Mrs Parker New York is a big place, and I've no reason to think this, but if for whatever reason you or your husband should happen to see Logan, please under any circumstances do not approach or engage him in any way."
"What is he meant to have done?" Ben demanded.
"I can't say."
"But it's bad." Martha concluded.
Jones didn't deny it.
"How bad?" Ben asked. He stared hard at the tall African American.
"Multiple homicide, nasty stuff, gang related" Jones paused. "I've told you more than I should already Mr Parker. Let's leave it there okay."
"It doesn't sound right, doesn't sound like the soldier I knew." Ben said.
"Times change and people change with them." Jones replied, pausing and looking in every way sincere and serious. "Here's my card, if you think of anything, whatever, don't hesitate to contact me."
Ben took it. Martha showed the Police Detective to the door. She closed it returning to Ben, he hadn't moved, looking at Jones' card as if it might reveal some hidden secret.
"Something is very wrong Martha. I think you maybe should give May a call, see if she's all right."
"Sure, as soon as next-door's girl goes home." She replied. "I'll do that; tell her to maybe expect a call from Detective Jones?"
Ben nodded. Martha didn't need to be a telepath to read his thoughts; he was wishing his old buddy Jonathan Kent was still alive.