Scott wakes up; Paige is there

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Paige has asked to be on rotation during the night. Scott decides to wake up when he's not supposed to. They dance around the issue before finally meeting headfirst; it's really not pretty. They haven't really solved anything, but they're halfway through the equation and both of them manage to sleep a little by the end. Count how many issues come up, just don't make it a drinking game unless you want to pass out.

The sky through the glass ceiling was dark the next time he woke up. Scott went rigid in the bed, briefly overcome by a dizzying wave of terror until it dawned on him that it wasn't at all dark around him. All the greenhouse lights were on, flooding the place with light. But even as he tried to focus on that, his pulse was racing, causing the heart monitor to bleep irritably at him.

There was a gentle clucking noise as Scott’s attendant rose from her chair, touching bare feet to the ground and setting aside a worn copy of Fisher’s The Genetical Theory.... A button was pushed, two, and she examined the readout she had produced, frowning slightly and reaching for a nearby train case of sorts, flipping the catch to produce a varying selection of small vials and clean needles.

“Terry needs you to stay alive long enough to teach her how to steal your job,” Paige muttered quietly, either unaware of his open eyes or the late hour causing a lack of concern. “That means no heart attacks, please.”

Paige. It was Paige. "Paige?" Scott stammered out, his voice still rusty-sounding but a rising undertone of something like hope to it - which turned into absolute terror as the lights above glinted off something thin and metallic in her hand. No... no, no, not again, no... He tried to sit up, to move away, but the movement provoked a wave of pain and nausea that had him wilting back against the bed, his head swimming. "No," he whispered brokenly, almost pleading with her. "No, you promised..." The heart monitor was sounding almost affronted now, but he didn't hear it.

With a curse, she tapped the air out of the needle she’d just drawn and thrust it forcefully into the IV hub, intending to put him quickly back to sleep before he further hurt himself. And then she paused, her eyes flicking over in cocktail of fear and confusion to his, holding firmly. Paige bit at the inside of her mouth. “Promised what?” she asked before she could stop herself; always asking questions, always wanting answers.

“It’s okay, you’re just going back to sleep, Scott,” she continued bleakly.

"You weren't one of them, you promised you'd stay..." In his pain-fogged mind, not much was clear just now, but he knew that if this wasn't her, if it was one of them... "You p-promised it wasn't a trick, you promised...." His voice cracked with what would have been hysteria, without the exhaustion. "Please..."

Glancing at the needle in her hand and them back to him, she sighed, dropping her hand to her thigh. “I would never hurt you, Scott. You just need to calm down, you’re in a delicate situation right now and getting yourself upset is dangerous to your health,” she rattled, attempting in vain to give herself some distance; she was merely the person on duty right now. Nothing more. Just because he’d broken off and replaced her, didn’t mean that she couldn’t do her job.

“Try to take some deep breaths.”

"You said... you said, Kaylee in sunglasses. So I'd know it was you..." It was a weak, barely audible protest, almost desolate.

For a moment, time slowed, and Paige found it hard to breathe, staring hard at the shades of blue in Scott’s wide eyes. The needle slipping through her suddenly lax fingers and the sound of it hitting the hardwood with a irritable tink-tink sound brought everything back up to speed in that sudden rush – trying to make up lost time, maybe – and she found herself jumping back in surprise with a short yelp.

“That’s what I said, huh,” she answered slowly, quietly, as she bent down to pick up the miraculously unbroken needle, blindly throwing it into the trash. “Yes, I suppose that sounds like me.”

It was starting, very slowly, to penetrate that this was the greenhouse, that he was still in the mansion. Home. And that this was Paige. He raised the hand without the IV in it, pressing it to his forehead and trying to slow his breathing down. It wasn't working, and his eye was blurring with tears.

"I'm sorry. It's so hard to think... I'm sorry. I just..." It all spilled out. "I kept seeing... hearing people from here. Working with them, or in trouble... but you weren't. You were just there, and you told me it was going to be all right..."

Her hand twitched at her side, and she eased it by straightening his blankets, smoothing the wrinkles and curves. She licked her lips, taking a breath before letting it go, and when she spoke it was still quiet, and a little rushed. “Oh? That’s funny. Funny odd, I mean. I mean, I read the file, obviously, right, and with your mutation...” Paige dropped off, forcing a small laugh before she started again. “Just funny that your head would use me. Going back a fair while, isn’t it?”

"I don't... I'm so glad it was that way," Scott said somewhat disjointedly, his breathing still labored as he tried to focus, to think. "If... if I'd seen you in trouble, I don't know what I would have..." But he did, and something very close to a sob slipped out, shame and guilt lashing out and smashing his fragile composure. "I t-told them too much, if I'd thought they had you..."

