Jamie and Pete, Wednesday the 22nd

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

While the X-Men are off collecting Sarah, and following this e-mail, Jamie stops by the medlab to give Pete his impressions of Grey Crow. Exposition ahoy, and Jamie finally gets an explanation for this.



Jamie knocked on the door to the only occupied room in the medlab--for now, anyway; he hoped the place wouldn't fill up after the X-Men got back with Sarah, but wasn't going to put odds on it--and waited. The Professor and Mr. Summers had interviewed him pretty thoroughly after the actual event, but it couldn't hurt to try again. He remembered Grey Crow and the other soldiers melting out of the shadows and repressed a shiver.

"Come in, Jamie." Pete called, closing the laptop he'd been working on, trying to trace back the few occaisions he'd run across the name Grey Crow before. He was pretty sure it'd come up when he'd worked up Essex last year, but he was buggered if he could remember where. "Pull up a chair old son, and tell me all about this horrible bastard that Sarah's been daft enough to go running off after."

Jamie smiled slightly as he dropped into a chair. "I don't know a whole lot. He was the guy in charge of the soldiers Dr. Essex brought with him . . . pretty tall, looked sort of Native American." Jamie's eyes narrowed slightly as he concentrated on the memory. "Made my cousin Nate look like a friendly little puppy, and Nate's a Marine drill sergeant."

"I know it's been a while, buf if you can remember, how'd he deal with you lot being there? D'you think he was trying to come off hostile, or d'you think that's just the way he was? And how'd he seem with Sarah - the two of them had already met, hadn't they?" Pete frowned slightly, trying to think of details that might give him some kind of picture of the man.

"I . . . think it was just the way he was. Or maybe partly him, partly me--I was pretty messed up that night, scared and guilty. He didn't really say much to us, Dr. Essex was running the show--he was surprised to see me, and not very happy." Jamie frowned. "Grey Crow and Sarah . . . were friendlyish--I mean, Grey Crow was all business, but you could tell he--I don't know about 'liked,' but 'approved of' Sarah, anyway, under that, and she was happy to see him. And when we got to the fort, she went off with him, and I didn't see her again until we left the next day. I think they'd been training at least part of that time, she had that look she gets after a fight, and he was less formal with her then."

"What about his men - the ones he had with him when you first met him? How'd they react to him? Or the rest of you? I know it's asking a lot, but did you get the sense he'd worked with them before? That this was his regular unit?" The frown had become a slightly distracted air, as he tried to put things together...

"See, that I'm not sure about. Most of what I've seen about stuff like that is movies and TV, and I know that's not necessarily accurate." Jamie closed his eyes, immersing himself in the memory. "They . . . I think they'd worked together. The unit, I mean. Him, I dunno. He seemed . . . separate. In command, and . . . maybe he'd worked with them for a while, but . . ." Jamie sighed. "He was more. That's the impression I got. He was more than they were--skills, maybe, or he was a mutant and they weren't, I dunno, but he knew it and so did they. Wish I could be more specific."

"You're fine, mate. That's as much as I could have hoped for, and it gives me something to go on with when I look for him - if he's something seperate to the boys there, then the odds are pretty good that I'm not just going to be able to get a mate to pull the posting records for the base you went to, but if I can get another guy to see if there are any special projects going through that base, then it might turn something up. It's a start." Pete flashed him a quick grin.

"Anything else you can think of? Any incidental details or stupid things that stuck in your memory?"

"I was mostly concentrating on Dr. Essex, and Kitty, and then once we got to the base they . . . kept me pretty much isolated." Jamie smirked slightly. "Like I said, he wasn't happy I'd invited myself along. So I don't . . ." He tilted his head. "They knew each other. Grey Crow and Dr. Essex, I mean. I'd bet a lot they'd worked with each other before. Grey Crow deferred to Dr. Essex like he was used to it, and there was a lot of respect there."

"That'd fit, yeah." Pete nodded, then something Jamie had said sank in. "Wait, you invited yourself along? Essex didn't include you in his little plan? Heh. I don't need to ask what you were doing there, in that case, but you must've driven him up the wall, turning up like that."

