"Ty." Just that one word held enough emotion to set the tone for this message: serious. "I'm about to do something... well, really stupid." She breathed into the receiver, part laugh and part disbelieving hurrumph. "I'm sending you something that's important to me. Remember how you said you'd do this thing for me? For free? I hope you don't regret that offer once it gets there."

There was an awkward pause where Noel tried to figure out what she would say next. This wasn't scripted by any means. "Uhm, once you know everything from what I've given you... If it's bad... Ty, I don't know, maybe... Maybe help me not be like that? I'm putting a lot of faith in you about this." Because she didn't trust herself anymore and she couldn't remember anyone else trustworthy at the time. He had her back once before. He made her an offer. She just had to hope he would follow through with it.

"Thanks. Sorry." As far as goodbyes went, that could have gone worse. She hung up.

Ty was crashed on his bed in Sanctuary. In the safety of his own room. He figured considering his run of luck lately, that was the best thing for him to be. That or, hey, runs of bad luck really made a man tired, and sleeping was always good. So good, in fact, that he didn't hear the rare sound of his phone going off. Maybe that's what he got for keeping it on vibrate all the time.

'You've reached Ty Fisher. Leave a Message.' The recording was very simple, but it was enough to do the job.

When he woke up later, he pulled out his phone, seeing a missed call and a voice-mail from Noel. It'd been awhile since they'd had contact, so he eagerly checked the message.

"Ty. I'm about to do something... well, really stupid."

Just the way she said this let him know something was about to go down. Ty'd done alot of things he regretted, but a promise was a promise. When the message finished, Ty sat on his bed, debating whether or not to call her back. In the end, he decided against. After all she'd said all she needed, and anything else would come to light as it needed, right? Really, all he could do was wait.

And he hated waiting.

A small package arrived for Ty by a courier service that wore yellow. It held a disassembled matte black handgun wrapped in a tee shirt. No ammunition included. It was the one thing she had managed to keep with her through before everything that she could remember.

The day Noel got her gun was the day of her field exam when she had finished training with the FBI. She carried it with her through missions and continued to carry it after she was transferred to New York. The gun was there when she captured, threatened, tagged and wiped the memories of her fellow mutants. It witnessed her humiliation when her face got gutted by a knife, when a co-worker stole her clothes in the park, and when she went to the meeting that changed Sebastian's life.

It had less and less to witness as Noel started to prefer the sword, but the last and most recent memory was deliberate. She used it like yet another answering machine.

---

Noel pulled her gun out of a drawer and sat on the couch in the apartment she and Sebastian had shared.

"Ty, you said that you can see the whole history of something. If that's true you now know more about me than I do. At least I hope you do. I met Sebastian's wife last night. It was... Awful. I don't know how I got to this point, but I do know somebody who is responsible for a large part of Sebastian's suffering." She didn't say it, but she was thinking about her current suffering as well. She had never wanted to betray someone's trust like she had obviously betrayed Sebastian. With almost angry movements Noel started to take the weapon apart.

"I'm going to make her suffer the same way Sebastian suffered. I'm going to make her forget everything." An eye for an eye, so to speak. "I'm listing you as my emergency contact so when it's done, when I am a vegetable or have the brains of a three year old or whatever, they're going to call you. Sorry. You said you didn't really have anybody. That's double true for me. I hope you get that."

She was done taking the weapon apart so she buried her face in her hands. "Tell me. Or don't tell me. Use me. Kill me. Or make me into whatever you want after this, but gods damn you if you lie to me, Ty, I will know it." She took some time before she spoke again.

"Sorry to dump this on you."

Noel didn't cry, but she did have to wipe her face before she wrapped the weapon up and put it in the same packaging Ty had now.

When the package finally came, Ty was pretty much a nervous wreck. His imagination had run wild, and he was chomping at the bit to get this done. It wasn't like he was madly in love with her or anything, but...she was a friend. And in Ty's life, good solid friends were hard to come by. He took the package from the man in the banana-suit and went back to his room, shutting the door, and locking it. He pulled out the shirt, unfolding it to reveal the disassembled gun.

The pickpocket removed his green gloves, and reached out for the main part of the weapon, attempting to calm his beating heart and racing mind as he did so.

