xp_logs | Foley, Alison, and Nathan, Saturday morning

Alison stops in the medlab to see Foley, who's not doing very well.

She slipped inside the room after a last nod towards Madelyn, hesitating for a long moment before finally closing the door behind herself. Hands still resting on the handle, she looked straight ahead, before catching herself at it and shaking herself out of the daze. She was here for a reason, after all. She turned and leaned on the door, looking at the bed in the center of the room and the man who lay upon it, the restraints holding him down snugly gleaming in the lighting.

Foley's eyes shifted slowly to her, regarding her dully for a moment before moving back to the ceiling. "Go... away," he murmured, the words slurred. "If you're not.... going t'kill me... g'way..."

The small whimper escaped her before she even realized it, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, closing her eyes, fighting off the tears. Despite the overwhelming urge to do just as he asked and leave, that he at least get something he asked for listened to, Alison took a careful step closer, unaware of the fact that she was moving just as she'd had in the forest when approaching him the first time.

"Nathan told me to sleep..." His voice was flat, lifeless. "Should do it... but then I'm in... the cell again. Mine. Walls change every time I close my eyes..."

The remains of the conditioning, which the Professor would be taking care of over time when he returned, Nathan had told her. Without speaking she finished walking to the bed, pausing once she was beside it to look down at him.

Foley stared up at her, dark blue eyes dull with pain. "Please?" he asked in a whisper. "Please let me go... I won't hurt anyone. I'll just go..."

She smiled sadly, lips trembling as they curved and instead rested her hand on the bed next to his, radiating a slow, heavy warmth. "I can't," she whispered, which was nothing but the truth. She was the one responsible for him being here in the first place. Had made the decision to follow him, had not backed down when given a chance. Had hauled him back to the safehouse and Nathan.

"I'm not like him. I don't... I don't have Aliya and Tyler to live for and..." Foley laughed, a small, broken noise with no humor to it at all. His eyes were glimmering with tears. "And they killed them anyway... I couldn't even cry for them..."

"You're crying now," she shifted, leaning on the side of the bed, not willing to push into what little space he has as his own just yet. And reached over to brush as his cheek slowly with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry there's no easier way. So sorry."

He flinched at the gentle touch, as if she'd struck him. "It's quiet," he said faintly. "In my head... the tactical imperatives... they're gone. I can't hear them anymore..." His eyelids fluttered, but opened again. "Hurts so much," he said unevenly. "He says it'll get better..."

"It will," she murmured, not wanting to make promises or tell him what to think or so. She rested her hand near his own again, unwilling to make him flinch once more, unable to just leave - she'd started this, she'd see it through the end.

"They were all gone... when we got there, they were all gone, except the feral kid..." Tears were trickling down his face. "I didn't know... I didn't know what the place was, we were just supposed to check on it... report back... I didn't know..."

She nodded as he spoke, listening to his words and acknowledging them, a small soothing sound usually reserved to soothe the nightmares away from Miles sometimes escaping her. "I believe you."

"And it was the same, it was exactly the same... the cells and the conditioning room..." He was gasping now, as if he were trying to hold back sobs, or couldn't get enough air. "They had him in there and they made us watch... we were supposed to be h-happy, that there'd be more of us..."

She slid her hand under his, reverse it to hold on to him tightly. There was nothing she could, nothing she knew to do to help this, other than to just be there. A complete stranger offering comfort, however little it was. So she reached forward once more with her free hand, caressing his cheek lightly, murmuring a soothing nonsensical thread of words, hoping to help him calm down.

Foley squeezed his eyes shut, obviously trying to slow his breathing down and not hyperventilate. "I just wish... I were dead," he choked out. "I should be..."

"But you're not." She whispered the words lowly, hoping she might get through to him. "You couldn't do anything for them. But if you need something to fight for - when you get out of here," she wasn't sure this was for the best, but it made sense and felt right, "maybe you can do something for the others. They won't stop taking kids. And you," she paused for a breath, "you know how to help them. You've been through it. Get better and then help the ones you still can."

His breathing got a bit steadier as she talked, and he actually focused on her, a hint of something other than dull anguish in those dark blue eyes. Not quite interest, but he did seem to be listening. "I don't... I don't know how to feel," he said, his voice hollow. "I don't remember what it was like... I was only twelve. Manifested early..." He took a deep, shaky breath. "My parents died... car accident. Then they took me out of the foster home..."

That Mistra had killed his parents to make taking him into custody a simpler process seemed almost evident to her. That she had thought of this right away and that it seemed evident was not a comforting notion, however. But he wasn't asking to be killed and that couldn't be all bad. So she murmured encouragingly and listened, holding his hand tightly.

