Robert didn’t say anything when Lee pointed out it didn’t make sense to tell him the wild things she’d done when he hadn’t believed the more mundane things. That just meant it was true.

Lee explained that she’d made a conscious choice to go to Romania, to do what she could to help and then explained that she wasn’t a terrorist.

”I didn’t think you’d set off the bomb, I just was afraid you’d been there…Jesus Em, you think I’d call you a terrorist?” Robert said.

Tarin was glad that Lee’s brother had clarified. They were getting to the tough clary of the conversation though and Tarin held out his hand towards Lee in case she wanted it.

”There were camps in Romania, just like there were here.” Tarin said, he’d have been happy to say more but he didn’t know exactly what Lee wanted to share.

”Actually come out and say it? No. But honestly? I have no idea what you do or don’t think about me anymore,” Lee said. Her tone wasn’t angry, her voice wasn’t raised. If anything, it was a little sad.

But it was true, Lee didn’t have any idea what Robert thought about her, considering he had raised the exact same issues recently as he had 15 years ago even though Lee had thought those had been dealt with a decade ago.

Seeing Tarin hold his hand out, Lee gave him a slight smile as she reached out and took it. Then expanded on what he had said. ”Camps that they had up and running the day after the law was passed. And what little I did see of them, they were no better than the ones here.”

Robert looked absolutely horrified when Lee said that she didn’t have any idea what he thought about her.

”You can’t be serious?” Robert said, a little heat entering his voice for the first time. ”I have only ever wanted you to be safe. I have clearly made some poor assumptions, but I would never” he said.

Lee took Tarin’s hand and Tarin didn’t miss the sidelong glance that Robert cast at the two of them. The other man didn’t say anything though and then Lee mentioned the camps.

”You were in the camps in Romania too?” Robert said running a hand over his face. ”You went across the world and ended up in another camp?”

”You can’t be serious?”

Lee simply gave a small shrug with her left shoulder to start with. But then Robert continued. ”That’s good to know,” Lee said, her voice calm. ”With how you just haven’t believed me for so many years, I honestly had no idea what you might think.

“And safe…” Lee continued, her voice quieter now, a small frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. ”You’ve just seen how ‘safe’ my life is, no matter what I choose to do or not do.”

Lee looked back up when she heard Robert questioning about how she had been in the camps in Romania as well. ”Thank god no,” she told him with a shake of her head. ”I really doubt they would have adjusted my collar there, which would mean I wouldn’t have been walking out of there alive. Not that I had thought I would with the camp here. No, I saw a small bit of the Romanian camp when we were getting everyone out of it.”

”How could I believe you when I didn’t know any of this about you?” Robert exclaimed. ”And life is much safer when you aren’t constantly walking into proverbial burning buildings.”

Robert actually had a point there, one that Tarin had made to Lee before and Tarin glanced briefly over at Lee as they continued speaking.

Lee was still talking though, pointing out that she’d have been in real trouble if she’d ended up in the Romanian camps because of the language barrier and Tarin involuntarily squeezed her hand because the fact of the matter was that she so very nearly hadn’t and it still shook him to the core to even think about it.

”Getting everyone out?” Robert said, and Tarin could already see the other man coming to the right conclusion, ”You broke people out of government camps?”

Robert leaned back against the couch. ”How….?”

”Maybe safer, but it’s not safe, Robert,” told him. ”At least that’s how it’s seemed the last 20 years.” And it really did seem that way. Kidnapped off the street when she was pregnant simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing to do with being a mutant. Everything that had happened with Blaine’s doppelganger because the rift had opened and she’d mistaken him for the man she was dating. The building collapse simply because they’d decided to go do something safe to make the world a better place.

And Robert quickly realized that ‘getting people out’ meant a breakout. ”Probably the same way it was done here,” Lee told him. Though she really couldn’t be sure since all she knew about the breakout here was Rupert’s part and that there had been a resistance. ”There was a resistance in Romania. They figured out a plan to get people in and out of the place. I went in with them the day of the breakout.”

As she finished speaking, Lee squeezed Tarin’s hand slightly.

Robert just shook his head when Lee said life was safer but not not safe when she wasn’t saving the world. Tarin had actually nodded when Robert had said what he’d said.

Lee had a point though, so many things had happened to her just in the course of her normal, everyday life that it wouldn’t be a leap to do the wild things that Lee had done.

Robert just shook his head again when Lee mentioned working with the resistance to get people in and out of the camps. There just wasn’t much else to do.

”I imagine that it wasn’t a peaceful takeover”

”Neither of them were,” Lee whispered, her eyes dropping to the floor as she spoke. ”Even if that had been the plan of either of the resistances, even if every mutant going in and every one already in the camps had wanted it to be a peaceful takeover, I don’t think that would have been possible.”

Lee took a deep breath then looked up at Robert again as she squeezed Tarin’s hand. ”But I can guarantee that the number of prisoners who did not wish harm on those guards for what they did is very small,” Lee continued, her voice still very quiet.

Lee let that sink in for a few moments. Because, while she herself hadn’t killed any of the guards during either of the breakouts, she had wanted them dead for what they had done.

Robert was just staring at Lee as she spoke, his face unreadable as she explained that there hadn’t been any way for the camp breakouts to be peaceful. That the mutants in the camp had wanted to harm the guards for what they’d done.

