Profession

Getting home

Crossing the Atlantic was speedy; there were no storms and the ocean was calm. I had a session with Dr Lance; it helped get me seeing straight and it didn't look like I was going to need a deep dive into therapy to deal with the flashbacks. I hadn't had any since getting out of that interrogation room, my dreams were untroubled, so it turned out not to be surprising that being fastened to a chair and tortured would have some impact, but she didn't think that it would be serious or long lasting. Torture really isn't a thing you forget, after all. Jon didn't quibble when I asked if it would bother him if I had the light on low for a few nights, and I slept better for having access to the light, to Jon, and to my freedom. I also had an initial interview with the new solicitor assigned to my case; they were quite interested and I rated a full, senior partner who agreed to meet me in their New York offices. Uncle Bucky promised them a copy of the information on the crystal drive--he was going to put the original some unspecified place for safekeeping--and they wanted to speak with him, Uncle Steve, and Natasha in more depth. Jon didn't have much to add; my solicitor had contacted him immediately. She'd been warned by the officers who'd been with Trevalyn that my incarceration fell under some sort of espionage law--I was fuzzy on that part because he was too--and had to be careful in what she said.

"She told me that all she could say was that you'd been arrested by officers claiming to be from MI:13," he said to me. "She didn't even know where they'd taken you, although she did say that she was prevented from telling me even if she'd known." He sighed. "I couldn't locate you anywhere. They must have wherever you were shielded quite impressively. Even Dad couldn't." And if they couldn't have found my heartbeat, that was really pretty extraordinary. "We never did find your prison. We had to go to 13 to find you, and the result was... well, you saw that." A long-distance consultation with Hawkeye helped Aunt Natasha and Uncle Bucky get into the building through supposedly secure air vents, and Uncle Steve had gone in by the front, using his previous friendship with Peggy Carter to leverage himself a seat in the observation room. Wisdom, Crispin, Uncle Steve, and a couple of people he said were higher level management were in there, and they retreated to a nearby conference room to hear what Carter and her cohorts thought, which is why everybody missed the light show. Even with the bright lights in the room, the shock sticks had been visible when they'd been applied to me. Uncle Steve had lost his cool when I said I'd been tortured, and for the rest, there were corroborating witnesses.

"Well, this is a clear misuse of power and warping of the laws designed to protect the public good," the partner, Marnie Davis, said thoughtfully. "Your solicitor was misled regarding what she could tell your husband. There's nothing in the law that would have prevented her from contacting him and fully disclosing everything that she knew. The problem is that the laws shield officials who are working for the government in their official duties, and one of the duties of the intelligence agencies is to recruit spies and sources of information. Additionally, those higher up in the hierarchy are deliberately shielded from specifics, such as how they hoped to get your cooperation, Lysippe. This is done for plausible deniability, so people with sensitive positions--like the prince--are protected. But I have a few ideas to research about how to hold somebody accountable. Depending on who we can rope in, it's unlikely that we can get a public hearing or even a trial. But I will devise the best plan possible, explain it to you, and you can decide where to go from there." So that was that. She seemed really sharp and if there was any wiggle room in the laws, I expected that she'd find it. I signed a release so that she could get copies of the doctor's records in case they 'disappeared.'

We were a grumpy bunch; Aunt Natasha tried to keep us looking on the bright side; I was out, I was exploring my options for justice, as slim as they were, but I was coming down with a cold which made me dreary, and Jon and my uncles were just really cross about the whole thing. All in all, I was glad to dock.