"It just... hurts so much," he said haltingly, shivering. "I can't... focus." He drew in a sharp breath, stiffening suddenly. "And they'll come looking for me," he said, the words spilling over each other in a panicked flood. "Like they did him... my conditioning's not gone, I can still feel it..."

"They will never. Ever. Get you while you're here." The words were spoken calmly, rock solid certainty radiating through. "Look at me." She made sure he was, before going on. "This is a safe place. Nathan broke the conditioning when he was here. And they never got in. Never."

Foley closed his eyes. "You all think I'm going to... do myself in, right?" he asked raggedly. "That's why the restraints."

"Madelyn was worried about that, yes." Use names, not anonymous terms, she told herself. "I'd hate for that to happen, myself." She had too much invested in him, in this. After everything she'd done... she paled a bit, looking down at their linked hands.

Foley gave a broken-sounding little laugh. "Can't even say she's wrong... you wouldn't believe me, and it'd be a lie." He took a deep, shaky breath. Tears were still trickling down his face, even with his eyes closed. "Nathan told me it'd get better. I want to believe him..."

"He had help. Just like you will. You're not doing this alone..." She wiped away at the tears slowly, first with her fingertips, then the back of her hand. "I'll come to see you every day?" she offered, not sure it would mean anything at all - but she already intended to do so. Letting him know wasn't really changing anything.

He opened his eyes, actually focusing on her, really focusing, for the first time in the conversation. "Why?" he said uncertainly, his voice low and hoarse. "I don't understand... why take the risk you did... you don't know me..."

"Because I could. Because someone had to and I was there and so I just did." That was all she had to give him, the most honest of answers. "Because it mattered to Nathan and it mattered to me and once I started I just couldn't stop. I had to try."

Foley sighed. "Wish there'd been people like you lot around twenty years ago," he murmured in a pained voice.

"You can be that for those kids out there today," she replied softly instead, holding back a sigh of her own. Keeping her voice steady and calm. "You can help them." Give a drowning man a cause and he just might hang on.

Foley was crying again, silently, as he turned his face away from her. But he was holding onto her hand, as if to a lifeline.

Afterwards, she finds a miserable Nathan sitting out on the porch. She manages to get him thinking and planning, rather than brooding, and he comes up with something - or someone - who might be able to help both Mick and Kyle. They speculate a little on what MacInnis might actually have been up to, but don't come to any conclusions.

He remembered, somewhat dimly, sitting out on the porch steps like this just after the attack at Columbia. His eyes closed, Nathan rested his head against the railing, trying futilely to ball up the pain and anger and misery and push it down and away. But it didn't work. Wouldn't ever work again, and he didn't know what to do. How to handle this, without it.

The door opening and then closing broke the silence briefly, followed by the low sound of footsteps. Without a word Alison sat down next to him, hugging herself tightly. She wasn't really thinking about the events of the previous day, doing her best to focus only on every single passing moment. But she knew where she needed to be just now.

"You went down to see him?" Nathan asked quietly, not opening his eyes. His telepathy was raw, had been since the raid on the safehouse in Vermont, and his shields kept trying to give out on him.

"Yes." It had been the first thing she'd done, after waking up that morning. She'd needed to see him for herself and know, at least, that they hadn't broken the man irretrievably. "He's holding on." Barely. Somehow. And oh, how she hoped he wouldn't stop, either.

"I was down there for most of the night. Then Moira dragged me out for a while." Nathan's shoulders shook for a moment with a silent laugh that would probably have come out as a sob if he'd let it. "Fuck, Ali, I can't handle this..."

She shivered, but remained calm - numbed, she knew, by everything that had happened. What they'd done to break Foley's conditioning. "We don't have much choice, do we?" It was a good thing she'd spoken to Foley first, she knew - or else she'd likely have broken down on Nathan on the spot, at those words. "Someone has to handle this."

"He's not going to make it. Not unless..." Nathan swallowed past the lump in his throat, rubbed his eyes and opened them again. The grounds shimmered in his sight for a moment. "What saved me was hate, Alison... pure murderous hate. I was probably clinically insane for the better part of six months, after--" He bit off the rest of that thought. "I don't know what there can be for him."

The same thing there would be said for Nathan, of course. It felt odd, to be so still inside, see things with such clarity. "I told you he was holding on. Give him a chance to save the others, Nathan." There was a distant echo in her mind, a conversation she couldn't quite remember yet. "We got him out. And Kyle. But there are more first-gen operatives out there. And Mistra isn't about to stop taking children just because of yesterday."

Nathan closed his eyes again, thinking of Morgan back in Vermont, the pure torment in his eyes as he'd attacked. "I don't know how I managed any of this, this week," he said very softly. "Vermont. Belgium. Any of it. It was like when I went in after Anika, I was terrified..."

