Avery Jones (sanandum) wrote in commandhq, @ 2018-05-27 22:34:00 |
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The brass had labelled the mission a success. The Senator, although shaken, was with hospital staff who would check him out and find no injuries at all thanks to Avery and then the whole thing would be swept under the rug with little attention to the fact that three supers saved the man’s life despite his attempts to keep their existence criminalised.
Honestly, the whole thing irritated Russell, and he knew he’d been irritated since the brief had come across his desk with Avery’s name on the file, because she shouldn’t have been selected for field duty. There were other healers, even if they weren’t as good or as experienced as Avery, but one of them in the field and Avery at base would’ve made more sense.
Not that anyone listened to Russell when he said this.
Add in the fact that Avery removed her comms on mission, only the grace of Theo putting it back in and had no proper training in the field, Russell was sure something was going to explode in his temple. He had managed to keep it restrained the whole mission and on the way back, even if he was still pissed that Avery went off comms.
He knew better than to address things in the heat of the moment though, because emotions would still run high, and Avery needed the time to wind down from whatever that was on mission. It seemed like her powers might need a slight reclassification at this point, but it was honestly Russell’s second priority.
He’d already poured two fingers of scotch and knocked them back, waiting in his office for Avery to come for a private briefing so he could at least try to understand what the fuck she’d been thinking out there without Lupei looming protectively and Ash’s mothering glances.
Avery felt like her face was stuck in a grimace, if she were honest. Since they returned she had managed to escape medical only to find that she was desperately needing to avoid Lucas, that Ash kept looking at her like she wanted to hug her and Theo was avoiding her. In fact, whenever they were in the same room, Theo looked at her and then walked out. She didn’t understand, and her perpetual headache meant she was more sullen than usual.
Receiving the message from Russell for a private briefing wasn’t the news she was hoping for but it was better than sitting in her room and staring at her hands, thinking back to the fact that she had killed a man by touching him. Let alone the fact that she had felt a rush when she had unleashed whatever she had done.
The bruises had a few days to settle in, now, Avery had an impressive shiner around her right eye, as well as dark bruising on either side of her temple. She had stitches in her hairline, too, from where she’d had her head slammed into the floor. It was wrapped up in a bow with the hand marks around her neck, long red bruises that were yet to blossom.
Knocking twice on the door, she pushed it open and slipped inside.
“You rang, milord?”
Just looking at Avery made Russell want to march down the hall and smack Frost upside the head. The kid might have a good relationship with his agents but it was no good if they were going to end up dead, “C’mon in Avery, have a seat.” And as an afterthought, “And dear lord, don’t call me that.”
He figured she was going for humour, hoping to diffuse things with that sarcasm she mentioned, playing to her very witty strengths. But Russell was decidedly struck by the fact that, had her powers not reacted in a manner that no one expected, she’d likely be dead right then. And all the ‘I told you so’ about non-combatants in the field wouldn’t change the fact that she died on one of his operations, where almost every contingency was planned for.
Everyone except an invisible super and an agent with absolutely no understanding of how to protect herself on assignment.
“How’re you feeling?” Distance from the event at least meant Russell could approach it more calmly, and not like he needed to hit his head against something.
“Would you prefer ‘sir’ or ‘grand overloads Davies’?” She asked, giving an uneasy smile as she sat down. Her whole body ached like Lucas has made her do hours of cardio, gingerly lowering herself onto the seat, she then made an effort to look like she was relaxed. She wasn’t, she was brimming with anxious energy, rippling through her already tense form. It was exhausting.
She cleared her throat and lifted a shoulder, resisting the urge to touch her throat. Her hand lifted halfway to do so before she caught it and dropped it to her lap, tugging her hands into her sleeves.
“I’m okay, kinda hungry. Pretty sure there’s more salad than usual in the canteen today and I really don’t like that kind of healthy stuff unless I have to. You?”
“Russell would do just fine, but if you feel you must, sir is sufficient.” He wasn’t exactly a fan of the titles and whatnot, at least when it wasn’t called for. This didn’t need to feel anymore like being called to the teachers office than it did.
