hunter "great social skills" mackenna. (detections) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-04 21:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, ! plot: kidnapping, carter gray, daisy hughes, hunter mackenna |
WHO: Daisy Hughes, Hunter MacKenna, and a hovering Carter Gray.
WHERE: Medical intake room in the Canadian IVF Safehouse.
WHEN: After the rescue.
WHAT: Friends reunion.
STATUS: Complete.
DAISY: The first thing Daisy had done upon arrival was shower. Even though the IVF officials were clearly anxious to get speak to her about the experience, even though the doctors were clamoring to get a look at her, no one had argued when she'd requested the shower. Daisy supposed she must have looked pretty bad. Or smelled it, at least. They even brought her things to her -- Daisy never thought she'd be so happy to see her own bag of toiletries. Her own razor and body wash and shampoo. For the first time in over a week and a half, she was able to wear her own clothes again. It made her feel human. She hadn't realized that she'd stopped. And now she was clean, still isolated in the confines of the intake room, but Carter was there and so Daisy was reminded that she was okay. She was safe. She worried about Jack and Kieran and Damien, but the doctors insisted that the boys were okay, that there was nothing she could do for them right now. When they'd asked if she wanted to allow any other visitors, Daisy could only nod. She did want to see them, more than anything -- but she felt anxious, too. What was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to apologize to Jodi or Lottie, to explain why she came back when others did not? Daisy fretted, turning the questions over and over again in her mind. She gripped Carter's hand and closed her eyes, focusing instead on the fact that he was here with her. HUNTER: Not having a radio in hand for the duration of the rescue had been torture for Hunter. He'd done everything that he could do, everything he possibly could to help -- he'd been fucking necessary even, so it wasn't even a negligible contribution -- and then from that point on, his hands were utterly tied. There was nothing left for him to do but wait, ill-tempered in his barely-suppressed terror, grinding his teeth as he tried not to conjure up all the hundreds of ways this rescue could go wrong in the silence of not knowing what was happening. But the rescue was finally over. Everyone was alive. Vic was alive -- he'd checked on that himself -- and Daisy was safe, whole, apparently in one piece. All he wanted was to see her for himself, reconcile this information in his mind with the reality of it. And then -- only then -- he could sleep. He'd run himself ragged waiting for the possibility of getting to experience this moment, and the clock was still ticking as he paced the hallways outside the medical intake rooms. He knew Carter was in there with her. Carter deserved it, belonged in there, he couldn't resent Carter for that -- and he understood that Daisy needed him the most right now. She'd call for him when she was ready. When she finally did, it took every ounce of self-control that he currently possessed to walk, not run, into the small room. Hunter didn't know what exactly he had expected, but nothing could really have prepared him for this thin, pale, hollow-eyed Daisy. His breath caught in his chest and his lower lip between his teeth, yet he didn't hesitate to cross the room to where she sat leaning against Carter. She was a shade of herself from before break, but she was still fucking Daisy, blonde and small and pretty and ostensibly unhurt, though he wasn't going to be satisfied until he'd checked her over for himself. He knelt in front of the couple, slid his hand around hers, pulled off his smudged glasses, and smiled tiredly up at her, suddenly feeling as though the weight had finally lifted from his shoulders. "Hey Dais," his voice rough as sandpaper but clear, "I got your message." DAISY: It took her a moment to adjust to the sight of him, and Daisy could feel her heartbeat speed up as Hunter stepped toward her. He was real, not just a voice in her head -- she'd already been assured that he was fine, that he wasn't dead, that he hadn't been locked up in a room similar to hers. But it wasn't until his hand touched her own that Daisy could finally accept that he was real. That she had him back. She threw herself at him then, arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders with more force than Daisy realized she still had left. Her senses were overwhelmed. All of this was familiar, all at once -- the way Hunter felt, the way his shirt smelled. It was so much better than the memories she'd tried to cling to. It was different, somehow, than her reunion with Carter had been. Where she'd found herself hoping that her boyfriend would never relinquish his protective hold, Daisy now felt like she was the one who couldn't let go. She knew that she was supposed to say something meaningful. But after almost ten days of silence, Daisy found herself fumbling for the right words. The sides of their heads were pressed together as she hung on tightly. "Hi," was all she managed. HUNTER: She felt lighter than he remembered. His arms went around her without needing to think about it, enveloping her with his warmth and strength and yeah, how he smelled too. She was clean, the hair against his face that same familiar scent as before, and for the first time he was conscious of the fact that he'd barely showered in the past couple days and if either of them smelled like they'd been locked up in a dank basement for over a week, it was him, not Daisy. He breathed her in deeply, too tired to bother feeling self-conscious about it, too focused