Saturday, Piers and Lorna

[x-polarisstar.livejournal.com]

After the memorial service, a healing Piers stops to talk with an also healing Lorna. They talk about the mission and Lorna makes Piers promise to write to her.



As memorial services went, this one had been... nice, Piers supposed. Not that he'd ever actually been to one before. Mistra hadn't been big on them, after all. All I know about funerals, I learned from TV...

His eyes narrowed as his gaze roamed over the departing people and focused on the young woman with green hair sitting in one of the few chairs that had been brought down for those X-Men who weren't fully ambulatory just yet. There was a blond kid hovering around her, and for a moment, Piers hesitated - but made the decision, and with a quick murmur of explanation to Matsuda, headed over there. As he approached, Lorna spotted him; he saw her look up at her companion and murmur something he couldn't quite make out at this distance. The young man nodded and wandered over to a small knot of people who didn't seem to be departing as quickly. Giving them some space, Piers realized.

Lorna watched Alex go then looked back at Piers and lifted her good hand in a greeting. Her right arm was still in a shoulder immobilizer and her left leg encased in a cast with a few scribbles on it—she hadn't been able to deny Miles the opportunity. "Hello. You're looking better." Healing factors were very much cheating, Lorna thought but at the moment she was grateful for his. When last she'd seen him, he was suffering from injuries no one should have survived.

Piers' hand went instinctively to his chest, but he smiled a bit. "Shouldn't really be up," he said, his voice a little more gravelly even than usual, "but I wanted to come. How are you doing?"

"I'm okay." She continued looking at him, surprised by how much it helped to see him up and around. Knowing he had survived wasn't the same as seeing it with her own eyes. "It's been a long week. Docs say another week for the shoulder and a month for the leg if I'm good. Do you want to sit? I'm sure there is a spare chair around here."

Piers looked around, spotting the one he'd seen Summers vacate, and pulled it over, easing himself down with a sigh. "That's not too bad, then," he said, relaxing a little now that he was seated again. "You took a few pretty hard hits. I was worried about you."

"You should have been worried about yourself. I can shield." Lorna smiled briefly and looked sad, "I'm sorry. I should have done a better job of it. She shouldn't have been able to hit you." She touched his shoulder in apology.

Piers raised his hand and patted hers where it rested for a moment on his shoulder. "Don't apologize," he said with a sigh. "I shouldn't have lost it like I did, but when Mark went down..." Real anguish flashed in his blue eyes, and he struggled to lock it back down again. It was going to take some getting used to, being totally without the conditioning like this. "I ought to explain, I guess. He was... well, call him my protege, maybe. We used to get paired up with younger operatives just out of training, to ease their way into the program."

Nolan. She hadn't known his first name. "I'm sorry for that too. If I'd been paying more attention…" She shook her head, closing her eyes. "I know you don't want to hear apologies."

Piers shook his head. "It's not that I don't want to hear them," he said wearily. "It's just... well, after what you and your friends did, for all of us... it didn't turn out as well as we were all hoping, but none of us would have made it out of there without you." He smiled humorlessly. "They were about to haul the nine of us back in for conditioning tune-ups at the beginning of this week, did you know that? They would have found out that ours had been compromised by what had happened in Canada... I can't imagine what that would have been like. Going back to being an obedient dog on a leash..."

"No, I didn't know. I haven't had a chance to read the reports yet. I've been wondering…" She trailed off and looked away. "I can't even imagine what it's like for you. We've…never really lost anyone except Jean and even that worked out mostly." She wanted to ask about the second gens but didn't know how to bring it up.

"It's... not easy." Piers didn't know why he was talking about this with someone he hardly knew, when he'd growled at the government shrinks to leave him the fuck alone several times already this week. But then, this was someone he'd fought beside, who'd risked her life for him and his friends and those kids. She deserved whatever answers she wanted. "They were family," he said heavily. "The other first-gens. Some of the second-gens, too... and that was a fucking nightmare, seeing them like that."

Well, it was an opening, even if taking it felt cheap. But she needed to know, for her own peace of mind. "The second gens…do you know if they lived? I…towards the end I was less careful and…" Lorna didn't usually stammer like this, even when she was upset. "If you don't know or can't or don't want to talk about it, that's okay."

Piers reached out and took her hand, in a completely uncharacteristic gesture. "Most of them that were alive when the Trojan Horse went off lived," he said steadily, meeting her eyes. "A few are in critical condition, simply because of all the punishment they took. None of the ones we fought, though."

Lorna gripped his hand, sorting through what he said. "They're… going to make it?" God, she hoped that was what he was saying.

"Most of them will, yes." He bit his lip, not really sure if she needed to hear this, but... no point in keeping it from her. "The Trojan Horse damaged their minds pretty badly. The trigger that bitch Ruiz set off... it left nothing in their minds but the imperatives, and then when the Trojan Horse wrecked those..." He sighed. "It's going to take a lot of telepathic therapy, I gather. Some of them are liable to recover more completely than others. But all of them, except possibly for those few I mentioned, are going to live."