~The first image of Noel was the gun being presented to her when she started FBI training. Her very last test, being recruited to a black ops division. Image after image of her tagging and wiping mutants' memories as if they were animals...

But back at the office, she was bullied. To the point of being tricked into jumping into a lake naked so they could steal her clothes. He saw her being taken down, given scars and tattoos, but these were healed by someone Ty had never seen in his life.

Her office was shut down, leaving her as a scapegoat for the 'real' FBI. More mind games, and more memory wiping, this time leaving her and the victim in an insane asylum. Then, the memories began getting a bit spotty, after wiping the memories of the man who'd healed her.~

Ty's head was reeling, it was just so much to process, but it wasn't over yet. Next, he saw Noel sitting on a couch, disassembling the weapon, and her words were as plain as day. After it ended the gun fell to the floor, and Ty collapsed on the bed, pale and sick to his stomach. He had no idea that was what she had to deal with.

He shook his head, popping some aspirin and rolling over. "No...I'll never lie to you.I...just be careful...I'm tired of losing people I let in..." he said, as if she could actually hear him. But she couldn't, and by now she was probably in the middle of doing what she felt she had to do...

((Continued from Fitting Reprisal))

Ring, ring.

"Mr. Ty Fisher?" The nurse hardly even waited for confirmation. "We have a patient here, a uh- Noel Fisher. You're listed as her brother and emergency contact..." She filled him in on the details. First and second degree burns on her chest, abrasions and contusions all along her back, neck and the back of the head. Something electrical blew up and shot her across the street into a car. Noel had a concussion, two fractured ribs and will likely carry a small degree of scarring on her chest for the rest of her life.

---

"I hear music." And her head felt like a blender attached to a balloon. Did that make sense? Balloon-y blenders? She would have laughed, but even just breathing burned. The ceiling zoomed by and Noel blinked until someone clapped loudly in front of her face.

"Hey! Don't go to sleep."

Sleep? "Freaking impossible," while strapped to a "freaking board." She did, however, blink again.

And jerked awake again in a different room. In a bed. Someone came to check her pupillary response with a small pin light and when they made eye contact...

Noel was still laying down, but the bed was cracking its way up with a mechanical buzz. A nurse was escorting someone out of the room who was just as confused as she was. If the room would just quit shaking, if her head would just quit spinning around for a minute...

"Can you remember your name?" The doctor began, pin light in hand, pulled her chin up to make eye contact...

This time everyone was clearing out of the room. She had an IV in place and a bit of gauze on her chest with a bit of cloth draped loosely over it so that the cloth wouldn't touch anything and so she would be decent. Her shirt was a wreck, a combination of burnt and cut open, but at least she retained her pants and what little dignity they afforded to her. She was propped up slightly by the angle of the bed which made her chest throb in a distant, unimportant way.

What really bothered her was the gauze. It burned and grated like it was too heavy a covering.

"Hello?" She didn't recognize her own voice. It eeked out and made her grit her teeth to keep from drawing too deep a breath and disturb the gauze of doom.

"Discontinue the use of your mutation so that we can continue giving you medical care." The voice buzzed over the speaker from the phone next to the bed. Noel took her time turning her head to locate it in order to keep herself from throwing up.

"Mutation?"

This time, Ty got his phone, he even answered it on the second ring. From what Noel had told him, he knew it was going to be a hospital the next time he heard anything from her. And he knew it was going to be pretty bad. But that knowledge didn't ease it when it actually came through though. He was warned that she would end up in bad shape, and there was nothing he could do to stop it; it just came to pass.

Even then, he had to smile at Noel Fisher. Sister. That was clever. When the voice finished talking, Ty nodded for some reason. "I'll be there as quick as I can." With that, he hung up and made his way outside, his limp not as prominent but still present, deciding to take a cab. He had to see her, and fast. No time to be Captain Cripple and get there possibly too late.

The cab ride lasted too long to him, as did the walk to the front desk. "I'm here to see Noel Fisher." The lady was one he wasn't exactly a stranger to.
"For some reason, kid, you always pick the ones that are in a condition where they can't have visitors."
"She's my sister. I can help."
"So you can control her mutation?"
"Yeah," he lied, without even thinking about it.

