The microwave door slams shut.
Eve cries louder.
Jesse sets the timer, scoops Eve up from the bassinet quickly. He cradles her gently, while she wrinkles her nose at him.
"I know, I know," he mutters. "You're hungry..."
The microwave drones on.
He knows that if he asks, Eckhart will have everything prepared for him, have everything exactly right, but he won't.
He wants this to be his. Feeding, bathing her. Taking care of her.
This of all things is *his*.
But, this night she cannot sleep and he wonders if his resolve is worth...the microwave stops, derails that train of thought. It beeps loudly and Eve cries louder. Gently Jesse places her back in her bassinet, tests the milk quickly. Grimaces at the red spot just a drop leaves on his wrist.
Eve cries louder.
"Ssshhh...." Jesse tries to soothe her. She ignores him, her hands clenching into small fists.
"Shhhhh...."
He leans towards her and nudges the tin of formula off the table. It clatters to the floor and everything is now peppered with it.
"Fuc..." Jesse clamps down on that word immediately. Leans against the counter and his eyes drift closed in frustration.
He is tired.
Eve's cries are sharp now, anguished. They hammer against him, against defenses that crumble ...that leave him teetering on the edge because... this is his child.
Blood. His family.
Her life entwined with his so much he's afraid he loves her too much. Knows that there is nothing he wouldn't do for her even if it is only to screw up making her bottle.
Jesse holds on to that thought as he picks her up again. Steps through the spilt formula to a cupboard and retrieves the other tin.
Eve still cries.
He holds her, lets the sounds wash over him, lets it drown out the microwave too as he steadfastly watches the timer count down from forty seconds.
Later, when she's asleep and by all rights he should be too, Jesse makes more bottles of milk for her. Refuses to have another night like that if he can help it.
She's his blood. His family.
She's the best part of him.
~~~
It happens on her first birthday, when there are tests to be done and he will not leave her. When he is pushed to the floor, his arm twisted behind his back and Sam does not, cannot help and Eve's cries reverberate in their rooms, her birthday cake forgotten...and Jesse tries desperately to tell her it's okay, that he's okay until...
The carefully set table, including the cake rise. Higher and he realizes the agent pushing him down to the floor is looking up at the cake with his jaw open. Eve cries, the objects rise a little bit more.
Jesse swallows.
"Eve, baby girl, it's okay," he manages and holds out his arms. She flies into them, presses against his chest as the remnants of her birthday party come crashing down around them. Glass shatters, like Jesse does.
Eve stops crying.
"Daddy," she mumbles into his chest. He smoothes her hair away from her face, his fingers catching in the curls he had painstakingly combed earlier. He murmurs nonsensical things, meets Sam's eyes, over her shoulder. Sam, he realizes, is scared. Watches him as he stumbles over to the red phone and presses a few buttons.
"It's okay, baby girl, I'm okay," he says.
It begins like that.
~~~
There are visits to the infirmary that seem to last forever, that leave Eve crying softly, looking at Eckhart with fear in her eyes. She is pale against the white sheets, no more than Jesse is. Her cheeks are tear-streaked, her nose red. She rubs at it. Her father's eyes as he had predicted, though his accuracy gives him no comfort. Not when it's Jesse who looks back at him, instead of Eve. A small hand shoots out, closes over the plastic of his gloves, tugs and Eve blinks at him through tears. He knows he should do something, but Eckhart doesn't. She tugs again and his hand closes over hers briefly. He tells himself it's foolish sentiment, a luxury he cannot afford. He believes it too.
There are an infinite number of possibilities available to him, to Genomex, none of which seem to be useful, because she is still too young. Not Gabriel, thank God, this time, but not better either. Her powers will match Gabriel's. They will mutate like his.
They are mutating.
Jesse says nothing when he hears Harrison's diagnosis. He strokes his hand through his daughter's hair.
"Well, then Doctor, you seem to have a lot to do," Eckhart says. Harrison looks at him, nods jerkily.
"Let me know what you need."
Only then does Jesse look at him and Eckhart lies and tells himself that it doesn't matter anymore.
~~~
Sam puts Eve down on the bed because Jesse can't, because he's shaking. So he hovers instead, fingertips flicking over her face, over Eve's hands curled into the material of Sam's coat. On the bed Eve curls into a ball, her arms tucked under her head.
"Jesus..." Jesse mutters from the doorway. His hands are clenched at his side through each shudder that wracks his body. He looks at Sam and Sam wants to close his own eyes, doesn't want to see Jesse.
Fear.
Unleashed now in a way Sam hasn't seen before. Not when Jesse first came to Genomex, and not since then. Jesse is helpless to it.
