Memories

Battle Scars

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If you want to use Tora, or any of my other characters, PM me.

Curt swirled the mop across the deck and looked up. The main deck of the Thetis shone. He wasn't strictly speaking on deck duty right now but he found the repetitive movement away from the noise of the social rooms to be relaxing. It gave him time alone, to think. Poison stirred restively. They'd been stuck without having a chance to shift and change, meaning that they were getting edgy. He wanted to run, to fly from the petty people his own apparent age who hadn't seen a tenth of the things he had. How many of them had seen a man die? How many of them had ever had to fight for their lives and the lives of their baby brother and sister? How many of them had killed?

He already knew the answers to those questions. He was set aside from the others, by his genes, his upbringing, if you could call it that, and his family. And he had to kill to survive at times, or to guarantee the survival of his family.

Curt wasn't his father. He wouldn't kill unless his opponent directly threatened his family. But he could still kill and thanks to his training –even though Maman had managed to help him break most of it –he could kill without too many ethical complaints.

The fact he was linked with something that saw most of the rest of the sentient races as food helped.

Hungry. Want food.

You've got chocolate.

Want REAL food! Need brains!

(Watch out, the imbecile wants brains. You do know we're getting to be like a zombie, don't you?)

Zombies are cool!

Eat zombies! Munch, munch, munch!

(I'm surrounded by idiots.)

Cheer up, Brian! We have a ready supply here, if all goes wrong!

(Are you seriously suggesting eating your fellows? You're madder than I thought. And I share a head with you.)

No! But there are sheep carcasses in the freezer! Whole sheep carcasses! Brains aplenty!

BRAINS!

(I give up.)

"How on earth did that boy end up as well-balanced as he was?"

"I rather think it was the three personalities in combination that did it. They voted on everything. A democracy in the mind of one man. Rather interesting concept, don't you think?"

Eva De Souza looked over her bags. Maybe she should leave. But she didn't want to.

She wasn't at home here. She wanted to go back, to find the few tattered remnants of her family. But at the same time…

At the same time, Xii was her family. As children, they had been closer than sisters. And now that Xii was dead –dead and reviled by the fickle ones she had protected for so long –Eva felt some sort of debt required repaying. And then she made her decision.

Logan looked up from his desk to see the Latino woman enter the room.

"Yeah?"

"I… I wanted to make a suggestion… I would like to go home to Santo Marco for a while and then return to –if it pleases you –help look after Eva and Jamie. I… I feel I owe Xii that much."

She smiled sadly.

"I… I don't want to fight. I'm done fighting. Anyway, I can't really do that much, just play around with stupid pictures."

"Stupid pictures? Not that much? You nearly killed Steve Rogers with those turrets."

He shook his head in amazement.

"I can't disagree with what you say. You go back to… Wait. Wasn't Santo Marco that place the Brotherhood took over way back?"

Eva paused then nodded sharply.

"I wasn't there by then. In fact… If what Xii said was true… Then by that time I was… You know…"

She didn't want to say it. She didn't want to admit that she had been dead and maybe her memories were all facades of the real thing. Or maybe that was just one debt too great.

Logan smiled back.

"I… I think Tora would have loved you to look after Jamie and Little Eva."

"Not lil'."

Eva paused then tilted her head down to look under the desk. Eva Logan was sitting on her dad's feet, snuggling a squirming, protesting Bamf to her chest.

"Not lil'. Me big."

Eva looked back up. Logan had a long-suffering look on his face. Somehow Eva got the impression that if his daughter took it into her head to clamber up and hug him, he would be as helpless as the Bamf.

"She always could twist him around her little finger, couldn't she?"

"Didn't you know? Heart of butter when it came to his baby girl. Although her first couple of boyfriends had life pretty difficult…"

"Didn't they all threaten the first one?"

"Jamie, Curt, Laura, Logan, Steve, Luke, Bobby and Peter –Parker, not Piotr- all threatened him with various death threats."

"Jamie? Jamie Logan, the one who never fought unless he had to, and then he preferred to use his brain? What threat could he come up with?"

"I believe it involved a black hole. And spagettification."

Zillah was sitting silently in the Jungle Room, legs crossed as she meditated. Ima had impressed on her the importance of allowing oneself to order ones thoughts every day.

"Erm… Miss Zillah?"

Her silver eyes snapped open. There was a tall blond-haired man standing there looking awkward.

"Er… Do you know who I am?"

She nodded. Then spoke.

"Captain America. Steven Grant Rogers."

"Do you…? Did your mother ever tell you about… what we…?"

"She said you were the man who broke her heart."