It was hard to ignore the blossoming injuries; the bruised eye, the hand prints around her throat, the peaking out of stitches. They were all avoidable, had the proper action been taken when the mission was given, an extra body assigned, Avery not in the field. And Russell tried not to focus on the fact that were Avery properly trained in hand to hand, it likely wouldn’t have been as bad. But even if it was true, he didn’t want to pass all the buck onto Lucas’ training.
“I’m on my fourth headache of the day and very close to spiralling into day drinking to stop myself punching your handler in the face.” If they were going with sarcasm and wit, he’d join in. Elbows on his desk, fingers threaded to rest his chin on, Russell just gave Avery a fairly blank look.
“Is there a particular place you’d like to start on this, or will we just go from the start and slug through it all?” Comm removal, not waiting for a clear go, sending Theo away when she had no protection at all. Not informing him that she had less training than she did field experience. There were numerous places to work from.
“Well, I’ve not had as much experience working with many other handlers,” Avery offered with a half grin, “some people might prefer the more… deferential thing.” She waved a hand as if she was about to do some kind of elaborate bow but didn’t. “Heard that there was a handler in another facility that demanded to be called by their surname prefixed by ‘Handler’ all the time, even if it was just amongst their own team. I mean, there’s being strict and then there’s being strict, and I’m pretty sure they went wa~ay over the line.”
She lifted her hand again to touch her throat, or her hair, something because she didn’t have anything to fiddle with and there weren’t any loose bits of thread in the sleeves of her hoodie to play with to keep her hands occupied, so she was stuck sort of just restlessly wriggling on the chair, unable to sit still for too long because she was uncomfortable and nervous and would really rather be almost anywhere but here.
But not in the clinic. She didn’t think she could set foot in there just yet. After all, she’d killed a man. With her hands. With her powers. And that- that wasn’t really what a healer was supposed to do. What if she did it again?
“If you’re gonna punch Lucas you oughta do it when you’re sober. He’s kinda slippery.” It was easy to talk about stuff that wasn’t the point of the matter, and Avery had a habit of rambling when she was nervous anyway, which she definitely was. “But I’m pretty sure Handler on Handler violence is frowned upon anyway, as is day drinking. Don’t know if your liver’s gonna be able to thank you for moving night drinking to day drinking…”
He said something else though and her ramble was derailed. “Uh, start with what? A debrief? We had one of those already, I’m not even sure what you wanna talk to me about ‘cause I, y’know, stuff happened. And mission accomplished. Pretty sure they’re stamping it with the rubber stamp that says it went well. Senator’s all good and happy and still hating on us. And y’know, we’re good. So yeah.”
Russell understood that some Handlers liked to keep the chain of command clear, and he really didn’t like those Handlers much; it was too much about having power, about controlling things, and never about the job. He’d been around long enough to see signs of poor handling, and keep that distance between handler and team was always a poor start.
“I think punching out two handlers in the space of a year might be a bad idea, yes.” Even if the first one did deserve it, most assuredly. But no, any clipping around Frost’s head would mostly be light chastising for letting his fondness for an agent surpass their best interests. Avery might be a non-combatant, but this mission just proved that in certain situations, the top brass wouldn’t care about that. “My liver never thanks me, but sometimes it just needs to deal with it.” And when he’d been doing this as long as he had, sometimes there was not a better coping method.
Russell let Avery ramble on for a moment, trying to derail what they ultimately had to talk about. And if this was what she meant by difficult to train, then he still planned on cuffing Frost’s ear. “How about taking out your ear piece? Or not listening to an experienced agent? I understand that this was a lot for you, and nerves were to be expected, but you put yourself in avoidable situations without assessing the environment thoroughly.” And not all of that was on Avery, she wasn’t field trained at all, she wasn’t meant to be. But she should have a clear and competent method to protect herself if she was in that position.
“And we need to talk about your powers.” Because that was the real issue.
“I mean, I could probably fix the liver issue for you,” Avery offered, a last-ditch attempt to derail the conversation but Russell was firm in his conviction, almost like he had notes or something, little labels on his desk that was stopping his mind from wandering under Avery’s expert rambling. In fact, while he did sort of look like he was listening to her he also didn’t, like he was carrying on a separate conversation in his head which didn’t stop while she talked.