"Jesse..." Sam tries because he wants to do *something*; to say *something*, but it's wrong because Jesse spins away into the outer room. There are more useless platitudes on Sam's lips, but he bites them back as Jesse paces the length of the room.
"He won't let anything happen," Sam says softly. Jesse stops, picks up her favorite blanket, his hands twisted in the soft material. Sam remembers the day he brought that, remembers how it felt when he realized she never let it out of her sight. Neither did Jesse.
"Either of us," he promises. Jesse doesn't seem to hear him, sinks to the floor, draws his legs up against his body. He clutches the blanket to his chest.
Small, fragile so Sam stays with him, pretends it helps.
Jesse succumbs to sleep finally, tired and pale against the sofa. The t-shirt and sweats he's allowed isn't enough no matter how many times the air-conditioning is changed in this place. Jesse is always cold here. Eve doesn't know anything beyond these rooms. They are his attempt to make them comfortable, but the couch is too small, and Jesse's feet hang over the edge. Sam gets a blanket from Jesse's room, from the shelf next to the dozen white t-shirts and matching sweats. He settles it over Jesse, watches as Jesse curls up beneath it.
He checks on Eve next. She sleeps like Jesse does and for the first time Sam thinks, "Abomination."
Eve sighs, turns over, a hand slipping free of the warmth of the blanket. He sits by her side, tucks it back in.
"Mistake, mutant, freak..."
He's heard that enough times here at Genomex. It's been drummed into each agent, each mutant here that is what they are, the only thing they can be. It's all he knows and now he imagines...what he doesn't. What he has not allowed himself to think since he was a child and his first lessons in life at Genomex began.
Eve stirs, her eyes open briefly and he is fixed in her gaze...until they slip closed and her breathing becomes regular again.
He tries to think of her as he's been taught to. As he should. But.
She is Eve. Jesse's daughter. That's all.
It's more than he's ever been.
When Sam slips out of the rooms it's late. He can feel the energy of the building waning as Genomex stops for the day. He sweeps the rooms as he heads down to Level 34, he doesn't want an audience for this conversation.
However most agents know that Sarah will not tolerate anything of the sort.
Not even from Eckhart.
~~~
Thirty-four is empty, save for Sarah in the last office. He knocks.
"Come in, Sam."
Whether he broadcasts or her power still gives Sam pause. He wonders at the fates that would grant her those powers and send her to Genomex and not Mutant X or the Underground. He asked her when they first met. Her answer was that Genomex needed her. Which is why she volunteered for the Psych Division.
He opens the door to find she's already pouring coffee for him. A diminutive woman with fiery red hair there is nothing that hints that there is anything beyond what she seems to be. Sam is not that blind but nor is he that arrogant. There are rumors that Eckhart tried to harness her powers and failed miserably. Hers is a gift of her birth, not Genomex. So Eckhart lets her be, his anomaly in the science of Genomex. What is certain is that her allegiances are with her kind, mutants, made by Genomex or not.
"You're here about Eve."
Sarah gestures for him to sit, hands him the mug. He blows across the top until Sarah is seated behind her desk. He wishes that he doesn't have to say it, but Sarah he knows will insist on speech. It keeps her honest, she quips.
"Yes. Her powers are mutating."
Sam sits back, sips at his coffee.
"I'm sorry," she says earnestly, her brown eyes, sad, never leave his. The words slip out, a lament that has echoed in him this entire day. Eve's birthday.
"She's a child."
A child and not anything else. Sarah looks at him, her eyes narrow. Assessing.
"You were a child once," she says. "You were like her."
"I doubt that," Sam replies. Sips. The coffee scalds his tongue and he savors the pain.
"She is just a child."
He says it again, bears it down with everything he knows is going to come to her, to Jesse. Sam puts the mug down on the desk in front of him, uncaring that coffee sloshes over the top.
"What do you want, Sam?" Sarah asks reasonably. He has a dozen different answers at least, and just speaks the one.
"Not this...not this..."
Not Eckhart, Genomex, not the mindless words drummed into his brain over years in this place of cold steel that absorbs everything a person is until there is nothing left but...
Freak. Abomination.
"Not this."
He buries his head in his hands, hears the different voices over the years, swelling waves that crash over him...until a soothing presence wipes it away and he's back in the office with the coffee stained desk and Sarah.
"Eckhart wants him, you know," she says conversationally. "It's twisted, he twists everything, but it's there."
Bile rises at the back of Sam's throat, he pushes it down quickly. This is his...
"Arrogance doesn't become you, Samuel," Sarah interrupts smoothly. "There is no fault here, it just simply is. And right now, Jesse is here, so is Eve. What matters is helping them."
"How?" Sam asks softly.
But she has no answers for him.
~~~