Mac's memory of what happened after becomes something of a blur.

There are a few things that really stick out, of course, but at the time she was...well, she's not proud, but she's pretty sure she went into shock.

Ororo showed up right around the time Logan shoved Victor to his knees, the impotent man snarling and snapping the whole way, but weak in a way that was probably way too satisfying to witness. She said something about securing the school, calling some dude named Hank, and a bunch of rapid fire shit Mac could not have cared less about then.

Mac had been dizzy and cold, feeling nauseous and irritable. She was confused and couldn't figure out why. She didn't honestly react until a blood covered Logan tried to gently take the gun from her hand, which got Ana all up in arms and...well.

The important part is that they gave them up.

Of course, they gave the guns to Coulson, who got trucked down to the future hospital with a set case of broken ribs, but he took them amicably enough, when he was aware and patched up six hours later.

It funny. Later she learns that the whole thing with Victor only lasted fifteen minutes, start to finish.

Then…

Crisis Incident Debrief. That what he called it, afterward. She always imagined they would be more military-ish, something that wouldn't seem out of place in a war movie, or a spy thriller.

However, it was just the three of them giving their side of the story, running through the situation out loud in the most sterile, bland way. It began with the dart in Xavier's neck up to them handing back his guns.

Then they did it again.

And again.

They did it until her voice was rough and her nausea faded away into a headache, her uncomfortable chill fled, and her hands stop shaking. At that point, she was exhausted, too tired even to set up a watch shift, and fell asleep in her chair beside Ana.

It's been a hectic few days since then, but Mac feels maybe, just maybe, things might be looking up for them. Sure, they still have no home, but Coulson seems doubly sure that he can get them into a system that can help. It's still ostensibly Witness Protection, because Victor had former accomplices, and though he's been carted off -hopefully not just to prison because Ana was right, prison is too nice for the likes of him- shit might still happen. The likelihood of them being targeted is apparently slim, but great enough for them to merit a new life.

Which is good. It won't be their shitty apartment in Hunt's Point, but it is better than living off another dime in a fancy ass mansion full of people Ana can barely bring herself to be around.

Mac looks over at the bed beside hers, where Ana is carefully writing down what appears to be a damn novel. Mac knows from experience, however, that she is just doing as she was told. Coulson suggested writing down what she felt, and Ana took that and ran the moment Mac seconded it.

There are books and journals scattered on the mattress around Ana with glossy covers, ostentatious titles ranging from wordy to succinct. In particular 'Scandinavian Journal of Work: Recovery as an Explanatory Mechanism in the Relation between Acute Stress Reactions and Chronic Health Impairment' stands out because of the sheer length of it. 'Hostage' by some MS Miron and AP Goldstein seems tiny in comparison. Ana has been consuming them for days now, referencing her frame of mind and justifying her reactions based on data from borrowed books.

It's weird. Then again, maybe her own way of coping is strange. She can't seem to sit still, can't stand the quiet and isolation. Even sitting on this bed feels wrong.

"Ana," Mac says, shifting to her feet. She wants to pace some more, maybe walk around the grounds a few hundred times. It doesn't help, but for some reason exhausting her body help out her mind. She feels less trapped when she's moving, and then she can keep an eye out for anything that might go wrong. It's not like when they first came and she distrusted everyone, and not like she believes them either. It's...it's hard to explain, actually.

"I'm going to check the mansion again."

Ana hums, glancing up at her. Her friend's face is tired, her thoughts obviously elsewhere.

"Okay. I can be ready in-"

"I can go alone, this time."

Ana seems hesitant, but her eyes drift down to the pen in her hand consideringly. She quickly glances back up, as if caught contemplating something horrid.

Mac smiles wanly.

"Space, Ana. I need some space."

"We have kinda been up each other's asses," Ana says slowly.

"Ana, we haven't been apart since all this began."

Ana nods once, her head slowly drifting back to the notebook.

"Then be free of my anus Mac," Ana says monotonously. "And in doing so remove me from yours."

"You disgust me," Mac tells her affectionately. Ana flips her the bird as she moves toward the door.

Yet, when it's all said and done, it's a bit weird to wander around the mansion without Ana glued to her side. Not bad, exactly, just different. She didn't notice how much someone else -even the other half of her soul- being there just kinda itched at her. It's nice to walk along by herself, to drift down the halls and let herself outside. It's even better to circle the mansion with the first freezes of winter crunching under her boots, sharp winds biting at her face.

It's….peaceful.

Mac takes a shuddering breath, feels the cold like weirdly pleasant shards of glass in her lungs. The jitteriness she felt in the room is faded and dull. There's no Victor hunting them, and even if he was, she could take him now. They have a plan for the future, a place to stay, and a way to live life again.

It's been a long time since she has felt peaceful.

It isn't what it was. It's not New York, which she knows will always hold her a shard of her heart. Nor is it the hard packed earth and squeaking hinges of the town they grew up in. Somewhere inside her, she knows that this experience has only picked at old wounds and dragged up things she should have forgotten, but now…

Now she feels like she can deal with those things. There is time to work through them. She can heal.

