Memories
Daughter of America
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After a little bit of legal fudging, courtesy of Jen Walters, Zillah Bat Etana Rogers was soon being given the full introduction around the Avengers Mansion. This was followed by the new father and daughter going off to train. Everyone ended up wandering over to see the pair of them sparring and there was a certain amount of friendly teasing in store for Steve after a sixteen-year-old girl managed to hold him in a hammer-lock for ten seconds, even if he did beat her in the end. His excuse of "I didn't want to hurt my daughter" was scoffed at by Logan, who told him that any decent father wouldn't hold off, at which point Steve pointed to Eva, still clinging like a limpit to Logan's left leg and told him to get her off.
By the time Logan had resorted to bribery with a four-scoop raspberry, strawberry, mint choc-chip and caramel ice cream, sprinkles and chocolate sauce, the other Avengers were all laughing hysterically. And then Jamie came in, pointed at Eva and commanded in the cutest authoratitive voice many had heard since Tony had been turned into a teenager "Eva, get off Dad." Logan's credibility dropped another few notches when Eva grumpily did as she was told, mumbling about "mean big brothers".
The fact that Logan's five-year-old son was better at making the three-year-old to behave than the century and a half headmaster of his own school was something that Logan would never quite live down.
"Steve Rogers and Logan. They spoiled their daughters silly."
"To be fair, Zillah sort of needed spoiling. She needed as much positive human contact as possible."
"I kind of always wondered why she never carried a shield."
"She did. It's just it was collapsible into her wrist guard. She was rather proud of it, as a matter of fact. A little gift from Akira."
"I still can't quite believe those two were such huge friends. They were so different."
"What? If I recall correctly, Phoenix, you were amazed that the Sisters worked out so well."
"They had only one member who was even halfway decent at social skills and she was a flipping vampire!"
"They also had Wolverine's clone, Taskmaster's daughter and Captain America's adopted daughter who was cloned from Etana and had some weird inherited Death powers. They were friends precisely because they had no social skills."
"You still swear you had nothing to do with the Sisters' formation?"
"Phoenix, you wound me! To suggest I would set a group of ninjas on four innocent teenage girls on a night out!?"
Steve looked at Logan.
"Is this really a good idea?"
Logan shrugged.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
"Last time you said that, Doom blasted your head two seconds later."
"Then good luck we're not fighting Doom."
Steve looked around at Zillah, Jamie, Eva and Laura.
"Okay. Everyone ready?"
There was a group of nods. He looked at Zillah.
"You sure you're okay with this?"
The image inducer flickered on, changing Zillah's appearance until her appearance was that of a pretty normal human girl.
"Better than Ima had."
And then the car door opened and they piled out into the amusement area of Coney Island. Eva and Jamie immediately pulled Logan off to the Wonder Wheel in Jamie's case and the haunted houses in Eva's. Steve was left with Laura and Zillah, both of whom looked incredibly nervous and kept giving each other shy glances as if they didn't quite know what to make of each other.
"Either of you up for a roller coaster?"
They looked at each other and then Zillah flushed.
"Er… What's a roller coaster?"
Laura nodded. Steve sighed.
"Right, we're going on the roller coasters. And then we're going to try the fairground games. And at least try to look happy."
Half-an-hour and twelve roller coaster rides later, Steve was beginning to question the wisdom of allowing Etana's and Logan's clones anywhere near any structure that could satisfy an adrenaline junkie. When he finally tore them away from the Cyclone and pulled them towards the fairground games with the promise of things that could test their aim, he soon realised that probably wasn't the best idea. Both girls had deadly aim, either with an air gun or just plain throwing. Staggering under the vast array of prizes both of them had amassed, managed to get them on the haunted house ride, pleading a need to get a coffee to avoid going on with them. He soon questioned the intelligence of that plan when he heard the whoops of laughter and managed to run over still carrying everything to see Zillah and Laura laughing about the 'horrendous' ghosts and discussing real monsters.
"Okay, haunted house was a bad idea. What else do you want to do?"
Laura looked longingly back at the roller coaster and Zillah had a dreamy look at the unused Parachute Jump and Steve was incredibly thankful that he was saved by his phone ringing, with Logan announcing that Eva was half-asleep and they'd need to go home.
Eva did wake up a lot when Zillah handed over eight cuddly toys of sizes ranging from small to bigger than Eva.
And Logan and Steve exchanged secretive glances as Laura and Zillah began chatting the entire journey back to the school about a variety of subjects from their respective classmates to the best way to kill a man from eight yards.
"Okay, which of those smart-alecs had the terrible idea of letting those two meet?"
"They kind of hoped it would be good for both of them."
"Wasn't it a bit risky, all going out together like that?"
"Oh yeah…"
Steve thumped his head off the breakfast table as he read the headline. The photo was of him meeting up with Logan. Jamie dancing around their feet, Eva hig- well, higher than normal- on Logan's shoulders and Laura and Zillah carting their prizes around at the funfair.
FAMILY CAP!
What followed was a list of rumours. Each paper got worse than the next and by the time he reached the tabloids, his mind could barely take in the suggestion that Logan and him were parents to all the kids and had been in a secret relationship for years. For pity's sake, Laura and Zillah were slightly older than he'd been out of ice for! He continued reading the most credible article. They'd identified Laura as X-23, Logan's "daughter" correctly; worked out that Jamie and Eva were Tora and Logan's kids –not that it was hard to guess when you saw Eva, miniature Tora that she was. But Zillah had them stumped. Guesses ranged from another Logan –despite the clear race gap- to Laura's girlfriend, to the new girlfriend of either him or Logan or…
Steve thumped his head on the table one more time before picking up his phone to call Tony.
"Can we call a press conference?"
Phoenix rolled her eyes.
