Memories

Adjusting

Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men or any of their characters. Tora and Weapon X-ii are my own though.

She sat there in the kitchen drinking the coffee she had made herself. She really liked this stuff. The first time they'd given her some she'd sat there for ages just enjoying the scent. Kitty had to remind her it was a drink and she was supposed to ingest it. She blushed and gulped it down, burning her throat. And then gasped and went to get another cup. After she went back for the third, Scott had stopped her and told her that she'd get addicted to caffeine if she carried on. He didn't see why she burst into fits of laughter until she explained her body flushed out drugs almost as soon as they entered her system. They'd asked her how she knew. And she'd gone back to the time when she was thirteen and they decided to see how good her immune system was at flushing out foreign contaminants. They'd started small with the Class-C drugs, increasing the dosage and monitoring her responses. And they'd worked their way up to the Class-A drugs. To begin with they affected her. The hallucinations were terrible. Because they didn't affect her the way they apparently affected everyone else. Instead her immune system went into overdrive and completely took over and she lost all knowledge of where she was, who she was. And when you have so little, memories mean a lot to you. Then they stopped. All the hallucinations and pain stopped. So they declared the test a success and moved onto radiation.

When she'd finished telling them, she had started to shake and the others had just looked horrified. They did that a lot. And then they'd asked if she wanted to cry. And she'd turned round and told them she hadn't cried since she was six years old. That crying was a weakness. And Charles had looked her in the eyes and told her crying wasn't a weakness. It was a gift. And then she told them why she couldn't cry. They'd torn out her tear ducts. When she'd got her powers they grew back but she couldn't remember how to cry. That shocked them more than the explanation of the drugs tests. She didn't understand them at times. But she shuddered when she remembered the radiation tests. That had been the closest she ever came to dying. They hadn't realized those tests they'd done when she was a little kid made her immune system sluggish when it came to radiation. They had only realized something was wrong when she had stopped screaming and just curled up and pressed her hand to her head. She would have done it too. But they stopped and burst in all armoured up, not realizing she was too sick to move, let alone kill anyone. They'd stopped the experiments for a while then. She didn't really remember. She'd been too ill, too wrapped up in the desperate attempts to save the multi-million dollar weapon from dying. They hadn't been interested in her life. It was only the money that had been spent on her they cared about. But she hadn't told them about that. She didn't want them to pity her even more. Oh, she'd seen the looks on their faces. Pity. She didn't want pity. She wanted them to forget about it all, act as though they hadn't happened. It worked for her. She blanked it all out, aside from the annoying buzzing in her skull as the computers turned everything she saw into a weapon and recorded every piece of information she gathered. At times she wanted to tear them out but she couldn't. The metal skull saw to that. A scent was entering the room now.

"Logan."

"I'm not used to people knowing who I am before I even open my mouth."

"You do it all the time."

She heard him chuckle at that.

"Guess I do. But I hadn't realized how disconcerting it was."

She turned. He wasn't in uniform and he had his hat tucked under one arm.

"Going out?"

"Yeah. I normally like to be alone this day every year."

"Something to do with your past?"

"You could say that."

"Do…do you remember anything? I can't but I was just a child…"

He frowned as if he hoped she hadn't asked that question.

"Not really. A few faces, couple of blurred memories. That's it."

He hurried out, as if he was worried she'd ask more questions. She heard his bike being kick-started and he had left. She busied herself making the coffee for the others, then glanced at the clock and counted to ten. As she finished she caught the scent of brimstone.

"Morning Kurt."

"Fraulin, why are you in your uniform?"

"I'm not all to sure. Coffee?"

"Tora, I could get used to this service."

She smiled and swung the cup round. The sight of Kurt sipping delicately from his cup as he hung upside-down always made her grin. He made her laugh and he enjoyed the protracted conversations they had in German. He finished and then ported over to the sink to clean the cup.

"I thought you weren't supposed to port in the house."

"Ah, but you won't tell on me will you?"

"I might. If you put a bucket of paint on my door again."

"Ah, yes. Pray tell why you only saw fit to enter your room at one thirty in the morning."

"I was training."

"You are always training."

"I don't really know what to do with my time. When I was younger my entire life was scheduled. When I was older, I lost all notion of time."

She rummaged through drawers, trying to find a bread knife. In the end she gave up and simply extended a claw and attacked the loaf. When she turned, Kurt was looking at her claw.

"Does it hurt?"

"What?"

"When you extend your claws. Does it hurt?"

She turned away. Then turned back.

"Have you ever had a skewer pushed into you? Now imagine that, but it's coming from inside you. The skewer's a part of you but it hurts when you push it through the skin."

"I'll take that as a yes."

She glanced down at the claws. They were short, nine inches. Enough for them to fold in on themselves twice. Three three inch sections. Each thinner than the one before. The thickest section no thicker than the narrowest point of her smallest metacarpal. Next to Logan's foot-long claws, twice the thickness, they looked insubstantial. But they were useful. She'd taken to using them when she couldn't find cutlery. The first time Kurt had come down and found her trying- and failing- to eat noodles with her claws, he'd fallen off the ceiling. When she'd explained that he'd forgotten to do the washing up again he'd disappeared pretty fast.

Storm was next in. She glanced at Tora but soon realized that she was fine after the nightmare of the night before. She glanced upstairs.

"Whose turn is it to wake Kitty?"

Tora pointed to Kurt. Kurt pointed to Tora. Then they both glanced upstairs, then at each other and chorused in unison.

"Scott's."

Storm smiled slightly.

"Ah, ganging up on our fearless leader. Do you know where Logan is?"

"He left. At about half six. Said he wanted to spend today alone."

Storm looked slightly surprised at that but then turned to walk away. As a passing remark she completely crushed the hopes of the two others in the room.

"By the way, Scott's out. You'll have to decide who wakes Kitty up."

A swift but brutal fight ensured. Only to stop when Kitty fell through the ceiling fully-dressed.

The woman relaxed her hold on the Eye. The waters faded, losing the image to become just plain water. She turned her head. She always knew when someone entered the Library. One word was spoken. Her voice was low and soft.

"Thana."

"I wish you wouldn't call me that. It sounds like Thanos."

"You can first. What do you want me to call you? Mort? Death?"

"Death will do. Are you still spending all your time at the Eye?"

"What else can I do?"

The other woman entered into her vision. For a second a cowled skull grinned out at her but that disappeared to show a beautiful black haired, black-eyed woman. She sat next to her friend whose ice mask appeared more expressive than the side of her face still showing.

"Show me."

The woman glanced at Death. Then smiled and reached out to the pool. The images reappeared and then moved.