Deepened echoes of harmonious life

[Matthew Craft]

Hey! Little Matt-boy! Matthew’s a little put off by the sudden little romp in his head and pauses mid-throw. What was that girl’s name again? Ellen? Elle? Elliot. Oh...right. Having solved the mystery of her name, Matthew’s left to figure out how to communicate with her.

Sure, he’s chatted with other telepaths like Mr. Sheppard and Dr. Caine, but their methods vary. Does he just think ‘loudly’? Consciously try to send a thought back? Or does he just—The thinking loudly bit will do, dude.

There’s a brief pause followed by a ruffle in their telepathic connection — Matthew mentally clearing his throat. Oh...well...um...what’s up?

Timmy, his sort-of-not-quite nephew, drops his hands after a moment of his uncle’s stillness and gives up waiting for the football. Having obviously inherited his mother’s attention span, it only takes the sight of a cockroach in the corner to pull him away.

Matthew had appreciated the attention given to him by the boy (though he’s really only 4 years older than him). The raid on the base had gone over successfully, but the one person he had been intent on finding hadn’t appeared. Tossing the football had helped him clear his worrisome thoughts, though it didn’t quite stop the image of Laurie from coming to his mind.

We found your little girlie. Actually, girlies. Elliot says cheerily into his head, placing some emphasis on the later syllable of 'girlies'. Matthew feels a sharp jolt of adrenaline enter his system and his heart begins to beat faster.

Is she alright? Where is she? Isshehurt?Ineedtomakesureshe’sokay! Elliot sends a small poke into his anxiety-ridden mind, effectively interrupting his ramble of incomprehensible questions.

Dude! Relax, she’s fine. But Warr’s requested an entourage to go out and pick her up. Do you wanna—

Yes! He practically shouts at her, already half-way out the door.

No need to yell, man! Just head to the equipment bay and Vanisher’ll pick you up. He sends a brief little grunt-like thought back, his mind to busy dealing with his excitement to form actual words.

———————————————————————

Matthew’s practically mentally screaming at Elliot to hurry up and get him to Laurie when Vanisher finally blinks him away. He arrives just in time to see Warren greet Laurie and the wolf-chick and...Laurie?

Only it’s not Laurie. But it is, only she’s...old. He’s not really sure how else to describe her. She doesn’t exactly look that different: still blond, still fragile-looking, still...Laurie. But there’s something different about her too. He’s not sure if she’s looks wiser like one should when one’s aged 20-some years, but there is a bit more maturity about her.

Whatever. He’ll deal with that stuff later. He’s got better things to do. Like hold onto his girlfriend and never let go.

Silently, Matthew steps passed Warren and his big wings and quickly pulls the younger Laurie into a firm hug, pulling her off her feet as he straightens. She smells like dirt and smoke and...dog? But he doesn’t care. It’s still Laurie and he’s just beyond happy that she’s in one piece.

“You alright?” He asks finally, slowly lowering her so she can stand on her own again, though still keeping his hands on her out of fear that she’ll disappear the moment he lets go.

[Laurie Collins]

"Evening, folks. Sorry we missed you on the Camp extraction.”
The younger Laurie whips around at the familiar voice, face positively beaming relief. Mr. Worthington has never been someone to inspire any variant of ‘relaxed’ in her, but he is Mr. PR Guy with a certain everything’s-fine-nothing-to-see-here-folks stolidly reassuring quality, and at the moment that’s what she wants most- someone to take over. Her older counterpart turns more slowly, looking nervous and hitching her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans, a relaxed-looking gesture that will keep her from fidgeting with her hands.

“So… what brings you back from the dead?"

She opens her mouth to answer but cuts off abruptly as Matthew, sixteen years old again, pops out from behind Worthington and spares her a moment’s consideration before practically sprinting over to her younger self and lifting her up in a hug. The girl squeaks a little in surprise then throws her arms around him in return, holding on for a few moments even after he’s let her down before pulling away to look up at him, mirroring the concerned once-over he‘s giving her.