"But you did anyway." Alison stared ahead, silent for a moment. It was cold outside but it didn't matter, really. She remembered what he'd told her a while ago, about everything eventually ending up black, no matter what you did. She still didn't want to believe that. "Tell me more about Anika? You mentioned her once."

"Ani was a trainee, just before I... left." Nathan stared out at the ground. "I'd had my eye on her as a possible team member. Feral mutation, but... stable temperament. It's a rare combination. But she also had..." He stopped, shrugging. "It's hard to describe. Some people, the conditioning doesn't break as fully as others. There's still a lot of them there. Foley--Mick's the same."

He was silent for a few moments, trying to think of how to tell Ani's story succinctly. "I got an email from her, about two years ago now. Old secure account - I have no idea how she found out about it. She'd been in a relationship with another operative who was killed... damned stupid intelligence failure, like the one that took out my team. And it had cracked her conditioning. But she didn't know how to get out."

"So you went back in to help her." It made perfect sense, of course. How could he not have? It made perfect sense as well that Mistra wouldn't do something to correct the intel failures. Why worry about a few operatives when you could just condition up a new batch? Why worry about a few operatives when life was so cheap to you in the first place, at that. She remembered the look in Foley's eyes only too clearly, the thought nearly breaking the numb haze she was in.

"Dom and GW and I. We got her out - by staging her death, actually, and set her up with a new identity. She's in Paris right now." Nathan stared at the leaf-strewn grass in front of him, something shifting inexorably into place in his head. "What the hell am I do doing?" he demanded suddenly. "She's a feral. Like Kyle. And she was on Mick's team for five years. She told me that."

"When are you going to contact her?" Still calm. Glass like pool of water, no ripples or evident undertows. "She'll be good for the both of them, and it'll probably be just as good for her to be able to help. Mick needs to see someone else got out as well, too."

"Tonight." Nathan frowned a bit, rubbing at his unshaven jaw. "Problem is, how to get her into the country safely... "

Get him to thinking and planning and not brooding. It was working well, it seemed. "We can always ask Scott if we can just go pick her up in the 'bird." She couldn't think of a single reason why he'd say no and using the bird meant the trip would be that much faster. "Ororo could put the winds at our back, speed up the trip even."

"I could get in touch with her," Nathan said, already thinking it through. "Get her to a safe LZ... we had that procedure established, just in case her cover got blown. The Pack would come down and pick her up..."

"We can find a secure landing field or just do a mid-air exchange with a flyer - the Pack has the helicopter after all. Low altitude for the pressure requirements. It'll be more a matter of them getting her up to us in time more than anything else."

"There are four secure LZs we could use in the immediate vicinity of Paris," Nathan said almost without thinking, then blinked a bit sheepishly at Alison. "I overplanned. You should hear about the twelve separate exit strategies I worked out for her."

No longer quite on the edge: he had a purpose and something to work on again - that was good. Very good. "Well, you're probably going to have to work out a few more for her if we're going to be using one of them to get her out this fast."

"No," Nathan said distractedly, "the question would be whether or not she goes back to Paris, if we take her out like this. And there's Mick to think of, too."

"So, where do you think they could go?" She didn't even try to think of alternatives herself. Let him work on that, busy his mind with plans for now, until everything moved on a little, giving him time and perspective that he needed.

"I wouldn't trust MacInnis with them." That was a given, especially after he'd shown up in Leuven. "If they don't stay here, the only safe place I can think of for both of them is with the Pack."

"Then I guess they'll be leaving with them soon enough," she answered. "It'd be nice if I could get news, now and then. On how he's doing." There was a touch of wistfulness to her voice, though she'd known somehow that Mick wouldn’t be staying at the mansion all that long.

Nathan actually laughed. It was a tired, brief laugh, but a real one. "Alison, I still get chapter and verse on every single little thing that happens with the Pack, even now. Phone calls, email... trust me, you'll be getting news if you want it. One way or the other."

"Good." The word was spoken softly, but it felt good to know that she'd be able to keep track on his progress. Alison wasn't sure why it was so important to know, but she didn't feel like questioning it that much, either.

"I'm not letting him out of here until I know he's stable," Nathan said. "Ani was with us for six weeks before I was sure. I know too well how--"

She just turned to look at him, waiting patiently. Either he'd go on or he wouldn't, but she wasn't about the demand anything from him.

"She tried, once," he said slowly. Telling himself that he did need to explain, to someone. "Once it really hit. The initial shock... it's bad, Alison, but as time goes by, it's worse. I knew to watch out for it, because--I expected it, and I stopped her."

