xp_logs | Fiddler's Green: After The Battle

After the fighting is over, Paige manages triage, Haller makes a discovery, and Nathan has a visitation.

Things were starting to come under control in the facility, from the sounds of it. Certainly, the flow of X-Men back and forth to the triage area that had been set up to receive the unconscious operatives had been increasing sharply in the last ten minutes or so, which of course implied that they had time to do so, as opposed to fighting. The SHIELD response team had finally moved forward as well, both the medical types who'd been prepared to deal with comatose 'rescued' teenagers and the security types who were there to take the people who actually ran Taygetos into custody. Some of the latter were already doing their job.

The former were helping Paige. "We've got a feral here from the looks of it," one SHIELD officer called to her. "A few visible injuries, but they're healing already. Still seems to be out cold. Suggestions?"

There was a string of curses that Paige didn't bother to hide under her breath as she scraped back her dampened hair with her fingernails, her suit already reforming around her. Feral meant immunity to drugs. Feral meant put on the toughest thing you owned and hope he didn't wake up while you were assisting putting on the super special restraints. "Well, at least we'll safe on bandages. We're going to pin this one down, keep him on a low steady dose to keep him fuzzy. Get behind me while I do this, be an extra pair of hands until it looks like he might wake up in which you back off. Got it?"

Without waiting for an answer, Paige tugged at her ponytail to reveal a sharp, metallic looking husk. She dusted the palms of her hands against one another to smooth them down somewhat, keeping the fingertips sharp for ease of buckles and IVs, and moved towards one of the described set ups she had requested, more demanded, always be made in advance, for situations just like this.

As she and the SHIELD medic worked on the feral, another black-leathered figure appeared at the top of the slope, a green-skinned girl in his arms. She couldn't have been any older than eight or nine, and Scott was carrying her very carefully. The surprising thing was that she was awake, and staring up at him, looking almost perplexed, but making no aggressive moves at all.

"Husk!" He headed over to her as she finished with the feral boy. "I'm not sure what's going on with her," Scott went on, voice unnaturally loud. There was a trickle of dried blood coming from both ears, telltale sign of the sonic blast he'd been hit with earlier. The little girl eyed Paige, next, curiously. "Too young to have full conditioning, maybe, I don't know. She doesn't seem violent."

"Well, hello, chickpea. Has he been yelling at you too?" Paige asked cheerfully, shaking out of the metallic husk with a tinkling like cutlery. "Let's get you both on the bed."

Herding them across the tent, with helpful shooing gestures for her deaf Captain, she made a quick run over for injuries as they walked, investigated further as she was put down on the wax paper covered examining table. Scott found his empty hands refilled with alcohol and bandages, more for keeping him from running off again than anything else. "Aren't you clever? We're just going to get this put together quick," Paige continued, a quick cleanup and stitch before the girl could have really even been aware of what was going on, deft hands mirrored with a bright smile. The bandage wrapped around next, the other half held by a still "how did I get here?" Scott.

"And now you can keep him company!" she explained, apologetically nudge-shoving her Captain onto the table beside the girl. "Or at least gossip with me and make him wonder what we're saying about him. Isn't he cute? Clever and lucky, carried by him."

"I need to get back up there," Scott persisted - again, too loudly. The girl laid a small hand on his arm, drawing his attention, and he blinked down at her, an unguarded look on his face for a moment. "It's okay. You'll be all right." There was a call for 'some help, here!' from one of the SHIELD officers, dragging a woman in a bloodied white lab coat into the triage area.

Rolling her eyes, Paige pushed him back down again with one hand. "You'll survive ten more minutes of sitting. I need to make sure you haven't done something stupid, right after I make sure that one doesn't die," she yelled, earning a startled look from a nearby agent, who had, so far, only heard her use one even tone for all her bossing.

"If he tries to move, bite him," she told the girl, and jogged off to stop some more bleeding.

---

They hadn't been introduced. But the middle-aged woman with the graying blonde hair, despite the fact that she was wearing the same sort of body armor as the other SHIELD officers, wasn't either securing prisoners or giving medical attention to the young operatives. Instead, she was moving from youngsters to youngster, laying her hands lightly against their temples for a moment with a very familiar look of concentration.

That she was a telepath would have been obvious to most people familiar with psi-mannerisms. Haller didn't need that familiarity, however. A brief questing confirmed the woman's mind was like a warm, steady glow, well-shielded yet open to the children in a practiced way that suggested she was well-used to utilizing her powers in a therapeutic manner.

"Excuse me," Jim ventured when she pulled away from one of the operatives. He was aware that he looked a mess, particularly with one side of his face already turning purple, but if she worked for SHIELD she had no doubt seen worse. "David Haller, telepath from Xavier's. How are they doing?"

"Wickham," she said thoughtfully, clear blue eyes meeting his. "Anne Wickham. I worked with the Mistra taskforce..." Her gaze went back to the boy on the stretcher in front of her, and when she looked back at Haller, there was relief and a certain degree of puzzlement in her eyes. "Far better than I was expecting. It's a very pleasant surprise."

Jim cocked an eyebrow and glanced towards the boy. "How do you mean?"