Tarin couldn’t help but think that if Robert knew his sister at all he’d know by the way that her eyes had dropped to the floor, by how quiet her voice had gotten that this was getting harder and harder for her to talk about.

Lee was looking at Robert now and Robert looked back.

”But you got out…” Robert said, almost hopefully and Tarin realized that maybe the other man did recognize how hard this was for Lee. ”You were all okay…

The silence stretched and Tarin looked at Lee again before turning back to Robert, ”There’s a difference between surviving and being okay.”

”But you got out… You were all okay…”

Lee just looked at Robert in shocked silence, the second stretching out longer and longer. Did he not remember what she was like that week she crashed on his couch before she ended up going to Toronto?

Tarin was the one who broke the silence. He knew, he had known, without her having to spell it out for him how true that was.

”I'm not exaggerating when I say I didn't think I'd get out of the camp here alive,” she told him. This she could talk about. Even if she wasn't sure why she needed to explain it all to him. ”The moment I found out what the collars did, I thought getting caught would be a death sentence for me… They actually adjusted it for me, but still every time someone touched me or my emotions got too strong, it shocked me.”

“I was in there for one month,” she continued. ”It took about six before I started to voluntarily touch people again. Even then, I still flinched when I was touched. My subconscious was still expecting to be shocked. I would start flinching away before the contact was made because my siphoning told me when Simone was that close.

“So yes, I survived being in the camp, but I was far from being ‘ok’.”

”I know.” Robert said, ”I remember how you couldn’t leave the apartment, how terrible everything was for you. I also remember what made it all worse and why it happened in the first place.” he said, eyes flicking to Tarin momentarily before coming back to Lee.

”I want to understand Em, but every time I don’t, you leave or get mad instead of explaining what I don’t get. Also, most of our conflict hasn’t been because of you and me.” Lee’s brother said, hesitating as if he knew bringing this up was a bad idea but didn’t know what else to do. ”From my perspective, every time something bad happened to you in New York it was because of something he did. Now it sounds like he drug you into the same kind of nonsense halfway across the world too.”

”But you said you weren’t even actually in the camps in Romania in that way, thank God. You helped everyone get out.

”And what started all of that was the fact that I still believed he would leave me because of my powers,” Lee pointed out.

But then Robert claimed he had dragged her to Romania, and Lee actually rolled her eyes at the man. ”How many times do I need to tell you he was incapable of forcing me to be anywhere I didn’t want to be?”

And Robert was relieved that she hadn’t been in the Romanian camp. But he really didn’t understand, did he? Even ignoring what had happened to her there, he didn’t understand what the breakout meant.

”No, I wasn’t in the camp, and yes, we all walked out alive,” Lee told Robert as her eyes dropped again. And yes, she was choosing her words very carefully with that.

Lee took a breath then looked over at Tarin. ”He’s not going to really understand unless I tell him, is he?”

For someone as conflict averse as Tarin, this conversation was wildly uncomfortable. There was even more history of conflict between the two siblings than Tarin even knew.

As a somewhat neutral observer, Tarin could understand a bit of Robert’s frustration. He truly couldn’t empathize with a lot of what Lee was saying because Robert had never been through anything like what Lee had been through.

Robert also didn’t try very hard. Not nearly as hard as he should have. Robert wanted everything to be as normal as possible.

Normal just wasn’t possible for some people. Hell, some people couldn’t even volunteer without having a building fall on them.

Lee was struggling more and more to talk though, and Tarin knew she didn’t want to have to explain the whole ordeal again.

”No, but don’t do it. Nobody needs to understand everything about you.”

Tarin turned to Robert, ”Lee went through something in Romania that nobody should or maybe even has gone through. It’s hard for her to talk about. She tried to explain to Rachel, but it’s hard to understand.”

Robert scowled at Tarin, ”But you understand it.”

Tarin nodded grimly, ”I’m in a unique position to understand.”

Tarin looked over at Lee, ”Can he ask Rachel about it? Do you want to go for a walk and I’ll explain?”

Tarin agreed that Robert wouldn’t be able to understand without knowing, but also said not to, that he didn’t need to know every single thing about her.

Then he turned to talk to Robert, to explain, and Lee’s eyes dropped down to look at Tarin’s hand that she was still holding. He was in a unique position to understand, because even that first time before he had any sort of feelings for her, Tarin was able to imagine what it had been like, the fact that her spirit had been out of her body.

”Can he ask Rachel about it? Do you want to go for a walk and I’ll explain?”

Lee looked up at Tarin again. ”Would you be ok to do that?” Lee asked. When Tarin confirmed that he would be, Lee nodded. ”Ok. I’ll go get a coffee, then.”

Giving Tarin’s hand another squeeze as she stood, Lee made her way to the door without even looking at Robert, grabbing her purse on her way. From there it was quick for her to get out the door and down the hallway to the elevator.

Lee agreed to let him help. Tarin was so surprised that he almost missed her asking him if he was sure he’d be okay with it.

Tarin managed to answer in time for Lee to not balk and he just kind of stared in shock as Lee retrieved her purse and made her way out the door.

That left Tarin and Robert sitting on opposite sides of the couch.

”It’s a testament to how hard this is for her to talk about that she just agreed to this…” Tarin said before Robert could get confrontational.

”So I’m going to ask you, for her sake, to just pretend to forget everything you think you know about me for the next fifteen minutes and listen.”