steahl_npc (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
steahl_npc) wrote2015-10-03 10:52 pm
steahl_npc) wrote2015-10-03 10:52 pm
Entry tags:
When the wind blows...
Who: Natasha, MJ, assorted.
When: A few days after Jason is born with flashbacks to before.
What: What's a spy in this world then?
War...war was hell. She knew that in her bones. As cold as the rain sluicing down her suit was, well, it couldn't touch that bone deep knowledge. She ached, still, days later and it was an almost pleasant burning in her belly; an ember to hold against the winter she knew. That...probably wasn't healthy, but hey, do what you could these days.
The bundle tied tightly to her chest under the waterproof jacket stirred fitfully; she couldn't blame the little thing, no one liked the cold. They just...got used to it. And much the same she couldn't blame the baby for how he was born. Nothing like she'd hoped, the bitter months had led to an even bitter ending when the mite opened blind eyes to the world.
She...couldn't train that.
And she couldn't truly protect it either.
It was her own fault really, when it boiled down to it; she'd gone looking for a father from the same program she'd had. Someone with the modifications in their veins. Way back they'd...all been disappointments. Their lord Apocalypse had been fascinated by his horseman War, or more accurately the processes he'd been through. To take a mere human and make them so much better?
Well, it was worth looking in to. And what their lord wanted, well, he got. There'd been hundreds of them; human children shepherded into special groups to receive 'treatments'. All meant to create...supermen. And superwomen. Evolution was slow after all, and there was no harm in trying to hurry it along.
For most, well, the program had been less that successful. Bodies were frail, and children frailer yet. Peter and Mathew had not been in her 'home group' but she knew them, just as she knew every name and face that had suffered alongside them. She knew when the treatments took Matt's eyesight and when Peter lay in a fever fighting the spider mutation with even chances of dying.
She knew because unlike most children she'd...needed to know. She'd made up names and appearances, slipping between groups, gathering information. The treatments hadn't killed her at all, but the benefits were...less than apparent. She couldn't be read by telepaths, she healed human slow but without scarring of cellular degeneration. Her mind though? Ah that had always been her greatest weapon.
She managed to catch the attention of one of War's generals, Fury, during his tour of the program. He hand chose her from among the children, pulling her up out of the grim pens and screams to bring her into a terrible secret: War despaired.
She hadn't believed it naturally. Apocalypse's horsemen were nigh unto Gods and were as far beyond human emotion as the successful treatment children were beyond humans.
Then she saw War weeping one day. She'd peeked at him from an upper window while Fury was teaching her and the other chosen child, Clint, something about tactics.
War was crying.
Fury said it was because he had been a good man, once. A hero who protected people before Apocalypse had reforged him into a horseman. Too bad he'd been fighting off 'Hydra' instead of the greater, rising threat; maybe the world would have been different if someone like War had been able to stop things earlier. Sometimes, though, the good man could fight free of the programming for moments. Precious moments. She tasted her own blood that day; nothing unusual, but she had never bit her own lip so hard before as that bitter realization hit; even good people, noble people, answered to Apocalypse and sometimes all anyone had to call their own were those risky, necessary seconds.
The blend of love, pity, and fear she felt for the horseman beyond that day was a twisted, hard edged thing for a child to bear...but she wasn't alone. Fury felt it, she knew, and Clint, and many of the other generals and soldiers of War's personal household. Theirs was a heavy secret life...
...but she was good with secrets. She was there with the treatments children again when Apocalypse came to view them, ponderous and terrifying with his power worn as casually as any king. They were...all far from the desired outcome but he was a kind God. They were all free to go forth from the program and forge what life they could.
Their grand leader believed in survival of the fittest after all; maybe life out in the world would hone the small successes they'd had. An interesting series of affairs that was. Fury wanted to know what people did with themselves so she'd...stuck with many of them as needed and asked. Different names, different agendas, she had a myriad of aliases depending on who she was with and who was passing through the territories.
She'd been almost as shocked to find a different resistance source than War's household as they were to find her, though she prided herself on the fact she hid that better. And more resistance forces was better after all, it meant that there would be too many targets when there were the inevitable sedition hunts.
It was in following up on the program participants that she first started to observe how the children of the treated groups were...far more in line with what Apocalypse had had in mind. Interesting, honestly, and that was when she'd started to think it may be best if she had a child herself. Someone to share her work with and to be raised in War's household without the suspicion of 'outsiders' that even Fury's hand chosen recruits could engender. Two parents with treated bodies would likely be best for a strong and able child.