"Wasn't there some actor to do something stupid so they could focus on something other than Steve's private life?"
"He was Captain America. He didn't have a private life."
Zillah sat nervously in the dark at the side of the room, shielded from the reporters by a couple of screens. On her cue, she was to go out and stand beside Steve –he'd told her to stop calling him Captain Rogers but seemed disappointed by something.
Stark was on the podium, clearing his throat.
"You've all seen the photos. Captain America at Coney Island with the Logan family. And another girl. I'll hand you over to Cap to talk this, as it's personal."
Steve shuffled up and coughed, looking embarrassed.
"I need to start this from the beginning. It's a bit complex, so please bear with me."
He kept glancing over to the screen, as if to assure himself that Zillah was still there.
"During the War… I met a woman. A warrior, who wasn't interested on fighting on the front lines, because she was protecting those she rescued from the concentration camps. Long story short, we fell in love. And then you know the story. I was frozen. And she was left to live alone again."
He looked away.
"After I returned, I didn't bother to look for her. She must have died between then and now, I was sure of it. And then she turned up one day, bold as anything."
He looked away.
"She looked the same. She didn't age. That was her thing. Well, one of them. Hopelessly outclassing all of us was another. And being sarcastic about us all. A year and a half later, she died. The last victim of the Legacy Virus."
There were shocked gasps. Was Captain America actually admitting loving a mutant?
"We never actually told each other how much we cared. And then six months ago, for a few brief hours, she was returned. She was killed saving my life from the one who brought her back."
He looked down.
"Etana was a lot of things. She was smart; she was brave; she was this beautiful ancient being who could adapt to new worlds and customs with an ease I envied. And… And a few months back, I found someone. Her… Her daughter. Or clone. A clone raised as her daughter. A girl who was lost and forgotten after Etana died. And I offered Zillah something. A sort of closure for both of us. We'd both lost someone close to us and this was a way of trying to make things a little bit better. I offered to adopt her. She agreed. Zillah, can you come over here?"
Zillah stood up and walked over to him, ignoring the flashes of the cameras. He looked at her and quickly grabbed her hand, hiding it between the lecturn and squeezing.
"Zillah, will you show them your real face?"
She gulped and with her free hand, she turned off the image inducer. She heard the gasps and felt her wings pull in tighter around her. Steve's hand squeezed tighter.
"This is Zillah Rogers. Or Zillah Bat Etana Rogers. She wanted to keep her mother's name and I agree. The adoption has been fully legalised, with her guardian giving full permission for this. Zillah will remain at the Jean Grey School until the end of term, then after summer, will be participating in an exchange program with the Avengers Academy. And yes, she is a mutant, but that doesn't matter to me. She is her mother's daughter, and that's good enough for me."
Zillah squeezed his hand back and flashed him a nervous smile. He smiled back.
"Wait. I thought she called him Dad?"
"It took a while."
"Oooh! Show me, show me, show me!"
"Phoenix, you're worse than Eva was when she was in her 'want' stage after Logan spoiled her senseless."
"I am not."
It was meant to be a nice day out. A father-daughter thing. Their relationship was still in the early stages and they were both nervous about how much to give. But of course, when you're Steve Rogers, there's no way you can have a normal day out, especially not after you've just announced that you adopted.
It started with the paparazzi, who wouldn't leave them alone until Zillah teleported them eight blocks. Then when they were about to go see the film –a showing of The Wizard of Oz- and there was a bank robbery on the other side of the street so they sort of had to intervene and then they were attacked by HYDRA goons as they were trying to go to a restaurant that Etana and Steve had went to on a couple of their 'not-dates'.
Zillah had been the one they'd set their sights on, assuming –wrongly it turned out- that she'd go down easily. They didn't realise she was wearing slimline adamantine armour under her street clothes and that she carried a pocket crossbow with tranquilliser darts –Steve had banned her from using the actual quarrels. She'd taken down three before she'd even got close enough to resort to Krav Maga.
No, it was Steve who'd been taken unawares. Without the shield –it was difficult to carry on a standard day out- he had lost his primary weapon and method of defence. He'd done pretty well for himself but some small part of him was panicking about Zillah. He'd lost Tan and he didn't want to lose her too. Which resulted in the blast clipping the side of his head.
The last thing he heard before he dropped into blackness was Zillah's frantic scream of "DAAD!" and a sudden flutter of satisfaction countered his terror at being unable to protect her.
He shouldn't have worried. What he later learned was only five minutes later, he woke to find Zillah kneeling over him, her bloodied palm resting on the head injury.
"Are… Are you okay…?"
"Did… Did you call me Dad?"
She flushed.
"Sorry…"
"No. I… I like it… I kind of wanted you to call me that right away. Wait! Where are the HYDR-"
Zillah pointed and he turned to see all ten HYDRA agents unconscious and tied up with what looked like duct tape.
"No bother. I… I kinda did what Ima always told me I wasn't to do…"
Steve felt his blood run cold.
"What thing?"
And Zillah flushed and then she moved back and her hands caught fire, inky black and shining silver flames that reeked of death. And Steve closed his eyes.
"How the hell did you inherit that?"
"Don't know. Think the Master had something to do with it."
"What Master?"
And Zillah's cheeks flushed even deeper.
"Oh, you are kidding me!"
Death was frowning.
"Okay, I am now very annoyed. She had no right to siphon a little of the Malach Hamavet off into that…that…girl!"
"She tended to be quite good at what she did and it only really manifested as the Angel's Breath and the ability to sense when someone was going to die imminently. Think of her as Susan."
"Susan… Susan…?"
"Bill's granddaughter."
"Oh! Susan."
"Yes. Susan."
A.N. Guess the crossover in the last part! It's very...British humour, so I don't know how widespread it is out of the UK.