"I think perhaps you should take a look for yourself," Wickham said after a moment. "If you've trained with Xavier, I'd welcome your input."

Jim nodded. He knelt, touching the boy's forehead for concentration's sake; Cyndi's little display had unfortunately left him with a growing headache. There was no resistence. As expected, the boy's shields were nonexistent. He sifted through the wreckage with gentle hands, expecting little more than a mind full of broken glass . . . and paused.

"I don't understand," Jim said aloud, frowning. "This is the first time I've seen it used, but I heard the Trojan Horse obliterated everything. Here I feel . . . paths." He felt around a little more, concentrating now. "All the debris seems to be artificial. The underlying structure of the mind feels -- intact."

"I've read every file on the Trojan Horse, including those MacInnis passed along himself. Hell, Dayspring let me take a look at it, prior to the Puerto Rico incident..." Wickham frowned, as if remembering what had happened in Puerto Rico, but then shook her head and went on. "This is closer to what it was intended to do with first-generation Mistra operatives. Blasting away the layers that were imposed in a way that would allow the mind to heal naturally over time. Kritzer's design was brilliant. It just didn't work that way with these children, because there was so little but the conditioning, with it having been implanted from the beginning of their lives."

She sighed almost shaky, laying a hand on the forehead of the girl on the next stretcher, then shaking her head. Her expression was one of near-wonderment. "It's... amazing," she finally said. "Therapy for the others who were exposed ahead of this - it's going to be long-term. Extremely long-term, and we're not sure just how much their condition will ever improve. But for these kids, the outcome could be so much better."

Jim smiled, unaccountably relieved. But it was a relief, wasn't it? All too often the end of the mission was in no way the end of the battle. It was nice to know with this one, at least, the end was in sight. "That's good. That's really good. But why was it different with this group?" He hesitated. "Then again, it didn't start normally, either. Nathan said Trask interrupted -- triggered them. They didn't just drop."

Both of Wickham's eyebrows went up. "... well, that's interesting. I wonder... I suppose we can't know for sure now." Her eyes flickered past Haller, to where two more SHIELD officers were just lifting a stretcher and setting out for the transports.

Its occupant was not a child, but Tara Trask. The restraints were more or less completely unnecessary; her eyes were open, but utterly blank, the dried blood on her face suggestive of severe psionic trauma.

Jim watched her carried past. Trask may have been middle-aged, but she'd been a handsome woman, if haughty. Sure and self-possessed. Now, with her muscles slack and eyes empty, she just looked small, and old. As if she'd been cored.

He didn't doubt she'd given Jean no other choice. Jim had stood in Trask's mind, staring her down across a certainty solid as bedrock. For her, surrender would have been inconceivable. Maybe that was why he couldn't muster a sense of triumph or satisfaction at the sight of her husk. He would probably never understand her reasoning, but he'd gotten the sense something had been fundamentally broken in her. Broken, and healed badly.

But that was speculation only, an all-too-common impulse to derive meaning from tragedy. Maybe it was much simpler, and she'd just been a monster from the start. Regardless, it was unlikely they'd ever know the truth.

Wickham gave herself a little shake as the stretcher went by, her attention moving back to the children. "Still so much work to be done with them," she said, "but this is... well, I can't even call it a silver lining. It's a far better second chance than we thought they'd have." Her smile as she looked back at Jim was hopeful, lighting up her tired eyes. "And we thought that the evening had turned into a disaster."

Jim gave her a tired half-smile. "It happens like that. But there always turns out to be some way back, even if you're halfway to hell."

---

He wasn't sure who'd carried him to the 'Bird. Jean had been here briefly, looking him over, and had given him something to drink and another set of pills to take, before strapping him in and telling him to stay put. Nathan wasn't inclined to argue at this point. The pills were making him less so.

"Never thought I'd see the day. That you didn't argue."

Nathan opened his eyes - with some difficulty; his eyelids felt like they had lead weights attached - and gave the old man sitting beside him a hazy smile. "Mark it on the calendar," he murmured. MacInnis gave him a crooked grin. "Seeing things, now... that, I do regularly."

"Wish I could've been here for real," MacInnis said thoughtfully, knocking ash off his cigarette and watching the X-Men move in and out of the Blackbird.

"You mean... I wish." No one was paying attention to him murmuring under his breath. That was convenient. "I wish you were here, Mac," Nathan admitted, just as softly.

"I had my moment, son. Paid my price for it, too. This is yours." MacInnis gave him that sideways, knowing look. "Paid less than I did, too, I think. But then, some might say you owed less."

Nathan shook his head slowly, denied whatever part of him had been thinking that and was voicing it through the memory of the man who'd been tormentor, then father. Who'd taught him so much, as both. "Owed them... everything," he murmured, and his eyes stung. "Everything I could give."

"Huh. Well, you gave it the old college try." MacInnis took a puff of his cigarette, gazing out through the open ramp of the 'Bird at the mountains and the moonlight. "When you think of that island, remember these mountains. The one sort of balances the other."

"I'll try," Nathan murmured, closing his eyes again. Mostly because there was someone leaning over him, asking him if he needed anything. "M'okay," he murmured, already halfway back to sleep. "Just... want to go home."