She hadn't intended to get caught up with Matt but, well, the boy had always had a way with girls when they were young, and that trait had stayed true even into adulthood. It could almost have been a power itself; that charisma. That was the only excuse she had for not seducing Peter as she'd intended on that visit...
...ah, but she was rambling. She could feel the swaddled child wiggling in the mindless, miserable way of infants everywhere searching for a meal. The sedative she'd given the baby was wearing off and that wasn't good. Injudicious crying would be a problem at this junction given she was perched on a high fence along a property that wasn't hers and she hadn't announced that she was coming to anyone.
After a moment of discomfort, though, she saw the signal. She'd heard, through various and sundry, that there was going to be an attack on Peter and Matt's lands tonight. Almost on schedule the outcry arose and she was slipping off the fence to pad toward one place she knew she'd at least be able to plead her case properly; MJ was something of a resistance leader in this area but she was also blessed with patience to here a person out. She'd be stuck for hours, after all, if she went straight to Matt to talk about the baby.
The physically perfect except for those damn eyes baby.
Well, that was what happened when she pinned too much hope on a single plan. The treatments hadn't taken Matt's site, oh no, they'd changed the genetic coding for something IN the eyes themselves. All that lovely potential and she...couldn't dare keep the boy with her. Clint had agreed, as one of her few confidants, well, the man was priceless. He was already shouldering the quiet blame for her pregnancy; easy for her to get knocked up by the guy she was partnered with often, right? And she didn't need to name the father as long as people thought they knew who it was.
Lower odds in her home suspected War himself, the face they knew at 'home' was War's fascinating little weapon, which would be just as useful a fiction...
...but neither of those fathers would have granted blindness, which meant the protective layers of speculation wouldn't have guarded the boy.
Sue her, she was a cold bitch but even she wasn't going to give a kid nothing to protect himself with. Especially since she'd be trusting War to her child, and Fury, and Clint...that left her with this singular option.
She managed not to squelch through the mud, or trip and accidentally drown her son in a puddle, luck, those, since most her concentration was taken up with avoiding being seen at all in the pouring rain AND seeing in said rain. Despite her best efforts though she managed to clip her hip sharply on MJ's cottage as she rounded a corner. There was no welcome light in the window, which had thrown her off. She'd never know MJ to keep her place dark...
...at first she didn't think anyone was present as she dripped on the small mat inside the door with a baby shivering against her. She didn't think...until she heard the low, pained groan from the kitchen. MJ was there and...only an emergency would have pulled people away from the kind woman when she was this far along in her own pregnancy. Natasha ached in remembered pain when she spotted the woman. She wasn't the sort to empathize with people she came across, but she could vaguely feel a connection tonight.
It had to be the lingering hormones.
Still, the red headed woman needed help and Natasha could provide it; she'd learned many interesting skills in her work after all.
The most merciful thing that could be said for the process was that at least MJ's was quick. It wasn't even an hour later before twin girls were clean and swaddled beside an equally cleaned and exhausted mother and...
...one of the children was certainly taking after Peter already. She could tell by the way the thinner girl child's hands had felt; slightly textured and even as a newly born thing the grip she had was hard to shake. The other child, well, she was blissfully ignorant of her sister's ability, showing instead a desire to sleep already.
That meant, likely, that if the girl had gotten any bonuses from a created spider man father they were subtle.
Subtle was good.
And, well, any child of THIS pair was likely to share a hair color with Natasha, a trait her son was lacking, honestly. That would help...
...pass off the fiction.
To be fair she didn't jump to the decision. No, instead she sat down and thought, carefully, as she eyed the twins and the boy she'd laid down with the pair. It would cause heartache, here, and that could be an issue in and of itself...but then again MJ had been far gone in delirium by the time Natasha arrived, how much could someone remember under those circumstances?
And as Fury had pointed out grimly in their conversations no one was getting any younger these days. There was too much to do between protecting their people from War's programming AND monitoring the world to be squeamish about...recruitment. And Clint, well, he was the only one who had seen Jason...and he'd take her secrets to the grave, just as she would his.
Decided she wrapped the healthier looking daughter tight in swaddling clothes before tying the newborn to her chest and laying a letter beside Jason. Matt could 'read' it after all and it...had been written to ensure what safety she could give her son. In the guise she wore here with Matt, in these lands, she'd learned far more than the man realized. He was a man who still had honor...and an honorable man would raise his own sun.
Natasha hadn't had that luxury in decades.
Besides, she was certain Steve Rogers, the vulnerable facet of her lord War, would rather enjoy meeting her daughter and watching as the little girl was taught how to play lords against each other and excel at displaying the virtues of War to all and sundry. Perhaps it might bring a touch of sunlight to War's despair...
