Alison, Kylun and Paige - Coming Home

[x-foliate.livejournal.com]

Alison gets the information she's been waiting for back. Things don't look good and she snaps a little, taking matters into her own hands.


"I'm sending you the pictures of her apartment now. It doesn't look like she even stayed there for more than a few days, but... you gotta see this."

Alison nodded and then added a murmur of assent to that, hitting 'send/receive' repeatedly. "A few days. That means she was gone since at least, what... yesterday, in your estimate?"

"Yeah, maybe day before. Landlady said she barely saw her since she showed up, kept hiding or something and she thought it was weird, but the kid was quiet so she didn't care. She only bothered to remember one of her sons saw her head out back when I waved the green stuff at her."

Alison's computer pinged obediently as the email came in, the voice's suddenly subdued warnings about them being a bit disturbing to look at unheard as her eyes scanned over them walls of Paige's apartment.

The word 'monster' was painted over nearly every visible inch of wall, over and over again in jagged letters. The older words were more easily discernable while the ones that seemed to congregate over an area near the floor were clearly unreadable. And they were written in blood, in an obscene copy of what Sarah had used to do while living in the boiler room.

"Look, I'll try and find more information, see where she could have go-"

But there was only one place she could have gone, if she'd been writing that on the walls. Identifying with her.

"I know where she is."

Hanging up, Alison rose to her feet, pushing away from her computer and racing out of the room. Scott left the keys to his car in the garage. That would be the fastest way to get to town. She only needed one person along for this, had no time to prep and gather a team. Tapping her comm as she pelted down the hallway, heading for the garage.

"Kylun. Emergency. Meet me in the garage. NOW."

Another tap.

"Scott. Something's happened to Paige. Go check my computer. I know where she is, no time to prep a team. Taking Kylun out, he can track her when we hit the tunnels. I'll keep you updated."

The stairs were taking too long, and it didn't take long for Alison to simply start hopping over the railing from one floor to another, swinging over and then down while taking the hard landing instead of the soft in favour of speed. Twinges of pain at the landing went unnoticed and soon she was headed for the corridor leading to the garage door.

Kylun was moving before Alison even finished; he paused at the door to his suite only long enough to transfer his swords from their display scabbards to his battle harness, and secure the harness across his shoulders, before making his own way downstairs.

He arrived in the garage shortly after Alison did, sliding into the passenger seat of Scott's car as she started the engine. He stowed the swords underneath his seat, as much to avoid slicing up Scott's upholstery as not to draw notice on the drive, and took the measure of her grim expression. "Where are we going, and why?"

"Morlock tunnels. I think Paige is there. She disappeared from her apartment and hasn't been seen since and they found... writing on the wall." Her lips twisted at that, the car's roof barely clearing the garage door as she peeled out, a mental 'all clear' from Charles accompanying the squeal of the tires as both of the car's occupants were pushed back in their seats.

---

Alison and Kylun go down to the sewers and find Paige. Things are not pretty, but they convince her to come back with them.


The drop from the sewer grate was high but Alison didn't care, landing with a tuck and roll to try and absorb the most of the impact. She then settled to the side, hoping she hadn't destroyed any tracks in her landing while waiting for Kylun to join her and take the lead. It would be his show now, until they found Paige.

Kylun dropped lightly into the sewer behind her, landing in a low crouch as his legs took the strain. Nose wrinkling at the stench, he searched the ground carefully, stalking back and forth in a careful crisscross pattern. "This is a bad place," he murmured, barely paying attention to the words. "Old death and older despair. Much becomes clear." And there--a scuff mark in the filth of the floor, a blurred handprint on the wall. Neither looked particularly human, but they were recent, and the handprint was the right height. "She went this way."

A short nod answered him, Alison trying to breathe lightly, the smells of the old tunnels as bad as she remembered them to be. One hand drifted to rest on her leg and the small circular scar there, the reminder of her last time in these tunnels. "I'll follow." It was the only thing she could do now and even though everything else within screamed at her to hurry up and move forward, she didn't, letting Kylun do what he was best at.

"We will find her," Kylun said as reassuringly as he could. "Her trail is clear, and not remarkably old." He frowned slightly, moving off down the tunnel, eyes roving over the walls and floor. "I worry more for what we will find, when that trail ends."

