Cain and Anika, Thursday morning

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Great Escape #2: Anika, once she's been moved upstairs and out of the medlab, sneaks out of the house to go see Cain and ask him a very important question. In the process, she helps Cain, who's been in a bit of a funk since the weekend, come to some conclusions about what happened.


She was going to get into trouble. They'd let her out of the medlab, but she was supposed to be resting, not sneaking out of the house. Maybe they'd make her go back to the medlab? Anika wondered a bit dizzily, tugging nervously at the Institute sweats she was wearing. They were too big, but she didn't mind. Hadn't found any shoes, though. She'd probably get scolded about that, too, since there was still snow out here, even if most of it was melting away.

Cain sat silently on his couch, flipping from channel to channel on the television. It'd been... he'd lost track of time, days? Everything seemed to run together in a blur. He'd slept when he was tired, eaten when he was hungry, but everything else just seemed... numb. He was aware that Remy had been in and out, but either out of some strange form of respect or just plain apathy, the Cajun hadn't said a word to him.

He just couldn't shake the feeling that he'd screwed it all up.

Cold. It was cold out here. Anika wrapped her arms around herself, shivering as she limped up the steps to the boathouse. The walk was wearing her out more than she'd expected. Her whole body was aching and throbbing and protesting that it really had liked the bed much, much better. So maybe they'd had a tiny little point about her staying put, resting. She had given her healing factor an awful workout, after all.

But no one had talked to her about something that was very, very important, which made her think that no one was looking after it. And that wasn't going to work. Besides, Nathan was still unconscious more often than not, so that left it to her to look after this. Her responsibility. She raised a hand and knocked on the door.

Noticing the knock, Cain looked at the clock. Either Remy had gotten too drunk to remember his keys, or it was likely to be one of the kids needing something. Everyone else tended to announce their arrival like some kind of blathering herald every time they stepped onto the porch. Clicking the television off, he turned on the porch light and opened the door.

Seeing Anika there made his heart stop for a moment. Cain's first thought was that she'd come to get her pound of flesh for his hesitation that probably caused the death of her friends. Then he took a closer look, noticing her paler-than-normal skin and the bags under her eyes.

"You look like shit," he rasped out. "The hell are you doing out here, get inside..."

She came inside, tottering a little. "We have to t-talk," she said, her teeth chattering. Why were her teeth chattering? "It's important. And no one's done it yet." Or maybe they had, and they just hadn't told her. The thought was sudden, terrifying, and she looked up at Cain imploringly. "They h-haven't, have they? They're still there. They haven't taken them away?" She gave a small, cracked laugh, her eyes burning with tears. "They used to dissect us when we died, you know. Research. They wouldn't do that here, though, right?"

Cain shut the door, turning to Anika and quickly wrapping her in a blanket from the closet. As he assisted her over to the couch, he knelt next to her and quietly replied, "No one's dissecting anyone, Ani. I don't know what you..."

Then he understood. The body bags on the plane, two in particular. Probably still in cold storage in the medlab. As he understood it, neither Foley nor Morgan had any family to be notified. Their family, or the closest thing they had, was the Mistra team. And right now, that was just Nate... and Ani.

"They're still here," he assured her, shying away slightly. "You can probably ask Maddie or Moira about that. You didn't have to come all the way out here."

"No, I did," Anika said brokenly, drawing the blanket more tightly around her. "Because it's your house, right? I'm sure I heard someone say that. And I don't want them to be taken away to somewhere else." Her voice, though still shaky, was clear, despite the tears rolling steadily down her cheeks. "They liked it here. Especially M-Mick. It was like a dream, and if they're never going to wake up again they should be here." It struck her that she really wasn't making a whole lot of sense, but she didn't think Cain would laugh at her.

Realization slowly sunk into Cain's mind, what Anika was asking. He reached over to the table, to a book of photographs he'd had taken of the property. Sitting on the couch next to Anika, he turned through the pages and stopped at a photograph that showed the sun setting behind the hills to the west, just over the woodline.