"He called Kitty while we were out on a date--which he'd paid for, as a present to her, so he knew where we'd be, and she told me what was going on when she got back." Jamie frowned. "I tried to talk her out of it, but she wasn't having any. And I thought then--I'm not sure, now, but we've been through a lot together since--I thought if I let her go alone, or if I went to the Professor, that I'd lose her. She was convinced it was the only way to save Ms. Braddock--might've been right, too, I dunno--and I thought--well, either way, if I didn't go, then that'd be a wall between us." He paused. "And I thought, somebody'd better go along who wasn't
just taking everything Dr. Essex said at face value--and yeah, he was in _no_ mood for anything but 'Yes sir, Dr. Essex' that night." Jamie shook his head. "But it was still a wrong thing to do, and I knew it was when I said I'd do it. None of us should have been there." He paused, uncomfortable. "And I've never been able to figure out . . . you said you were proud of us for doing it. Why? I still can't decide if that or killing Skippy was the worst thing I've ever done."

"God, lots of reasons. First off, I don't think you were wrong. Before Betsy had the surgery in the first place, she asked me to look into Essex' past, find out a bit about him, however much of a shit the man was and is, he's the best in his field, and he's too fucking proud to ever do less than his best. Seriously, regardless of anything else that happened afterward, Charlie and the others really didn't have any place second-guessing him - he knew a lot more about what was going on than they did, and if he couldn't sort it, there's no reason to think they could. So he did what he could to set things right, and yeah the way he did it was shitty, but still - he had a patient dying, and he did what he had to."

He gave a rueful grin. "Yeah, so my ethics are for shit. But anyway, the fact that I think that getting her to him was the right call is a start. But regardless of that: you made you own minds up, for your own reasons. You knew there'd be consequences, big ones, and you did it anyway. Kids your age aren't generally encouraged to make their own minds up about diffcult things, and I think you should be. And lastly, just because I was proud of you doesn't mean I didn't also want to, y'know, throttle you with my bare hands. But you were going to get the sky falling
on you off the rest of the staff, and I don't get to be the good cop very often. Honestly, most of it was for Kitty's benefit. If she'd gone to pieces back then, we'd never have gotten Emma back, and it was the only thing I could think of to do to help her a bit."

Jamie nodded slowly. "I can understand that, I guess. And it did help her--she always feels better when she can do something, and there isn't much that distracts her like a computer challenge." He smiled wryly. "My Grandpa Jessup wasn't much older than me the first time he dropped a bomb on enemy territory . . . and my Grandpa Madrox always used to say, the world has no respect for age. The hard choices show up anyway."

"They do, yeah. It's being able to make 'em with a reasonably clear head, rather than just blundering about in a panic and doing something stupid by accident that's the hard part, as we've just seen demonstrated today. Especially when you're choosing between a bunch of bad options."

Pete went to shrug, and winced as his shoulder objected.

"If I could figure out a way to teach a class in it, I would."

"I'd take it. Choosing between bad options seems to happen a lot around here. Makes me almost miss being stuck on the farm some days. --Can I get you anything for the shoulder?"

"Nah. I try not to take more painkillers than I have to. I prefer to able to work, and I'm on enough at the moment that it doesn't bother me too much unless I, y'know, move. Next step up is a bit too close to pink elephant country for me. I think it's an occupational hazard - Nate's the same way. Actually, he's worse, but he's a couple of years older than me, so his bad habits are more pronounced."

"Gets hurt more, too, going off the last few months. Good thing the Doc doesn't seem to mind patching him up. Anyway, feel free to give me a shout if you want anything from upstairs before they let you out."

Jamie frowned. "Assuming they don't lock the place down entirely once the X-Men get back with Sarah. If those other guys are anything like Grey Crow . . ."

Pete gave a wry grin. "Actually, it turns out, I've taken more bullets in the last year than he has, which is not the macho laughfest that the movies make it out to be. He's been busy finding whole new ways to injure himself and frighten people. But anyway, thanks for stopping by - you've given me enough to start looking for Crow and his mates so we can stop Sarah running off and doing something stupid again. And thanks - if I need anything, I'll let you know."

Jamie stood. "Doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, no. I hope you find them." He smiled briefly once more, and slipped out the door.