...and failing that, well, there would be one more body at Fury's disposal to protect War and slowly undermine Apocalypse. That alone was worth any price.
When: A few days after Jason is born with flashbacks to before.
What: What's a spy in this world then?
War...war was hell. She knew that in her bones. As cold as the rain sluicing down her suit was, well, it couldn't touch that bone deep knowledge. She ached, still, days later and it was an almost pleasant burning in her belly; an ember to hold against the winter she knew. That...probably wasn't healthy, but hey, do what you could these days.
The bundle tied tightly to her chest under the waterproof jacket stirred fitfully; she couldn't blame the little thing, no one liked the cold. They just...got used to it. And much the same she couldn't blame the baby for how he was born. Nothing like she'd hoped, the bitter months had led to an even bitter ending when the mite opened blind eyes to the world.
She...couldn't train that.
And she couldn't truly protect it either.
It was her own fault really, when it boiled down to it; she'd gone looking for a father from the same program she'd had. Someone with the modifications in their veins. Way back they'd...all been disappointments. Their lord Apocalypse had been fascinated by his horseman War, or more accurately the processes he'd been through. To take a mere human and make them so much better?
Well, it was worth looking in to. And what their lord wanted, well, he got. There'd been hundreds of them; human children shepherded into special groups to receive 'treatments'. All meant to create...supermen. And superwomen. Evolution was slow after all, and there was no harm in trying to hurry it along.
For most, well, the program had been less that successful. Bodies were frail, and children frailer yet. Peter and Mathew had not been in her 'home group' but she knew them, just as she knew every name and face that had suffered alongside them. She knew when the treatments took Matt's eyesight and when Peter lay in a fever fighting the spider mutation with even chances of dying.
She knew because unlike most children she'd...needed to know. She'd made up names and appearances, slipping between groups, gathering information. The treatments hadn't killed her at all, but the benefits were...less than apparent. She couldn't be read by telepaths, she healed human slow but without scarring of cellular degeneration. Her mind though? Ah that had always been her greatest weapon.
She managed to catch the attention of one of War's generals, Fury, during his tour of the program. He hand chose her from among the children, pulling her up out of the grim pens and screams to bring her into a terrible secret: War despaired.
She hadn't believed it naturally. Apocalypse's horsemen were nigh unto Gods and were as far beyond human emotion as the successful treatment children were beyond humans.
Then she saw War weeping one day. She'd peeked at him from an upper window while Fury was teaching her and the other chosen child, Clint, something about tactics.
War was crying.
Fury said it was because he had been a good man, once. A hero who protected people before Apocalypse had reforged him into a horseman. Too bad he'd been fighting off 'Hydra' instead of the greater, rising threat; maybe the world would have been different if someone like War had been able to stop things earlier. Sometimes, though, the good man could fight free of the programming for moments. Precious moments. She tasted her own blood that day; nothing unusual, but she had never bit her own lip so hard before as that bitter realization hit; even good people, noble people, answered to Apocalypse and sometimes all anyone had to call their own were those risky, necessary seconds.
The blend of love, pity, and fear she felt for the horseman beyond that day was a twisted, hard edged thing for a child to bear...but she wasn't alone. Fury felt it, she knew, and Clint, and many of the other generals and soldiers of War's personal household. Theirs was a heavy secret life...
...but she was good with secrets. She was there with the treatments children again when Apocalypse came to view them, ponderous and terrifying with his power worn as casually as any king. They were...all far from the desired outcome but he was a kind God. They were all free to go forth from the program and forge what life they could.
Their grand leader believed in survival of the fittest after all; maybe life out in the world would hone the small successes they'd had. An interesting series of affairs that was. Fury wanted to know what people did with themselves so she'd...stuck with many of them as needed and asked. Different names, different agendas, she had a myriad of aliases depending on who she was with and who was passing through the territories.
She'd been almost as shocked to find a different resistance source than War's household as they were to find her, though she prided herself on the fact she hid that better. And more resistance forces was better after all, it meant that there would be too many targets when there were the inevitable sedition hunts.
It was in following up on the program participants that she first started to observe how the children of the treated groups were...far more in line with what Apocalypse had had in mind. Interesting, honestly, and that was when she'd started to think it may be best if she had a child herself. Someone to share her work with and to be raised in War's household without the suspicion of 'outsiders' that even Fury's hand chosen recruits could engender. Two parents with treated bodies would likely be best for a strong and able child.
She hadn't intended to get caught up with Matt but, well, the boy had always had a way with girls when they were young, and that trait had stayed true even into adulthood. It could almost have been a power itself; that charisma. That was the only excuse she had for not seducing Peter as she'd intended on that visit...