“You alright?”
“I’m fine.” she replies quickly and then promptly bursts into tears from a combination of pure relief at not having to be the one staying in control anymore and the fact that not five minutes ago she’d been hearing about his death in the future and wasn’t sure where he was or in what condition in the present. “Really, ignore the crying, it’s stupid, I’m stupid, I’m really glad you’re not dead.” she babbles, swiping furiously at her eyes and looking embarrassed and a little surprised at the sudden crying as she’s usually more of a clench-your-teeth-and-make-with-the-repression sort. She ducks her head for a moment, getting herself together, before looking up at him again. “Are you okay? Is everyone else okay? Did Bob and Miss. Munroe make it out of the camps?”

The second Laurie turns away from the scene, looking pale and a little nauseated as she faces Warren determinedly. “I wasn’t expecting that.” she mutters, lifting a hand and running it shakily through her hair for something to do while she gathers herself. Right, what brings me back from the dead. “She apparently went straight to the archives building and did a search for me. I have…” she looks uncomfortable again, “Well someone has a trace on my old name. When she started the search they alerted me and I thought it might have been one of the kids just plugging in any name they could remember so I went to check it out myself.” she pauses and stuffs her hands into her pockets again. “Didn’t know everyone thought I was dead.” she adds quietly, “I did a search awhile back, got this address, but then I heard what had happened to most of us and…” she shrugs, backs up a couple steps. I should go. She opens her mouth to say it but comes out with, “So…you don’t age then? Or are you from, the, ah, past too?” instead as she realizes that her former teacher actually looks younger than her.

[Warren Worthington III]

> "I wasn’t expecting that"

Warren nods sympathetically at Laurie’s reaction to her younger counterpart’s classic reunited-lovers moment, and lets the two youngsters have a little privacy as he talks to her.

"Yeah. Believe me, I sympathize… they aren’t the only ones who popped out of the past. Josh is back at the base… and an eighteen-year-old Drake, if you can believe it.

And Storm in her late twenties again, which is downright freaky – she’s just not supposed to be younger than I am, it isn’t right!" He chuckles a little, trying to lighten the mood, though he doesn’t really expect to succeed… disturbing as it was to be “reunited” with a twenty-years-younger Josh, Warren can only imagine what his reaction would have been to having to deal with Josh and his own younger self.

> " Didn’t know everyone thought I was dead. I did a search awhile back, got this address, but then I heard what had happened to most of us and…"

Warren shrugs. "There were conflicting theories. Drake dropped some hints, back when we were still speaking to each other, and when I started running the resistance out here I thought about tracking you down to recruit you… you would have been useful, and there aren’t too many of us left who remember the old days together.

But basically I figured if you wanted to be found, you would be, and if you didn’t there wouldn’t be much point. It’s not like anyone can make you do anything you don’t want to do, right?" He’s aware of the bitterness in his voice, and feels vaguely guilty about it: it’s not like she had any obligation to join the Brotherhood, and it’s not like he didn’t do his share of running away as well; it’s hypocritical of him to censure her for it. Still, there it is.

> " So…you don’t age then? Or are you from, the, ah, past too?"

"No, it’s the real me, same as I ever was. Or, well… there’s continuity, anyway. And, yeah, it looks like I don’t age... hard to believe I hit forty last year." Or was it two years ago? The years flow into one another these days, with nothing much to differentiate them, just more and more of the same.

"So… do I even want to know where you’ve been since you vanished?"

[Laurie Collins]

Yeah. Believe me, I sympathize… they aren’t the only ones who popped out of the past. Josh is back at the base… and an eighteen-year-old Drake, if you can believe it…”

“Christ…” she says under her breath, mirroring the sympathetic look he’s giving her. It’s one thing watching the tableau of her teenage years playing out when half the players are now dead, but to be linked to it like Warren and Josh were always linked to each other… it’s hard to even imagine. But there are other names on the list and the next one makes her start. “Drake?” she repeats in shock, her expression hardening in a way it hadn’t yet been able to twenty years ago. She shakes her head slowly, wondering what she’d have to say to an eighteen year old version of the man who’d worked for the people who’d killed her mother, what her younger self will have to say to him after hearing about it, but leaves it at that as he goes on.

