Log: Lil and Garrison

[x-diamondlil.livejournal.com]

Lil receives a phone call from Heather Hudson and Garrison's there for the fallout.


She couldn't tell if the ringing in her ears was the tone of the disconnected call or due to the blood that had rushed from her head. Lil sat, shock still with phone still in hand in the living room of her suite, feeling both drained and too full at the same time.

How long had she been waiting to go home? How long had she hoped this day what come... only to have it come at this horrible cost.

Names and faces she remembered, gone. People she'd trained with, fought with, grew with all dead.

Eugene in a coma and close to death.

And Madison...

Madison.

Lil pushed herself off the couch and stumbled blindly toward the kitchenette. She should have been there. She should have been with him. She should have...

Fingers wrapped around a wooden chair's back, her knuckles turning marble white. How could it all go wrong? How could their lives change so quickly? Just like the chair: one moment it was a place to sit.

The next, nothing more than splinters scattered across the floor after being thrown at the wall.

With a whimper, she collapsed; dropping to her knees as her stomach rebelled. Images of what was, what could have been mirrored waves of nausea overtook her and Lil made a grab for the trash can just in time to save her the additional hassle of having to clean up another mess.

"Sometimes I hate being right." Kane muttered to himself as he crossed through the hallway and to Lil's room. Heather had told him that she was the next call on the list. He'd given Logan and Marie a brief head's up, in order to let them know a call was coming. But there hadn't been time to warn Lil, and frankly, Kane wasn't sure whether doing so would have been a good idea, since his answers were so thin. Better to let Heather give her all the details.

Even if the likely result was going to be broken furniture.

The first knock was ignored. Lil ran the back of her hand over her mouth and shakily got to her feet. Hopefully, whoever it was would go away and leave her to pack in peace.

"Open up, Lil." Kane said, knocking with the side of his fist. Better to get to grips with this one quickly, before Lil tried to steal the Blackbird as the first plane back to Canada.

She opened her mouth to scream, to curse and rant but found she didn't have the energy. If it had been anyone else, the blonde would have kept ignoring them. Instead, Lil made her way back to the other side of the room, circling wide around the destroyed chair before opening the door to reveal her fellow countryman. Green eyes were wide and haunted, her usually pale skin tinged with a sickly hue. "What?" she asked simply as she leaned on the doorframe for support.

"I'm pretty sure you know." Garrison stepped inside. "They say that Madison's going to be alright. It's mostly shock, according to Joseph. You can trust Joseph, remember?" He stressed the last line. There was no way to soften the impact of the call, so Kane decided to deal with it head on instead.

Closing the door behind him, Lil wrapped her arms tightly around herself. "Doesn't change the fact that he's still fucking injured. Him and Juddsie with everyone else..." She shook her bowed head causing the long golden hair to fall around her face like a curtain. "And that damn robot! I don't know whether to feel vindicated, grateful or guilty just that I need to go home and be with Maddy. Now."

"Logan, Marie and I are heading up to Ottawa tomorrow. You're welcome to fly with us, or if you want to leave right away, Heather said she could arrange something out of New York tonight." Kane related along the message. Hudson knew her people, which is why she passed the details over to Kane.

"I... I need to go now," she replied, stuttering slightly over the words. "I need to go home and see him. I need, I need to see with my own eyes that he's still alive." The last part was nearly whispered as images of explosions and destruction formed in her head again with Madison taking center stage, laying in the snow with a wrecked BoxBot and unconscious Puck beside him.

"I need to pack," Lil said suddenly more to herself than him when she snapped back to the present. One hand tangling in her hair, fisting the blonde locks, she walked towards her room, seeming to forget Garrison was there. Think. Don't feel. A hard diamond exterior that wouldn't shatter. She couldn't allow that yet. "Clothes. For the funerals. My ring..."

"Hey." Garrison grabbed her arm as she tried to bustle past. "Take a breath, Lil. Madison is going to be fine, and he's going to need you to be strong for him right now. Fuck, we're all going to have to prop up everyone up there until we know what's going on." The lack of real details had been maddening, but Kane wasn't about to press Heather on the press. He'd heard that tone of voice before.

The tall woman turned to looked at him - really looked at him - for the first time since he walked through the door. Her eyes were red, glassy and burning bright with choked emotion but her pale cheeks lacked any tell-tale trails of wetness that accompanied tears. "We don't know that he's going to be fine. All we know is that he's alive. There's a big fucking difference, Gar! He's under medical care and I'm not there with him like I should be. I'm his fucking wife and I'm not there." She took a swing at a nearby vase and it crashed on the floor while Lil buried both hands in her hair again. "Fuck!"

"Stop it." Garrison's voice wasn't angry, but it was definitely firm. "Look at me, Lil. You are not at fault for not being there. None of us are." Although he wasn't about to admit that his initial reaction had been exactly the same. "Listen! You let the guilt run you, and you're not going to be able to help him. Let it go or find a way to bury it until you've got time to deal with it."

Untangling her fingers from the blonde locks, Lil let her hands drop with shoulders sagging. Guilt. Fear. Grief. It was too much for a person to feel.

So, she didn't.

Emotions were locked away, the frigid diamond-hard shell that kept everything out now served to trap just as much in. The urge to ask Garrison to travel with her was likewise squashed; he would have things to do and she couldn't let herself seek comfort in a hand to hold her own. Instead, she made a much simpler request:

"Can you ask Heather about that flight? I need to pack and I'd like to leave as soon as possible."

"I'll take care of it." Garrison promised, aware of what Lil was going through, but unable to do much to help her. There were his own feelings and duties in the way, and he could only offer what he could.

Lil gave a barely perceptible nod of thanks followed by a shaky though deep breath. "I hated that goddamned robot more than anything in the world. And now, it's the only reason he's still alive. Fuck, Gar, it wasn't supposed to be like this," she sighed, looking more the like awkward sixteen year old girl she'd been the first time they'd met than the proud invulnerable woman she'd become. "Not for any of us."

"I don't know." Garrison shook his head before heading for the door. "Maybe this is showing us for the first time exactly what we signed up for."