The X-Project

Nathan, still faithfully manning the coms, abruptly finds himself with small, red-haired, distraught company. He's not all that reassuring, but can't be, having been in Scott's current position himself in the past. Terry, thankfully, isn't there for platitudes.


Terry tore downstairs, not quite running flat out but close. Four days, it had been four days and no one knew anything. No one was even close. She burst into the communications center, her face flushed and stained with tears. "Why haven't you found him yet? It's not fair!"

Nathan managed not to quite jump out of his skin, although Terry had startled him badly enough to set his heart racing. This lack of telepathy was going to be the death of him yet. He looked up at her, blinking, then pulled off the headset and gestured to the chair beside his.

"Sit down." It wasn't an invitation.

She flung herself into the chair impatiently and frowned at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. "Why doesn't anyone know where he is? What's going on? No one will tell me anything."

"Everyone is doing everything that they can," Nathan said, calmly but not quite gently. The underlying tone was definitely 'calm down and start acting like an X-trainee'. "Terry, keep in mind that he could be literally anywhere. And that's if they didn't take him out of the country." Out of the country might account for how much trouble Charles was having finding him.

She'd tried acting like a trainee. Had tried for days and days and it got her nowhere. She had no answers and no clue and everyone kept putting her off with soft assurances that Scott would be found and all would be well and she was ready to scream. "It's not enough," she insisted.

"No, it's not." Nathan's voice was cool, candid. Clearly she wasn't in the mood for platitudes. "Because the longer this takes, the more likely it is that they'll get what they want and kill him."

Terry flinched and bit her lip. "What happens until then?" she asked quietly, sensing that Nathan would tell her honestly, not avoid the subject like everyone else. Even Bobby wouldn't talk to her straight about it. But this was Scott, her friend and mentor and...she wanted to help and if she couldn't, at least wanted to know.

Nathan raised an eyebrow and then leaned back in his chair, shifting his arm in its sling to buy himself a moment before he had to answer. "They're ex-military," he said quietly, finally. "Stryker's people." She was a full trainee, she had access to all the files. He wasn't telling her anything she shouldn't know. "So they'll be competent at this. They may even have a proper interrogation specialist."

Many and varied though her texts were, interrogation techniques had never been covered. She knew the euphemism though. Torture. Terry swallowed hard and closed her eyes. "What does that mean?" she asked anyway, needing to hear it.

"In this case, they haven't had as much time as they'd need to break him down properly," Nathan said, almost impassively. His eyes went back to the console in front of him, however. "That usually takes weeks. They can't count on that, either. Not with Charles looking for him with Cerebro. So they'd have to do it fast, put as much pressure on him as they can."

"He's not going to give in easily." It wasn't simply a wishful statement, in fact it was accompanied by no small amount of fear. "No matter what they do. What if they just get fed up with trying? How long will that take?"

Nathan closed his eyes for a moment. "It's not a question of not wanting to give in," he said quietly. "Or of being stubborn. It happens, in the end. Almost inevitably. Trust me, I speak from personal experience." He opened his eyes again and looked at Terry, his expression grave and tired. "And I don't think they'll get fed up with trying. Every day that they have is one day closer to the point at which everyone breaks."

She really didn't understand, he thought suddenly. "It's not like the movies," he said more softly. "You don't get the noble hero gritting his teeth and enduring until he can get the drop on his torturers."

Terry swallowed hard, curling up in her chair, wrapping her arms around her legs, suddenly cold. Her panic had settled into a leaden feeling in her stomach, preventing her from taking full breaths, like suffocating slowly. "They could break him even if we do get to him in time, you mean."

"Scott is tough," Nathan said after a moment, as if conceding something. "If they stuck just to physical methods... I don't think it would work this fast. Think of how he lost his eye, Terry. He's used to pain." He set the headset aside gently - none of the other teams were due to report in just yet. "And they don't have Alex. Which is very, very good. It's damned near impossible to handle, when someone you love's being tortured in front of you. GW and Dom and I found that out in North Korea, once upon a time." That didn't mean that there weren't psychological methods they could and probably would use, but at least they wouldn't have the one that Nathan, when he thought about it objectively, thought was probably most likely to break someone like Scott.