She'd considering trying not to look or see what Kylun pointed out to her, the glow of her light a flat, almost cold whiteness - considered it for all of a few seconds. "We'll find Paige," she breathed, the rest secondary for now. The steadiness of her voice surprised her, anchored in determination as it was. "That's all that matters in the immediate. We'll deal with things as they happen once that's done." Kylun's calm was contagious, she told herself – a steadiness to rely upon.

Kylun tossed a smile over his shoulder. "True. We have but two feet, and must therefore take one step at a time." The trail turned into a side passage, sloped downward, then opened up onto an abandoned subway platform, and Kylun threaded Paige's trail through the new grime atop scars of an older battle. She had paused at a small crater in the concrete, which centered on a dark splotch, then moved on into the darkness. "And yet I fear for her," he murmured. "I remember too well what it was to feel alone and helpless and a failure."

"Hate common sense sometimes," Alison muttered, pushing the anxiety which made her voice sound far too tight and thready to the back of her mind as best she could. Which was, truth be told, not that far away at all. The surroundings were becoming disturbingly familiar and Alison found herself staring at one tunnel that ended in rubble - where she'd collapsed the tunnel wall on Prism last year. She brushed one hand over her leg, feeling a twitch of phantom pain at the memory of her laser being turned against her, reminding herself absently that she was immune to them now.

"She's not a failure." The words of protest sounded pitifully small in the darkness, her glow only giving them enough light to see in the immediate vicinity thus far. "She's not alone and she's not helpless." Alison extended her range, taking a shallow breath. "I just wish she hadn't lost sight of that. I wish I understood how it got to-" she stopped, and shook her head. "No. That I know." Resisting the urge to ask if they were near yet, if Paige was close by, she followed Kylun carefully.

"I did not say she was--only that I think that may be how she feels, however needlessly, and that I remember when I stood in that place. That too proved needless, but the road to that realization was long." Kylun shook his head, tracing the edge of one handprint with his fingers and leading them further down into the dark. "At least Paige will not have to walk it alone."

"She won't. And I know, I'm sorry, it was just..." Alison shook her head, the softly spoken words fading into silence as they moved ahead. She kept the glow minimal, enough for her not to stumble over anything and for the both of them to slowly adapt to the darkness surrounding them. There were no self-recriminations, no wondering about what if and maybes - merely the intent to find Paige and, if she allowed it, to bring her back home.

"Just that you fear for her," Kylun finished the thought, "as I do, and our fear shortens our tempers. What are friends for, if not understanding and forgiveness?" The tunnel was widening again, the floor strewn with brown-stained cloth and old bones. "We're getting close."

Alison smiled wanly at Kylun, though it faded at his last words, tension resurfacing instead. She had, she realized, no idea of what she would do once they found Paige. No idea of what to say, if there was even anything to say. She followed Kylun into the steadily widening tunnel anyway, holding her breath without even realizing it.

The signs of disturbance were becoming obvious now, drag marks and scuffs, disturbed bedding . . . fresh bloodstains on the walls. "She uses this room often," Kylun murmured. "Often enough that tracking is of little further use; she may well be within the sound of our voices." He tilted his head at Alison. "I have had some of her more recent training, but you know her better than I." There was a moment where Alison was utterly still, the faint glow radiating from her dimming slowly until it was almost entirely gone. Looking down at the ground for a moment, she bit her lip, taking a slow deep breath once more, regardless of the smells lingering in the tunnels, ignoring the muck clinging to her shoes.

And the light sparked to light once more, the radiance increasingly warm and steady as it spilled outward in an ever growing pattern.

Skins littered the ground, pale and torn and often streaked with dry blood, as if the husking process had been long and painful. By the same account, food wrappers glittered like mirrors and water bottles with their few droplets left created prisms on the ground. The debris seemed to form a partial halo, with long scratches outside the border as if whatever was in the center didn't quite have enough energy to collect everything properly, but was making sure nothing got caught in a splash of sewage and dragged away.

Waking slowly, panic and pain instantly filled Paige as light flooded into the room, illuminating the corner she'd taken as a resting place. With one arm she tried to shield her eyes, the other helping her feet push herself deeper into the corner, shoulder blades scraping against the rough concrete. Perhaps if they saw her they would understand and leave, but she couldn't take any chances and distance was the first part.

