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Chapter Three: And the Ashes Start to Fall
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Dr. Moira MacTaggart pushed her chair back from the lab table and twined her slender fingers together, giving her knuckles a good, dignified crack. Her spine felt stiff and achy, but her work was more urgent than the discomfort caused by physical inactivity. Yawning widely and removing her glasses to give her eyes a cursory rub, she leaned with her chin in her hand and her elbow on her cluttered desktop. She tapped at the keyboard with one finger and opened her e-mail, silently reading. The first of her many daily messages was from her long-ago-lover and current friend and confidant, Charles Xavier. A small smile stretched across her lips as she read, auburn hair falling into her eyes.
It was mostly the standard report of his students' activities, and it might have sounded dry to anyone who didn't so deeply understand Charles' wry sense of humor. She laughed quietly to herself as she read up on the latest exploits of one of the students that she remembered meeting several years before, the young German she'd met just before he went off across the ocean to the institute. Apparently, his swashbuckling romanticism and youthful comedy had managed to transcend the shy, self-conscious temperament she had encountered in him at their first meeting. It was good to hear.
The rapping at the door reminded her: it was long past lunchtime and she hadn't eaten all day. Again.
"Come on doon, Hank."
The young American pushed the door open and presented a tray of hot food balanced on one large hand. "Ta-dah!" he said, beaming, talking the stairs down to Moira's office four at a time.
Moira chuckled and accepted the tray, pushing aside stacks of papers to make room for it. She pushed out a seat for her friend, and he swung it around, straddling the seat backward and resting his chin on his folded arms. The chair looked dwarfed under his bulky body, and Moira stifled the slightly undignified desire to offer him a sturdier chair.
"I'd begun to worry that you'd forgotten your meals again, Dr. MacTaggart, so I tossed together something nutritious," —he reached behind his back and pulled out some sort of sugary cake wrapped in cellophane— "and delicious." He tossed his short dark hair with a deep laugh and tore into the plastic, tossing half of the sweet onto Moira's tray and devouring the other half in one bite. "Service charge."
"Aye, I had, Hank, and I thank ye. If it wasn' f'r yuir concern I'd likely starve and no' even know it."
"I'm quite sure your corpse would have a bit of trouble continuing on with your work after you'd passed, doctor, but it might find a way if it thought it would spite me. Have you heard anything from the authorities about the South African incident?" He nodded to her untouched cake, and she pushed the tray toward him. He snatched up the snack with a grateful wink.
She shook her head and sighed. "Nae, no' a word. It disnae appear tha' they think we're worthy o' response."
"It's not that, I'm sure. They're probably just afraid of what you'd undoubtedly uncover."
Moira cleared her throat. "I heard from the professor joost now."
"Oh, really? Anything interesting? How are Scott and Jean?"
"It sounds as if their studies are goin' quite well. They're goin' t' a college together not far from th' institute, and the professor sounds quite pleased wi' their training."
"I'm glad. Are they still at home? The institute, I mean. "
"Aye, they're—"
A buzzing sound interrupted Moira in mid-sentence.
"Is tha'? Nae, it cannae be! We haven' had a visitor in months!"
Hank chortled and swung himself up out of the seat. "You just finish that soup before it gets cold and I have to make more, Moira. That bowl alone took me three nearly disastrous attempts, and I believe I may have ruined one of the pots. I've got the door."
"Ye do tha', then, but its yuir job t' clean up th' kitchen!"
"Of course, good madam." He bowed deeply with a flourish of his arm, and Moira laughed, slapping at his shoulder.
Halfway up the stairs, he was halted by Moira saying, "Hank? D'ye think…" she looked away, looking sobered. "Tha' is, would you mind bringin' Kevin a bit o' soup? It's after lunchtime, an'…I don' know if I've got time…an'…"
The broad-shouldered youth hung back, looking as if the request were much more complicated than it seemed. Then again, it probably was. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically loud and his jaw was set, trying not to look as if the request bothered him. Moira choked back her guilt. "Yes, Moira, I'll make sure that he gets lunch." He turned and left the room with his normal speed, but the jovial mood of the room was now somewhat tainted.
Hank was gone for about ten minutes, and Moira was once again deeply engrossed in the latest batch of Kevin's test results, pouring over numbers and statistics that indicated his current status. Plugging in the necessary equations told her what she'd known for months: Kevin was getting considerably stronger. With a painful sigh, she clicked the intercom button, and her son's youthful face filled the screen. He was thin and pale, having not seen the sun in quite some time, and his eyes looked large and intense against his pallid face.
"Hullo there, my lil' one."
"I'm bored, Mum. I need somethin' t' do."