"They let Alex go." Terry frowned, realizing that and recognizing his point. "Why would they do that?"

"We won't know that until we find them and figure out what precisely they want from Scott. As for why they let Alex go... could be a range of things. First and foremost, Scott's dangerous, and if letting Alex go meant he came willingly, they might have seen it as worth it. Secondly, Alex himself is dangerous, and his powers are a lot harder to control than Scott's. You can just slap a ruby-quartz visor on Scott, after all."

His eyes softened as he properly absorbed her obvious distress, however. He was a little slow about these things, without the telepathy. "Look. I'm still here, Terry. And I've been through this sort of thing, more than once. Scott is... quite possibly more stubborn than I am. Which is saying a lot."

That made sense. Alex didn't have his suit when he arrived, that meant that he had no way to regulate his powers. But they hadn't hurt him when they could have so maybe. Maybe she was building up false hopes. "You don't have to lie to me, Nathan. I can handle the truth."

Nathan tilted his head at her. "I'm not lying to you," he said with a sigh. "It's possible to live through this sort of thing. To heal... takes a while, and you're never quite the same afterwards, but it can be done." He gave her a brief, sad smile. "The key is to find him. That's why the team's working so hard, and why Charles hasn't been out of Cerebro for more than a couple of hours at a time since Scott disappeared."

Terry took a deep, shaky breath. "I don't know what I'd do if he didn't come back," she admitted quietly. "First it was Dr. Grey and then my uncle and now Mr. Summers and...it's too much. We have to find him." It was selfish, put that way; Terry knew that.

"He's really important to you, isn't he?" Nathan asked, watching her. He'd noticed things, over the last couple of years. "You've known him for a long time."

Terry nodded, not looking at him. "When I was sent here..." her voice was thick, choked up with unshed tears, "I hated everyone. This wasn't home and they weren't my family. Mr. Summers...he took me out for a drive, after I'd been here for six months or so. I don't know. It just...I could tell he cared even though he didn't really...he wasn't good with kids. Then they went out for a mission and they didn't come back for days and days and I thought...he's gone. And he was never coming back and..." She had to stop, burying her head in her arms, clutching at her knees.

"Hey." Nathan reached out with his good hand, laying it over one of hers. "I'm sorry," he said more softly. "I know the uncertainty's hard. I wish there was something I could tell you to make it easier, to reassure you that he was going to be okay..."

She shook her head without lifting it. "Nothing makes it better. He's not here and it's not going to be okay until he is!"

Nathan looked at her for a long moment, then leaned back in his chair, his expression turning speculative. "Do you want to know some of what you should expect, when he is?" he asked quietly. When, not if. Maybe that would help, if he talked like that. "Would it help? To know a little bit about how you should probably act around him, at least at first?"

Terry sniffled and looked up, trying to stifle further sobs. She nodded mutely, her face miserable and blotchy. She scrubbed her eyes with her sleep, waiting for him to tell her. Because somehow, if she knew how to act when he came back, then he would be coming back. It was a bit of magical thinking but she was Irish enough to believe in magical thinking.

"Don't be nervous around him, but don't pretend like nothing's happened. Watch him, if you're with him," Nathan said steadily. "Tailor your reactions to his. If he's trying to keep his distance, keep yours. If he's acting like he might be okay with physical contact, try it - slowly. Talk to him about everyday things. Or nothing at all." Nathan's eyes went distant for a moment, thinking about Mina coming into his room every morning for two months after North Korea, with the crossword.

The small redhead listened intently, like every word was going to make the difference in Scott's recovery. "What if he doesn't want to see me?" she whimpered, sniffling a bit.