Footsteps, weighty and sure, crunch their way through the frost toward her. They are louder than usual, probably purposefully so. Mac appreciates that more than he probably knows, a wordless acknowledgment of the fact that he realizes he makes her wary. Perversely, it is his recognition of her unease that makes her calm again.

She glances at Logan out of the corner of her eye. He's wearing a jacket, bundled for warmth. She supposes it might be hard to stay at a warm temperature when your bones are made of metal.

"Surprised to see you out here," he greets. There's a lit cigar dangling from his fingers, and when he takes a puff, Mac can't tell what is smoke and what is misted breath.

"Gotta enjoy the cold when I can," she says. She shuffles her feet underneath her, tilting her head to watch the bare trees sway against a background of gray sky. The last of their leaves have fallen away, bright yellows and faded browns scattered on the ground.

They stand in silence for a bit, just watching the area around them. The tranquility she felt still lingers inside her, and she is content to just stand for the moment. The pressing need she felt in the room is no longer there.

"Scott called. Said things got shaky at the clinic where they make the cure, but he and Jea- Phoenix were there. Weren't really accepted at first, but the fed made a few calls, and everything worked out alright," Logan tells her casually.

Mac furrows her brows because she has no damn clue who Scott is or Phoenix. She also does not know why the fuck this matters to her at all, or why he is sharing.

Logan must see the confusion on her face because he sighs and plants the cigar between his lips. He stuffs his hands in his coat pockets and stares out at the trees.

"Thought it might make your friend more at ease to know they stopped the facility from being trashed. Cure ain't being mass produced no more, cause apparently, they were using some kid as the source, but it's still there. "

Mac turns away from him then. She glances back at the school behind them, trying to pick out the window that belongs to their room. She can't though, they all look the same from outside. She turns back around, not looking at the man standing beside her, but not looking away either.

"You know, she once held the opinion that the cure was the shittiest, most wasteful thing ever invented," Mac says conversationally.

Logan lets out a surprised grunt. A sort of 'no shit?'.

"Yep," Mac states, popping the 'p.'

He inhales, and the end of his cigars burns bright orange for a moment before fading down as he exhales through his now.

"You?"

Mac thinks about it. Looking back at all the fucking shit she's been through, it's surprisingly easy to find her answer.

"I just wanted to help, but that kind of got shot to hell."

Logan nods his head. To her surprise, he grins. He doesn't have sharp teeth like Victor did, just human ones.

"Funny to you?" she asks, maybe a little defensive.

"Seems to me you both got exactly what you wanted," Logan says. He takes his hands out of his pocket and pulls the cigar from his mouth with one hand, and pinches the burning end off of it with his other. Mac winces as the heat burns his skin, but when he hold his fingers up, the blisters are already fading from view.

"Because you stopped your friend, I'm still a mutant. Because you saved the fed, he wound up here. He called his guys, and now that facility will be regulated to hell and back because of what they found. And because of you, Creed is no longer the threat he was. Seems to me you helped a whole damn lot."

Mac opens her mouth to speak. She sincerely doesn't know what to say to that, so she closes it again.

"Xavier," she manages finally. "He's still…"

Logan raises his eyebrow at her.

"Bub, you telling me you could have done anything about that?" he asks.

Mac doesn't answer.

"You know, your friend had a point too. Even if he doesn't find a cure, which I'm pretty sure the old bastard will do, what he has now isn't bad. He's respected, rich, smart, and surrounded by friends. Sure shit is weird, and there's probably a bunch of law making nonsense and politics and work to be done. Maybe the government goes back on those treaties, and perhaps things get rough. I think your friend might have a better knowledge of dishonest governments then we do, though, and I'm also pretty sure that you two are no strangers to rough."

"But-"

"Face it, Mac. You wanted to help, and you did. You chose that destiny for yourself, and you can fight your fate, but you'll just end up losing," Logan tells her.

Mac shuffles awkwardly in her place, feeling the cold nip at her cheeks. He's kinda got a point there.

She figures if she looks at it like that, she might not mind losing all that much anyway.

"I got to read your paper."

Ana smiles, making sure that her expression is edged with faux sheepishness, tinted with just the right amount of self-deprecating apologeticness. It's not a new look for her, but she figures this it's better than expressing what she feels.

Soft numbness still hangs over her. It's gentler now, a light fog that drifts around embers of absolute rage and lingering fear. She is back in her body now, processing everything in a dizzying cycle of sleep, work, and heavy rumination.

She still feels physically exhausted by it.

Research dubbed it Acute Stress Reaction, her brain chemistry flaring up like city lights. Stimulation of the pituitary-adrenal axis, resulting in hypothalamic secretion of the corticotrophin-releasing factor. Which makes adrenocorticotropin, 8-lipotropin, and 3-endorphin. Fancy talk for 'working through shit and feeling like numb crap.'

