[drug addiction and withdrawal, problematic use of mutant powers, mentions of pain, vomiting, war injuries, death, psychiatric care abuse, meds and drugs]
So, new story. I don't really know where I'm going with this. I want to write about John and Lorna pre-series, and possibly the others, but it's not going to be a long multi-chapter, as I don't think I can handle that. It will probably be a series of shorter fics, each for a moment or a scene.
The series should span the four or so years between 7/15 and the beginning of the series eventually, possibly further. Fics won't necessarily be in order. This universe ties up with my other fics (The World As We Know It, All We Stand To Lose and the Sense series) and will use the same general headcanons, though it shouldn't be necessary to read them to understand this one.
This particular chapter is the first of two or three, probably, to start it off. I don't actually know where I'm going, I'm not completely satisfied with this part, but I'll post it rather than changing my mind and scratching it entirely. Hopefully you'll like it anyway.
John weakly makes his way back from the bathroom and lets himself drop on the bed, now free of the chains. The bed creaks ominously, and John gets down on one knee to inspect the damage. It's ruined, the wood cracked and splintered along most of the length. It doesn't matter. He didn't intend on staying here much longer anyway, and this apartment was a ruin when he rented it.
He winces at the pull of his muscles, getting back on his feet. Spending a week chained to a bed didn't do wonders for his already abused body, and the excruciating muscle cramps that apparently come with acute withdrawal have taken their toll. He feels wrecked. This is the first day he can stand, let alone walk, since he started experiencing symptoms over ten days ago, and he still feels like he's been hit with the worst ever case of the flu. He hasn't managed to keep any food down in days, and he's still too queasy to even think of eating.
Evangeline is working at the desk, which she's declared hers since she basically moved in. John is torn about her: he's grateful she stayed this long, through him screaming her ears off and trying to attack her, through him throwing up on her shoes and passing out from the pain−because of course his body had to choose this moment for a migraine−but he can't help resenting her for making him go through that at all. The unrelenting craving for pills, that barely let him think about anything else, is not helping.
Giving up on the bed, he folds himself into the room's single armchair, where Evangeline has spent the past ten nights.
"When you found me in the fight club, you said you wanted me to help lead the Atlanta station," he says. "Does that mean you have someone else in mind?"
Evangeline looks up from her paperwork and evaluates his question for a moment.
"Have you heard of Lorna Dane?" she asks.
"Lorna? Yes, I remember her," John says. "You're thinking of her?"
"You've met before?"
"We were at the Institute together," John nods.
"Wait, the Institute? You were at Xavier's school?"
John frowns, surprised. "You didn't know? Why did you think the X-Men sent you to find me?"
Evangeline just shakes her head, taken aback. "I don't know. You're the one who were surprised when I told you they wanted you."
"I'm not who I was back then," John says darkly. "I refused to become part of their team and I enlisted instead. They have no reason to want me. I thought you knew."
"I wasn't−" Evangeline hesitates. "I was only Xavier's lawyer for a couple of years before they disappeared. I never really met the children from the school. I guess they didn't tell me as much as I thought."
John nods. "Anyway, why Lorna? She's younger than me, so I didn't know her well, but she didn't seem the type of person you'd want to lead a clandestine network back then."
"I don't know. Xavier just gave me a list of names and locations."
"And you knew so much about me because…"
"I did my homework," Evangeline answers. "It was all in your military records."
John scowls. "So the X-Men are in the wind and you're out there looking for mutants to help you build an underground network, but you don't even know who it is you're supposed to find? That doesn't sound like a great base to build on."
"It's all we have," Evangeline sighs.
"So where is Lorna now?"
"You're not going to like it."
John laughs, then coughs when it irritates his still sore throat. "Evangeline, you essentially just pulled me out of the gutter. Few of us are as well-adjusted as you, I'm aware of that."
"She's in a psychiatric hospital," Evangeline says. "I'm working on getting her out."
John chokes on her words. "How did she land herself there? She used to swear she'd never put a foot inside a hospital ever again."
"She was committed before?"
"Yeah. She had just got out of there when her...aunt or something brought her to the school. She was fourteen."