"It depends. If he's actively shouting at you to get out, leave." He doubted Scott would go that far with Terry. Other people, possibly, but not one of his favorites among the kids. "If he doesn't seem to know that you're there... I'd say stay."

Terry nodded, biting her lip, her face pale. "Will he...he'll get better right? If we get him back, he won't be plagued by this forever?" She was thinking now of Bobby. Of the sometime inexplicable ways that he'd seize up and shut down, blocking himself off from her.

Nathan looked right at her. "Everyone's different," he said softly. "After things like this happen. You don't ever shake it, not completely. But there are varying degrees of learning to live with it. You change, when you go through something like this. There's no going back."

That wasn't what she'd been hoping to hear but she was grateful for the truth anyway. She sighed and shook her head solemnly, "Thank you, Nathan. Do you...do you want any help down here?"

"I wouldn't mind the company," Nathan said. He suspected she wouldn't, either.

Silently, Terry shifted positions, turning the chair to the comm. console and picking up one of the headsets. "When is the next check in?"

"Half an hour, forty-five minutes." Nathan put on his own headset again, a bit clumsily with one hand.

Terry nodded and settled in, thankful she had something to do, even if it wasn't much.

---


Elsewhere, a moment of reciprocity. Terry was thinking about Scott, and he's thinking about her.


We were ready to help you, Mr. Summers, but you're making it impossible for us...

They were gone again. They'd put him back, not in the cramped, grate-covered space - he thought he would have told them everything, begged them to listen, if they had - but in the familiar cold concrete emptiness. He'd found the wall again, once he could move, and had managed to pull himself up into what was almost a sitting position. Better than the floor. Easier to breathe.

At least it was cold enough in here that he didn't hurt as much. Just ached. He swallowed, and it hurt: he'd been screaming again. Safer to do that, because then you couldn't answer questions. Although he'd told them something, at some point. Must have. Because they knew he was remembering.

A bald head... glasses, and a reedy voice that hadn't been Stryker's... no. Something close to a whimper escaped Scott and his head sagged forward. He wished he could see. He was almost ready to tell them, if they'd just take him out of the dark...

There was a short high-pitched giggle and the quick scuffing of feet over the floor, light treads but short strides. A child's voice asked in a stage whisper, "Mr Summers? Are yeh all right?" The darkness parted to admit a small, wiry frame dressed in grey leathers. Hair like flame was tamed into two braids than fell over her shoulders nearly to her waist and she sported a familiar and mischievous expression as she crouched in front of him. "Mr Summers?" Her voice lilted, almost a song.

There was something very wrong, that she was here. Very, very wrong. "Terry." His voice was ragged and rusty, remote-sounding to his own ears. "Terry, no... you can't be here. It's not safe. They'll find you."

"Shh," she admonished with another little giggle, "They'll hear yeh and sure we'll both be in trouble then." She rested her arms on his knees, looking up at him. "Are yeh all right?" she asked again, persistent.

"I'm-" Not fine. Scott's head sagged back against the wall. "No," he finally said, almost forlornly. He was supposed to reassure her, but he couldn't. "I'm in trouble... I don't know what to do..." His voice was soft, too slurred.

"Tis a fine fix yeh've gotten into, Mr. Summers, true enough." She stood again, tossing her braids over her shoulder, her child's face solemn with blue eyes too old for her. "There's those out there looking for yeh, spending every waking hour. Can yeh wait for them?"

Wait? He wasn't going anywhere... was he? "I... I want to." Hold on until they came for him. Because they would, wouldn't he? Charles would find him. And Jean wouldn't let anyone keep him away from her. He'd come for her. She'd come for him. Wouldn't she?

They wouldn't leave him here. Not really.

They wouldn't.

Small hands reached out and touched his face, softly, lightly, tracing over his features as she often did when she needed reassuring. It made her feel like he was permanent, she'd said. Like he wouldn't go away. "Yeh'll be all right, Mr Summers. It's not forever, this wait. Just be patient."