“…But basically I figured if you wanted to be found, you would be, and if you didn’t there wouldn’t be much point. It’s not like anyone can make you do anything you don’t want to do, right?"

She nods, accepting the bitterness in his tone with neither the shame and stuttering of the time before she’d left the Institute nor the defensiveness one might have expected. I was selfish, she thinks with no particular guilt (or so she tells herself) in response to what he hasn’t said, but that’s what grief is, and I was never one who could fight for the sake of the big picture anyway. Then before she can properly process what she feels about that, they’ve moved on to his aging, or lack thereof-

“yeah, it looks like I don’t age... hard to believe I hit forty last year." and she smiles slightly, “Well as strange as it is it does help me remember you’re not my teacher anymore. No formal pronouns strictly necessary.” That had been a bit of a joke back when she was a newly graduated senior who was still calling all the teachers by their last names on force of habit when most of her classmates had been on first-name terms with them long before graduation. Toni had been especially amused by it, she remembered, making several loud and very public comments about how screwing her little brother put them on a first name basis. She opens her mouth to ask about Toni and her kids but closes it again as she realizes she isn’t sure she really wants to know just yet.

"So… do I even want to know where you’ve been since you vanished?"
That wipes the semi-smile off her face quickly enough and she looks nervous again for a moment before sighing to herself and shrugging, turning her back completely on her younger self and Matthew. She answers him as quietly as she can, counting on his enhanced hearing to pick it up regardless, “I’ve been selling my pheromones through an agency in New York City. The usual sort of escort business, but specializing in mutants. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it…I was out on the street at twenty with my name on SHIELD’s list, I couldn’t exactly go work at Wal Mart and I had no idea where any of you were… it’s just not something I really want to tell myself at sixteen about you know?” she pauses for a moment then laughs softly, “It’s probably the safest place on earth for a mutant if you don’t mind the work and keep your mouth shut.” And don’t meet with the leader of the Brotherhood to hand over mutant criminals. If they knew where I was right now… she shivers a little and pulls her coat more securely around her. “How are you, the Brotherhood that is, doing? Really?” she asks after a moment, instead of walking away like she should, like she will, no matter how much nostalgia and being faced with her past is making something disturbingly like regret tighten her chest. “I hear the propaganda on the news channels, but that’s never entirely accurate, obviously.”

[Warren Worthington III]

> "Drake?"

Warren nods, a humorless smile on his lips. "Yeah. You want to know the best part, though? He got picked up by Sentinels and dumped at his own Camp. How’s that for irony?" The smile doesn’t last very long, though – the truth is there’s nothing remotely funny about what happened to his former teammate.

"You should have seen his face when we picked him up, though. Like… I don’t know. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like he’d seen a ghost. You know, I have no idea what brought these kids here from the past, but maybe it’s like Scrooge seeing the Ghost of Christmas Past, or Future, or something like that. "

He doesn’t believe it, but it sounds good. And he’s careful not to respond to her story about what she’s been doing for the last decade or so, other than to nod from time to time. It’s far, far less than she’s capable of, but it doesn’t hurt anyone either, and that counts for something. Besides, Warren really isn’t in a position to judge her.

> " it’s just not something I really want to tell myself at sixteen about you know??"

Warren nods. "Yeah. Bad enough what they already know, right? Don’t worry… I don’t know a thing."

> " How are you, the Brotherhood that is, doing? Really? I hear the propaganda on the news channels, but that’s never entirely accurate, obviously.?"

He shrugs. "Still alive. Still operational. Still mostly drawing some kind of line between the political prisoners and the real ones… except it gets blurrier every day, you know? This last extraction… well, we ended up leaving Sam behind to get you all out… well, not you two, you got out on your own, but everybody else. Now I don’t know what happens."

