xp_logs | Morgan, Amanda - Friday morning

Amanda meets Morgan. Or rather, re-meets him. They both remember Columbia, and Morgan is able to answer some questions.

He was really getting very tired of this room, Tim Morgan thought dourly, sighing as he shifted onto his back and stared up at the patternless ceiling. Unfortunately, he still couldn't do more than walk across the room without landing unceremoniously on the floor, and the doctors were still fretting about the fact that the nosebleeds and headaches were still recurring. Nathan had reassured him that they had plenty of experience with overloaded telekinesis, a joke that had earned him a very narrow-eyed look from Madelyn Bartlet.

There was a hesitant tap on the door, and Amanda poked her head in. "Um hi," she said, perhaps a little uncertainly - word was Moragan was a cranky patient, and not easy to deal with. "I've got somethin', for the headache, if you like. A tea. Works pretty well on Nate, an' they told me it would be all right t' give t' you."

Tim pushed himself up to a sitting position, gingerly, and peered at the somewhat blurry shape in the doorway. "All right," he said a bit uneasily. He doubted the girl would have gotten past Bartlet or McCoy if she hadn't been permitted. "Come in, then--" The words froze on his lips as she did, and he realized who she was. The hair was different. He wasn't about to forget the face.

Amanda came in, not noticing his reaction at first, setting the steaming mug of willowbark tea down on the bedside table. Then she looked at his face, and realised something was wrong. And that he looked somehow familiar... "'M sorry, I'll go..." she began, before her memory obligingly coughed up the face. She'd been distracted by the pyrokinetic and his pals, but she'd seen him, seen him giving orders, directing things. She stepped back a little, reeling with it. "You were there," she said faintly.

Why, precisely, would they have let her come down here? Morgan took a deep breath and let it out again, careful to stay precisely where he was and not move towards her. "Yeah. I was."

"You... were in charge. Tellin' 'em what t' do." Get a grip, Amanda told herslf. He'd been conditioned, same as Nate was - hadn't she told herself that over and over again in relation to the others. "You told 'em t' kill all those people."

"I most certainly did not," Tim said sharply, ignoring the way she jumped at his tone. "The second team that day had direct orders from Dispatch... our base." She didn't look convinced, and he scowled at her. "Look, kid, I don't particularly care what you think of me, but I was not made to slaughter civilians and I was not happy with that tactical plan. Unfortunately, I also didn't get the option of refusing it."

The tone actually helped, sort of. Helped her focus past the memories crashing through her head, the images of that face in front of her, laughing at her. "So Nate was right," she said, sounding a little defeated. "It wasn't their fault, they didn't want t' do it, any more 'n the rest of you." She shivered a little. "It didn't seem that way t' me."

Tim opened his mouth, then closed it again, rolling his eyes a little before he realized that it kind of hurt to do so. He reached out for the tea, slowly, so as not to spook her. "Nathan's a romantic," he muttered, sipping warily at it. "Some of them, no. But the energy-projectors that day were hand-picked little psychos. They were salivating at the thought of the assignment, back at base."

"That'll taste pretty bad," she warned him automatically, seeing him sipping at the tea. Then she frowned, coming and sitting in the chair near the bed without realising that it meant she was coming closer to him. "I... well, 'met' is the wrong word, but I got a bit more up close an' personal with one of 'em than I wanted. A... pyrokinetic."

"Deveaux," Morgan said, grimacing at the taste. "If I were the type to take my shirt off in front of strange girls, I'd show you the scar he gave me in training. Crazy bastard."

"An' then some." Amanda shuddered again. "He enjoyed it, didn't he? Wanted t' be there?"

"Deveaux was from one of the later groups of second-gens," Tim said bluntly. "You know about the difference in the conditioning?" She opened her mouth to respond, but he shook his head irritably and explained anyway. "First-gen conditioning is deeper, meant to produce the perfect latter-day Spartan. The problem was that you could only do it on kids fourteen and under. The second-gen conditioning was a lot less complex, and worked on anyone under twenty. The death rate was a lot lower, too." He took another sip of the noxious tea, more to buy himself a moment than anything else. "But their usual sources for candidates started drying up about ten years ago. So they took mutant teenagers out of psychiatric facilities and youth detention centers."

Amanda sat silently, taking all this in. She'd been right. What she'd said during her speech, it had been right. She'd _felt_ she was right, but having it confirmed... "They already hated... they just got better at usin' it," she said softly.

Tim's eyes narrowed. "And might they have stopped hating, if they'd been given the opportunity?" he asked. "Instead of being taken and having that... heightened, and their minds rewritten?" His lips quirked humorlessly. "Personally, I prefer not to give a fuck. I've had to live with the little psychos for years, and if it wouldn't have meant penal measures I'd have been killing them quietly in the halls all along."

"Maybe. Depends on how bad it was." Amanda looked up at Morgan curiously. "You're different. From Nate, from Mick... Not so..." Broken, was the word she wanted to use, but that wasn't right.

"My conditioning got taken out cleanly," he said shortly, not wanting to dwell on it. "Plus Xavier's had a couple of examples now to show him how to help along the healing process."

"Good t' know all that was worth all the hassle," Amanda said a touch wryly. "How's the head?'

