John dozes through most of the trip back, half-lying in the front seat of Lorna's car. Clarice sits behind him, gently stroking his face.
After the argument with his family that John only heard partially, Andy rides back with them. Lorna is the one driving, and the atmosphere is nothing if not tense, but it doesn't matter to John anymore. He's too tired to care.
Lorna pulls up right in front of their building. While Marcos and Clarice get out of the back or the car, she leans over and pulls John into a quick, gentle hug, careful of his injuries.
"Take care of yourself," she murmurs.
John meets her eyes, briefly, and she turns away. Unable to think of an answer, he painfully pulls himself out of the car, leaning on Marcos. They all stare, unmoving, as Lorna and Andy drive off, each at the wheel of one of the cars.
It tastes like another failure.
John tries to lean on Clarice and Marcos as little as possible on the way up to the apartment, but his legs simply won't carry him properly anymore. The migraine he felt starting hours ago is slowly getting worse, and John knows it's going to be a bad one. Possibly one of his worst.
Marcos half-guides half-carries him to the bedroom, while Clarice scrambles to pull back the blankets. John drops onto the bed. He tries to unlace his boots, but the pain of bending down and his lack of coordination defeat him. Clarice does it for him, gently and sweetly, her eyes barely leaving his face like she's afraid he'll disappear again.
John badly needs a shower, to get the grime and blood and the goddamn smell of that place off him, but it's going to have to wait. There's no way he could stand in the shower right now. He lets Clarice help him lie down and pull the covers back over his legs.
"You okay like this?" she asks.
John nods. Despite how much he's hurting all over, the soft mattress is the most wonderful trade from the wooden pole digging into his back and the chains. And the collar. John can still feel the phantom sensation of it, trying not to move his head so it doesn't cut his breathing.
He's free, and it's the most incredible thing.
Clarice steps out for a moment, John isn't sure how long. Time is weirdly distorted right now. It feels like both a lifetime and just a few moments since he was last here, arguing with Clarice because that's the only thing they've done lately.
There, another thing he has to apologize for. Later, when each word doesn't feel like it's ripping apart his throat, when he can do it properly. What he said deserves him getting on his knees before her. At least.
He feels a sudden weight on the bed, and turns his head to find Zingo jumping onto his side of the bed−for some reason John ended up on Clarice's.
"Hey girl," he rasps out.
She whines and lies down beside him, her head against his hip. John reaches out to pet her.
You have no idea how happy I am to see you is too long a sentence to articulate right now, but John tries to convey it anyway.
She just looks back at him, unimpressed, and whines again.
"'m alright," John mutters.
"Do you want me to get her out?" Clarice asks, coming back into the room carrying a kitchen chair.
"No, 's fine," John answers.
Clarice sits down beside him, taking his hand in hers.
"I was so afraid," she murmurs. "We didn't know where you were, we had nothing−"
"But you found me," John squeezes her hand.
"Thanks to Lorna. No one wanted to...but we had no other choice..."
Clarice trails off. John wants to reassure her, apologize, say something, but it's beyond him at the moment. He flinches at a noise from the kitchen. Marcos. Marcos is on his phone in their kitchen, not Turner.
"John, what did they do to you?" Clarice asks. There's too much anguish in her voice.
"You saw," John croaks out, looking down at his chest.
"Yeah, but before that. You're...I don't know, I've never seen you this shaky, this jumpy."
Right. He's been flinching at every noise, at every hand even approaching his head. His brain is still waiting for another round of the music.
"Music. Loud. Really loud." He shudders.
"They used your hearing?" Clarice asks, horrified.
"Turner's idea," John says.
"For how long?"
"Whenever..." John trails off, too tired to make up a sentence.
"Whenever he wasn't interrogating you?" Clarice guesses. "John, you were there for almost twenty-four hours!"
"Felt...longer." It really did. With the music blasting his brain apart, it felt like an eternity. "But you...came for me."
"Oh, John," Clarice runs a hand down his face. "I wish we'd found you sooner. I wish I hadn't bailed on you like that."
"T's okay," John mutters. He feels his eyes closing, almost on their own. He can still see Clarice through his mutation, though strangely distorted with the ringing in his ears. "Did...your best."
"Go to sleep," Clarice murmurs. "You're safe now."
John is already half-asleep when he realizes dimly he hasn't told her about the migraine.
"Lorna? Can I talk to you?"
Lorna turns, halfway through unlocking her door. She finds Sage walking toward her, holding a tablet.
"Sure, come in," she says, opening the door with a flick of her hand. She's have rather been left to her own thoughts, but she owes Sage for today, for finding the Purifiers' compound and not telling Reeva. "What is it?"
"I, uh..." Sage hesitates. She looks disturbed. "After you attacked the Purifiers, they broke the closed circuit of their network to communicate with their boss. I was able to get in."