She tucked her hair behind her ear as the questions started, Russell’s focus was like a laser and she was hugely uncomfortable. This time she did touch the mark on her neck, only briefly because it was tender. They’d said that she’d probably have a scar in her hairline from the stitches. The bruise would fade, as would the cut from the punch and she was lucky that nothing was broken. Lucky. Sure. That’s what the word for it was.
“It’s not-” she cut herself off, “It’s not that I wasn’t listening.” Because it wasn’t. No one really understood how difficult it could be for her sometimes, driven by her power to fix things whenever someone had anything as simple as a papercut. She couldn’t be around some of the staff members because they had injuries that weren’t fully healed, that were still ‘active’ as far as her abilities were concerned and the drive to heal them was so intense she couldn’t always ignore it. “Firstly I couldn’t hear you on the ear piece over the thumping of that Senator Asshole’s heartbeat. He was dying, and y’know that kind of stuff’s difficult to ignore. And then there were the guys whose asses Ash and Theo were kicking, and those that didn’t get d-dead were on my radar too. I could barely hear anything.”
It didn’t excuse her taking her earpiece out though, she knew that. “I don’t- I’m not even sure why I did that,” she confessed. “But the second time was ‘cause I’d been punched and it fell out. Plus Theo put it back. That counts, right?”
She frowned, stumbling over her words a little and she sat there with her mouth hanging open a fraction as if she’d stalled mid-thought, and she honestly kind of had. They needed to talk about her powers. She didn’t want to. She powerfully didn’t want to talk about her powers. She looked down at her hands, fingertips poking out of her sleeves. Even though they weren’t covered in blood anymore - Hector had helped her clean her own blood, the Senator’s and her assailant’s off her and held her while she freaked out about not being able to get clean - she could still feel it. She could still feel the tingle, the rush that rippled through her when she’d grabbed at him, how it felt almost cathartic to her, some sort of wheel of pain that went off in her head, accessing a rolodex of injuries that she just imparted on the other man.
He looked as though he’d been beaten, tortured and doused in acid. The look of horror on his face was burned into her mind.
She swallowed.
“I don’t really want to.”
Sticking to the point was part of Russell’s job, and if he let every agent who wanted to derail things and go somewhere else with the conversation do it, he’d have gotten nowhere in his career. Avery’s discomfort was clear, and Russell was sympathetic to it. This was brand new territory for her, and he wasn’t her handler, which put her on uneven ground. But right then, Russell didn’t think Avery would benefit properly from Lucas’ input on this matter in particular.
“I can sympathise with the distractions being difficult for you, and if we had our way, I’m sure all handlers here would agree that you should not be active in the field in those situations. It’s not fair on you when your power offers a compulsion like that.” Ignoring the natural instinct to help, to tend to people, the way her power seemed to draw her towards fixing the injuries, it was rather cruel to put her in a situation where she had to force herself not to do it. “But when can’t see you, we need to have an open communication channel to all agents.”
He knew it was her first mission in years, that she wasn’t suited or use to the hectic nature of a mission like that, where there were casualties. Making her feel bad wasn’t the goal, but she needed to know, should she be forced on another mission, that they’d need to find a way to make it work.
“I understand that, and I’m sorry you were in a position where this has happened,” he’d already called up the brass and Director Vance to have one hell of a conversation about untrained agents in the field, who weren’t ready for the field and shouldn’t be used there. It had got exceptionally shouty and definitely hadn’t helped Russell’s headache one bit. “But I can’t in good conscience let you ignore this. Normally, I’d leave it to your own handler, but if I have to I will ask one of the psych team to talk to you myself.”
Aside from her powers developing a previously unknown application, the use of them had clearly shaken her up.
“Yeah, don’t take the earpiece out again, I got that much.” She was still waiting for Theo to do something, because it kind of looked like he wanted to shout at her whenever he saw her and even that would be better than this weird freezing thing he was doing. And that wasn’t even to say what would happen when she eventually stopped being able to avoid Lucas. At least when she had gone to see Garrett he’d not judged her, just hugged her as she sobbed in his arms, re-did the stitches and let her go back to her room where she curled up in Hector’s arms, covered from head-to-toe so there was no risk of her accidentally touching him because she didn’t want to hurt anyone else.
