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Even I don't like to see you caged up; Tag: Jac
Topic Started: Sep 20 2013, 03:08 PM (340 Views)
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Date: June 1st
Time: Shortly before lunch
Location: Spitfire's holding cell



Junior agent Thomas (Tommy) Shepherd was still the new kid on the Helicarrier, he had spent much of his time so far doing this type of training and that type of training. It was all very dull to Tommy who could complete each seminar or activity in a matter of minutes at the very tops, he supposed it was a lesson in patience, which was something he definitely needed. The buzz around the helicarrier was still very much about the agent that had been kidnapped and somehow turned against his own people, Tommy didn't know the agent in particular, there were few agents he did know well: Uncle Pietro, Simon and Altman were the ones that he knew best. There were a few others as well, not to mention he was beginning to get to know others that he was working with more frequently too, but unlike the school where he had known a lot of people, it was taking some adaptation for the speedster, something which despite his speed and the way he viewed the world was something that he struggled with greatly.

But there was one piece of information that the speedster had learned of in the past few weeks that troubled him: Jac had been arrested, while the speedster had kept his distance for the most part from the Brit and fellow speedster since they broke up, this had been helped by the fact that Tommy had spent six months on Skrullos which made it easier and then the school had moved back from the Savage Lands.

But even though Tommy knew to stay away, he also knew what it was like to be a speedster locked up without being able to use your powers, it had happened to him a number of times, firstly when his powers first manefested and he wound up in juvie, then again on Skrullos, it was something that he was going to avoid happening for a third time. Especially now that he was working for SHIELD. With a gap between training sessions, Tommy had zipped down to his locker and grabbed some of his often much needed sugar supplies: chocolate and sweets and stashed them into the pockets of his suit trousers, he may be a proper adult now but formal wear still wasn't something he did well so the tie was loose around the neck, top button was undone and the suit jacket had all together been lost at some point during the day, stuffed into his locker where it would stay until it was needed or he went home.

Moving through the carrier was relatively easy, he just ran at speeds that were slow by his standards, but still fast enough so he could avoid the agents and other staff that worked aboard and soon enough he was in the elevator taking him down to the cells. Forced to stand still as the elevator took him down, he began to wonder what he was going to say, was it going to be awkward? Was she even allowed visitors? The last of which was something he would deal with easily; he'd just walk away, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

The doors of the elevator opened and he zipped out again, closing the short distance between the elevator and the security check point, showing his ID, the guard took it and made an off hand comment about him looking like Pietro. He'd heard a lot of that since arriving in SHIELD, but it didn't matter, there were a lot worse people he could look like. Finally he was allowed through into the holding cells, as he approached the door to Jac's cell it was opened unlocked for him.

"Knock, Knock." He spoke before pushing the door open to the cell.
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Four walls could get dull fast. Even nulled, the speedster had a lot of time on her hands that had to be put to use. It wasn’t as if SHIELD provided her with colouring sheets and plasticine sets (although a few times she had considered asking for some). Mostly there was reading (as she had asked for and received plenty of books to occupy her mind) and exercise. There was daily time out of the cell for her to stretch her legs and eat, shower, even have ‘therapy’ to show that she was so very sorry for everything that she had ever done and so on and so forth. Even so, there was still a lot of time spent inside. A lot.

Dressed in the height of prison fashion in a white tank top and one of her too-big jumpsuits with the trouser cuffs rolled up, the top half of which was unzipped and tied around her waist, Spitfire was making use of her cell. Once she stopped looking at it as a cell and more of a giant climbing frame or a fort or whatever she wanted it to be that day, it wasn’t too gloomy. With her feet stuck up under her bunk, she was in the middle of sit ups when there was a loud buzz, followed by clicks. Frowning, Jac paused mid sit up, as it wasn’t time for lunch yet.

Oh…

Pretending that she hadn’t seen the flash of white hair, the former Acolyte went back to her exercises. What exactly was this? A Christmas Carol? Were they going to send in some muppets next...Although she really didn’t want to think about who the ghost of Christmas yet to come was going to be. Joey had definitely been the past and Tommy wasn’t exactly of the moment, but there hadn’t been anyone else. She had kind of liked someone, but looking back now she knew that was just her lonely soul wanting to connect to someone like her.