"I see. Well, she was arrested just before 7/15 during another protest. She already had a bipolar disorder diagnosis, so she ended up in the hospital rather than jail. She's lucky her trial was before the attacks, or she'd probably have disappeared in one of their mutant facilities."
"Well, I'm sure we'll make a great team," John deadpans. "How do you expect us to help anyone with that kind of baggage?"
"You know what it's like to need that kind of help. There are dozens of mutants out there watching their life pass them by, working menial jobs or addicted to Kicks already. Who can save them better than people who've been where they are?"
"Great," John mutters. "I'm sure we'll do a stellar job of it."
"John, you've lead men before, and you've done it well. I know you have it in you."
"Yeah, I led my entire unit into a trap. That's great leadership right there."
Evangeline looks at him sharply. "It wasn't your fault, John. You didn't kill them."
"And what would you know about that?"
"I've read your file, remember."
"You have no idea what it was like over there," John mutters angrily.
"No, I don't. But I know that the way things are going, it's not gonna be any better over here soon. There is going to be a war, John. We need fighters."
"It's funny, how things happen, don't you think? I get shipped out to fight for my country, I lose my brothers, I get hurt, and the moment I come home my own country turns against me?"
Evangeline sighs again.
"Look, the reason I told you about Lorna is because I'm worried. I'm going to have to go back to Philadelphia almost as soon as she gets out. She'll have to go off her treatment, and she's going to be unstable for a while. You're not out of the woods yourself. Do you think you can handle helping her through this?"
John shrugs. "If she's willing to work with me."
"She was about as enthusiastic as you when I talked to her, so you should hit off just fine."
"Right. When are we leaving?"
"If you have anything here you need to take care of, you should do it now. We're driving out to Atlanta in the morning."
Great. A nearly thirty-hour drive is just what John needs now. Especially stuck in a car with a woman he barely knows and whose shoes he's already puked on a couple of times.
"It's gonna be a long ride," he says.
"It's not like you can fly, you're a fugitive. And we have a few stops to make along the way. I want you to see the stations that are already helping mutants across the border."
"Come in," Lorna answers the knock on her room door, not bothering to turn from where she's standing by the tiny window.
"Someone's here to see you," the nurse−Kelly, the only one Lorna even bothers to talk to−announces, opening the door wide.
"We're here to get you out," says a second voice. The lawyer. Evangeline Whedon.
"Just like that?" Lorna asks, squinting at the parking lot below, trying to make out which doctor is getting into his car.
"You should only have to sign a couple of papers."
Lorna turns around. "They told me I was getting out today. I didn't know you'd come to get me."
"I told you I'd take care of everything," Evangeline says, walking into the room, handing her a file. "And that there were conditions."
Lorna skims over the first page−discharge papers−and flings her hand to bring Evangeline's metal pen to her. She signs her name at the bottom absently.
"Help you with your project, I know," she answers.
She looks up from the papers and goes to hand the file back, but she stops sort. Standing a few paces behind Evangeline, leaning on the doorway, is a man with long hair almost covering his face.
He looks up at her and Lorna freezes. His face rings a bell, though he's changed. A lot. And he's about the last person she expected to see today.
"John Proudstar," she says, blinking at him.
"Lorna," he answers with a nod.
"What on earth are you doing here?"
"It's a bit of a long story," John says.
"And not something we can talk about here," Evangeline adds, taking the file and the pen back from her. "Car's out front."
Lorna nods and gathers her meager belongings. It's basically just the clothes she walked in here with, and a couple of notebooks her therapist had her use to write her thoughts. And her birth father's medallion, safe in her back pocket.
Walking out of the hospital, after nearly a year inside, is not as climatic as she'd have thought. She's dreamed about this moment many times, but it never included a strange lawyer, a man from her past she hasn't seen in years, and no money or clothes, nowhere to go. More to the point, her dreams of the future never included anything beyond walking through that door.
And now it feels overwhelming, all these things she has to figure out.
Lorna takes a shaky breath, struggling to stay in the moment.
"You look awful," she tells John, because he does. He has dark circles under his eyes so deep his face looks sunk in, and his long hair is greasy and tangled. The last time Lorna saw him, he'd shaved all his hair upon enlisting and stood sharp in his brand new uniform. What the hell happened to him since then?