"I know, babe. Hank will be there in a bit t' give ye yuir lunch, and when he's back, I'll bring ye some books or somethin' else t' do." Kevin nodded, looking disappointed but not particularly surprised. She exhaled and closed the program with a faintly trembling hand, watching the screen crackle and fade to black.
The sound of the door swinging open jolted her attention upward, and she swung her gaze up the narrow metal staircase. Hank stood there, twisting his hands and looking atypically anxious.
"What th' devil is wrong with ye, lad? Are ye entirely daft or is somethin' wrong?"
"The visitor. She's here for you, Moira, and I believe that she is in need of your immediate attention."
"Wheel, who is it, boy, or hae ye gone mute?"
"A girl, about seventeen or so. She looks pretty badly off. I got her some food and put her down on the sofa, but she keeps asking for you. I think she's come quite a long way."
Moira leapt from her chair, ignoring it as it clattered away to the floor. "Don' joost stand there! Go!"
The trip to the living room was an agonizingly long one. When the door was opened and Moira finally got a look at the mystery guest, she felt her breath catch in her chest. The girl, who was clearly no more than seventeen or eighteen, looked worn and thin, and her clothes were scruffy. She wore a greasy men's shirt over a battered tank top, the straps twisted and shredded in a way that showed someone had tried to restrain her. Her dark hair hung about her shoulders in dirty loops from under a sweat-stained baseball cap that was a bit too large for her, and her face was sunken. Shockingly green eyes peered out of an ashen-skinned face, and a deep wound, apparently a few days old, gleamed above her brow. She sat on the edge of the sofa cushion, looking uneasy. There was a slight scent of burning wood on the air.
Moira rushed to the girl, who started slightly when she saw the doctor. Her eyes seemed to light up, and her mouth popped open. Moira sat down gently on the sofa, taking the girl by the shoulders and giving her a good natured little shake, surprised at how limp the girl's body went under her hands.
"What happened to ye, lass? Ye look like ye've been thrown to the dogs!"
The girl's haunted eyes grew glassy as she searched for the words she'd planned to say. She licked her chapped lips and started to suck on her tongue, knitting her brows together in thought. In Moira's peripheral vision, she saw Hank tiptoe silently out of the room, casting a concerned glance over his shoulder. When he returned a few moments later, he carried an open first aid kit, and approached the girl with a bit of gauze in his hand. To his consternation, the girl went suddenly tense and jerked away from his reach, jumping onto the couch with her knees drawn up underneath her body.
Moira grasped her smaller hand and pulled her closer, gently. "'Tis all right, lass. No one's goin' t' hurt ye here." She beckoned Hank forward. "This is Hank, a good friend o' mine. He joost wants to take a wee look at tha' forehead."
Slowly, Hank dabbed at the girl's gashed forehead, and she flinched slightly as the alcohol stung her injury and remoistened the dried blood before it was wiped away. Hank glanced down apologetically and continued, pausing a moment to hand her a cup of tea that Moira had poured from a teapot on the coffee table.
Moira went on as if she were speaking to someone other than the disheveled teenager getting her settee grubby. "An' my name's Moira MacTaggart."
She was rewarded with a little nod, the first sign she'd seen that the girl spoke or understood any English. "I-I know who you are, doctor. I've come a long way to see you. It took me weeks to get here. Well, I guess it took me longer than that. More like seventeen years, really."
Moira smiled. "An' ye look it. How'd ye come, on yuir hands and knees in the mud?" The visitor glanced down at her dirty knees, embarrassed. "Och, I meant nothin' of it, lass. We're all a bit dirty after travelin' a long way. Now. What's yuir name?"
There was a long pause, and that contemplative look returned to her eyes. She studied the surface of her tea as if it were a magic looking glass. Finally, she succumbed to the painful desire for honesty. "My name's Natalie, ma'am. Or Nat."
"An' have you got more t' yuir name than tha', or are ye joost 'Natalie or Nat'?"
"My…my last name's Fairbanks."
Nat watched Moira apprehensively, as if she expected her to react in some way to the name. Moira leaned forward and added a bit of cream to her tea, stirring it so slowly that Nat was ready to scream under the influence of her apprehension. "Am I supposed to know the name, Nat?"
Finally, a smile lit up the girl's long face, making her appear more like she was sitting in a comfortable den and less like she was awaiting her execution date. "No, ma'am, I wouldn't think so."
Releasing a breath of relief at the girl's apparent relaxation, Moira smiled around the rim of her teacup. "Wheel, then, I suppose ye ought t' tell me what is so urgent tha' ye'd nearly tear yourself to itty bits to get t' me."
Another long pause. Nat swallowed hard, trying to clear her throat. "I need your help."