And here is the third and last chapter. John and Lorna get further into confessions and friendship as they team up to clear out the bank and make it livable.
John ducks as another metal rod flies past him, as little too close for comfort. Lorna's ability is powerful, but she doesn't have the greatest sense of spacial awareness. He glares at her.
"Sorry," she says sheepishly, landing the rod onto the pile of metal they're keeping. She can use it later to fortify the cracks in the building's foundation. For now the work they need to do is clear out the layers of rumble covering every surface of the abandoned bank.
It will be an amazing place, once repaired. John can already see how they can arrange it to house people, if they manage to get the water running. There are a dozen former offices that can be turned into bedrooms of some kind, and a barely damaged bathroom. With the addition of camp beds and second hand furniture, they could fit twenty people without feeling cramped. There's a huge hole in the floor by the stairs, but they're not here to make a luxury hotel. For a clandestine squat, it's paradise.
Swearing, he ducks under another heavy rod. "Lorna!"
"You were just standing there!"
"So what, you're gonna hit me because I'm taking a five-second break?"
"I just might!" Lorna says, sauntering over. "I've been doing all the heavy work."
John sputters. "Right. So you're the one who got the fallen concrete blocks out of the way and put the scaffolding back together."
"But you're so slow!"
John frowns. He hasn't been slow. Lifting the blocks takes time, because they're almost twice his size, but he's been working as fast as he could, as eager as she is to get this over with.
He watches Lorna move for a moment. She's fidgeting with her sleeves, flapping her hands quickly, while making the lighter metal pieces in the room fly around them. John avoid a screw headed for his face, and sighs.
It's been just over a week since he and Evangeline got Lorna out of the hospital, and she's been off her meds since then. John expected her to crash before now, and he rather thought it would be the other way, with how apathetic she'd started to get at the motel.
John himself is still feeling the effects of going off the meds cold turkey. They're not as brutal as the first couple of weeks, but his insomnia is worse than ever, and he invariably wakes up craving pills from the little sleep he gets. He never once imagined he'd dream of little white tablets, but he does. And through all that, the pain in his back is not giving him any respite.
He blinks when Lorna waves a hand in front of his face.
"What?"
"Where were you? I've been trying to get your attention for a while," Lorna says, now swinging back and forth on her heels.
That's another of the annoying side-effects, losing track of what's going on around him. God, the both of them are a mess.
"Sorry. What were you saying?"
"Would it actually hurt you, if I hit you with a rod?"
John rolls his eyes. "It probably wouldn't make me bleed, but I do feel pain, Lorna."
"You seem so invincible. That's what the girls at the Institute called you, you know. The Invincible John."
"I didn't know that," John snorts.
"They all loved you. Kept imagining what those abs felt like. It was always John this and John that."
The girls in Lorna's age range would have been quite a bit younger than him, John reflects. His own class never looked at him that way. They remembered the shy fourteen-year-old boy who couldn't come out of his room without ear defenders and extra-strength sunglasses.
"What about you?" he asks.
"I wanted to fight you," Lorna says. "You were never my type, but I've always wanted to know what my powers could do to you."
"Sadistic much?"
"Maybe," Lorna smirks. "We could try and see, one day."
"Oh, sure, let's get the attention of half the city when we're trying to be discreet."
Lorna shrugs. "We're pretty isolated out here. We have the whole 'contaminated' area to ourselves."
"We also have work to do," John says, picking up what used to be a large couch. It's unusable now, the frame bent so far out of shape it would break if he tried to bend it back. "God, the kid who did this must have had a lot of power," he says under his breath.
"I think he did," Lorna says sadly. "But we'll never know how he would have grown into it."
"So many lives wasted," John sighs.
"Probably more that we'll ever know. Sage says people have been disappearing, some of those who get arrested don't go to trial and just...vanish."
"Yeah," John says. "That's what happened to my friend. That's why I was looking for him. Other guys I knew in the Marines, too."
"And the whole time they blame us, for 7/15 and for pretty much everything that's happened since."
"You're angry," John states.
"Of course I'm angry!" Lorna blurts out. "They're killing us! How are you so calm?"
John shrugs. "I'm tired of being angry," he says. "And I'm really, really tired of being helpless."
Lorna stares at him for a moment, then turns away, her shoulders slumping.
"I'm tired too," she says, so quietly that John only hears her because of his mutation.
"Can I ask you something?" Lorna asks, later, when they've moved on to clearing out rubble with brooms they found in a former supply closet.
"Yes?"
"Your friend, the one you were looking for. Did you ever find him?"
"No", John answers. "I know he was arrested, but I couldn't figure out where they took him. There were no trials, they just declared us all mentally unstable. It was pretty easy, few men ever come back from a tour overseas without some trouble adjusting, and even fewer mutants."
Lorna spends a minute clearing out another smattering of concrete fragments, digesting this.
"Why?" she asks. "Why is it worse for mutants?"
"Out there, they treat us like cannon fodder. Mutants, especially those with offensive powers, are useful, but expendable. The death rate for us is almost two to one."
"I had no idea," Lorna says. "I mean, I didn't think it was better than anywhere else, but−"
John shakes his head. "You don't know that when you enlist. It seems like a good way to make a difference, you know, show the world that mutants are willing to fight for their country too."
So that's why he enlisted, Lorna thinks. She wants to ask why he didn't become an X-Men, make a real difference, but she already knows. John doesn't want to be a superhero, he wants to belong. He wanted to fight with humans, not pretend to take the high ground and save them from themselves. Lorna doesn't feel like that anymore, but she used to. She can understand.
"Why was your friend captured and not you?" she asks.