She lifted a shoulder. “I get it. My powers are useful to people. In the field and stuff. It’s- that’s just how it goes, right? They don’t see us for who we are, just what we can be used for.” She’d never felt like that before, never really understood the people who were so anti-Regiment or their ‘they just use us’ sentiments. But for the first time she was seeing that maybe they were assets, that perhaps it didn’t matter how they felt about things.
She tucked her hair behind her ear and Avery winced, covering it a moment later with a mock innocent look which would have had a greater impact if she wasn’t injured and covered in bruises.
“Ignore what?”
It was unfortunate when the brass pushed things, when people who looked at powers on paper decided to overrule handlers just because they saw useful powers. “Unfortunately, to some people, yes. You have a very unique ability to help people, and they don’t think about the further implications beyond what you can do.” They didn’t think about how old agents were, what they were trained for.
If they had previous trauma.
“But that’s all the more reason to keep working so that if you are used for a mission again, you’ll know what to do and what not to do.” If Lucas’ training wasn’t working, if she wasn’t retaining how to make it work in real applications, then alternative methods would need to be found.
Her dancing around the issue wasn’t really going to fly with him though, “That something you use to help people hurt someone. That you hurt someone. I’ve been around a long time, Avery. You’re only stalling the inevitable, we are going to talk about this until I’m sure you aren’t pushing down trauma to the point you’re going to hurt yourself.”
Avery set her jaw, a movement which caused an ache to rocket up the side of her head. She was staring at a spot on Russell’s desk and the more he talked, the more she could feel the colour rising in her cheeks, or maybe draining from her face, she wasn’t sure. But there was a burning tightness in her throat, making it hard to draw in a breath and she could feel a prickling in her eyes.
He was right; she’d hurt someone. And she hadn’t just hurt him. She’d destroyed him. Even after he’d been so injured he wouldn’t survive she hadn’t let go of him until he’d fallen backwards, body not even twitching on the ground. The image was burned into her eyes, as was the way that Theo’s expression pinched and twisted when he’d seen the man on the floor before he was crossing to look at her. And how the Senator looked at her, how he’d flinched away from her even after she’d saved him.
And the worst thing of all? That rush of power… it had felt good. That was sick.
She felt nausea bubbling in her chest again, clawing at the back of her throat and she squeezed her eyes closed.
“I- I just- He-” Her hand lifted to her throat. It had been her or him, she knew that, but she-
Nope. Her throat closed up, she thought she might be sick for a few long seconds. The more she thought about it, the worse that sick feeling got.
“How long is long? Like, lifer long?” Her voice caught, hitching a little. “I- Russell please, I- I can’t-” she swallowed, looking at him again. “I can’t get his body out of my head.” Or the fact that seconds before she’d been about to die.
Moving from behind the desk, taking the seat next to Avery, but very carefully not reaching out to startle her. Avery had to learn to trust herself again before she’d initiate contact, he’d seen that enough in agents who suddenly learned their power could do more and inadvertently hurt someone. “Like lifer long.” He’d been with the Regiment about as long as some of these agents, longer than a lot of them.
“I know, and you’ll feel that for a while, but you’ll learn how to cope with it. I’m not saying it’ll go away, but it will fade a little, you won’t see the details as clearly. But it’s important to remember that you had no control over that, you protected yourself. He would’ve killed you.” It wouldn’t help now, it probably wouldn’t help for a long time yet, least of all with someone like Avery who literally ached to help people.
“I would really like it if you would ask Lucas to refer you for therapy. They can help you unbox this and figure it out, they can help you learn to deal with it.” Because it wasn’t a magical fix. “But Avery, this does not reflect on who you are at all.”
Avery didn’t look at Russell, she just leaned forward and linked her fingers behind her head, forehead low enough that it was almost touching her knees. Her arms, and hair, formed a sort of protective barrier around herself where her face couldn’t be seen because she had one of those faces that every micro-expression was pretty damn obvious. She had a terrible poker face.
“You don’t get it, Russell,” she said after a long moment of silence, trying to breathe past the lump in her throat, the band around her chest. When she blinked, tears dripped onto the knees of her ripped jeans. “I’ve never- I’ve never killed anyone before. I’ve never even hurt anyone before, not even with words. And what I did to that guy, he- it wasn’t even-”
She shook her head. “I- Literally all I do is help people, make them better. What does it make me if I can- if that- if all I have to do to make someone’s head cave in is touch them? I-” Maybe Archangel was the right code name for her after all; they were warriors of God or something, right? “I- I don’t want this.”
