62 A Mother's Touch
Gabriel remained lost in his thoughts as twenty minutes passed, then thirty. Michael gave him injections as directed. He heard Noah groan in pain once and he heard Angela's voice speaking to him soothingly. At least he imagined it was soothing. All he could make out was the tone. She was speaking too quietly for him to get the individual words.
Peter arrived. Gabriel heard his voice clearly in the hall, initially alarmed, then settling down to a calm, practiced and professional banter. After another minute Noah made another cry as Peter did something in the course of examining him. Fitzgerald's fingers twitched. It occurred to Gabriel that Michael probably felt responsible for Bennet's pain. He felt sorry for him. He'd just been doing his job.
Angela came in, carrying Noah's handcuffs. "How much time do we have?"
"Seven minutes," Michael said, looking at the timer.
"Very well." She went to her knees in front of Gabriel, who looked at her dully. She put a hand on his knee. He shifted it away from her touch. Michael's grip increased marginally. He winced. Angela told him, "Gabriel. Gabriel, I don't know what you saw, but… please understand, telepathy is a very difficult power. Most people who have it don't like to use it, unless… unless they are very cruel, or very certain of themselves.
"It can show you things you don't want to see, show you things about another person you didn't want to know. It's like precognition in that respect. People are never what you want them to be. They may be selfish, egotistical and mean. They may have thoughts you don't want them to have. Do not let those dark thoughts blind you to the good ones."
Her hand faltered towards his leg again and he moved it further away. Michael tightened his hand. Gabriel made a strangled sound against the pain. He had no regeneration to help him endure it. Angela looked at Fitzgerald and he relaxed his grip to a more tolerable level. She huffed. "He's not ready to listen to me yet." She handed Michael the handcuffs. "Cuff him, hand to foot."
She looked back at Gabriel, "Gabriel, stay here. It's not safe for you outside. Please stay here. Remember what I've been trying to teach you about emotional distance, blocking? Use it. Your mind is being affected by what has happened to you recently. Stay here." This time when she reached for him he didn't move away. His expression was still untrusting.
"Wait a moment," she said to Michael and she walked over to get a box of tissue. She returned and knelt much closer to Gabriel's face. She started to wipe off the tear tracks from earlier. He tried to jerk away from her, but Michael turned his head back. "Let him go," she told him and he did. Gabriel reached up and rubbed his neck. It hurt badly, like it had been stuck in a vise for half an hour.
Angela reached up slowly to wipe his face. He tried to forgive her for how she saw him. He dug for more tender moments in Nathan's memories and brought up one where she'd sat at his bedside reading him a story. He must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, because Peter was very small. He hadn't felt jealous of the new addition to the family, but sometimes he felt resentful of how much of his parent's time the baby absorbed. She'd sat next to him as he was fevered and sick, reading him the entire story, giving him her time and her attention, caring for him. He let her touch him and sighed, looking away, thinking about how he was doing the opposite of her instructions for emotional distance. "Thank you," she said softly.
She cleaned him up and looked at the face of the man who wasn't her son, touching his chin and the line of his jaw with her bare hand. He glanced back at her briefly, a grateful look for her attentions, then away again. She rose. Gabriel didn't fight with Michael about being cuffed, even if it was an awkward position. Angela said to Fitzgerald, "I need you to pick Noah up and carry him to a bed. Peter can't heal him directly so we'll give him standard medical aid for now." With a last concerned look at Gabriel, she picked up the bag of neutralizer darts and left.
Three or four minutes later - he couldn't tell exactly, which was very annoying - Michael came back, looked at him and gave him another injection. He grumbled to himself, but it seemed pointless and undignified to fight with the man about it. Gabriel didn't feel in danger from Angela anyway. Being at her mercy was inconvenient, not threatening. He trusted her. Fitzgerald paced up and down the hall uneasily and finally came back to sit on the settee. Gabriel turned to look at him. "Do you live here?"
Michael grunted in some manner Gabriel suspected was affirmative. He knew the answer was yes - Gabriel was just trying to pass the time.
"You like your job?"
He got a similar grunt.
Gabriel sighed and looked out towards the hall, giving up on conversation with the brick. "What are they doing?" He asked this rhetorically, but it got the best answer.
The blond man said, "They're working on him, I guess. Gave him painkillers, straightening what I broke."
Gabriel ran his free hand over his face. Even through half the house, they both heard Noah yell. Michael stood up and paced the hall again. With the degree to which Angela liked Noah, entirely platonically, he thought Michael had good reason to be anxious.
A half hour and three injections later, Peter came out, gave Gabriel and Michael both nasty looks, and left. Gabriel was never so relieved that Peter hadn't stayed. Angela followed him out shortly and unlocked Gabriel's cuffs. The timer went off. She shook her head at Michael when he hefted the bag of remaining darts at her. "Gabriel, will you talk to me?" she asked him.