Steve shifted uncomfortably.

"You could say she was the woman who broke mine."

Zillah stared up at him, her expression unreadable.

"Then we understand each other."

"I… I just wanted to ask…"

"About her? She was very... Ima. I'm sorry; I'm not very good with normal relations. I was raised by robots and dodos, you see."

Steve blinked at that.

"Dodos?"

"Yes. Ima found them in the 1500s and she quite liked them, so she took a breeding colony to her island, to keep as pets."

Zillah paused, suddenly thoughtful.

"And their eggs are very nice fried…"

Steve paused and stared at her.

"You really are very like her, you do know that?"

Zillah looked up again.

"Thank you."

"But… Sorry, I keep noticing this. Your nose is different."

Zillah reached up and touched her nose softly.

"Ima had her nose broken so many times that when she found a mutant capable of reconstructive cartilage and skin grafts, there was nothing left of the original shape, so he just approximated what he thought would fit her and shaped it to what was considered attractive at the time."

She grinned.

"It was broken again two weeks later. She kind of gave up after that."

"I did notice her nose sort of zigzagged."

Zillah giggled slightly. Steve was still looking at her.

"Your face is more symmetrical…"

"She had the left side of her face slammed into a mountain by Apocalypse. Broke her jaw and cheek bone. She's been annoyed about it ever since."

"A mountain?"

"Apparently it was the nearest thing to hand."

Steve sat down cross-legged.

"Any other amusing injuries I should know about?"

"She once broke her kneecap when she kneed Attila the Hun in the crotch."

Steve let out the slightest snort of laughter. Zillah's eyes sparked with a hint of amusement.

"And then there's the fact that if you looked closely, her pinkie on her right hand was crooked, because she once had it bitten off by a mad wyvern and she had to get it reattached. Apparently, the Brotherhood of the Shield was still in the middle of pioneering that particular technology and they botched it. Actually, I think she said 'Isaac botched it, and I swear it was on purpose!' Before swearing in Yiddish, which she didn't think I knew."

Steve snorted.

"Yeah, she used to try that with Max. Unfortunately, he was fluent, and by the time we left, Bucky could get a good rant going in the foulest Yiddish you could imagine."

Zillah giggled and then suddenly looked embarrassed.

"I… I shouldn't be… My friend… They…"

She shuddered slightly and gestured to her eyes. Steve nodded.

"I'd heard. We also kind of worked it out when Hellfire Club buildings all over the world were destroyed near simultaneously. Would you have had anything to do with that?"

Zillah flushed, something that only a few people would have been able to determine. Steve was one of them.

"I…helped. I was transport and I admit I was the one with the stun grenades."

Steve raised an eyebrow.

"Just the stun grenades?"

"Okay, and the flash bangs and the bolas and I may have stabbed one or two in non-fatal places, but that was it."

Steve laughed.

"You really are her daughter. You're not her –I knew that as soon as I saw you- but you are so like her it's scary."

He paused for a second.

"I… I don't know if you'd like this but… Would… Would you be… interested in adoption?"

The look on Zillah's face told Steve she didn't understand. He blushed, his ears turning bright red.

"It's just… If things hadn't turned out the way they did… I'd have probably –well, if you believed Tora –I would have married your mother… I wondered… Would you like me to adopt you?"

Zillah seemed unable to comprehend this. Steve felt his ears turn scarlet.

"I know it's all out of nowhere but… Forget it, it was a stupid spur-of-the-moment thing… Oomph!"

For Zillah had launched herself onto him, crushing his ribs as she hugged him and shouted "Please, please, please, please, please!"

"She'd met him twice! How could she make a decision like that?"

"Because she'd grown up with stories of the amazing, dashing, chivalrous Captain America. She used to play House where she had what she thought was a 'normal' family from TV shows and so on and she loved making him her dad. And then he offers her that opportunity. Of course she leapt for it."

"And how could he make an offer like that?! Was he crazy?"

"I believe his thought processes in the dead of night went something like this… I loved Etana. Etana loved me. If she was still alive, we'd probably be married. Zillah is Etana's daughter. If I'd married Etana, she would be my stepdaughter. Etana would want her daughter to be raised by someone who cared about her. Ergo, he should offer to be her legal guardian. And then he just sort of blurted out the offer of adoption on a whim. It was a spur of the moment thing, just as he said, but with the logic of a grieving man trying to decide his next course."

A.N. Because Logan is secretly a big softy at heart who could never say no to his baby girl and Steve kind of wishes that he was Zillah's actual biological father. Oh, and Curt's still insane, it's just people have gotten used to his quirks and actually quite like them now.