...ah, but she was rambling. She could feel the swaddled child wiggling in the mindless, miserable way of infants everywhere searching for a meal. The sedative she'd given the baby was wearing off and that wasn't good. Injudicious crying would be a problem at this junction given she was perched on a high fence along a property that wasn't hers and she hadn't announced that she was coming to anyone.
After a moment of discomfort, though, she saw the signal. She'd heard, through various and sundry, that there was going to be an attack on Peter and Matt's lands tonight. Almost on schedule the outcry arose and she was slipping off the fence to pad toward one place she knew she'd at least be able to plead her case properly; MJ was something of a resistance leader in this area but she was also blessed with patience to here a person out. She'd be stuck for hours, after all, if she went straight to Matt to talk about the baby.
The physically perfect except for those damn eyes baby.
Well, that was what happened when she pinned too much hope on a single plan. The treatments hadn't taken Matt's site, oh no, they'd changed the genetic coding for something IN the eyes themselves. All that lovely potential and she...couldn't dare keep the boy with her. Clint had agreed, as one of her few confidants, well, the man was priceless. He was already shouldering the quiet blame for her pregnancy; easy for her to get knocked up by the guy she was partnered with often, right? And she didn't need to name the father as long as people thought they knew who it was.
Lower odds in her home suspected War himself, the face they knew at 'home' was War's fascinating little weapon, which would be just as useful a fiction...
...but neither of those fathers would have granted blindness, which meant the protective layers of speculation wouldn't have guarded the boy.
Sue her, she was a cold bitch but even she wasn't going to give a kid nothing to protect himself with. Especially since she'd be trusting War to her child, and Fury, and Clint...that left her with this singular option.
She managed not to squelch through the mud, or trip and accidentally drown her son in a puddle, luck, those, since most her concentration was taken up with avoiding being seen at all in the pouring rain AND seeing in said rain. Despite her best efforts though she managed to clip her hip sharply on MJ's cottage as she rounded a corner. There was no welcome light in the window, which had thrown her off. She'd never know MJ to keep her place dark...
...at first she didn't think anyone was present as she dripped on the small mat inside the door with a baby shivering against her. She didn't think...until she heard the low, pained groan from the kitchen. MJ was there and...only an emergency would have pulled people away from the kind woman when she was this far along in her own pregnancy. Natasha ached in remembered pain when she spotted the woman. She wasn't the sort to empathize with people she came across, but she could vaguely feel a connection tonight.
It had to be the lingering hormones.
Still, the red headed woman needed help and Natasha could provide it; she'd learned many interesting skills in her work after all.
The most merciful thing that could be said for the process was that at least MJ's was quick. It wasn't even an hour later before twin girls were clean and swaddled beside an equally cleaned and exhausted mother and...
...one of the children was certainly taking after Peter already. She could tell by the way the thinner girl child's hands had felt; slightly textured and even as a newly born thing the grip she had was hard to shake. The other child, well, she was blissfully ignorant of her sister's ability, showing instead a desire to sleep already.
That meant, likely, that if the girl had gotten any bonuses from a created spider man father they were subtle.
Subtle was good.
And, well, any child of THIS pair was likely to share a hair color with Natasha, a trait her son was lacking, honestly. That would help...
...pass off the fiction.
To be fair she didn't jump to the decision. No, instead she sat down and thought, carefully, as she eyed the twins and the boy she'd laid down with the pair. It would cause heartache, here, and that could be an issue in and of itself...but then again MJ had been far gone in delirium by the time Natasha arrived, how much could someone remember under those circumstances?
And as Fury had pointed out grimly in their conversations no one was getting any younger these days. There was too much to do between protecting their people from War's programming AND monitoring the world to be squeamish about...recruitment. And Clint, well, he was the only one who had seen Jason...and he'd take her secrets to the grave, just as she would his.
Decided she wrapped the healthier looking daughter tight in swaddling clothes before tying the newborn to her chest and laying a letter beside Jason. Matt could 'read' it after all and it...had been written to ensure what safety she could give her son. In the guise she wore here with Matt, in these lands, she'd learned far more than the man realized. He was a man who still had honor...and an honorable man would raise his own sun.
Natasha hadn't had that luxury in decades.
Besides, she was certain Steve Rogers, the vulnerable facet of her lord War, would rather enjoy meeting her daughter and watching as the little girl was taught how to play lords against each other and excel at displaying the virtues of War to all and sundry. Perhaps it might bring a touch of sunlight to War's despair...
...and failing that, well, there would be one more body at Fury's disposal to protect War and slowly undermine Apocalypse. That alone was worth any price.