"Sore. Stay around for another couple of minutes and you should see the early afternoon nosebleed, right on cue. It's very dramatic." He sipped at the tea again. "I was at the memorial," he said, more quietly.

"Know all 'bout the dramatic nosebleeds - get 'em often enough meself." Pulling her legs up so her chin rested on her knees, she watched him drinking the tea, warily. "You were? Why?"

"Because it made me sick, what happened. Because I hated every minute of what that second team did, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it." Morgan fell silent, his eyes a little unfocused, locked on the empty air beside her head. "You have no idea what the futility is like," he said, sounding almost defeated for the first time in the conversation. "I looked at that situation from every angle I could, trying to find a loophole in our orders, and all I gave myself was a fucking migraine from my obedience imperatives telling me they'd be having none of that."

Amanda nodded, sympathy entering her face for the first time. "But you still tried t' find a way," she said neutrally.

"You always try. Nathan taught us that," Tim said, his voice a little hoarse. He sipped at the tea again. "It's the only way you have any freedom at all."

"He's like that," Amanda said softly, realising that it was true. "Always pushin', always pushin' you, t' always keep tryin' no matter how hard it is..."

"He nearly killed me, you know. Back on... up north," Tim said a bit vaguely, not really sure what day it was. Things were a bit hazy. "Then, I nearly killed him, too. We left a rather large crater, I'm told."

"He always goes for the big dramatic scene," she said, affectionate humour clear in her voice. "Likes his explosions, he does."

"He told me he wasn't leaving me behind," Tim said, the vague note still in his voice. "In my head. I heard him. I--" He winced at the stab of pain behind his eyes, trying not to drop the mug of tea. His hands were trembling, suddenly, and he felt a familiar warning trickle. "Kleenex?" he asked a bit thickly.

She was there in an instant, taking the mug from his hands even as she handed him a wad of Kleenex from the box on the table. "Here," she said, helping him sit up a bit as he pressed the Kleenex to his nose. "Sit forward so you don't end up swallowin' it."

He did as he told, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to ride out the pain. "Nate and I... were having them together, yesterday," he muttered. "Bonding activity. Thought Bartlet... was going to have us both tied to our beds."

"You're lucky she didn't," Amnada told him, fingers itching to alleviate some of the pain but the warnings - the doctors' and Tante's - were still too fresh. "Power overload's a bastard." She grinned briefly. "Was doin' it meself on a regular basis. Mostly for Nate."

"It'll settle down," Tim said heavily, his voice a bit muffled. "No loss of function, either, according to Xavier..." He opened his eyes, blinking at the two of her he saw for a moment. "So why do something like that to yourself for him?"

"Because I wanted to, an' he needed me to," she replied steadily. "Tho' maybe I didn't have to." With a shrug, she reached for more Kleenex - he was soaking through the ones he had. "I think I still would've done it any way."

He'd forgotten what her powers were. It wasn't a particularly pleasant realization. "Things are so hazy," he muttered, pressing the new Kleenex to his nose. "Only things clear are.... now, and years ago."

"They'll come clear, the docs say it'll take some time t' adjust" Amanda murmured. She wasn't sure why, but this man reminded her more of Pete than Nate, and she wasn't about to baby him any more than she would Pete. But she liked him, regardless. "I'm not allowed t' heal you, but there's some potions that might help, least with the headaches."

The nosebleed was actually stopping. "Sure," Tim said a bit dazedly, not really all that sure what he was agreeing to. Potions? "You'd think... I'd handle this better. Mick got his broken the hard way... Nate had it happen twice, and he hardly had time to breathe the first time before they killed Aliya and Ty..."

"There's no hard-an'-fast rules t' how well anyone deal with anythin'," Amanda pointed out. "You're you, an' Nate's Nate. An' I think losin' his family like that only delayed him dealin' with the conditionin' breakin' - 's only been now that he's really had the chance t' deal with it."

"Because he was running." Tim swallowed, feeling a strange, bitter shame. Shame, when he'd told himself he wasn't supposed to be feeling any of that, because he hadn't had a choice. But one of the memories that was clear was Nathan in August, begging him not to make him go back... His eyes stung suddenly, and he pulled the wad of kleenex back, dully relieved to realize that the bleeding had stopped. Maybe there was a reason the haze was there.

"Did he ever tell you... what he did, after?" She didn't say anything, so he went on, the words coming out a little slurred as he continued. "I can see why, now... well, I saw why then, too. But I understand, now..." And he was starting to make no sense.

"You need t' sleep," Amanda said, pushing gently on his shoulder so he lay back down. "Yer brain needs time, t' heal an' cope with stuff." She couldn't heal, but she could put him to sleep... Touching her fingers to his temple, she brushed him with just the slightest touch of the spell. No need for overkill.

Tim proceeded to demonstrate that no, Nathan wasn't an anomaly when it came to Amanda's spells and first-generation Mistra conditioning. His eyes drifted shut and his breathing slowed almost immediately, his whole body relaxing in sleep.

Dumping the bloody kleenex in the trash can provided, Amanda collected the empty mug and left, turning over everything he'd said in her mind. It made her feel a little better, about what she'd said at the memorial, and a little worse. But at least she had answers now.