Claudia. (veterinary) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-12-31 00:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, ! plot: kidnapping, claudia corbett, nathan mitchell |
WHO: Nathan and Claudia
WHAT: Reacting to the kidnapping news
WHEN: After the hostage list was released (backdated)
WHERE: Australian Safehouse
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Complete
Before the list had come out Claudia had just assumed everything would be okay. She was usually fairly optimistic and trusted the IVF to do their best to keep everyone safe, she didn't think anyone from IVI would actually get kidnapped. But they had. A whole bunch of people though she couldn't recall most of the list, only one name sticking in her mind. Anthony Liu. They'd taken Anthony. Poor Anthony who had spent most of his holidays helping other people, probably suffering along with them as he healed their ailments. Poor Anthony who was still not fully recovered from whatever had happened to him in his nightmare. Now he had to suffer through who knew what. Hopefully it was just healing though. It still wasn't good, Claudia adamantly believed that Anthony spent too much time helping and healing others and worried that he didn't spend enough time looking after himself but healing for the kidnappers was better than the alternatives she could think of. All the other kidnappings she could remember reading about were about trying to hurt or kill people, not heal them so why did they need Anthony if his power was the opposite of what they wanted? Unless it was to prevent Anthony from interfering. She couldn't think about that though, already feeling a heavy, sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. Maybe these kidnappers were different. Nice. Wanted to use Anthony's power to rid the world of disease. She had to hope that was the case. She'd moved into a quiet corner of the room, sinking to the ground. With so many people kidnapped everyone was likely to be worried, she didn't need to contribute to that or to hear any theories on what might be happening to the hostages. It was best to be alone for now, she'd decided, trying to keep it together. ==== Nathan was still in a bit of a daze. Life hadn’t been normal for years, but in the last few months it had turned from strange to utterly insane. Having your friends and teammates kidnapped and being pulled from your home with no warning wasn’t something he’d ever thought would happen, not even with things being as utterly weird as they had been for some time now. And here he was, a new kind of helpless, a fresh kind of scared. He was relieved – and felt horrible about it – that although parts of his team had been taken, it was no one he was so close to that it would set him off. He was better at controlling his power than he used to be, but it still scared him. These people didn’t need him to snap on top of everything else. He looked across the room, unsure about what to do with himself, if there was anything he could do before he’s been told what was going on. He was sure there wasn’t, at least until he saw Claudia huddled in a corner. Going over to sit with her wasn’t a hard choice. It hardly was one, as far as she was concerned. She really looked like she needed someone, and he may not be able to do much, but he could do that. “Hey,” he said, sliding down beside her, folding his legs up so he wouldn’t trip someone up. “How are you holding up?” ==== "Hey," she replied quietly, looking over at him. The answer to his question was obviously 'not well'. One of her best friends had been kidnapped, the only relief she had was knowing that Allegra was safe and here in this room. She couldn't even begin to imagine how it would feel to have Allegra be taken, she was barely dealing with Anthony being gone and he'd only been her best friend for a few months, not years like Allegra. She tried to push these thoughts out of her mind. Allegra was here, worrying about Anthony was upsetting enough without having to add the hypothetical what if she lost Allegra. "I'm okay," she answered finally, okay being the best descriptor she could muster up. She didn't want to fall apart on Nathan, or at all really when she was hardly the only one worried, but she couldn't pretend that she was dealing with the situation well either. "You?" ==== “I’m okay,” Nathan said. “I’ve been better but I can deal. Or I can try to, anyway.” He was used to things being kind of shitty, he’d dealt with that his whole life, but this was a new kind of awful, one he really wasn’t used to. Because who could be used to their friends being kidnapped anyway? You couldn’t. You could try, he supposed, but that was all it was. Trying. “They have chips. Some of them anyway.” Fumbling for a silver lining. Yeah. That was all it was, but for Claudia’s sake he’d try to hold on to it. “It will be okay. Has to be.” ==== Anthony had a chip, she knew that, so hopefully Nathan was right and that would help them locate him quickly. She doubted things would be easy even after locating him (and the others) because if you went to the effort to kidnap someone you were hardly going to make it easy to get them back. Unless they just wanted ransoms. If they weren’t nice kidnappers that was the second best option. The IVF seemed to have plenty of money, as seen by their private jets and ability to send them to private islands and build them lakes and rock climbing walls and even an ice skating rink in the middle of the hot outback. Taking vols for money was smart. Way better than taking vols to either kill them or make them kill other people. And surely the IVF