"So do you," John answers, and Lorna knows it's true. She's lost so much weight in eight months in this place that she can barely stand to look at herself in the mirror, gaunt and white as a ghost.
"Can you handle things for a minute?" Evangeline asks John. "I need to go file this paperwork. Car's open."
"Sure," John shrugs. "Not like we're going anywhere without you."
Lorna looks down, spotting the car keys in Evangeline's grasp that she doesn't hand over, and the slight tremor of John's hands. She wonders if John is as much a prisoner, a lost soul in this as she is.
She'll never admit it, but he used to be one of the older kids she looked up to, at the Institute. He was loved by all, always ready to help and take care of the younger children, promised to a brilliant future with the X-Men. She still doesn't know what made him enlist instead, but she imagined him sometimes, during her last years at the school, a decorated officer receiving his superiors' praise.
An adult, disheveled John, looking for all the world like a junkie, never featured in her daydreams. During the little TV time she was allowed, she heard that all the mutants in the military had been discharged and most of them arrested after 7/15, but by then she'd mostly forgotten about anything else than herself and the drugs they had her on to control her, so she never truly connected it to the one Marine mutant she once knew.
"Get in," John tells her, nodding to the passenger seat. "You get to see the sights, this once."
Lorna watches him for a little longer, then she opens the door.
"That's Whedon's car?" she asks with a frown of disgust. The outside, a dusty old Ford, surprised her, but the inside is worse. There are take-out wrappers lying around discarded, and a bunch of blankets rolled up on the back seat, like someone's been living in there.
"It's mine," John growls. "And we just drove here from Tucson, okay?"
Lorna shrugs. "Whatever. How long are we supposed to wait here?"
"However long it takes Evangeline to get back," John says, folding himself into the back seat, pushing the mess away. "You do know she's doing this for you, right?"
"She's not doing it for me. She's doing it for her cause."
"You really think her cause needs people like us? No. The Professor is behind this, even if he's gone. And you know how he was with second chances."
"People like us?" Lorna echoes, turning to look at him. "And what do you think we have in common?"
Her tone is purposefully biting, haughty, but John doesn't even flinch.
"We're both broken," he shrugs. He looks impressively cheerful saying that.
Lorna freezes for an instant, then takes a breath. "Don't," she murmurs.
With a flick of her hand, she uses the metal buckle of John's seat-belt to pin his to the seat.
"That supposed to scare me?" John asks sarcastically.
Lorna releases the buckle, making the seat-belt withdraw back brutally and slam on the door. John winces at the noise. Lorna looks for something else to use, regretting the knives she used to carry with her everywhere, and she finds metal where she didn't expect it. She pulls experimentally.
"What about that?" she asks.
John freezes, a strangled sound escaping his lips. Even as she releases her hold on the metal pieces embedded in his back, he doesn't move. Lorna is not cruel enough to do any real damage without being provoked, if she even could given how solid his flesh feels, but there's real fear in his eyes.
"Don't ever do that again," he mutters, far less intimidating than he probably wants to be. There's too much pain in his voice for the threat to be effective. He gingerly shift in his seat, one hand going to his thigh as if to make sure it's still there.
"Okay, whatever," Lorna raises her hands, trying to pretend it doesn't affect her. "I wasn't gonna hurt you."
"Right," John says.
Lorna looks away, sitting back to get him out of her sight.
The strength of her reaction surprises her. John's right, of course, she's all kinds of messed-up and broken and crazy. It's not like she hasn't heard that all her life.
Except the way he said it is not like any of the asshole kids who bullied her at school. It's not like the psychiatrists' patronizing platitudes. It's deeper. It's real, from someone who knows what he's talking about.
And when did John goddamn Proudstar earn the right to know this about her?
Neither of them speak a word until Evangeline comes back to the car. She throws them both a look, as if she knows what transpired and she's not going to be patient with them, but John and Lorna ignore her. Lorna keeps watching John in the wing mirror until Evangeline starts the car.
Please tell me what you think! Do you want to read more of this fic? Of this series?
I'll probably also take prompts for further fics, so if there's a particular scene you want to read about, feel free to drop it in the comments.
I don't know when I'll post the next part of this, since I only have snippets written so far. But sometime soon.