“Hey,” she responded, a little shortly due to the physical exertion more than the sudden awkwardness. Carrying on for five more boosts, she untangled her feet from under the bunk, rolled back, to her side then got up, stretching out her limbs and chewing the inside of her cheek.

“So, uh, you got an afternoon off or something?”
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So this was going to be as awkward as Tommy had initially thought it was going to be. While Tommy was usually completely oblivious to the feelings of others - they simply never registered on his radar. There was no avoiding that his decision to come down and see Jac could be incredibly awkward not just for himself, but for her too. Deciding not to dwell on the awkwardness and instead to try and cut through it, either it would go away or it wouldn't Tommy pushed on. "Nah, lunch break. I get an hour and I was done in a little under ten minutes." Shrugging, it wasn't like it was any big surprise to Jac that Tommy ate fast, she knew what it was like to be a speedster too so he had no problem talking of the speed in which he could chomp down a burger and chips around her.

"Then I've got a two hour close quarter combat training session. Fun huh?" Rolling his eyes, as if he actually needed that sort of training. He'd been with the X-Men for for more than a few years now. So fighting was no big issue to him, besides it wasn't like there were all that many people on the planet that could fight at the speeds that he could.

"So I thought I'd come down here and see how you're doing." Glancing back over his shoulder, before looking back at Jac. He reached into his pocket and brought out a couple of chocolate bars he brought down with him. "Hershey or Cadbury's?" Though Tommy could already guess at which direction the English speedster was going to go in. Holding out whichever bar Jac decided to take, before unwrapping the spare one for himself to eat - there was always room to eat chocolate in Tommy's case.

"So uh.. any idea how long it's going to be until they make a decision on you? Or are you stuck in here for the long haul?" Glancing around the cell it made Tommy shiver a little. It reminded him far too much about his own cell on Skrullos and before that in juvie. So despite awkwardness between them right now Tommy could easily empathise with how Jac was finding the situation to be right now.
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“Oh,” Jac nodded as Tommy explained himself, suddenly wishing that she was in total isolation and not allowed visitors like this. Really, she was surprised she was. Maybe SHIELD just didn’t know what to do with her. Her life was going to consist of this until they had something worked out, or the Helicarrier got blown up knowing her luck. Truth be told, she didn’t know what to do with herself anymore either. In the past, she had always had a goal or a calling to plough ahead towards. She missed Magneto, more than she ever really admitted to the psychologists who would assess her every now and then. But not the person he had become, if that had ever been him, but the man he was before. For a while, she had been jealous of her otherworldly counterpart and only too late realised that she had become a dark mirror of that girl.

Taking the proffered chocolate bar, she gave a nervous smile. “Thanks,” Jac nodded and ripped open the purple wrapper. At his question, she hitched her shoulders up with a small shrug, wandering over to her bunk to perch on the edge of it.

“I don’t really know, to be honest. You probably know more than me about my situation here. Some days I forget the date even,” she made a face, nibbling on a square of chocolate to distract herself. “Honestly I think they were all rather taken aback when I handed myself in. They knew I was out there, but after what happened, they sort of let me slip off back in January. But then I just came back after and handed myself over to their mercy so now…”

What had happened in January had played on her mind a lot. It was made even more difficult by the lack of people she could talk to about it. Even those who had been there, not all of them could get their heads around the fact she had given her own Grandfather a blood transfusion from the original Human Torch and basically ended up triggering her own mutation.

Another bite of chocolate vanished into her mouth. “Do you see Billy much?” she asked, diverting the conversation on to relatively safe ground, although the thought of his brother made her think about her own brother...Closing her blue eyes, Spitfire leaned against the wall and sighed loudly. God, if only the next visitor was Gambit with a bottle of schnapps, then she’d be fine with Gonzo and Rizzo reciting the entire thing in song.
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"No problem." Tommy stayed where he stood as Jac shrugged her shoulders and moved her way over to perch on the bunk. In truth, Tommy had tried not to peek at Jac's files. He wasn't sure if it was professional or if it broke some regulation or something given their history. So rather than use what little security access he had (which he knew was next to nothing) he instead went to get it from the horses mouth.