As soon as she registered the motion, a scrabbling sound from a little behind and further off to the left dancing across her skin, Alison paused. And slowly, steadily dimmed the light once more, leaving it to a warm steady glow as she turned around to look.

A form moved on the edge of the light as she neared the corner and Alison paused for a moment, mind skittering around the scenery and trying to avoid absorbing it until she made herself look. Made herself take it all in, steadily looking around until she'd seen it all, before moving forward again slowly. And then going down lower, until she was almost in a crouch, not close enough to touch the girl trying to inch away through the wall, but certainly close enough to see and for the light's warmth to be felt, ever so slightly.

The change in temperature caused Paige to shiver suddenly, realizing how cold it was with jagged clarity. A whimper managed to escape her bitten lips, and the shivering turned to shaking; she had nowhere to go. Making a useless slash with her hand – her usually long fingernails torn down to the quick – Paige attempted a menacing sound. Her throat burned at even that small noise; her immunity to the common cold didn't seem to apply now, and it felt like someone had hit her with a rather large truck.

The long, diseased gashes came into sudden focus with the movement of her arm, being brought fully into the light if only for a moment. It was difficult to focus on anything else once they were noticed, in their different shades of purple, red and green. There were bandages around her right knuckles, the same injury from the day she left, but that seemed to be the only wrapping Paige had attempted. All her other wounds were left exposed, brutally so.

A slow hiss of indrawn air, Alison biting the inside of her mouth hard to not sob outright at what she saw. The broken sound was heard and drew a wince from Alison though she didn't back away, instead creeping a few inches closer before settling down, the light muting a bit lower still. "Oh Sunshine..." Steadily, Alison let more heat bleed through the light, reaching out in the only way she could at that very moment.

"M...monster..." Paige corrected her in barely more than a whisper, her voice gone to a terrible, coarse shade of it's former self. She didn't think she had any more tears in her, or even enough energy to make them, but they slid down her cheeks freely, causing her to hiccup and sniffle. Shaking her head violently, Paige tried to wipe them away, smearing something putrid and yellow across her cheek. There would be no more tears, no more feeling sorry for herself. Especially not in front of her; Paige wanted Alison to remember her from before.

What happened instead was a featherlight touch on her cheek, and though Paige flinched violently away it followed, warm and brief once more, wiping away at the tears, ignoring the rest entirely or so it seemed. Alison didn't move closer though, her hand settling back against her leg afterwards as she leaned a knee down in the muck to brace herself, leaving the distance as it was. "Sunshine." The word was repeated, soft and low along with a pulse of warmth radiating outwards.

"Paige."

There was a tiny whimper, an animal cry, of regret, sorrow, pain, denial... Paige's face crumpled, and still she shook, wracked from tears and sobs that never seemed to stop. "No!" she cried out suddenly, a sharp bark of sound. "Weak. Weak and ugly and stupid and a monster. There's nothing left!" Her voice broke, and she leaned against the wall, tired. "Nothing left."

"I don't believe that," Alison whispered, feeling the echoes run about them nearby and shiver against her skin. A sharp, shuddery breath escaped her, though she fought the tears, denied them for as long as she could. "I can't. I won't." Somehow her voice remained steady despite the trembling that coursed through her, the grief at seeing the jagged wounds that glistened unhealthily in the dim light she was projecting. "But I can't make you not..." she trailed off, breath escaping her slowly, sorrow weighing down on her so heavily she thought she might crumble.

"Please come back home." She hadn't even known she was about to say that until she heard the words, stretched out one hand, just a bit, towards Paige. Palm upward, waiting patiently. For as long as it would take for Paige to reach back.

But Paige wasn't looking at the hand. She was staring at Alison; the way her lip trembled, ever so slightly, the way the blue of her eyes shone so turquoise in this light, the way the blonde baby hairs by her temple shone gold. This was Lee, nothing had changed. No. She could make it so that nothing had changed. Taking a shaky breath, Paige pushed the hand away to topple into Alison's shoulder, trying to find something to hold onto, to keep herself upright. "I just want this to stop... I'm so cold, so tired, and it hurts. Why won't it stop?"

Wrapping her arms carefully around Paige, only too aware of the wounds covering every part of her that could be seen, Alison simply held on, keeping the light low and warm.

"We'll make it okay, Sunshine. We'll make it okay."