“I’m a student at your school,” she tried to rationalize, clearing her throat. Paige didn’t want to upset him, not now, didn’t want to ask him what he was talking about, how he was confusing her for someone else, how he couldn’t just... keep doing this to her. She was his doctor right now, this was her job, and she would not risk her patient just because he was deluded and she was hopeless. “You did just fine and you’re safe now. We set you up very nicely in Ro’s attic.”

Scott swallowed, then mustered all the strength he could - and sat up. For a minute, he thought he was either going to fall right back over or throw up, but he squeezed his eyes shut for a minute, breathing raggedly. Oh, he hurt.

"I know... I'm not making sense," he managed, a small noise of pain escaping as he leaned forward. "I know I'm not... I'm just so glad you're okay." He went to rub his eye with one hand, realized it had an IV in it, and used the other. "I'm sorry," he said suddenly, hazily aware that he'd implied... something, something that wasn't what he'd meant to say. "I know... you're an X-Man, now. I don't see you as... damsel in distress, or something..."

“It’s alright,” she replied, ignoring the voice in the back of her head currently trying to tear out it’s own hair. Biting at the inside of her lip again, she looked around for something useful to do, coming up short. “You really shouldn’t be sitting up, but you already know that, so I won’t bother lecturing you. And since you don’t want to sleep, um. Well, the view is nice and I’ll be back in an hour or so for your next round of painkillers. So, I guess you know where the call button is...”

"Please don't leave. Please?" His head was swimming - she was right about the not sitting up - but he looked up, trying again to focus on her. She was giving him a very odd look, and absurdly, despite everything, he laughed - a sad, broken little laugh with no real force behind it, but Scott bit his lip at the stab of pain in his side it provoked. "I like the view better when you're here?"

She didn't respond, looking conflicted. Scott swallowed, with some difficulty - his throat still felt like sandpaper. "You d-don't want to talk to me," he said hoarsely. "I forgot." It was still hard to think back to before. Even the disaster in San Diego seemed curiously faded in his memory. Scott rubbed at his eyes again, and his shoulders twitched suddenly as it struck him. "'Going back a fair while...' What the hell? Would you quit being stupid?" he flared in sudden, exhausted anger.

Paige moved across the room, fading into darkness a moment before swiftly returning with a small, red cup. “I don’t want to talk to you?” she asked incredulously, putting the water to his lips with shaky hands; ever the professional. “As much as you seem to think you’ve jumped into backwards land, Scott, this is all still just as you left it.”

He took a sip, mostly because he wasn't sure he'd be able to say anything else if he didn't. "Just as I left it..." he muttered, rubbing again at his eye. "Me, the horrible bastard who went away on vacation..." That part he remembered. He hadn't told her how much that had stung, mostly because she hadn't seemed to want to know or care.

“No, the really hurtful person I considered my role model and friend who upped and left for a rather long period of time with no heads up or mention of when you might be back or how I could contact you in the meantime.” Paige drank from the cup herself, grabbing a moment to collect herself, eyes firmly on his over the rim. “Who didn’t consider that maybe being part of one big group notification, that maybe not being able to answer when people asked me how Scott was doing, hurt, and that maybe, maybe... I don’t feel like I mean anything special to your any more and this sudden unbreakable bond you have with Terry and your jaunting off without a word, did nothing but enforce that.”

He quite literally couldn't believe that they were having this conversation now. It was so... surreal? "So of course... the answer's to avoid me. And give me the cold shoulder. Because that solves everything..." Another one of those strange, hurt little laughs slipped out. "D-Damn, if everyone who hadn't know where we were going, or how to get in touch with us, or when we'd be back had taken it like this, I wouldn't have any friends left. Or a brother."

Paige placed the little cup on his bedside table; beside the discplayer she’d placed there earlier. She stared at them a moment, hard, until they blurred into each other, pushing aside her temper. “No. The answer was to see if you even noticed I was gone. Which if you did, you ignored, and if you didn’t, well.” Shrugging, she turned her head, looking at him with nearly blackblue eyes. “But we can talk about this later. Your blood pressure is a mess as it is, and it’s not like you don’t know where I live.”

"You're forgetting something... why," he said, focusing on forming each word, because his head was just pounding at this point, "would it had struck me... as anything out of the ordinary for someone I love to stop wanting t-to talk to me? Betsy did. Alex. Jean. And look at what happened when I chased her!" The tears were rolling freely down his cheek and he looked away, wiping at his eye. "But I forgot. I forgot that it's my job to ch-chase. My job to make it all r-right, to read minds when people won't t-talk to me, my job to FIX things because it's always my responsibility... and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that I love them, because it's not enough, it's not ever enough..."

