Evergreen

The car pulled to a halt at a parking lot, everyone climbed out, John placed Lily carefully on her feet before following Marcos and Lorna towards the covered cars. Lorna and John each grabbed a cover, pulling them from the cars, Marcos grabbed a bag passing it to Lorna,
“Lily! Come here Angel,” Lily skipped over to John who knelt down in front of her, Lorna grabbed a jacket from the bag passing it to John,
“Put this on,” the girl was swamped by Lorna’s jacket but it was better than the alternative.
“We gotta talk. When we were out there, when we lost our powers.” John said,
“Yeah what happened? What did they have?” Marcos asked, John met his friend’s eyes,
“It was Pulse. He was there with Sentinel Services” Both Marcos and Lorna froze,
“No that’s impossible, he died.” Marcos said shaking his head,
“Marcos, I saw him, he’s alive” Marcos shook his head again,
“No, he hated Sentinel Services. He protected all his people in Macon.” John looked at Marcos,
“They raided that station.” John pointed out,
“No. No, he’d never work for them. God, if they can turn Pulse-” John held up his hand, cutting Marcus off as John looked over the buildings,
“Sentinel Service drone coming in, we gotta move now.” John said,
“It’ll see us soon, I’ll try and draw it off,” Marcos said,
“Kay, I’m coming.” Lorna stated, John was only semi listening as he watched Lily. The girl wandered around the gravel watching a butterfly intently with all of her focus.

Pretty soon, Marcos and Lorna were heading one way while the others were heading towards the HQ. Reed and Caitlin were taking and holding each other’s hand for the entire ride, John looked away from them to where Lily had fallen asleep, he could tell that it had been a while since she slept because every few minutes her eyes would snap open just slightly before they closed tight again. John pulled the girl onto his lap where he hugged her, avoiding her neck after it had caused her pain earlier, about 5 minutes passed before the HQ was in sight. Arriving at the HQ, John held a sleeping Lily in one arm before stopping dead in his tracks seeing a load of new refugees in the main room,
“Shatter!” He yelled heading towards the other man, “who are all these people?” He asked,
“You need to talk to Sage.” John headed towards the computers room where Sage was sat, he carefully put the little girl on one of the chairs, one of her hands clutched tight around one of his fingers, she was still in prison overalls.

Suddenly there was yelling from the rest of the room, the girl awoke and began fussing quietly, John placed his hand on the top of her head before heading out of the room to see what was happening only to see Fade punching Reed Strucker. John jogged over, grabbing Fade’s fist before he could hit the man again,
“That’s enough!” John yelled, “What are you doing?!” John hissed,
“How about protecting us?” John looked at the man questioningly, dropping his fist,
“Just so y’all know, last time I saw this son of a bitch, he was working for Sentinel Services.” There was a load of muttering echo around the room. John saw Lily stood there near the front before returning his attention to Fade and Reed,
“Everyone, just calm down.” Fade looked at John,
“Calm down? This dude’s job was locking up people like us!” Fade snapped, at that point Lauren stepped in,
“Just listen. My dad prosecuted mutants, okay? He did. When he found out about us, he stood up to Sentinel Services.” Fade nodded,
“Yeah, by wearing a tracker into my bar.” Andy intervened at that point,
“Hey back off my dad,” Reed looked to his son,
“Andy. I was doing what I had to do to get back to my family. I realized I was wrong –” Fade interrupted,
“’and I’m sorry’ right?” John rolled his eyes,
“Alright, just hear him out!” at that point they heard Trader moan in pain,
“Ok stop, there are injured people here, why are we fighting each other?” Caitlin said at the same time as a sort of fog began to fill the area, Reed looked at the child, he had seen this a couple of times over the past few days and knew that she was afraid,
“You go, take Andy and Lauren with you” He said to Caitlin,
“Let’s work this out.” He said, this time to Fade. At this point people were staring at the little girl, increasing her fear, John held out his hand, she all but ran to him where he lifted her. She began messing with his necklace. John noticed that she was still wearing Lorna’s jacket over prison overalls. Sonia walked past and noticed John silently asking for her to come over, the crowd had died down as Sonia approached her ex who was holding a child,
“Can you take her down to storage and try and get some clothes for her?” Sonia nodded, John smiled his thanks before turning to look at the girl in his arms,
“Hey, Angel, this is Sonia, she’s gonna take you to find some nice clothes that fit you, alright?” The girl nodded but it was clear that she didn’t want to let go of John.