on the sensation of having her back. Hunter hadn't seen her in weeks, not in person. He hadn't hugged her since before break, he hadn't gotten the chance to kiss her cheek and mess up her perfectly wavy hair in so long, and the wall of control inside of him threatened to give way under the sheer force of how grateful he was to be with her again. He closed his eyes and struggled to keep it together. The last thing she needed was him falling apart, though he suspected it would make her feel better in some ridiculous way to be able to comfort him rather than focus on herself -- no, she was the one who deserved the attention and the care right now. And he wasn't about to let Carter see him cry. Not even now, not even from relief and happiness and exhaustion all piled on top of both of them. He stroked his fingers slowly down the back of her head, through the strands of her hair, and hugged her more securely. Honestly, he wasn't sure at what point Daisy had turned into something like family. He didn't know when the bickering had stopped being an annoyance and started to feel like another form of communication, similar but not quite the same to the way he and Vic teased each other, similar but not quite the same to the way he and Elsa flirted. She was the closest thing he'd ever had to a sister, he'd come to realize that of late -- but he'd never had to think about what might happen if she'd died until this. The kind of hole it would tear in him. For all that Hunter loved words, he was no great master of eloquence himself. Hi was enough for him. And everything that he could think of to say in return sounded pathetically inadequate. "You did good," he mumbled back at last, squeezing her. CARTER: Considering Carter's hate for showcasing his emotions, it was no surprise that he felt equally uncomfortable in the presence of others doing the same. But although he did not know what to do with himself here, in this tiny room with Hunter and Daisy, he also could not bring himself to leave his girlfriend (because she was that, there was no denying it now). Not so soon, not yet. After all, he'd only just gotten her back. And so he stood, stiff and awkward, arms folded across his chest and back stick-straight. His eyes studied every crevice, every nook and cranny of the room, from the grid of floor tiles to the textured concrete of the ceiling. The only place Carter did not look was right in front of him; the uncomfortably intimate reunion was too much for him to handle. DAISY: If it hadn't been for Carter's presence, Daisy might really not have released Hunter from her grip -- or at the very least, it would have taken her much longer to let go. But some kind of social etiquette nagged at the back of her mind, reminding Daisy to act normal and show them that you're fine. She let go and pulled back. Daisy looked at Hunter's face -- she could see the red creases on his nose where the glasses had sat, and they matched the tired redness in his eyes -- and she smiled. No, it was more than a smile. Daisy grinned. She knew that she didn't have any right to feel this way. Alyosha, Mal, Erik, Marine -- they were all dead. Dead. She didn't feel like she should be allowed this happiness, but Daisy couldn't fight it off. She felt giddy, almost high, to be back in a room with both Hunter and Carter, and to know that Jodi was just outside. She could feel guilty for her happiness later, but right now, Daisy didn't have the strength to fight it off. There were tears in her eyes, but they were happy tears. She wiped them away, almost wanting to laugh at the absurdity of their situation. Daisy glanced at Carter (reaffirming for herself that he was still there) before looking back at Hunter. "I thought y'all might be gone. Like, I didn't know who else was taken, or like, anything, and they took Astrid and Vanessa and they never came back, and it was just so easy to imagine -- I just kept thinking that I'd never see anyone ever again." Her smile faded while she spoke, the rambling words spilling out to fill the empty space between them. She wasn't sobbing -- the emotions were being held back enough to prevent that, but Daisy couldn't prevent a few more tears from falling. She wiped them from her face. HUNTER: It was hard to ignore Carter standing in the corner like some strange sentinel, but Hunter did his best. He caught Daisy's face in his hand when she pulled back and brushed at her tears with his thumbs, still smiling slightly. "Astrid and Vanessa are safe, you know that now, right? And we're all..." Well. "The rest of us are okay. I'm fine. You're seeing me again." He wanted to say that he'd worried too, that he hadn't been sure if he'd ever see her again either, but he didn't want her to think that he had doubts about rescuing her. Nor did he want her to feel bad that he'd worried about her so much. Maybe soon everyone he cared about would be reunited -- at IVI, but he didn't even care at the moment what going back behind the forcefield would mean as long as he could have Vic, Daisy, and Elsa all out of harm's way and safe again. Quite frankly, Hunter didn't care about the social etiquette, acting normal -- he was so sick of acting normal in front of other people, putting up a front. But if Daisy didn't want to seem like she needed to cling to Hunter, then he wouldn't reach for her shoulders again and hug her up against his chest. Even if he needed that. "Seriously, though," he grinned as he reached to stroke back her hair again, "I mean it. That bank job? Using my code? I swear to god, Daisy." Hunter laughed, pulled her close to kiss her forehead hard. "Gonna make a real bankrobber out of you yet." DAISY: Daisy fought back a smile, although one emerged anyway. She didn't feel proud or