Kylun touched Paige's shoulder, briefly, as gently as he could. "All will be well," he murmured. "We who care about you will do everything we can to help."

He straightened, moving a little away, and tapped his comm. "Scott, this is Kylun," he said. "We have found Paige, and are bringing her home." He paused, Scott's reply a barely audible buzz. "She is... she will heal. But she will require many kinds of care. If you could have Dr. Grey standing by... yes. Very soon, I think. I will ask Alison to explain matters to her more fully when we have brought Paige out of this place. Kylun out."

---

Kylun gently reassures Paige on the way back and keeps her from diving out of a moving vehicle. Always nice.


Curled up in her corner of the back seat, Paige tried to concentrate on the gentle rumble of the motor under her, the warmth of the fleece blanket around her shoulders, the little bit of air against her face from the crack she'd rolled down the window. The buckle for her seat belt was next to her ear, the ultimate test that she wasn't herself; Paige was to the point of anal about safety.

Ripping her gaze from the sight of telephone poles rushing past, Paige looked over at Alison, still talking hurriedly to Jean on the speakerphone. She was worried, Paige could tell from the set of her jaw; the way she was trying not to cry. Kylun sat on her left, and a part of her knew she should say something. Thank him perhaps? But it was so hard keeping down the part of her that wanted out of this tiny, moving vehicle; wanted to throw open the door and find a ditch to make into a hideaway.

Kylun watched Paige carefully, and recognized the look in her eyes. He shifted slightly in his seat--'bucket' was a good name for them--and cleared his throat softly. "After the monastery died," he murmured, "after I had buried them all, and set the building to rights again, I walked out onto the glacier, to a crevasse I knew, and stood on the edge for a very long time."

Something in her cheek twitched, but Paige did turn her head slightly to look at Kylun. She didn't try to speak, whether she didn't trust herself or she just didn't want to, debateable, but her concentration on him and his words, was certainly an acknowledgement of a kind.

"If I had been just one tenth of a second faster," he said gravely, "just that much, then none of the people I loved would have been hurt. I stood there, and I went over that day in my mind, counting all the times I could have saved that tenth of a second. Every stumble, every hesitation, every eyeblink was a moment in which I had failed, and everyone--all the people I loved, who depended on me to keep them safe--all of them died, because all those little failures added up to become the one great failure. They died because I was not the man I had thought I was, that they needed me to be, and if I was not that man I was nothing. And so I stared into the abyss, and I thought: let nothing return to nothing."

It was obvious now that the little tremors running through Paige were turning back into shakes, her grip on her blanket tightening enough that deep cuts would have run through her palms had her nails been long enough. She took a breath, audible, and then another one, before she could finally manage a rough, "Why not?"

Kylun shrugged. "At the time... I was more afraid to die than I was to live in my failure. So I went back to the monastery. And there I found that Zz'ria had taken thought for me beyond his own death. That he had cared enough to send me somewhere I could find a purpose again. That he cared, even after my failure. It was not much--he was still dead, as they all were. But it was enough, and I wrote to the Professor, and came here, and here I have found myself again." He paused for a long moment, the space of a careful breath. "Paige, you do not need to cross the ocean to find people who care for you, and who will continue to care for you no matter how you see yourself. The road to despair runs both ways. I know--I have been there and come back. You may not see it now, but I promise you, this is not the end. There is a way back to yourself."

"More afraid of failing," Paige admitted, before turning her head to the side to cough harshly into her shoulder; a brutal, wet cough that had to be pulling up pieces of her insides. Licking cracked lips, she gave him a weak, tired smile. She'd only really been down there a couple days; she'd figured that out from the billboards they'd passed, but God if it didn’t feel like forever. "You care?"

"I care," Kylun said firmly. "I do not train students lightly. Nor do I lose them easily, and I do not intend to lose you." He touched her shoulder again, feather-light. "You have never failed me. I say so, and as I am your teacher it is mine to decide."

She stared at him a long, even moment, trying to push past her inability to make organized piles in her mind and come up with a simple conclusion. Satisfied, Paige slid over, leaning on his shoulder bonelessly. Her hand, covered by her blanket so as not to expose him to her skin, gently brushed his knee in a silent gesture; thanks. "Cold."

"Well, that at least can be remedied." Kylun wrapped his arm carefully around her shoulders. "And we are almost home, now. It will be warm there."