Ficlet: Throwing Sparks (Mike/Greta, FRM, 900 words)

[rsadelle]

Summary: She would have left earlier, but she had to suffer through weeks of intensive sessions with the mindhealers before she could convince them she'd accepted Mike's death.
Disclaimer: Fiction
Warnings: Implied evil institutions, mention of past forced pregnancy/abortion, presumed (but not actual) death, angst.
Notes: Written for icanbreakthesky.


Greta's three months pregnant when she leaves. She knows, of course she does. She can feel the bright spark of connection in her mind. She would have left earlier, but she had to suffer through weeks of intensive sessions with the mindhealers before she could convince them she'd accepted Mike's death.

Mike is gone from her mind, left suddenly and completely. But Greta knows what the death of someone you're bonded to feels like - she remembers the anguish of the spark dying out as they ripped the child she'd never wanted but grown to love from her - and that's not what happened when Mike disappeared.

A lot of people know Greta's strong. No one - no one except maybe the people who were there, and even then there's no telling what they've been allowed to remember - knows that she's the only person to have ever escaped the Institute. The only one who was strong enough to warp the memories of even their strongest guards, the only one who was desperate enough to try, even if she might have failed.

When the truth came out, about what they were doing there, Greta didn't have to testify. No one asked her to, and there were enough girls who'd had the same things done to them that she didn't have to. She watched, though, every minute of the hearings, Mike cradling her, his touch keeping her mind in the here and now. He knows more than anyone else ever has about what happened to her there, and there are things she kept even from him. Things he didn't press her to give up if she didn't want to.

He's not dead. Something cut them apart, but it wasn't death.

Greta barely dares to touch the spark between her and the baby that doesn't have a conscious mind yet, lest they take that from her too. The closest she dares is to send waves of love down that line of connection and mask it with love directed outward. She has a reputation for kindness and grace that serves her well.

When the mindhealers believe her, when they release her back into life, Greta hides herself from anyone looking and slips away to where it happened. She waits, until someone whose shields aren't strong enough thinks about what a pain it was to wrest Mike away, and she follows that man until she gets to the next person, and the next and the next and the next. Ethics be damned; she inserts herself into minds, finds what she needs, and slips out as if she'd never been there.

The trail brings her back to the gates of the Institute. It has a new name, now, but to her it will always be the Institute.

Getting in is easy enough; she has mandatory regular meetings with the mindhealers, set after Mike's disappearance, and no one would openly question her walking through the foundational heart of the psychic corps anyway.

Greta goes to her meeting as usual, lets them look inside and be reassured that she's grieving but coping with Mike's death.

She doesn't leave when they're done, the way she usually does. She cuts through the building instead. They brought her here when she was so young, before they knew she was powerful. Anything she didn't learn through her own exploration she learned from the thoughts they didn't guard well enough.

Greta slips through unused corridors, down a staircase that's supposed to be locked but never has been, and arrives at a hallway that doesn't officially exist. There are guards, but they're in the wrong place and none of them are at Mike's door. It's easy enough to plant the suggestion in their minds not to look this way.

The door isn't locked, and that, more than anything, makes her furious. It means they're so sure he can't get out they didn't bother.

Mike's tied to a chair, his arms and legs bound to the arms and legs of it. His head snaps up when she opens the door, and his eyes widen. He doesn't speak until the door closes behind her.

"Collar," he says, "and drugs."

Greta undoes the collar first, peeling it away from his neck, and her sense of him trickles into the space in her mind where he used to be. She shoves her love down that connection at him.

"Me too," he says out loud.

Greta unbuckles the restraints - no locks on those either, just plain buckles - and helps him stand.

"I'm going to hide us," she says. "Can you make it?"

Mike leans heavily on her, buries his face in her hair. "Yes."

They get out. It's a strain, even for Greta, but she does it because she has to, because there's no other choice. Just like last time.

Her home - their home - is shielded and protected as best any building can be, both by design and by her.

Greta gets Mike to the bedroom and collapses into bed with him. They lie in each other's arms and don't speak, and as time passes, Greta's sense of Mike gets stronger.

As the drugs wear off, he says. He pushes what they were doing through to her. She pushes back with the mindhealers' insistence that she learn to accept his death.

Greta can feel him hurting, and for the first time, she opens herself all the way up to that other connection, uses her own mind to bridge it, so he can feel the first sense of their child.

Mike makes a noise out loud, and floods them both with the full strength of his love.

Greta will have to testify, this time. Mike is strong, and that was bad enough, but no one is going to hurt her child. Not this time.