"Yeah I can understand this place being dull as anything. Especially for people like us." Both of Tommy's own experiences with prisons had resulted in prodding and poking and experiments, while for the most part he was kept cuffed at all times then. "At least you've got some space to move, I know it's like a bad Russian zoo down here. But could be worse, you could be cuffed to your bunk or something." He wasn't actually sure now if he was being reassuring, helpful or just plain awkward. As always his mouth was running fifty miles ahead of his brain and there was no filter to prevent any of the garbage that had a tendency to come out of his mouth when he was in a situation that he wasn't entirely comfortable with.

"Well you've shown you're not going to run off and not return. So maybe they'll figure out some sort of special deal where you help them out and you earn your freedom back or something." Shrugging as he thought about it. "It's not like you'd be the first Brotherhood prisoner to convert over. There's Cain and a couple of others." So he was pretty sure that it was just a matter of time until there was some more permanent sorted for her; though to speedsters that was half the problem. Six months was like a decade to them when they knew they had to wait for it to end. "There's even this one asset. I think that's what they call em. Who was some sort of illusionist for the Brotherhood. Claimed that she only became a terrorist because there was something wrong with her head. Now she's being allowed to run around with the other agents occasionally." Tommy himself wouldn't have believed that story at all though had he not seen it for his own eyes.

Taking the last two squares of chocolate from his bar he scrunched up the wrapper stuffing it into his trouser pockets while placing the two squares into his mouth. Chewing and swallowing them down fast, he then answered the next question. "Not half as much as I used to. He's at Hogwarts now learning magic with Dr Strange. We both wound up staying with mom for a while, when Spiral's brand of crazy was going down in New York though." He wasn't sure if he was happy with the new routine or not. Given that they'd only really spent four years together as 'twins' it was easier for him to pull back into the world on his own, but a part of him did miss his twin.

"Have you heard anything about Brian lately?" Though Tommy didn't know Jac's brother all that well, he had met him a few times while he himself was living down in Sanctuary and he was a little curious whether he was still with the Brotherhood or not, though if he was he was doubting she would mention that given their surroundings.
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Staring at the chocolate more than eating it, Jac mused over what Tommy was saying. “I don’t know. I suppose I’m just in a routine now, you know? I mean, I’m sort of used to it. I’ve been null cuffed and restricted in where I could go before and then there was that time in Utopia. I was there a long time. Some days I thought I was never going to leave there. Not that it was bad but…” Lowering her confectionary, the speedster stared around the cell. “It’s just that I seem to swap one set of awkward circumstances for another.”

The idea that she could earn her freedom wasn’t a stupid one in the slightest, but the girl still pulled a face when Tommy suggested it. “So I’ve heard, about Cain and the others. But I don’t want to be SHIELD. I don’t want to just convert over. Before you say anything, I know I can’t just go back to the Brotherhood. They wouldn’t even want me back. But…” Spitfire trailed off. He wouldn’t understand that she wanted to find Magneto. It was sad, really. She was closer to his grandfather than he possibly ever would be.

“And that sounds like a total copout,” she snorted at the sound of this illusionist. No wonder she was allowed to exist in relative luxury if this was the way the organisation were operating currently. “Have they all gone soft in the head around here or something?”

“Oh, well I guess that’s pretty cool,” Hogwarts? Yeah, she was probably better off asking Billy for better clarification if she ever met him again. She regretted asking about him though, as soon as Tommy started to ask about Brian. Pulling a face, Jac threw the rest of the chocolate bar at the small table in the middle of her cell.

“Tommy. You’re the second person to ask me that recently. No offence or anything, but how am I supposed to know anything? I haven’t been back to Sanctuary since 2011. I’ve not had contact with anyone. I just…” propping her elbows on her knees, she put her head in her hands, locks of white blonde hair trickling through her fingers. Since what had happened in January went down, she’d thought about him more than ever. It was big and he had the right to know about it, if only so he could help her process it all. “What do you expect me to say?” she asked, almost pleading, just staring at the floor of her cell.
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"Yeah I get that." Well he did, but he didn't. He wouldn't call his time in Sanctuary really a set of awkward circumstances, he wasn't as restricted as Jac had been in the Savage Lands. The most awkward thing about being in the city that contained the Brotherhood was that he was so close to his Grandfather. That was a whole different kettle of awkwardness though and mostly related to the fact that he simply didn't get on with his grandfather - not that it mattered anymore now that he was apparently dead and all that was left of him was that annoying teenager who somehow managed to put the speedsters back up no matter what he said. "At least you could run a bit in the Savage Lands though - and you know outside and not a cell." Tommy shrugged though - he didn't know if it was a set of circumstances he would prefer or not, especially due to the lack of people in that area now.