cared about the kidnapped vols enough to just pay whatever was needed. “Yeah,” she agreed with Nathan. She had two somewhat positive situations to focus on now; nice kidnappers who only wanted Anthony to heal the world or kidnappers who didn’t actually want to hurt anyone and just wanted money, but neither were really enough to keep the doubts and worry out of her mind. They had her best friend who, for all he could do to help other people and prevent them from dying, could do nothing for himself. “It has to be,” she repeated, because it did have to be, any other outcome was unimaginable. She forced a small smile but it didn’t reach her eyes, insincere even as she tried to be positive. “And at least we’re alright.” ==== “Exactly.” Nathan leaned back against the wall, telling himself that this was exactly what he needed to be doing. Focusing on the positive. Everything would be fine, nobody would get hurt, he had no reason to worry about having another episode. Fine. It would be fine. “They only got a few of us. We’ll do our best to help and there’s a lot of people with great powers here and that will make it easier.” If he said it out loud it wasn’t as hard to believe it. And he would believe it. As much as he possibly could. “I can’t, but... there are a lot of others. A lot.” ==== Claudia nodded along with everything Nathan was saying, glad he was also vocalising fairly positive thoughts. He was right too, there were heaps of people left who would want to help and who had powers that could. She wasn’t one of them, her powers not much good for offensive stuff or even for defending herself or helping anyone in any way and she’d quickly realised in the nightmare world that she was not very good at fighting so it was definitely best if this was left to other people. There were probably other ways to help too but, as worried about Anthony as she was, she doubted she would be able to focus well enough to help out. Even if she did usually pride herself on her ability to focus on work. “And they’ll help and won’t get hurt,” fingers crossed, even if she wasn’t usually superstitious like that, “and then everything will be okay,” she finished, pushing the information that someone had already died to the back of her mind. There was nothing anyone could do about that now and thinking about it would only make her feel worse. ==== “Exactly.” He looked around the room, at all the students who were moving around, who were standing in small groups, talking quietly. It was a fairly small group, much smaller than it should have been. Even so the American safehouse had to be a lot bigger. Most of his team was over there. Everyone but him, Mo and the kidnapped. Maybe that was why it felt so strange? The teams were pretty arbitrarily formed in the beginning, but with time they became a lot more than that. Having three of them kidnapped and the rest on the other side of the world felt... he didn’t know what. This wasn’t about him, after all. It was very much not about him after all. Unless... it became about him. He knew that was one thing he could trust Claudia with, though. If there was anyone he should warn about potential needle jabbing, it was her. “Did you... bring one of my sedatives?” he asked, something that probably came out a bit abruptly, all things considered. “It’s just that, I guess I might need it? At some point. And I know you like stabbing people. With needles. Not with knives. That’d be a bit weird.” ==== To be fair, Claudia didn’t really mind stabbing things with knives either. Not people but already dead animals. It wasn’t really stabbing though, more carefully slicing open to reveal the internal anatomy. With scalpels, not knives. For science! But it could seem sort of like stabbing. “No,” she answered, feeling a bit like she’d let Nathan down by not having one with her, but she hadn’t expected to see him again until after the holidays and she had stopped carrying it around once she’d gotten home. There was not much point always having it on her when she couldn’t use it on random passersby in the street. “Do you have a spare?” ==== “I have some. I just don’t want make people panic by handing them out left and right.” Which was usually what he did, because you couldn’t be delicate about these things, but right now it just didn’t feel right. People were so scared, everyone moments from exploding in tears or anger or both. They didn’t need to worry about him ripping them apart too. “I don’t know for sure that it will happen,” he hurried to add. “But it might because it’s kind of... painful. To not know anything. And emotional pain sets me off faster than physical, so. Just to be safe? If that’s okay.” ==== Claudia nodded. She didn’t want Nathan’s powers to be set off but she liked the idea of having to be on alert, especially when not many people here were likely to have sedatives on them. It was a good distraction from worrying about Anthony constantly, something for her to focus on instead of coming up with countless scenarios of what could be happening to him, very few of them pleasant even as she tried to be positive. “Definitely okay,” she told him. “You can always trust me to be willing to stab you.” ==== “Like all good friends would.” It made him feel a little better, at least. There was enough to worry about already. Way too much, as a matter of fact. “I have them in my bag. I’ll grab one later.” If they were lucky he wouldn’t need it. If they were lucky everyone would come back alive. Everything would be fine. Okay. Something like that. “Come on,” he said finally. “Let’s get some tea or something. You look like you need it.” ==== |