[Matthew Craft]

"I'm fine." Matthew feels relief wash over him as she finally says something, but his anxiousness comes back tenfold when Laurie suddenly begins to cry. He's left with the generic male oh-my-god-there's-a-girl-crying-what-do-I-do shocked expression on his face. Between his self-admitting hard-ass mother and his fatuously erratic sister, he's never really had to deal with emotionally stressed women. There's a brief moment of hands jerking around wildly as he tries to think of what to do before he settles for hugging her again, letting her dampen his shirt with her tears.

"Really, ignore the crying, it's stupid, I'm stupid, I'm really glad you're not dead." Instead of dwelling on the fact that he was indeed dead in this timeline, Matthew puts on a brave smile.

"That makes two of us." He says with his little grin. It’s probably the first time he’s smiled recently. Between stressing over Laurie, his death, and them trying to get home to prevent the whole apocalyptic future thing, Matthew’s hadn’t had any time or any reason to be happy. But now Laurie is safe and sound and that’s more than enough to make that smile stretch a little wider.

“Are you okay? Is everyone else okay? Did Bob and Miss. Munroe make it out of the camps?”

“We’re all fine,” he says with a reassuring nod. “Everybody’s back at the base right now, resting up.” With that statement also comes the realization that he hasn’t really rested, let alone slept in a couple of days. That would be first on his list when he got back, after making sure that Laurie got settled in and relatively comfortable, of course.

“I wasn’t expecting that.” Matthew’s reminded that the older version of Laurie is still standing there. She looks a touch sickened by the sight of him and Laurie together, and he’s left to wonder what ever became of the two of them. He’d heard plenty of his past from his nephews, but neither Greg nor Timmy had mentioned anything about any romantic interests he’d had. Maybe he and Laurie just couldn’t make it last…or maybe something worse happened. Either way, he didn’t really want to know.

Zoning out of Warren’s and older-Laurie’s conversation, he turns back to his girlfriend. “What happened to you guys during the raid we did on the camp? You got out on your own?” Not that he doubted Laurie’s abilities, but they weren’t exactly offensive in nature.

[Laurie Collins]

Laurie watches her boyfriend flailing and looking panicked in complete astonishment for a beat before realizing it’s his response to her tears. She bursts into somewhat watery laughter as he pulls her into a hug muttering, “You are such a guy,” and patting him lightly on the back as she tucks herself more securely into the hug, taking a deep breath and actually appreciating the contact this time instead of wildly flinging herself into it out of sheer relief.

“We’re all fine, everybody’s back at the base right now, resting up.”

She pulls back to grin up at him in elated surprise, after seeing the destruction at the camp she’d been trying to steel herself for hearing news of someone’s injury at best. Now she’s seized with the urge to get back to the base and see everyone being fine with her own eyes, a tiny part of her mind clinging to that childish ‘it’s-not-real-until-I-see-it’ belief. I’m probably relieved enough to start hugging John at this point. She laughs a little at that image before cutting off as Matthew asks about her escape, her smile dying a light-speed death on her face as he mentions the camps and when she answers her voice is much softer. “Rahne and I were in a cell together, we got out during the fight and took off. I didn’t know it was you, the, um, good Brotherhood apparently- which is still a weird idea-doing the attacking. I mean I saw Mr. Worthington but I’d met some weird future version of Bob and I didn’t know if anyone else I recognized was still not, um, incarcerating people, and I didn’t want to risk it so we hid in the woods then hitchhiked into town.” She looks a little crestfallen now, realizing that she probably shouldn’t have left the scene so quickly, that the past two days had probably been entirely unnecessary.

