After ordering a drink and a basket of fries to eat while they carry on their conversation Tony quirks a brow at her. “You were a part of the SAR for that? Not an easy mission to undertake given the location. Don’t think anyone would have found me had I not blasted out of there. Too many nooks and crannies in the mountains to be able to search effectively. On the upside I’m here and not there. You weren’t with the party that picked me up were you? I honestly don’t remember much of the pickup and the transport to the base.”
“You’re right,” she admits. “I couldn’t do it; after the first few days there wasn’t enough to differentiate you from most of the rest of the folk in the area — and there was so much area.” She sighs, closes her eyes. “I’m not the Professor; I can’t get a sense of you from someone else. Sitwell found you.” She sounds a little disappointed. “I should have been able to do more. Anyway, Colonel Rhodes wouldn’t let me come along once they’d located you; said we’d done enough already.
“I couldn’t get a fix. Not without having met you before.” Her eyes open, haunted. “There are so many pockets of people there, confused, compelled, hurting. I couldn’t pick you out. Not — I failed.”
With drink set before him Tony wraps his hand around the glass, drawing it towards him as he eyes her across the table. “So you’re a telepath then? Or akin to that?” He pauses a moment then adds, “There’s nothing anyone could have done back then; don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s the past and won’t happen again.”
“Not as good as a telepath. I’m just an empath.” She stirs her drink with the straw before chasing one of the condensation droplets with a fingertip. “You really believe that. That’s … impressive, really. A couple years on and I can’t forgive myself, but you just — ” She shrugs. “Anyway. That’s the sort of thing I do, that and crowd control. It doesn’t take much to keep panic from overwhelming people.” Hooking the straw to one side with a finger, she takes a long draught of the amaretto.
“Thing is if you focus on what’s gone wrong rather than moving past it and making certain it doesn’t happen again you get dragged down by the guilt.” Speaking from experience Tony sips at his drink then nods as if considering what she must have gone through searching for him with her abilities. There was a lot of anger and suffering in that area. “Crowd control would be the better gig by far. So now that you’re back home what’re your plans?”
“Oh, I’ve got a couple open web design contracts to keep the roof over my head, and I hop around wherever I’m needed when little things go wrong. It’s more often than I’d like.” The cruelties of humanity to itself is a constant source of sadness for her. She eyes her drink, toying with the ice again. “Mine is a very quiet life, really. I spend most of my free time at home, reading or playing games or tending the cats. I’m not really,” an uncomfortable shrug, “a social person.”