His voice had risen steadily before choking off on the last, and suddenly, he wanted out. Out of the bed. He was sitting here, this helpless, broken, pitiful excuse for a man and an X-Man, and she was standing there telling him he'd failed her, too, when all he'd felt for her was happy pride - pride seeing her in leathers, seeing how she handled herself, pride at how happy she seemed with Jono, with her work. Scott realized he was sobbing, tearing at the IV.

“You don’t get to do this, Scott. Not with me,” Paige replied, left hand clenched so hard at her side that it shook, tiny beads of blood forming where her nails dug into her palm, while the other pushed him back down, wrenching his hand away. “I’m sorry that you always have to be the one to fix things. That you’re tired and you’re hurting. I am. I am because I’m exactly the same, I do, did, the same. Except I? Never replaced you. And that’s the difference here.”

She grabbed both of his hands with her own, holding them tightly at his sides. “You know I have past issues with people leaving me, finding someone better. You know that, you saw me in that room, Scott. But we keep coming back here, to this silence, and I can’t do it anymore. I... I can’t be disposable because I don’t meet your needs anymore, because I am choosing something else, bec-“

"Please stop..." The tears were still falling freely, but he didn't have the energy to sob any longer. "If you ever th-thought... I was anything but proud of you... everything you've d-done, everything you've b-become..." Inwardly he felt just shattered. Lying to himself... had he been lying to himself? Happy little fiction of Paige, in the light, just because he needed it... "I don't know what to do... I'm sorry, I don't know what to do..."

Sagging in defeat, almost as if punctured, Paige pulled her hands away to cover her face, finally coming up with the loss against threatening tears. Taking a step back and trying to turn away at the same time she stumbled, falling gracelessly into the chair she’d been quietly reading in and found her knees betraying her when she tried to stand again; instead she tilted her head away, blonde hair coming down to curtain her face, as she shook.

“How was I supposed to know?” she choked out, pulling her legs up, tight, tight, a tiny little ball. “I didn’t want to do this again. How- how could I say it? I don’t want to go back in there.”

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..." Pieces. All in pieces. "I never wanted to hurt you... I'm sorry..." He turned his face away, his expression twisting in despair. His head was pounding, and he couldn't think, couldn't figure out how to... fix this. "T-Tell me what you need... please?"

“I need to not have to doubt us anymore. To know you’re not. Not just putting up with me,” she lurched, speaking mostly into her bare knee; the attic was warm and she’d worn shorts. Paige swallowed hard, taking a shaky breath. “For this to not be just another promise that we make to smooth over the guilt. I can’t... I can’t lose you too. I can’t just replace you. I was so scared.”

Scott stared up at the night sky through the glass, his throat so tight he wasn't sure he'd be able to force any more words out. But he did. "When I saw you, in the dark... I wouldn't have made it. Not through the night. If I hadn't remembered..." His throat tightened again. "I knew it wasn't real," he whispered, his eye blurring. "But it made me... want to hold on." He didn't know if it was an answer to any of her questions, but it was the only thing he could think of to say. His head hurt so much.

There was a long silence, punctuated only by the rustling Paige made as she wiped at the tears still running over the bridge of her nose and onto her knee. With a pathetic little sniffle, she raised her eyes to look at him through a break in her hair. “Can... I come back over?”

He gave a shaky laugh/sob. "Please?"

“I’m going to steal all the blankets, you realise,” she warned him as she slowly dropped her feet to the ground, coming full circle. “And at some point we’ll probably have to do responsible adult talking.”

Scott made a noise that might have been agreement, but sounded more like pain than anything else. "Not all the blankets?" His voice cracked exhaustedly, and the dampness on his cheek was still there. "I don't w-want to be cold again."

Paige bent over the medkit, skipping over the sleepy drugs and pulling out a bottle of painkillers, which she shook out into her hand. These were slipped into Scott’s mouth, one at a time and followed by a sip of water and a backwards tilt of the head, before she climbed in beside him, careful not to jostle anything.

“I’ll be a little furnace,” she said gently, dabbing at his cheeks with her sleeve and giving him a tiny smile. “A very non-sexual furnace.”

"G-Good... because I think J-Jono could... kick my ass right now...." It should have been a joke, but he was still crying, soundlessly, and couldn't stop.

“Shhshh.” Soothing, Paige pulled the sheets over herself, then the blankets, tucking herself into his side with a solid kind of practiced ease. “Come here,” she offered, leading him to lean into her, arms around him. “No more of that. It’s alright.”

Thoughts of whether this was or wasn't appropriate just weren't there. Or anywhere in the vicinity. He leaned against her, shaking with suppressed emotion he was too exhausted to let out. The painkillers kicked in slowly and gradually, although afterwards, he wasn't sure whether it was the drugs or the reassurance that finally let him start to relax finally into troubled sleep.