good about what she'd done in that whitewashed room with the computer, but it was rare to hear Hunter use such words of pride. It meant something to her, and it meant even more that he'd found what she'd left for him. She'd tried to believe that he would, but... "I'm glad you found it," she said. Glad was beyond an understatement. But Hunter's comment raised a new question in Daisy's mind, one she hadn't considered before. "Do people know that it was me? Am I -- am I in trouble?" Up until now, being arrested for a bank hacking job was the least of Daisy's worries. But now that she was safe, only just back with with the people she trusted, Daisy wondered if she would have to face further consequences for what she'd done. CARTER: At that, Carter's head lifted, his jaw set, expression almost angry. "No," he muttered gruffly, looking between Daisy and Hunter. "No, you're not in any goddamn trouble." He pushed himself off the bed against which he leaned, taking two steps until he was in front of them both. His hand twitched at his side, almost reaching up to finger Daisy's hair, but faltering at the last second -- Hunter was here. The initial rush of euphoria Carter had felt upon seeing her outside the warehouse had now eased back into his usual discomfort at public (even if that public was just that asshole in front of them) displays of affection. "You're not in any goddamn trouble," he repeated, thrusting his hands back into his pockets. HUNTER: Impossible to ignore Carter when he was interjecting and jumping up to move in on them. Hunter's head jerked up to look at him. There were warring impulses in Hunter as well -- he wanted to pull Daisy closer, protectively, because this was his moment with her and he didn't need her fucking boyfriend breathing down their necks, and then a part of him felt suddenly awkward and terribly sad. He didn't belong neatly in Daisy's life. Carter wanted to comfort her, and no doubt that was what Daisy wanted as well, because she loved this man for some reason and he needed to trust that. He was too exhausted to hide the tug-of-war in his eyes as he stared at Carter, but he took a deep breath instead of giving into either of those overwhelming urges and focused on Daisy once more. "What he said," he quietly reassured. "Everyone knows you were kidnapped and forced into it, Daisy -- there's video evidence of it, even. No one can play it off like you're responsible. It's not your fault." Hunter let go of her after a moment, but his hands slid down her sides instead to catch her fingers in his own. If Carter wanted to take her back, well, it wouldn't be too difficult, any time. He just had to brace himself to leave her before that could happen. "They didn't hurt you, did they?" His jaw tightened as he asked. DAISY: Her fingers tightened around Hunter's. Video evidence -- Daisy wasn't entirely sure of what that meant, although she could guess. She'd felt the other machines there, in the room... it made sense that some of them were cameras. She didn't want to ask if the entire world had seen what she'd looked like, if everyone had been allowed to share in the worn-down reflection Daisy had seen in the mirror. And so she just decided to trust them -- Hunter and Carter, the two people she trusted most when it came to her own protection. They'd both sworn to be there for her, and looking at them now, Daisy was finally sure that they meant it. "I mean..." she considered the question. Had they hurt her? Daisy certainly felt hurt; every inch of her was aching, miserable. But she also knew that Hunter's mind was undoubtedly filtering through all of the terrible possibilities. That he'd likely been imagining the worst, every day since she'd been gone. "No. No, they mostly just left us alone. We were all together. But the others..." Daisy found that she could no longer look at Hunter. She directed her gaze down to the hands she held in her own. "I don't understand why it happened to them, and not to me." It was a soft admission, difficult to voice. Why were others injected, killed, made sick, separated from their powers -- but not her? Had she been next in line? Daisy didn't understand, and she felt fairly confident that she hadn't deserved the luck, if luck was what it was. HUNTER: He'd heard about the state they'd found the others in, how they probably were still struggling to recover. It mattered to him quite a bit less than Daisy being alright, as long as whatever the other hostages had wasn't contagious, but clearly it mattered to Daisy. He could hear the survivor's guilt thick in her voice, and his hands squeezed hers more tightly, automatically, without even thinking. She wasn't hurt physically but she was going to be carrying these emotional scars around forever. It was worse, in some ways, to feel utterly destroyed without a single mark on the surface as evidence. Hunter knew that. He wanted to tell her that she wasn't ruined for it, that nothing would tear into her again, that the boys who loved her would protect her from everything ever again. Fear, pain, shame, guilt -- they would hold her through it. But he couldn't promise that. Boys were always so arrogant. Hadn't most of them promised nothing would happen to her in the first place? He'd never been so optimistic as to think Daisy couldn't possibly get kidnapped, but he'd promised her something that had to be worse: courage. If that had failed her, then he'd let her down in a greater way than anyone who had promised to keep her safe. "You were worth too much to them," Hunter said at last. "Out of all their powers, yours -- obviously -- you weren't dangerous to them and they could have kept on using you." He suspected, if they'd held onto her, somewhere down the line they would have