The woman looked at him through the oversized frames of her eyeglasses and sighed. "Down the hall. I really hope you don't have to come back again for a long time after this."

Ty nodded, hurriedly hobbling to where the receptionist directed him, and he stopped in the doorway, seeing her. "Noel? It's me...Ty. I came as soon as I got the news..." A nurse walking down the hall gave him a funny look. "I'm her brother," he lied. The nurse kept going, and Ty slowly walked a little closer to her. "We'll need you to calm down though...so you can get out of here faster."

Noel swiveled her head slowly to inspect this newcomer. Ty, eh?

"You're not my brother." Just by looking she could tell that much even if his words hadn't registered as... well, garbage. She made a face at the taste. "And I am calm." It was the room that was freaking out.

What she did not make a face at was the idea that they would skeedaddle. "Can we do that? Let's get out of here." She looked down at her shirt and hesitated. She had virtually no shirt left. And what little material was touching her body felt like a cheese grater against her skin.

And then there was the prospect of standing up. And after that the thought of walking.

She hadn't even sat all the way upright and was exhausted. "Wait. Maybe we start at the beginning."She pulled the covering up a little more. No need to get risky with a possibly related stranger in the room. "Your name is Ty. My name is Noel. Nice to meet you."

Ty looked around, thankfully no nurses or doctors were around to hear her say that. "No," he whispered, "I'm not. But you listed me as an emergency contact--and your brother--for when...whatever this is, would happen," he explained. "I'm a friend, and hopefully I can help you remember, if you want. But while you're here, we need to make the doctors and nurses think I'm your little brother, because that's what they believe. And trust me, they can be a pain about this crap."

Ty looked down at the shirt, smiling at her. He knew she didn't remember him. It was like last time, only worse. "First...I'm going to find out what happened to you, okay? You're in no shape to get up right now, as much as I wish we could. I hate hospitals..."

Shaking his head, he tugged off one of his gloves, then touched what was left of her shirt. He staggered back with the vision, seeing the entire life of the shirt, from beginning to its untimely end. Pale, he sat down in a chair and popped a couple of aspirin.

"Damn...that's rough..." he muttered, gaining his composure. "At least now you're gonna be okay. I'm here for you," he reassured her.

Actually, if she just closed her eyes it wasn't nearly as bad. Not watching the room shake violently did a world of good for Noel's nausea. So she closed her eyes and she listened.

Noel knew what she had done. She'd done the thing where she got mad and people started forgetting. Only this time, she had to be really, really mad because she was still trying to piece together basic things.

"If I had a place to go better than this, believe me, I would." She had an apartment, but it was a drive from... wait... where was this? "And I need you to feed my cat." Didn't matter. Nobody ever knew which hospital they were in because all hospitals were the same.

How would he figure out what she'd been through? She had her eyes open before she'd realized it. And then he was walking up to her. She pulled her gown up higher and higher in direct relation to how close he was getting.

He touched the hem of her clothes and... and just stood there for a second all glassy eyed and slack jawed.

"What? What's rough?" She squirmed. She was asking because he'd made it sound bad. She didn't know any better.

"I don't blame you," Ty said quietly. "I can if you need me to, but I'd be back. I'm not leaving you like this." His voice was a great deal weaker, shaky even as he spoke, his hand resting on his head.

"My mutation. Sometimes, it's pretty rough. I can touch something, and I see everything it's ever been through." He put the green glove back on, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes. "Your mutation is making people forget, among other things. I'm not sure I even know the extent of your powers," he continued. "But when you make people forget, you forget too. That's where I come in. We met awhile back, and discovered our powers are similar. We stuck together, saved each other's lives, even. After that, I promised to help you remember."

He paused, resting as his head pounded like a bass drum in the back of his skull. "I promised you I'd have your back no matter what. So, here I am."

"Hey now. C'mon. It can't be that bad..." How messed up could she be that she was comforting the person who knew what she had just done? Maybe it was that bad. He was talking about blame. And leaving her here. He was the first person to stop and talk to her, not that she minded the doctors doing their jobs rather than stopping to chat. "You're sorta freakin' me out." He sounded like he might just pass out. No better place for it, but still...

