Log: Alison and Cain

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Set for the morning of the 7th, Cain checks his mail and finds a promise fulfilled he didn't expect, and something he's been waiting a year for.




Cain grumbled, looking at the schedule taped to the outside of his
locker. Communications monitor, three shifts - THREE shifts? He
smacked his fist into the wall lightly, enough to make the row of
lockers jump. This was some serious Mickey Mouse bullshit right here,
he thought.

Closing his locker and shrugging on a simple t-shirt and jeans, he
made his way up to the kitchen to check the day's accumulation of
maintenance requests. As he filled a glass of water from the sink, he
looked through his inbox. Broken toilet, need new light bulbs,
roommate burned through carpet again, computer fried - Cain took that
one out and shoved it in Doug's inbox - hm, interesting letter.
Hand-addressed to him, no return address but a Pittsburgh postmark.

"Hrm," was the cheerful murmur from the doorway as Alison walked into
the kitchen, holding a mug of coffee snugly in both hands. "And there
you are! Good morning to-" she paused in mid greeting, the grew even
more cheerful, if at all possible. "Someone's in a grumpy mood," she
remarked, as though she didn't have any clue why he might be feeling
that way. At all.

"You'd think I went and wrecked a plane or broke something important,
way Summers is acting," Cain griped, tucking the letter under his arm
and flipping through the rest of the day's notes. "Way I look at it, I
almost did us all a favor. Whose bright idea was it to let the
sociopath back on the team, anyway?"

"Scott didn't assign that duty to you, I did!" was the sing song
reply. Alison hooked a foot around one a nearby chair's legs, drawing
it away from the table just enough so that she could sit down, still
holding her precious cup of coffee close to her. "I'm suppose to scold
you too, for not playing well with the other kids." She nodded wisely
at that, taking on a solemn expression as she spoke.

"He jumped me," Cain insisted, wagging a finger at
Alison. "If it'd been Ramsey or Jamie or anyone else but me
down there..." He drew his finger across his neck. "But what the hell.
Comm duty never killed no one."

Pulling a stool over to the counter, Cain continued to drink while he
twirled the letter in his fingers. "So how's Miles taking to having a
dad now?"

Comm duty hadn't ever killed anyone indeed and Alison hadn't ever
really intended to scold Cain anyway - repentance wouldn't have been
offered, for one thing, and for another, they were both grown idiots,
er men, anyway.

"Good days and bad days. Sometimes it's like he just can't be cheerful
enough and other days he's not sure if he suspects Haroun is taking up
so much room that shoving him off a bridge might not be a bad idea.
Not that the shoving off a bridge would do anything, but you get the
idea." She smiled, a touch tiredly, and shrugged it off. "It'll
settle. Haroun's working hard on it and Miles has a good heart, even
when he's as little boy as it can get."

Cain nodded. "Haroun and I, we don't see eye to eye on a lot. But he's
doing right by you, and by Miles. You two been through hell and back,
s'good to have something nice to reward it."

As he moved to put his empty glass in the sink, Cain dropped the
letter from under his arm. Turning his attention back to it, he picked
it up and opened it. "Don't get much personal mail these days, wonder
what the..." As he read the single sheet of paper, Cain's jaw dropped
and an inscrutable look crossed his face.

Whatever Alison might have been preparing to say was forestalled by
Cain's reaction to the letter, Alison blinking in bemusement as she
leaned forward, finally relinquishing her hold on her mug of coffee as
she set it on the table. "What?"

"High Pines Terrace, in Klamath, Oregon. It's one of those resort
bungalow getaways for rich folks who want to get away from the
cities." Cain looked over at Alison with a slowly forming smile. "Shaw
came through on his promise. He found where Cameron Hodge is hiding
out."

Alison raised one eyebrow slowly, letting go of the breath she'd been
holding in a low exhalation. "Well." She blinked once and then looked
out the window pensively, before turning her head to look at Cain once
more. "So. What are you going to do?"

Cain stopped before his instinctive response of "Kill him", hand with
letter poised above the table. He thought for a long moment. "I'm
gonna go see him," he finally decided, "get an explanation out of him."

The first answer had been glowing in neon letters over Cain's head,
but Alison repressed any reaction until he actually spoke his intent
out loud - and that particular decision brought a faint smile to her
lips, though there wasn't much humor to it. Hodge really wasn't going
to have a good time, even if only asking was involved. "Let me know
how that went, when you get back?" she asked, honestly wanting to
know, just as she honestly had no issues with Cain going to do that
particular questionning on his own.

Cain nodded, tucking the folded paper in with the other notes and
requests. "Oughta mention something to the team about taking some time
off," he mumbled, "after these damn extra com shifts..."