"Saw the two of them hanging out talking, before we left," Cain confessed. "They were happy - this place is like that, full of new beginnings, second chances. You want them put to rest here, it's done. Y'got my blessing, whatever you need."

Some of the tightness in her chest was easing, finally, but the tears were only coming faster. "Thank you," she whispered, her eyes locked on the picture. "I know they won't get forgotten if they're here, too. And that's important, too. I don't want Nate and I to be the only ones who remember them." Part of her was pointing out that it wasn't fair, that Nash and Isabel and the others that survived would, too, but that didn't seem to matter right now. It had just been the four of them who'd been here, and the four of them who'd been there in that hallway at the end. Anika didn't realize for a moment that she was stammering the words out aloud, trying to explain that to Cain.

Slowly, Cain patted Anika on the shoulder and stood up, walking over to the bookcase. Running his fingers over the spines, he selected one book and brought it back to the couch. He opened it to the middle, and a single black-and-white photograph fell into his hand. He showed it to her, men in sweat-soaked jungle fatigues standing in front of a sign reading "Firebase Opal". Cain's intense face stared back from the photo, looking not a day older than he did on the date scrawled at the bottom of the photograph: 6/12/63.

"I know," he said quietly, "what it's like to be the only one left behind."

Anika stared down at the picture for a moment, then looked up at him with reddened blue eyes. "You smell like dead leaves," she said hoarsely. "And it's not just this... you smelled like dead leaves as soon as I came in." She tilted her head a little, wincing. "Charles told me. That you got Ruiz. The one who did it?"

Cain nodded. "Made sure she wasn't going anywhere. Was going to help Nate afterwards... but..." He drew a hand over his eyes, shoulders slumping in resignation. "There were kids, and a building, and... thought Nate could take care of everything, but no one could take care of them. I..." he looked over at Anika, trying to meet her eyes and failing. "I didn't know about Mick. I'm sorry."

She was shaking her head, almost vehemently. "If there were kids, you had to do whatever had to be done," she said, her voice shaking. "That's why we did what we did." Her lips trembling, she forced herself to go on. "Have they told you what Mick did? Alison told me. He powered her shield. He was bleeding to death, but he powered her shield, to keep the kids safe." She gave another cracked, agonized laugh. "I was under a pile of bodies by then, I think. And Tim was dead. I saw him go down. Nate was still fighting, though. Trying to keep them back from the shield."

"That's Nate," Cain chuckled, "too stupid to know when to give up. But he didn't. None of you did. And I did what I said I was going to, got Nathan and Alison home safe." He reached over to put a hand on top of Anika's, squeezing apologetically. "Just sorry I couldn't do it for everyone."

"I'm going to miss him. Both of them. So much," Anika muttered weakly, rubbing at her eyes with her free hand. "But what we did... I have to remember what we did. It's the only thing that makes any of it mean anything." She stared down at Cain's much larger hand, covering hers. "Will you remember too?" she asked, her voice almost child-like.

"What we did there, what it cost," Cain swore, "I couldn't forget if I wanted to. We... we did good." There. He finally admitted it to himself. More than fifty children, given second chances on life. Countless more who'd never have to be put through that.

"Hell of a cost," he repeated, "but no, I won't forget."

"Good," Anika whispered. "That's good. Too many of us got forgotten, you know. Edited right out of existence, like we were never real to start with..." She sank back into the couch with a sigh, shivering again, more with weariness than cold. "I shouldn't have snuck out," she said planitively. "They're going to be cross with me..."

"Let 'em," Cain chuckled. "You made it all the way here, ain't nothing seriously broken. You just need some rest. You want somewhere quiet to hide out for a while," he nodded around. "Place is yours."

"Quiet..." she murmured, already curling up against the cushions. She'd done what needed to be done. She could rest for a while now. "Thanks, Cain..."

Quietly, Cain padded across the room to turn out the light. "No problem," he whispered into the darkness. "No problem at all."