John looks up at her. "I wasn't high priority when they came for us, because my ability is mainly defensive and I was injured, but Pulse has the kind of power they can't leave alone. He can disrupt systems. Distantly. Computers, anything electrical. Mutant abilities, too."
"Wow, I can see why they'd want him."
"There are labs that have been experimenting on mutants, trying to reproduce their powers, make them into weapons. That's the other reason that they got everyone with combat training. They saw out there that mutants can be used to win their wars. If they can have our powers without having to give us rights, they won't hesitate for a minute. I need to get Pulse out."
Lorna looks at him for a moment, thinking.
"It's not just that, is it? There's more."
"He's...more than a friend. He was there for me when most of my unit−" John chokes on his words.
"I'm sorry," Lorna murmurs. It must have been close to a year, if it was before 7/15, but John still seems to be deeply affected. She can make a guess as to what happened, though it doesn't seem like the right time to ask.
"He's the one who got me through...the aftermath," John adds. "Until he disappeared."
"How did you escape the purge?"
"We were already stateside when they discharged everyone," John says. "Most of the others got caught on their way back home, but I could see it coming. I signed myself out of the hospital just days after they issued the order to arrest us and when Pulse was taken, I ran."
"You were in the hospital?"
John looks away. "I got injured in the...explosion that took my unit. I was in PT."
"The metal in your back?" Lorna understands.
"Shrapnel, from an IED. The surgeon couldn't get it out because my skin is too dense."
"I could...maybe I could try," Lorna says. "To take it out for you."
John raises an eyebrow. "You think so? You can't just cut it out."
"My ability's pretty powerful, if I really concentrate. I don't know, it might not work."
John thinks about it for a moment. "Someday, maybe," he says. "We have other things to worry about right now."
Lorna nods. "Does it hurt? Your back?" she asks anyway, thinking back to last week, when she caught the metal pieces with her powers.
"It's not...great," John answers. "One of the pieces is pushing on some nerves going into my leg. The surgeon said it came really close to paralyzing me."
"Wow. I...I had no idea," Lorna bites her lip. "I'm sorry for what I did the other day. I wasn't actually going to do anything."
"I know," John says. "But...it's millimeters away from my spinal cord. Even just tugging at it could dislodge it."
Lorna opens her mouth and closes it again. "I really am sorry," she repeats.
"Just don't do it again," John shrugs.
Lorna nods. Uncomfortable, they both turn back to their work in silence. The main room is almost cleared out by now, except for the huge hole in the ground by the stairs, but they still have all the smaller rooms to do, and more importantly downstairs. The vault is nearly untouched, though emptied of all valuables, but the larger room is where a piece of the ceiling fell through.
"Can I ask you something else?" Lorna looks up after a while.
"What?"
"You don't have to answer, but...the drugs you were on. They were painkillers?"
John stops in his tracks and considers her for a moment.
"Yes," he says. "At first, they just helped with my back. I was given a prescription at the hospital, and I was in a lot of pain back then. But I needed a lot even to take the edge off, because my body processes everything faster. In a few months, I built up a huge tolerance, and the pain didn't go away."
"So what happened?"
"They gave me other stuff too, because I had PTSD symptoms. Anti-depressants didn't do much, but the tranquilizers helped calm down sensory overloads. I get those from my mutation," John clarifies as Lorna's questioning look. "When the painkillers stopped being effective, I took them more and more often, because the pain made everything else worse, and I couldn't handle...things. By the time I was discharged, I was taking way too much of both."
"What did you do when you went on the run?"
"I found people who could get more for me," John says. "But I needed money for that, so from there it was a downward spiral. I took more so I needed more. Just your basic junkie story, I guess."
"Until Evangeline found you," Lorna states.
"Until Evangeline found me," John nods. "I'm still not sure how I made it through the acute withdrawal phase. She stayed the whole time. No one could tell me how much I could take before I overdosed, but I must have been pretty close. I'd stopped caring."
"You cared enough to get clean."
"I guess," John laughs, bitterly. "She chained me to a bed."
"Wow. And I thought she got me out of a bad situation."
John meets her eyes, blinking, and they both suddenly break into laughter. It's liberating in a strange way, for two people who haven't had a glimmer of hope in a long time.
"We can really build something here, can't we?" Lorna asks, after their laughs have died away.
John shrugs. "Maybe."
"It feels like an impossible task."
"I know. But...whatever we manage to do, it's better than nothing, right? Look at your friends in the streets. They've already given up. I've seen many other mutants like that. Hell, I was like that."
"Yeah," Lorna sighs. "I didn't think I'd ever get out of that hospital. And I had nothing to go home to anyway."
John nods. "On the road from Tucson, Evangeline took me to a bunch of other stations. They've build real safe havens for mutants there. It's dangerous, and it's hard work, but they're helping people."
"You think we can do that too?" Lorn asks.
"I think I want to try. I think I'd rather fight than give up on life."
"And things will get better?"
"For the world? No," John shakes his head. Lorna opens her mouth, but he continues before she can say a word. "But maybe we can make life better for a few people people around here. I'd count that as a win."
"A good reason to live?" Lorna smirks playfully.
John looks at her for a moment, his head slightly tilted, then a real smile spreads on his face. "Something like that."
This story was meant to be a glimpse into the birth of the Atlanta Station, and I hope it delivered. I mean to keep going with this series, write more parts but as one-shots or other short fics, rather than one long fic.
I don't know when that will happen, as I have quite a lot on my plate right now. So if you want to get update notifications, you can subscribe to my profile (rather than just this story) or find me on Tumblr (theemmaarthur).
Thank you to everyone who've read and interacted, you all warm my heart and keep me going. Tell me what you've thought of this story and what you'd like to read going forward! And see you soon :)