tried to bring her over to their side, even. Coax her into grateful compliance. If they could work with one Vol, they could work with two. "It wasn't anything you did or didn't do, or anything they deserved. It's just logical. They tested whatever the hell their experimental treatment is on the boys because they weren't good for much else." DAISY: A shadow crossed over Daisy's face and she looked up, poised to argue with him -- it wasn't that Hunter wasn't right, logically, but Daisy felt the instant need to come to the defense of the boys she'd spent so much time with. They were good for plenty, she wanted to say. Without them, Daisy knew that she would have given up completely, long before the rescue came. But that wasn't what Hunter meant and so she swallowed the protest, opting instead to make sure that he knew just how valuable the others had been. "It's not -- it ain't fair," Daisy breathed out the words. Her already-reddened eyes were starting to cloud over again. She hated that she couldn't seem to stop the tears once they'd started. "I need them to be okay. When they came to take Astrid and Vanessa, Kieran tried to fight them and they like, they... they used their taser thing on him. And when they took all of them and it was just me left there..." Daisy felt a chill come over her as she remembered the night she'd spent alone. She looked back into Hunter's eyes, desperate for some kind of assurance. "They have to be okay." Because other people weren't okay. Mal. Alyosha. Erik. Marine. Myra. Providence. The names were all still too painful for Daisy to say out loud. HUNTER: She needed rest. She needed sleep, real, uninterrupted sleep somewhere safe in Carter's arms where she didn't wake up every half-hour convinced that someone she loved was going to be dragged off. He could tell she was on the verge of hysteria, and seeing her like that only made him feel closer to the edge himself, lacking the strength and energy to withstand the tide of her emotions pulling air from the room. Getting his smile back was such a struggle. "They have the best care they can get here." It wasn't a promise. He wasn't going to make those again, goddammit. "And they're pretty goddamn strong or they wouldn't have made it through all of this already." So was she. "You should lie down," he said after a beat, glancing at Carter again. "Rest for a while. Close your eyes. I bet by the time they get us out of here and back to the school, they'll be showing signs of improvement. All they need is proper medical treatment." He wondered how long it had taken the others to die -- the ones who they'd poisoned with the same stuff that ran through the boys' veins, Mette's veins. He hoped it had been easy, but for the sake of the ones who had survived, not quick. "Carter will be here, obviously. And I'll be nearby. If you need me, if you need anything..." DAISY: Hearing Hunter's words -- just hearing his voice -- helped more than Daisy could explain. One day, far in their future, Daisy would remember to look back and tell him just how much she'd needed him on this day. But for now, she could only nod. He was right. She was tired, although there was still adrenaline pumping through her veins. There were still people (Jodi, at the top of the list) who Daisy needed to see. And Hunter needed rest too, that much was obvious. She would do what he asked, Daisy knew, if only so that he could finally let himself relax. She'd listened to him, even when he wasn't there. Likely, Daisy would always do as Hunter asked, for the rest of their lives. She removed a hand from his so that she could wipe her own face, trying to gain back an ounce of composure. The other hand she held tightly. Daisy didn't want him to pull away. Not yet. "Okay," she assented. Daisy also looked up at Carter and found a small smile for him before turning back to Hunter. "Thank you." Daisy leaned forward in her seat to close the space between them once more. It was her turn to kiss him now, and she left it on his cheek before wrapping him in her arms. She felt a slight buzz in her head when she did -- later, she would realize that it meant that Hunter had allowed the IVF to put a chip in his head, but for now she shook it away and held him close. It felt even better than all of the hugs she'd imagined, all of the ones she'd visualized in the darkness. "I love you," she said, the words almost a whisper in his ear. HUNTER: He closed his eyes with her arms around him again. It was really over. They'd rescued Daisy, they'd rescued all of the kidnapped Vols, the field operations were over, he could close his computer and go back to the school and sleep the entire flight back to Australia. No one else would die because of this terrorist kidnapping. Everyone was finally safe. He was going to break down eventually, sob his relief into something that would muffle the sound and help him pull it together as quickly as possible. Vic's shoulder, if he could manage it. It was very nearly Daisy's, but he was holding it in, keeping it together -- her words almost undid him, but he pushed the urge deep within himself again, for later. Not with Carter there, not when she needed him, again and again he had to keep telling himself not now. But soon. "Love you too," he murmured back, quietly enough that he hoped Carter couldn't hear. "Go to sleep. I'll see you when you wake up and you can tell me everything." Letting her go slowly, he stepped back and threw Carter an unmistakably serious look -- take care of her, not that Carter needed the warning -- before he turned to leave. His hand slid into his pocket and pulled out his IVI phone, just enough so that she could see the screen as he opened the door. In case she needed him, she knew how to find him. |