“I do get it.” Because everyone had a first, even people like Avery who shouldn’t ever have a first. “And you don’t need to talk to me, but you need to talk in general.” It wasn’t just that she’d hurt someone, it was the manner it happened, and Russell didn’t know if the psych team could help Avery realise that this was out of her control or not, but they were at the very least better qualified to help her make sense of things.
“You do help people, you’ve always helped people, that’s what your power calls for you to do, it doesn’t urge you to hurt, it urges you to heal, even people you shouldn’t heal. This could’ve been an isolated incident, a fear response in an unusual place.” Because God knew Avery shouldn’t have been there, she should’ve been at a base, waiting for the Senator. If they’d just let him add Blink onto the mission roster, just let him keep Avery at an outpost and send Ash, Theo and Jade to get the Senator.
“You’re not just a power, even if this is part of your power, it’s not who you are.” But it wasn’t going to make it through Avery’s head right then, she was still too caught up in what had happened, it was too fresh. Which was really why he wanted her to start the process for therapy sooner rather than later.
“I don’t think it was a one time thing,” Avery admitted, looking at her hands, now, still hunched forward, her forearms braced on her thighs. They were clean now, Hector had helped her scrub them clean, removing her blood, the Senator’s and the man’s from her skin. He’d held her as she’d cried, talked her down from washing them more because there was nothing left. “I-” It felt good, it felt - in that moment - natural. Like it was just another part of her, the same way that she felt when she healed except it didn’t hurt her. It hadn’t hurt her at all, and she hadn’t had the exhaustion that came with healing, considering she’d been able to walk out under her own steam.
Considering how injured the Senator had been that shouldn’t have been possible.
She wet her lower lip, glanced at Russell through her hair. “I’ll- I’ll ask for a referral.” She swallowed, adding a moment later, “You- Theo’s not talking to me.”
A referral was all that Russell could really ask that Avery push for, at the very least they could address the fact that she had to live with what happened. Considering Avery’s personality and general interests in helping people, it was bad enough she’d been put in a place that those things were happening around her. Having a hand in someone’s death, in the manner she did, would be daunting to work past regardless of how it happened. And then there was the matter of her attack too.
“Thank you.” But he could keep checking in, hoping that the therapy helped her deal with the emotional stuff, and if Lucas’ training didn’t help her work up a better approach to her powers and her potential use in the field in future, then Russell would step in there.
“Normally, I’d advise giving him space. These things affect people in a lot of different ways, he was there on the mission to protect you, he’s your friend and you were hurt. He might be blaming himself, he might be uneasy at how he couldn’t do that, it could be something else.” It could be the worry about just what Avery’s powers were expanding to, or had always been. “I wouldn’t give him too much space though, make him talk to you, even if it’s to tell you to give him some more time. Head on is better than tip toeing about.”
Avery just nodded, pressing her lips together and breathing. After all the things that happened, the aftermath was the worst. She kept seeing the man’s body, and then Theo’s face and then… after all of this and after getting back, he was avoiding her. And it hurt. It really hurt. She didn’t know what to do with it. She relied on Theo for a lot, and how to handle something like this was one of those things. He and Ash had so much experience, and she’d nearly screwed up their track record.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, “Can- can I go now, please?”
“Try not beat yourself up, Avery. All things considered, you still saved someone’s life.” Even if that life maybe wasn’t so high up there that Russell would’ve said it deserved it for all this aftermath. But that was a tricky road to walk.
“If you need anything, my door’s open, but yeah, you can head off if you want.” He wasn’t terribly surprised that Avery was good at avoiding things, but hopefully it could start towards getting on the right track to fix things.
Avery just nodded, looking just as miserable as she felt which was probably somewhat exacerbated and made significantly worse by the bruises on her face. She just got to her feet and stuffed her hands in her pockets, looking small and unsure.
“Thanks, Russell,” she said after a moment, before turning on her heel and leaving the office, intending on going right back to her regularly scheduled avoiding all the things.