Log: Garrison and Laurie

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Garrison stops by the situation room to turn in his mission report and Laurie tries to talk to him. It doesn't go quite as well as she would have liked.



She was still violet coloured, and would be for quite some time till repeated showering removed the stain from her skin. It was one of many of what Laurie thought of as drawbacks to an otherwise useful power. She was currently ensconced in a rather comfortable chair, legs drawn up into a crossed position as she studied the situation reports in the aptly named X-men situation room.

She knew she would have to write up one of her own, and sooner rather then later. While Clarice would have already filed hers, a report from everyone involved ensured better training and evaluation procedures. Having said all that, Laurie really wished she didn't have to, and had been procrastinating on it since she'd woken up the morning after the entire ordeal. Still, there was no time like the present, and with a small internal sigh, she opened a new document on the computer screen in front of her and began to type.

Garrison's entire purpose in the sit room was to drop of his own reports, far more extensive than Laurie's mission report, covering all of the information that SHIELD and Corrections had unofficially passed along. Most X-Men tended to work on their reports either in their own rooms or in one of the more comfortable rec rooms. The regular scowling at monitors that the team leaders did tended to drive away the others from the austere space.

Laurie looked up as Garrison entered, back tensing slightly till she made herself relax, she was trying to move beyond her automatic assumptions that people were judging her simply by being in the same room. "Hi," she said, turning slightly in her chair.

"Uh-huh." He said distractedly, filing the papers into the drop box and searching for his flash drive. One problem with a day job was that his paperwork tended to spill across both offices, and it would be an entirely bad thing to mix them up over email or something. Bad as in a major federal investigation way, which Kane would prefer to avoid.

"Putting in a mission report?" Laurie asked, curious as to what he was doing here.

"Nope. I'm teaching a bear how to break dance."

"How's that working out for you?" Laurie said, the hint of a smile gracing her lips.

As easy small-talk went, Laurie would never be a star but she figured it did her no harm to try.

"The remarkable thing is not how well the bear dances, but the fact that it dances at all." He muttered, not looking up from the screen. Kane was very diligent with his paperwork, and his scowl of concentration was nothing new to see at the computer screen.

"Well, bears have danced before, so not as surprising as you might think" Laurie said, frowning slightly as she turned back to her own report. "That wouldn't happen to be follow up of the prison riot, would it?"

There would be a lot of following up to do, questions to be asked and people to be scape-goated, no doubt. Not that she thought Garrison would be involved in such things, but that didn't mean people higher then his current position wouldn't be moving to cover their own butts. Laurie had grown a lot more cynical in the years since she'd come to the mansion. There were times when she wondered why she still believed in anything at all, and couldn't say that she'd ever been able to give a satisfactory answer.

"Nope. If I filed those documents here, a lot of us would be going to jail. Those get filed with the actual authorities. These are my mission reports." He said, ignoring the note of curiousity in her voice.

It was difficult after that for Laurie to think of any other avenues of conversation to go down, and so she turned and went back to her own report, fingers tapping away at the keys while her mind firmly separated itself from what she was putting down on the screen. It was only after several minutes that she spoke again.

"Did you have to kill anyone?" Laurie asked, her eyes locked on the words in front of her.

The typing stopped, and only the very slow humming sounds of the computer fans could be heard in the cold, final silence of the room. There was a click as the USB stick was pulled out of the computer; the light raspy sound of thin metal against thin metal.

"Fuck you." Kane said levelly, getting up and walking out of the room without a backwards glance.

Laurie was out of her chair and rushing to the door only seconds after he'd left, "Wait," she called, "Please,"

She should have let him go, found someone else to talk to about...everything. But she couldn't just let him walk away and think that she was that cruel.

The Canadian seemed uninterested in hearing whatever she had to say, already in the elevator and stabbing the button up to the second floor. He didn't even bother to cast a look at the hallway where she stood as the doors slid shut ahead of her, eyes on the display and the muscles of his jaw jumping from the clenched expression.

She had perhaps seconds to make a decision, but she'd been a runner and the day she couldn't think on her feet was the day she put up her jogging shoes. The elevator wasn't the only way up to the surface levels, there were emergency stairs in case of fire and if she hurried, she could possibly make it up there in time to catch him.

She turned and ran as if her life depended on it.