There's probably a hormonal cocktail still floating around her skull. Even the ones that aren't supposed to be there. The catecholamines clearly kick in when she remembers that she is surrounded by people who could crush her and Mac like bugs, making her pulse rate skyrocket and muscles itch to grab the woman she loves and run.

It's normal, though. All within the statistic boundaries when she adjusts for outliers.

"It was good. Quality work, something I might have expected in a dossier, or as the result of a study," Coulson tells her. "Very academic."

Ana feels her smile turn a little sardonic at that. Academic.

"I read some stuff," she returns politely.

Coulson turns to face her, twisting carefully in his chair and keeping his mending body in mind. He looks non-threatening, and that's why she lets him in the room. He's baseline human, he is a surmountable obstacle, even if Ana knows very well that he has a gun on him right now. It doesn't really bother her, not in the way that the others do.

It's a knee-jerk reaction, Mac says. A cognitive bias against mutants that starts with Victor and doesn't seem to end. Intellectually, she can agree with Mac and knows it is unfair.

That doesn't stop her from feeling afraid when she stops and remembers that those kids running around can do terrifying things. It doesn't make it any easier to breath when she sees one of them move too fast, or make the instinctive fog disperse when they easily lift something three times her weight as if it is a feather.

It's a new tic, another obstacle to climb. Hopefully, she can get over it before whatever curveball life throws at them next smacks her straight in the face. She has to be ready for that because she knows it's coming.

Something always happens.

"Not what I had in mind when I suggested you write down what you were feeling," he says conversationally. "But good."

Ana feels something flare at that. An instinctive 'What did you have in mind, I can do better' sort of thought she cuts off before it can start. It isn't easy.

"Can I be honest with you, Ana?"

"Are you admitting to lying at some point during the conversation?" Ana asks. It's half genuine curiosity, half defensive wordplay. Usually when somebody inquires that they are segueing into something a little too emotional for her tastes.

Sure enough, despite his pleasant smile and passive face, Coulson's words are uncomfortable to hear.

"You did the right thing, Ana."

Her smile slips a bit, and her stomach does this strange clenching thing inside her. The praise is good, but it feels wrong.

"Nah," she says. "Mac's the hero, not me."

Coulson grins a little wider and shakes his head slightly, never once dropping eye contact. She feels so strange holding it she moves her gaze to the bridge of his nose instead of taking those eyes straight on.

"She's courageous too, but I stand by what I said. It was a little intense from what I hear, but in the end, you did the right thing. "

Ana wants to he's wrong. She knows, thoroughly and honestly, that her intentions were not what he would consider right. She wasn't standing up for anybody but herself and Mac, she wasn't saving people. She was surviving, a cornered animal striking out. Ana was motivated by nothing more than rage and the desire to murder in cold blood.

She wanted him to suffer.

Still wants it, if she's honest.

That's not right.

Thankfully, Coulson seems to see how uncomfortable she is with the line of conversation and drops the subject. For a moment, there is just a stilted silence in the room that just verges on companionable.

The quiet allows her to think of what is going to happen to them. This Witness Protection that, in her opinion, is little more than a farce at this point. Still, she's grateful for if, if wary. It still feels like she owes the people around her, as if there is something that has to be paid off.

No one, however, seems keen on setting up any financial return systems, however. Ana doesn't have much else to give other than thanks.

It occurs to her she hasn't even given that.

"Thank you."

Coulson twists his head around to look at her. In the quiet, he had gone back to glancing at the wall.

She looks at her hands, noting the burns that are finally fading away. Soon, she might get to the point where others might not notice there were any burns at all.

"You know. For the APB. For trying to protect us when Victor came. And, you know, giving us a way to get back on our feet," she mumbles. It's too sincere, too real, and it makes her feel weird.

"It's the least I can do."

Ana gives him a wry smile. That's just untrue. The least he could have done is turn the other cheek and walked away. This wasn't his problem, and he didn't owe them anything. Even if he is a fancy agent, he went above and beyond the call of duty in this situation.

"And Ana?"

She looks up from her hands.

"I hope you have a happy life, but if trouble ever finds you, feel free to call."

"I don't think me and Mac are destined for a happy life," she huffs in amusement.

"Maybe. But whether it's your fate or not, I think you can make it happen."

Ana goes back to looking at her hands. She thinks of all the things that have happened, of the seemingly endless running. She thinks of trying to stay out of dodge only to have Victor find them. She remembers knowing that it was inevitable because something always happens.

Then she weighs it against the fact that she met Coulson. She thinks of Mac, her Anam Cara, standing tall by her side. She remembers Victor's face as she shot him in the face, stripped everything away from him in a second. She searches herself and finds the ember she discovered then and there, that core that screams that she will not be a victim again.

Maybe they aren't fated for a happy life. Maybe they fight, and maybe they lose.

Maybe sometimes, though, they win.

AN: Heads up guys. This is the end of what I had done, and tbh it kinda feels like an end altogether. I might continue, but I am working to on an original novel and have RL commitments. Let me know what you think.