Description: Someone overhears some things they shouldn't and Naomi and the brand new baby Blair meet a friend.
Disclaimer: Not mine…
Hidden Whammy 3: Enlightenment and Reality
By Marns AKA Bumpkin
Rated: PG
x-X-x
Fernando Anderson wasn't heading anywhere in particular when Heather Dubois dragged her assistant Jorgina out of her main delivery room almost right in front of him. But since she had, and since she looked so freaked out, he thought he might want to hang around and see what was up. He ducked off to the side and plastered himself against the wall where he wouldn't been seen but he could still hear them.
He had always been incredibly curious, or nosy was more like it, it was what made him such a good FBI agent, especially for undercover operations like the one he was on now.
Now Heather really wasn't one of the people he was supposed to be watching, but that didn't stop him from wanting to know what was up. Normally Heather was pretty darn unflappable, so for her to be so 'flapped' it had to be something fairly earth-shaking. At least in his reasoned opinion anyway.
He settled in to listen as best he could to the low voices speaking in strained tones. At first he couldn't make out what they were saying and contemplated moving closer despite the risk of discovery. But then Heather's voice got a bit more strident, making it much easier to hear.
"Jorga, I'm telling you, the baby in there is a 'Talent' - and a pretty major one at that!"
Rapid shushing of soft soled shoes over the floor told Fern that Heather was pacing, the rustling of fabrics against each other had him guessing that she was probably gesturing wildly as well. Then there was some whooshy chiming and Fern knew Jorgina had probably thrown up her arms or something as she said,
"What are you talking about? There is no way a newborn is a 'Talent'! For heaven's sake, Heather, there's a reason they only come into their abilities at puberty, it's that or they go mad!"
The shushing stopped. So did the rustling. In the absence of those two persuasive sounds, the hallway at first seemed eerily quiet, then you heard what they had been masking – Heather's erratic and frightened breathing. Then Heather's shaking voice.
"Then you explain to me what happened when I held that baby in there and got slammed with all those negative emotions. There was a reason he didn't cry out loud like any other baby on the planet would've; it's 'cause he did it in my head! Everything a baby normally puts into that first wail, all of that was mainlined into my skull, Jorga."
Jorgina must've winced at the brutal imagery her friend and sometime boss conjured with her words. That was okay, Fern did too where he was hiding and listening. The mental image he came up with after hearing what she said was painful, and a rather confusing jumble. Drills with sharp shiny bits flashing, human skulls with enough holes in them to act like a colander – not exactly happy thoughts. He shuddered and wondered where he got these things.
Then his attention was caught again as Jorgina said a name. 'Sandburg.' The Sandburgs were a large clan who lived in large clumps all over the US, and they didn't trust anyone who wasn't family. That wasn't to say they never let anyone new in, they did, it was just that they seemed to assimilate new people and make them into one of their own. It was also one of the top names tagged as high probability for 'Talent', especially if it was one traveling by their lonesome.
"Heather, child, would you get a grip! Naomi Sandburg is naught but a slip of a girl! She, along with that little baby boy she just gave birth to, don't need the trouble you're gonna bring down on their heads if you keep talking this way. You will draw the attention of entirely the wrong people, if you understand what I am saying. Is that something you want to live with? I'm sure they don't."
Heather groaned. Jorgina took some pity on her friend who was obviously in pain. She laid it out in the simplest terms possible,
"Heather, it doesn't matter if that child in there and his momma are 'Talents', all that matters is what you do. Are you gonna report them, have their freedom taken away by our own government simply because of a quirk of genetics, or are you gonna let them continue on their merry way and live free?"
What Jorgina said hit Fern just as hard, if not harder than it did Heather. He sagged back against the wall he had been using as a blind and thought about few things he had always taken as given. Did he, or any other FBI agent, really have the right to call it in when they stumbled across a 'Talent'? Now that he was actually taking a moment to mull over what he knew, rather than be some schmuck just following orders… he didn't think so. Yeah okay, he knew it was a standing order back to the inception of the FBI, but that didn't make it right.
It really didn't make it right if some of the rumours he had heard about what was done to captured 'Talents' were true. The thought of the things he had heard about being done to a young mother and her infant son, well frankly it was horrifying.
That made up his mind. There was no way he could countenance even the thought of being part of anything like that. He would actually rather go the other way and help her. Help her leave the commune first and then the country so that she and her child would be safe. There were things he could teach her, stuff that he had learned at Quantico to be able to successfully survive undercover.
Yeah, that's exactly what he was going to do. Fern smiled, feeling good about his decisions. He skimmed along the wall until he deemed he was far enough away to not be noticed and then started to stride confidently. Yep, he knew exactly what he was going to do - but first things first, before he shipped her off to Tibet or somewhere equally obscure, he had better introduce himself to the young lady in question. After all, he couldn't do any of it without her, could he now?
-end-