"I wasn't going to say that you can't go back. Not that I think that's wise, even if they wanted you back. Bennet is in charge now and he's a fucking creep. He had Billy and one of the guys from the school locked up just for being in the city." Tommy had no intentions of ever returning to that place - not now that he had no reason to ever be there. "But SHIELD and the Brotherhood aren't your only options are they? I mean if you get out of here, there's uncle Al and his group or you could stop being a soldier all together" He was sounding a little preachy now and Tommy didn't do preachy unless it was to remind people how awesome he was. So he decided to leave it at that, it was ultimately Jac's decision what she would do with herself if she ever got out of the SHIELD cells.

"Yeah, I think there was something fishy going on around it. I heard she's fooling around with one of the other agents so she got special treatment. But then if that's what it takes to get out of prison, I guess some people are that desperate." And Tommy couldn't rightly say that he might not use the same tactics if it meant that he got out of prison some day, but then it was Tommy. People most often expected such things from him.

"He seems to like it, and Doc Strange is pretty cool. Y'know when he isn't talking about his non-existent forces in the universe." The speedster was quite literally the last person in the universe to ever believe in some higher beings - but he did owe the Doc for a number of things so he was alright in his book.

Almost instantly Tommy regretted asking about Brian, he hadn't meant to bring up old wounds. "Sorry Jac.. I didn't mean to uh. Y'know." He couldn't blame her for her reaction, he would likely be exactly the same if he had been cut off from Billy for that amount of time - though sometimes he thought that, that would be a pretty good holiday. "It was insensitive." He swallowed. "Have you had many other visitors?" Deciding that now might be a good time to change direction entirely.
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Jac sighed a little as Tommy pointed out she could run. “I could. And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what the X-men did for me and how much freedom and trust they gave me. But I couldn’t go any further than the borders. I couldn’t hop to a takeaway or go to the beach or…” shaking her pale head, she picked at the chocolate wrapper. “I’d rather be there than here some days, of course I would.” There, she left him hanging. It pained her to think, but he probably didn’t understand, not really.

As he started to talk, explaining that Exodus was in charge and there were other options, Spitfire started to shift around uncomfortably. At first it wasn’t even like his words were even misplaced. He made a few good points. Well, until the soldier comment. Her mouth set in a grim line and she stared at him.

“How can I stop being a soldier? That’s what I am,” Jac said, avoiding raising her voice as she didn’t want it to be an argument. For the same reason, she didn’t add ‘and that is why we broke up’ but the speedster knew that if Tommy thought about it, he’d think the same thing anyway. The thought of just settling down into a mundane life was mildly appealing, but thinking about it, Jac knew she’d hate it. She’d find it boring and empty.

As he talked about the special privileges prisoner, Jac snorted and shook her head. God, she’d never do that. She’d never pull it off anyway, as she had no skill in seduction. “There’s desperate and then there’s just lacking decency. This place drives me nuts some days but I’m not about to flirt my way out of here…”

Rubbing her forehead, the thoughts of her brother were now crowding her head. Tonight was going to be a bad night. Sitting up, her expression now blank, Spitfire hitched her shoulders slightly. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” coughing, she moved on. “Pietro comes to see me and Wisdom drops by when he can. I had a visit from Union Jack...But other than my usual handlers, no. Gets a bit lonely sometimes.”

Things were really awkward now. As much as Jac knew that Tommy didn’t mean it, it was still hard to look at him and not feel annoyed by the whole conversation. If anything, it made her stay feel even more indefinite and uncertain. God only knew what was going to become of her. “Thanks for the chocolate by the way. And for coming. You didn’t have to.”
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