"Do I have a choice?" He looked past her at Fitzgerald for a moment, then back at her.
"Yes, you do," she said, her voice stern. "If you won't speak to me, then you can leave and take your chances outside, on your own. If you will, then I will go get you some tea. When your powers are back and you feel more like yourself, we can have a chat."
He didn't think that was much of a choice, but it was classic Angela. He narrowed his eyes at her, feeling a bit sensitive about things due to Maury's letter. "I don't have to have my abilities to talk to you. I feel like myself right now." After a pause, he said, "Send him to get tea."
Angela turned to the muscle man. "Can you make tea?"
"Uh… yeah."
She nodded at him and he left to do so. Gabriel got off the floor and sat on the settee. After a moment, he pulled out the letter and reread it. He put it away, not caring to share it with Angela directly. The contents were embarrassing. "Maury is angry I killed his son."
"That's not unexpected."
"Yeah. I should have thought about it. He turned Noah against me. And Wilcox, but you know that."
"Noah is not turned against you."
He looked at her intently. She went on, "He is very upset about what has been done to him, but he does not blame you for it."
Gabriel grunted. "And you?"
"I don't blame you either." She folded her hands in her lap.
"Should I try to help Noah?"
Her voice was tense. "I would prefer you refined your technique on someone else first."
"He asked me to make him sleep."
"He told me that," she said briskly. "He is heavily sedated right now, so that is no longer necessary."
He looked at her. She thinks I'm a monster. It tore at him. He blinked and looked away, searching his mind for something to distract himself. "Maury says there's more you're not telling me about little Noah."
She exhaled slowly with an expression on her face indicating what she'd like to do to Maury for telling him that. "Gabriel, I do not wish to share my thoughts with you."
He turned his eyes on her, boring into her. She fixed hers on his chest. A long moment passed where Gabriel couldn't quite get past her cleaning his face earlier. As long as that was in his mind, that tender, motherly touch, a kindness he didn't think he deserved, especially from her, he couldn't bring himself to violate her. His power wasn't working anyway at the moment, but they both knew that was just a matter of time.
Michael came in with tea, oblivious to the silent battle of wills. He served Gabriel first, then Angela. She seemed very relieved at the interruption. Gabriel went on as if there had been no standoff. "He also says he has Molly and if I move against him directly, he'll kill her. No… that's not what he said. He said he'd break her."
Michael retreated after leaving the tray next to Angela. He looked uneasily between them. Angela looked to him and said, "Go see if Noah needs anything. Stay with him. Let me know if he wakes." Michael gave Gabriel a last uncomfortable look and went.
When he left, Gabriel said, "How can I tell how many of the agents he's gotten to?"
She sighed. "You can go to them, one at a time, and look into their minds. He can't hide things very well from another telepath. What we usually call memory manipulation is needed for that. What you find, you can try to undo. In fact, you'll almost certainly have to, since your presence will probably trigger them, assuming they're not already hunting you. Even now, Noah is driven to get at you." She frowned at her tea and blew on it to cool it. "Maury will bore quickly of the game. I do not think he had strong feelings for his son and in any case, he knows he will have Arthur to deal with if his actions against you inconvenience Arthur's plans."
Gabriel sipped the tea even though it burned his mouth. His regeneration was coming slowly back online. He'd clearly lost the layered effect. It had probably happened the same time he'd lost Claire's memories. "He implied he was going to go after the people who loved and trusted me the most." Peter, Heidi. He looked at her.
"That may be so, or it may be an empty threat to frighten you. Heidi can defend herself better than you know. I don't believe Maury will go after children."
"He has Molly! She's only a year or two older than Monty."
Angela huffed and said nothing. He glared at her and then looked away. Still looking away, he said, "What about Peter?"
She adopted a tight, even tone of voice she used when she was being guarded. He was getting better at reading her cues. "He is the same as he was last night."
He looked at her. He was really tired of the secrets. He was tired of having to fight off the urge to use his new ability to pry those secrets from her. Abruptly, she said, "Your powers are recovered. You need to leave." She stood up. He rolled his eyes and rose as well. She's right. If I stay here, I'm going to do it eventually. My self-control is shot. Hell of a week.
He said, "I'll start with the facility here in town, then Philly, then Washington. That's probably as far as I'll be able to get today. Do they all have these neutralizer darts? They're really inconvenient," he complained petulantly.
She smiled warmly at him. "Yes, dear, they do. They're standard issue now. Try to keep the body count down." She came over and tugged him down to give him a peck on the cheek. She patted his cheek like she did to her sons and walked off towards Noah's room. He shook his head and left, feeling very much like he was wearing the wrong face today.