She had known it wouldn't be simple but..."Alive is better than dead." She closed her eyes again, sorrow and relief warring within her. "Alive there is still hope. Is there someone…who could keep me updated on them? And you? Will you let me know how you're doing?" It seemed strange to be so concerned about the lives of people she hardly knew but faith comes from many places and has its own touchstones.

"I gather you - the collective you," he said, waving his free hand around at the mansion, "are going to get regular updates on all of us. Part of the cooperation with the taskforce." He grinned suddenly, a tired grin but one that had some real humor behind it. "And I'm a lousy correspondent, but if you really want, I can toss off a few lines now and then." His gaze shifted, over to where the man who'd introduced himself as Bridge was still talking to Anika, his arm around her shoulders. "Suspect that once the government's done with me, I may be heading off to the same place as Anika. With Nathan's friends?" He shrugged, looking back at Lorna, the smile still playing on his lips. "Nash and Matsuda are talking about going off and having normal lives, but I'm feral. I like fighting, and I like the idea of going wherever Ani goes. I've missed her a lot, since we thought she was dead..."

"I'll take even a couple of lines now and then. If you're going to be playing with Nate's friends, I suspect I'll also see you around. Nate draws people back to him, I've noticed." Lorna smiled as well. She followed his gaze to Anika and Bridge. "She's been through a lot, hasn't she?"

"Yeah. This is the second time she's seen a lover die in front of her, you know," Piers said, his jaw clenching a little as he remembered. "First time it happened... that was what broke her conditioning, or so she tells me." He smiled a bit, ruefully. "Of course, the rest of us thought that the grief made her sloppy and got her killed in an op that went wrong. Never dreamed for an instant that Nathan had managed to stage her death." His gaze went back to the mansion. "We're going down to his room, the three of us... Ani and Isabel and me, I mean. Call it a bit of a wake."

"It's extraordinary, everything you all have gone through." Lorna looked back at him, green eyes serious, "Not just Nate and Anika but you too. Not just the events but…you lived through it. You didn't give up."

Piers' smile turned a bit wan. "Well. We are Spartans, after all," he said, with more sadness than sarcasm. "I sometimes think they didn't really understand what they were doing, when they made us the way they did... but it gave us what we needed to survive. To keep fighting. And... we had each other." His gaze strayed back to the lake, where Mick and Tim's ashes had so recently been scattered. "So few of us left now," he said, much more quietly. "And those of us who are left have to decide how we want to live. It's a bit scary, Lorna." He paused suddenly, then smiled at her. "Ian, by the way," he said, squeezing her hand.

"Lorna Dane." She smiled back, "Which you probably knew. It's an honor to know you, Ian. I'm looking forward to see what you decide." She paused, debating something then gave a mental shrug, "You didn't like me. When you met me in Greece. I didn't have a chance to ask why."

Piers grinned suddenly. "I looked at you and saw 'young, probably inexperienced, most likely going to be a pain in my ass'." He squeezed her hand. "Then I fought beside you and figured out how wrong I was."

Lorna laughed, "Not all that far off. We train a lot but it doesn't really make up for experience. I have to admit my first thought was that there was no way I was putting an unknown feral at my back."

"Tim told me to behave. He doesn't--" Piers stopped, sadness in his eyes. "Didn't always trust me to do that, rather. He used to tell me that unconventional thinking was all well and good but I took it to extremes."

She squeezed his hand, sympathetically. "Not bad advice at all. In moderation," she replied, simply.

Piers summoned up a smile, but then caught Matsuda's scent, coming up behind him, well before her hands came down lightly on his shoulders. "Ready to go see Nathan?" Isabel asked, then gave Lorna a tentative smile. "Hello."

Lorna turned to smile up at her, studying her in a casual way. "Hello." She gave Piers hand a last squeeze then tugged it away to offer to Matsuda, "I'm Lorna."

"Isabel." Matsuda shook her hand, the smile turning a little ironic. "The one who walked away with a scratch."

Piers made a disapproving noise, laying his hand over the one of hers that still rested on his shoulder. "Knock it off, Izzy. Would've broken Gavin's heart if anything had happened to you, and you're not nearly as sturdy as the rest of us."

She bapped him lightly on the side of the head. "Yes, well, the whole point is not to take the punishment in the first place, lout." Matsuda chuckled, her gaze going back to Lorna. "Old debate. Sorry."

Lorna grinned and shook her head. "One that I have often with Alex. He's of the opinion I shouldn't be getting hurt either." Lorna shrugged her good shoulder, giving Matsuda the universal "Men, what can you do?" look. "Speaking of Alex, I think he's probably fretting by now." She glanced over to where Alex was doing his best not to hover. She looked back to Piers, "I'm glad we had a chance to talk. It helps."

"I'm glad." He extended a hand to Matsuda, who hauled him to his feet easily; she might be little, but she was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked. "You take care, Lorna. I won't forget what I promised."

"You'd better not." She smiled again and watched them walk away.