Sonia and Lily arrived down in storage where there were boxes of clothes,
“So you wanna tell me your name?” Sonia asked looking at the child whose tiny hand was clutching two of her fingers,
“Lily, Lily Mai Proudstar.” Sonia was hit with sudden realisation,
“Is John your dad?” Lily nodded,
“is he your fwiend?” Lily asked,
“Yeah, he is.” Lily then looked around,
“Where Momma?” Sonia looked at the little girl with sad eyes,
“That’s a question for your dad.” Sonia grabbed one of the boxes that had a pink dot on the side. Lifting the box to the floor, she sat crossed legged while Lily knelt down to peer inside the box. The clothes seemed the right size for the child, inside were a load of t-shirts and trousers and even some pyjamas. Grabbing out the top shirt, Lily looked at it, the top was pink with long sleeves and patterned with flowers. Underneath were a pair of grey Minnie Mouse leggings. Sonia helped the girl change into the items before grabbing down another box filled with socks and shoes. Lily looked into the box and picked out some ladybug socks and a pair of sparkly pink converses. Sonia grabbed down a bag and filled it with other clothes before passing Lily the jacket she’d been wearing back.

Sonia saw a smile appear on the girls face as she led her upstairs, it didn’t take the two long to find where John was stood in the main office with Sage, they were listening to police coms about something. Sonia cleared her throat, causing John to turn and look at them,
“Oh that’s better, isn’t it,” John said lifting the girl who was sucking her thumb,
“Yeah,” she spoke without taking her thumb from her mouth.
“Here, it’s some other things for her,” Sonia’s voice held something that sounded like betrayal but John didn’t care about that now, all he wanted to do was make Lily feel safe.
“Sage, I’ll be back in a minute.” John’s voice was quiet now, Lily was almost asleep against John’s chest even though it was only 3pm. Sage nodded, John left the room with the bag slung over one shoulder while Lily’s head rested against the other, John could hear her heartbeat, steady and calm as she slept. John opened the door to his room and flicked on the light, he walked over to the bed, lifting back the covers and laying Lily down, taking her shoes off. He pulled the covers over her not before remembering something. Heading over to his closet, John took a box from the top and pulled the lid from it, inside were a couple of things he had taken from the safe house that his wife and daughter had lived in, one of those things was Lily’s favourite stuffed toy, a small stuffed moose. John put the box back before putting the moose on his daughters arm, he watched as she cuddled into the toy taking her thumb from her mouth only to put one of the antlers in her mouth instead. John chuckled slightly before turning off the light and leaving the room after dropping the bag on the couch. He pulled the door to only to turn around and see Reed and Fade were back but Clarice and Sonia were gone, Marcos and Lorna were still yet to return, he let out a breath at the idea that he didn’t have to deal with Sonia yet. That only lasted for a moment when a portal opened up and Lorna, Marcos, Sonia and Clarice all entered the room Lorna motioned for John to come over once again he rolled his eyes before heading over,
“What happened?” he asked,
“We kidnapped a Sentinel Service agent.” Lorna stated,
“What?!” John asked in shock,
“Well we needed answers and we think we’ve got some.” Marcos said,
“Where’s the kid?” Lorna questioned looking around the room,
“Asleep.” John stated simply. The look on Sonia’s face didn’t escape his notice but once again he didn’t question it. Yet.
“Sonia. Can you write down what you saw?” She nodded, heading off to draw the images.

By the time Sonia was finished it was 6pm and Lily was awake but cuddled up in John’s arms as he, Sonia, Lorna, Marcos, Reed and a couple of others looked at the drawings,
“Do you recognise this?” Marcos asked Reed, pointing at one of the drawings, Reed shook his head but before he could speak, John answered,
“I do, it was on our friends arm.” Lily looked at it,
“I was what the mean men did to the nice people.” Everyone turned to look at the child,
“What did they do, kid?” Marcos asked,
“They made them be mean or the bad men would hurt them.” She hid herself in John, the fog growing around her again,
“Hey, it’s okay, you’re safe.” John whispered as Lily clutched his necklace in her tiny hand,
“What does it mean?” Lorna asked her cautiously, the only response was a shrug of her shoulders for a moment,
“They did it to Unkie Gus.” John gripped is arms tighter on the child and the fog cleared a little.

Soon everyone was finished talking and John took Lily back to his room. He set her onto the floor and the girl yawned again, John dug in the back and eventually found what he was looking for, a set of fleecy pyjamas that had unicorns on them,
“Here, Angel, put these on,” as she did, John noticed scars covering her back and on deep red mark on the back of her neck,
“Baby, how did you get those?” John asked gently even though his blood was boiling,
“The bad men hit me if was doing somefing wrong” she said quietly almost like she was worried John would tell her off. John felt the anger boiling inside him as he listened to his child telling him about the reason she had scars.
“They can’t hurt you now, Baby” He said softly as he hugged the girl, lifting her into his arms before lying her down on his bed, he grabbed out a book with fairy tales in which he read a couple of until Lily fell asleep. John lent down and kissed the top of her head, just as he did so he heard her mutter,
“I wuv you daddy.” Her voice was heavy with sleep,
“I love you to Angel.” He stood from the bed, switching off the light and grabbing a blanket before lying on the couch, slowly he began to drift to sleep. For the first time in a long time, John found himself having pleasant dreams, not a night filled with nightmares of seeing his wife dead and his daughter gone but of happy times with them.