Noel rolled her lips together at Ty's explanation about powers. Her thing. That thing she did on accident. That was a mutation. A controllable ability. Her brain felt like it was trying to shrink in on itself or rearrange something. "Right. Memories and lies." She must have forgotten, but him brining it up like this was helping her remember.

In fact, the more her head felt like it was squeezing, the more she was certain of how it worked. The memorymancer held her head in her hands and took a long blink to shut off the forgetting part. Now the room was on solid ground again, she could make eye contact and finish getting treatment as needed.

But first, "What else? There's a short window where I can get some of it back." She had been smart to pick out Ty. Since what he was telling her was true, there was no one else that could get her the full picture unless they were there and... Judging by her injuries being wherever she was before this had been hazardous.

"It's not what I saw that's rough," he explained. "Sometimes, my mutation takes a toll on my body. This is one of those times. That shirt's seen alot, and I just witnessed years and years of memories in a matter of maybe two minutes."

Ty nodded, taking a breath. "Yeah, you can tell if someone's lying, and you can gather memories by...licking stuff. I guess one could say where the palms of my hands serve as my window to the past, your tongue does the same?" He shrugged, chuckling at how funny that sounded.

"What exactly I saw is alot to process though. In fact I'm still sort of...'remembering' so to speak. What you'd wanted me to remember for you, are my memories too now. I'm...I'm honestly not sure what you want to remember," he admitted. "I'll go ahead and tell ya you've had it rough."

"Take your time." Seemed like that was in ample supply around here too. The only thing that wasn't plentiful was positions where Noel could lay and not touch something that ached. Maybe her side? She struggled to roll herself and declined any offers of help. It wasn't pretty, but it did feel a bit better.

Years of shirt, eh? She supposed she could lick it and find out, according to Ty anyway.

"I don't know what I wanted to remember before, but right now what interests me is the person who put me in here." She tightened her fists as much as the IV and finger monitor allowed and took a deep breath to keep herself from setting off her mutation again. Revenge sounded pretty good right about now.

Okay, well. Not now, now. But like... pretty soon?

"The person that put you here," he repeated. "Was someone you blamed for alot of your problems, someone who apparently caused a lot of trouble. You wanted revenge. You made her forget. Everything. Even to the point of controlling her mutation, from what I gathered from the vision. After doing what you'd sworn to me you'd do, you were somehow...thrown into something, burned, and you ended up here, with no emergency contacts except a little brother. Me." The redhead rubbed his temples a little, starting to relax as the pounding headache settled, but he didn't move from his spot.

"In a sense... His voice became gentle. "You put you in here. You told me what you planned to do, via a handgun you mailed to me. And said when you ended up in the hospital, they'd call me, because I'm all you have. And...well, here we are, planning our next move as you recover. Though I honestly gotta say...I'm flattered by how much you've entrusted me with." He smiled softly.

So it was a sh and she was a mutant. Noel filed that little nugget away for later.

If Noel essentially did this to herself... If she had meant to wipe everything... "Yeah. Must've gone wrong when I took away control of her mutation. That explains my own break down in that area. Plus the fact that I still know my own name, how to read, that kind of stuff." Noel looked at the monitor just in case. Yeah. Still knew how to read.

"We'll I guess if revenge is what got me here, I shouldn't run off and avenge myself again, huh?" Funny that her first inclination had been to get revenge. Did she have some leftovers from who she used to be or was that part of her core? Something she would always do no matter who she was? She sent the psychometric a handgun to read to learn about her before.

"Am I... was I some kind of crazy?" Like right wing gun happy shoot 'em up crazy? Or mass murderer crazy? Who lived their life in full view of a handgun?

A philosophical conundrum for another day, perhaps.

"She deserved it, right? You know enough about "her" that you can tell me that, right?"

Aaaand then he had to go and get all cocky about how much she had trusted him. Right after he had said she didn't have any other choice, too. "Our next move? Don't you have like... A day job? Or something?" Noel wondered if she was still going to college. Nah, with her luck she'd probably only managed to erase a couple weeks off that chick's life and she would be just in time for finals only without any of the knowledge of this semester. She certainly didn't feel like any time had gone by.