"What did you find?" This could be good. If it gets them closer to eliminating the Purifiers, then Lorna is all for it. After today, it's going to be her number one goal.
What they did to John is worse than unforgivable. Nobody touches her friends. It doesn't matter that they don't see eye to eye anymore, John's still her best friend.
"A bunch of information about the group, I still need to parse through that. But there was something else."
Once again, Sage hesitates. Like she's afraid of Lorna, for some reason.
"What?" Lorna asks, a bit impatiently.
"They recorded what they did to John," Sage says slowly. "Every minute of it. I've started watching, I couldn't go through all of it, but I've isolated Turner's interrogations. The rest is mostly just John chained to a pole, forced to listen to hard rock at full volume."
Lorna feels her blood run cold. "They used his mutation?"
If she thought she was angry before…
Sage nods, taking a step back. "For hours. I don't know how he held on."
"The bastards," Lorna mutters, reining in her anger. There's no point in raging at Sage.
"I hate it as much as you do. But there's something else."
"What?"
"It's in Turner's interrogation. He got John to tell him about us, about the Inner Circle. And that you and Andy had left the Underground."
"John broke?" Lorna asks incredulously.
Sage shakes her head. "I would have, too. But I don't think he broke. I think he was trying to protect his friends, trying to convince Turner not to go against the Underground."
"By selling us out?"
"He has no reason to protect us," Sage says. "And I don't think he meant to tell Turner about you and Andy, but Turner figured out that you were at the bank."
"Dammit!" Lorna spits.
"There's something else."
Lorna pauses. Sage doesn't just look uncomfortable anymore, she looks disturbed.
"I'm not going to like it, am I?"
Sage hands her the tablet, touching it to start the video.
Lorna didn't see where−and how−John was held in that basement, since she and Marcos were tasked with distracting the Purifiers. A knot form in her throat at the sight of her friend in chains, a collar around his neck. Unconsciously, she rubs at her own neck. She remembers the sensation. The humiliation.
"So they just, what, turned their backs on the dream of the X-Men, huh? How the hell did that happen?"
The camera is turned toward John, so Lorna can't see Turner's expression, but she can imagine it. Hearing his voice, she feels a surge of hate the strength of which she hasn't experienced since the day she escaped prison.
She resists taking the tablet apart with her powers and tries to concentrate on John's face.
"Because I couldn't make them believe. Because I failed."
Lorna freezes. She slowly, unthinkingly lets herself drop onto her bed, when her legs feel like they won't carry her anymore, and she stares.
She's never heard that kind of desperation in John's voice. Never. Not on his worst days post-withdrawal, when he begged her for his pills. Not during the migraines that reduced him to a sobbing mess. Not even after they lost Pulse.
It's not the torture doing that to him.
"He blames himself for us leaving," Sage says, after they've been silent for a while.
Lorna snaps out of her fixation to look up a her. She's twisting her hands anxiously.
"He blames himself for me leaving."
"We were friends, too."
Lorna nods, conceding her that. "But I built the station with him. I was there from the start, I promised him I would always be there."
"You were there for him today," Sage says.
"I almost didn't go," Lorna sighs. "Because I was afraid of what Reeva would do."
Suddenly feeling cold−though it has nothing to do with the actual temperature−she kicks off her boots and wraps her arms around her legs. "I was never afraid of what John would do. We often disagreed, but we could always talk about it."
Sage sits down beside her. "I've been thinking of that, too, lately. I know that what we do here is going to make a difference, but−"
"Don't," Lorna stops her. "The Underground is dead. Even John knows it. This is our only option to make things change."
Sage looks at her for a while, then shakes her head.
"There's one more thing," she says slowly. "It looks like Turner started believing John after that, stopped hurting him."
"Then why did he shoot him?"
"Because he saw you and Marcos attacking the compound. Together."
Lorna puts a hand over her mouth, nauseous.
"Show me," she says.
She doesn't know why she wants to see it. Is it because she doesn't want to believe it, that her coming to save John is also the reason he got hurt so badly? Or is she trying to punish herself?
Sage bites her lip. "If you want. But I'm not watching it again."
Lorna nods. Sage brings up the video on the tablet, then stands up and walks to the door.
"Sage?" Lorna stops her.
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For bringing this to me. Alone."
Sage nods. "This is about John, it doesn't concern Reeva. I saw no need to go to her. And, uh, Lorna?"
"What?"
Sage hesitates. "If you decide to do something about this," she gestures toward the tablet. "Tell me? Whatever it is, I won't betray you."
Lorna stares at her for a moment, then nods. She doesn't know what Sage expects her to do exactly. It's not like she can just...turn back time, repair her relationship with John and Marcos. Go back to the Underground.
It's far too late for that.