"To kill herself." Alison nodded, unsurprised. "He was pretty much asking for us to kill him, when I went to see him. Knew that was why we were keeping him in restraints."

"We can't let him leave until we're sure he's not going to do it as soon as someone leaves him alone." Nathan swallowed. "GW... caught me, when I tried it. I don't think I want to wager on him having that kind of luck again with Mick." He looked sideways at her, his eyes meeting hers, pained but level. "Please don't ever tell Moira about that. It wasn't long after I left Muir the second time."

"I won't." And she left that particular matter alone, with a simple nod. "Is there a critical time during the de-conditioning where that might happen, or are we better off just keeping a steady suicide watch?"

"There's the immediate window," he said quietly, trying to think it through. "First week or so. Anika and I made it through that, for different reasons. Mick'll need to be watched more carefully. The first three months after that, so long as he's not left alone to brood too much, shouldn't be as bad..." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "It's around the six-month mark, when you might get the first signs of delayed post-traumatic shock, when the second critical period can happen." He grimaced, rubbing at the back of his neck. "De-conditioning. I need to talk to Charles, see what he can do. And Jack maybe, too."

"Well then. We'll watch him while he's here, and the Pack and Anika will while he's with them." Not by any means as simple as it sounded, but it had to be resumed somehow. "Charles helped with you, when we got you back... I'm sure he'll be able to help Mick, as well." She hugged herself, trying to stay in the 'now' and not to think back on the previous day.

"I think MacInnis set him up," Nathan said suddenly. Alison looked at him, and he shrugged, wrestling with a certain bitterness. "He told me light security in Vermont and suggested a timeframe. Then Morgan's team shows up in that timeframe?" He really should have asked him in Leuven. "I think he set this up. Exposing the two remaining first-gens capable of commanding more than a squad to enough stress to crack their conditioning... makes sure I'm there to see..." And maybe Foley had been the only one to run, but he wouldn't lay money on the idea that there had been no damage done to Morgan's conditioning either.

"So that we'd get a chance to retrieve one of them. That makes sense." In a very calculating, manipulative sort of way. It was hard to feel much of anything about it, though. "Are you going to ask him if he actually did this?" Because knowing would be good, as opposed to assuming.

"Oh, yeah," Nathan said with a strained little laugh. "That, and a number of other pertinent questions. I don't really expect him to answer them, mind you."

"Maybe you should let me ask." Out of the blue and not anything Alison had been planning to say, but she had no objections in doing so. MacInnis had too many ways to twist Nathan up inside, knew his weak points. Adding something new to the equation might prove interesting.

"I could give you the email address," Nathan said slowly, not sure what had spurred the offer. "I can't guarantee that he'd answer you at all. Though he might." His smile was a bit twisted. "As if I have any idea what goes through that man's head half the time."

"But he probably has a very good idea what might be going on in yours." She'd worry about all of this making way too much sense later on. "On the other hand, he'll have to work a bit where I'm concerned. It's worth a try." Changing players on the man was only fair, after all.

"I wonder if he's got a new grand strategy yet," Nathan said tiredly. "Whether there was a plan B... I hope he chooses it a little more carefully than he did plan A, if so."

"No use wondering for now. Mick is our priority at the moment, wouldn't you say?"

Nathan shook his head. "Right. Mind's wandering... I didn't sleep much." He looked down at her, visibly trying to focus. "Are you okay?"

She had been hoping he wouldn't ask that question. "I don't think so. I can't really tell right now." The thought of not telling him the truth didn't even cross her mind. "Everything is... numb." She stared ahead, not really knowing how else to put it.

"It was the only thing I could think of to do," Nathan said, pain in his eyes, for her this time. "What happened in Columbia, the children from the safehouse... it was all connected for him. I didn't expect him to crack that fast. I think it must have been your lightshow."

"I offered to help." A soft sigh, and she shook her head a bit. She hadn't know what she was getting into, but there had been no way not to offer. Not after bringing Foley in herself. "I had a responsibility to him. Still do." She held her breath for a moment. "It's good to know that it helped."

"I just felt that we had to act right then. That we couldn't wait..." His eyes had gone oddly distant, although he was still looking down at her. "We would have missed the opportunity if we hadn't."

And that was also part of what had prompted her to offer anything she might be able to do, to help him - the urgency in the way he'd been driven to bring the conditioning down as soon as possible. "It's done. And we can help him now."

Nathan rose slowly. "I'm going to tag Ani, see what sort of response I get. I don't know how much I should tell her even over secure email."

Oh... he was so dense sometimes. "Nathan?" She looked up at him with a small smile. "Just tell her you need her help. It'll be enough. She'll come."