The older Laurie, meanwhile, is relaxing a little after Warren’s non-response to her ‘what I’ve been doing in dystopia’ story and promise to keep it quiet in front of the kids though, she realizes uncomfortably, the nervous guilt she’d been pinning on her anxiety over Warren’s potential reaction hasn’t entirely dissipated. She looks over at her younger self conversing quietly with Matthew and frowns almost angrily. Why did she pop up now, just when I’ve accepted all of this? Even someone with a much less complicated life would have a hard time explaining it all to themself at sixteen. When you’re that young you can’t know, wouldn’t understand, the things you have to do, to settle for… she shakes her head and turns back to Warren, but if she’s hoping for any sort of pleasant distraction in his next words she’s pretty brutally disappointed.

“…This last extraction… well, we ended up leaving Sam behind to get you all out… well, not you two, you got out on your own, but everybody else. Now I don’t know what happens."

“Sam Guthrie?” she asks, face paling at the thought of the laid back, class-clown she remembered from high school in one of those places. They’d never been especially close but it was too small a school for them not to have known each other and he’d been Bob’s roommate for awhile. Not that the thought of anyone in a camp was exactly cheery, but Laurie even more than most tended to see broader conflicts through the lens of individuals, and for the first time she’s seriously considering what she herself could do about the camps. Probably nothing, she concludes, while her insider status might have some cachet she’s not going to be overthrowing governmental organizations through pheromone-prostitution anytime soon. Then the next question is: do you have enough cachet to help Sam, a tiny voice in her mind pipes up and she instantly wishes it hadn’t occurred to her, there would be no going back from that, and Warren has no way of knowing who her clients are, would never assume, and so he probably won‘t pressure her and take it out of her hands that way. “But you’ll have a plan to get him out again won’t you? Some sort of contingency?” she says, don’t make me have to choose she thinks.

[Warren Worthington III]

> " Sam Guthrie?"

Warren nods sadly. "Yeah, he got picked up three days ago. That’s why we were in there in the first place, to spring him. The whole mission went pear-shaped, though, when we realized there were more of the, shall we say, displaced folks in custody. We couldn’t extract both at once, and I don’t want the Camp labs finding out what their deal is before I do, so… " he shrugs once, crisply, "I left him behind."

> "But you’ll have a plan to get him out again won’t you? Some sort of contingency?"

He shakes his head. "That was the contingency. I was hoping he might have gotten a whiff of the anti-Cure we spread around and gotten out on his own, but I guess not. And," and he hates himself just a little bit more for what he’s about to say, but by now he can barely tell the difference, "extracting him isn’t a priority at the moment. Right now job one is getting – is figuring out what to do with these exiles." He can’t quite bring himself to say “getting them back home,” it still sounds too ridiculous to be seriously considered.

"That’s why I’m here, actually… for those two. " He indicates Rahne, curled up comfortably in wolf-form on the floor, and young Laurie with a flick of a wing. After a moment’s consideration, he adds "You’re welcome to join us if you want… but two things you should know.

First off, if I take you back to our base I can’t let you out again, or let you communicate outside the base… I’ll be modifying the automation to make sure of that. Sorry, but you’ve been working too closely with the government for me to be sure of you, and we both know you can talk most people around to anything.

Second, you aren’t the only member of your family to jump from the past. Primer is there as well. I thought you should know."

(( OOC: And, yes, Laurie could always get cyberboy to let her out, but let's just say Warren doesn't think of that. Boy's got a lot on his mind. ))

[Laurie Collins]

"That was the contingency… extracting him isn’t a priority at the moment. Right now job one is getting – is figuring out what to do with these exiles."

Laurie gapes at him for a moment in honest shock. The Warren she’d known had been a tactician, sure, but he’d never have considered leaving someone behind like this, even when the place they would have been left was a thousand times better than a containment camp. People change, she reminds herself, getting the expression under control and nodding slowly, times change. “What’re you planning so far?” she asks, tone a little cautious after Warren’s demonstration of what he’s willing to lose for the greater good. She can’t see how harming them would serve any broader purpose and she can’t see Warren, any version of him, harming Josh, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

