Sunday night, Lorna and Alison

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Lorna continues to question her part in the mission. Alison lends her some perspective.



Lorna was sipping her hot chocolate—not coffee sadly, Alex had given her a stern look when she suggested it and handed her the cocoa instead—and trying to type up a mission report one handed. Since it was going as well as it might be expected that a one-handed, semi-drugged and overextended person would be able to write, she was getting nowhere fast. The knock on the door was a welcome distraction and she closed her laptop even as she called out a greeting. “Come in.”

The door opened, revealing a blonde head. Looking up from at her socked feet, Alison focused on Lorna - looking her over carefully, before smiling just a bit in greeting. After closing the door she wandered over, noting how installed and how everything was in reach - clearly Alex had been hovering at one point, which was no surprise at all. She peeked over the top of the laptop's screen, and then at Lorna again, giving her a pensive look.

Lorna shrugged and patted the couch next to her, shifting aside her white afghan to make room. “Thought I’d try and get something productive done while I’m sitting around. How are you doing?” A little smile indicated she didn’t think it was any better than Lorna herself looked and so honesty was expected.

"I don't know," Alison replied softly, a remote expression on her face. "It's still... too much." She nodded at that, as though needing to confirm the statement to herself, then carefully crawled on the couch to join Lorna, making sure not to jar her too much and aggravate her injuries. "You?"

“About the same. Green. Doubting myself. Also broken leg, so you know, it’s not my best day.” But she’d been awake for a whole hour already and that was an improvement. Lorna closed the laptop cover and retrieved her cocoa. “There’s stuff in the kitchen if you’re hungry or thirsty. I’d offer to get it for you but…” she gave her leg a rueful shrug.

No doubt. Alison almost said it out loud, breath indrawn to do so - and stopped, tilting her head to the side slowly, considering the sentiment. "Haroun made sure I ate something when I woke up." She'd been starving, the body not caring as to the mind's sorrows. "I'll probably be hungry again soon." There was no asking Lorna if she'd
want anything the - the pain and medication might not help much with the keeping one's appetite lively, but she would still bring something back and leave it nearby, jut in case.

“Alex fed me. Wouldn’t give my computer until I ate. He’s a meanie.” She smiled. “He did an okay job on the food. I suspect he had help.”

"Danielle and Rahne cooked," was the answer to that, Alison remembering what Miles had told her not too long ago, before she'd made her way here. "I'm probably going to start reviewing the footage tomorrow." Some of it from the facilities own video system, no less.

“Oh good. I need to email Rahne and Jamie. I can’t cook like this.” Lorna sighed and waited for Alison to return. “I’m still not sure about what went on. I was sort of isolated.”

Resuming her previous place after setting the food within easy reach for Lorna, Alison sighed. She'd been doing that a lot, of late, she thought mirthlessly. In short sentences and precise words, she proceeded to update Lorna as best she could.

Lorna listened with inward focused concentration, adding what Alison told her to what she’d experienced. Alison’s description of the final stand at the training barracks, spare and undetailed as it was, made her flinch. She could have been there had she dealt more harshly with the agents she was fighting. “Do we know the status of the survivors?”

She started to say no, until she realized Lorna likely didn't mean just the second gens. "The first gens - we didn't lose any more than those who... were dead when it was over." Voice strangling over the words, throat aching suddenly. Taking a short, hard breath, Alison continued. "Second gens are still in treatment and being evaluated. We don't know more yet." A pause. "It's too early to tell."

Which meant Piers was going to be okay. Thank god. “Would you keep me updated? I…I feel responsible for them. The ones I was fighting. I tried to keep them alive and I don’t know how well I did. Nolan died because I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

"Of course I'll keep you updated." Speaking so lowly, voice kept softened to the point of almost being hushed. "What do you mean, exactly, by not paying attention?" The question followed smoothly, as though it had always been meant to be there, right after the reassurance, Alison's expression never wavering.

“I didn’t shield him. I was too focused on whoever it was I was fighting at the time.” Lorna remembered feeling the metal go flying. She’d turned, seeing Nolan slump, Piers catching him. She hadn’t had more than a moment to think about it at the time. Now it warred with a thousand other doubts and demons for headspace.

She wasn't even going to go near anything ressembling platitudes. Not today. "If there's footage from the security system, I'll go over that and then we can sit down and review." Personally, she held strong to the belief that Lorna had done all she could, considering how her training had been of late, but the best way to clear that for Lorna herself, either way, was to go over those tapes. "All right?"

Lorna nodded, agreeing to the review not the all right. “I have elements to incorporate into my training from now on.” Thinking about the practical helped. She suspected Alison was doing the same. It felt odd, so divorced from the way they usually talked. Lorna frowned and sipped her hot chocolate.


"There's always stuff to add..." Alison trailed off, curling up a bit tighter on the couch, staring ahead - the tiredness was emotional, not physical, but even that somehow felt like a cheat, obscurely unfair for some reason.


"Yeah, that's true. We always have ways to improve." She fell silent, staring into her mug, letting the silence stretch. "Ali?" Lorna said quietly after a long time, casting a sidelong glance as her, "Was it worth it? To you?"

There was a silence after that, which stretched out for a long moment. "It's not whether it was worth it to me or not, that matters so much right now, Lorna." Blinking away the tears, Alison made no effort to wipe them away from her face. "It was worth it to them." She smiled, somehow, just a bit. "And that matters to me a lot. That."

"I guess that's what matters." Lorna agreed then reached out and pulled Alison into a one-armed hug. "I guess I'm just not seeing it yet. Everything I saw was just destruction. Nothing redeeming."

The memory of Mick's face hovered before her, the knowing look in his eyes. The sound of her voice as she asked him for more, when he'd already given all that was to give. "Security vids. The kids. Show you." It was all she could manage, through a suddenly too tight throat, and instead she leaned into the hug, carefully returning it as she could. "Children."

Despite Alison's care, it still hurt but Lorna didn't complain. "Please. I need a little perspective. I just can't see it right now. It's all dark." Just violence. Piers trying to reach Bayliss and the failure of that.

It was, sometimes, so very ironic that her power was light based and yet when you got down to it, it still didn't keep away the darkness. Still, perhaps this once... Biting her lip, Alison concentrated, drawing in on the reserves she'd accumulated since the previous day, knowing this wouldn't last long. Light danced into being before them, a small shape barely a foot high - a little boy with wide eyes and no other facial features looked back at them, signing two single words carefully, which were still discernable despite how fuzzy the light shape was, the edges blinking out now and then as Alison's concentration wavered.

As blurry as the image was, it was much blurrier in Lorna's vision as tears flooded her eyes. "Thank you," she whispered, resting her head on Alison's shoulder.

"That's what he said too," was the unsteady reply, Alison still holding on lightly, not moving away as she tried to keep the image going for that much longer.

There was light, in the darkness. And that mattered too. Very much so.