All this hasn’t distracted her from her dilemma though and as if he’s been cued Warren starts in along the same lines-"You’re welcome to join us if you want… but two things you should know.” – and listing off his conditions which she listens to without any particular offense or surprise, she remembers how tight security was from when Matthew had enlisted and hadn’t been able to tell her where he was or give her any reliable way to contact him for fear of exposure. The bit about Primer makes her expression tighten for a moment but it isn’t with the old fear so much as anger, old enough to have burned down to embers, and she lifts her chin a little as she replies, “I don’t care how noble he seemed when he died, he was what he was, but right now he’s the last thing I care about. Thank you though. I wouldn’t have wanted that surprise.” Most of it was always fear for mom anyway and there’s really nothing he can do to her now… “If I came.” she adds a beat later, obviously still grappling with the idea. Being locked down in the base isn’t really a deterrent, she doesn’t care much where she is and there’s no one from her life as Lily she cares enough to want to contact, and there really are so few of them left who remember what the Institute was like back in the old days… but the idea of being trapped does scare her and she turns a little to the side to think. But that brings her around to face her younger self and Matthew again and she makes her decision abruptly, before she can turn back again.

“I won’t be much use in the fighting, I never was.” she’s not really self-pitying, just matter of fact, “But I might be able to help Sam. Lucas Jones is one of my clients, has been since before he went into the senate.” she says softly, naming the well known New York senator and ringleader of many of the recent anti-mutant legislations. “He employs a few of the more…physical… members of the agency as well, but I’m the one he talks to. It isn’t as if I know his every potential move or secret but just the fact that he employs me might be enough, especially with his new bill coming up, that he would consider releasing Sam a small price to pay for my keeping quiet, at least long enough for him to have time to do some damage control if the information did get out.” she pauses for a moment before adding thoughtfully, “He’s so scared all the time, paranoid. Sometimes he just asks me to come in and keep him calm so that he can sleep without nightmares. I think he’d give in to blackmail before he had time to even consider it.” Once Laurie’s tone would probably have held at least a little sympathy, even for Jones, after seeing such vulnerability, but now her deliverance is flat, neither particularly disgusted nor at all pitying, which is in some ways worse. “If it’s something you think is worth trying I won’t have problem not sticking my head out of the base for a long time- even now I rather like it attached to my neck.” she finishes, smiling a little.

[Warren Worthington III]

Warren tries not to take the expression on Laurie’s face personally. He’s well aware that, if he does so, the temptation to take her to task over her own general unhelpfulness over the last couple of decades will be overwhelming… and that it would be both unproductive and unfair.

Fortunately, she seems to sense this and dials it back, which helps.

> " What’re you planning so far? "

"Right now, nothing specific." It isn’t entirely true, but he’s not quite prepared to share his international travel plans with Laurie until she’s in a secure location… that’s one thing he’d prefer the government not have early warning of, if it turns out she’s really a spy. (The thought leaves a bad taste in his mouth, remembering the awkward, earnest girl from the Institute… ironically, the same one who is having her whispered reunion a few meters away, blissfully unaware of, or unconcerned by, Warren’s enhanced hearing… but he’s grown used to that taste.) "We’ve got some pretty smart people looking into it, though. Once we figure out how it happened, we can make more coherent plans."

> " I won’t be much use in the fighting, I never was."

That’s true enough, Warren remembers, though less a fact about her mutation than her personality. Her father had been quite effective in combat situations, as he recalls.

> " But I might be able to help Sam. Lucas Jones is one of my clients […]he would consider releasing Sam a small price to pay for my keeping quiet […]“If it’s something you think is worth trying I won’t have problem not sticking my head out of the base for a long time- even now I rather like it attached to my neck "

Warren actually stares for a moment, astonished by the suggestion almost as much as by the fact that, once upon a time, he’d have been the one making it. There’s another thing we’d never have believed, back in the day – Laurie as the team politician, and me as the team tank. Not that they were actually on the same team, not for ages… but it was beginning to sound like that might change.

He nods slowly, cautiously. "You do realize… you do anything like that and there’s no going back, right? I mean… word gets around."