Scott and Betsy, early Wednesday morning

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Scott's finally out of Amelia's clutches the makeshift greenhouse-infirmary and back in his own suite. Betsy stops in to see him before she heads back to New York. This conversation goes a whole lot better than their last.


He was surprised that they'd left him alone, but a little glad. He wasn't feeling up to conversation at the moment, whether or not Amelia had finally deigned to let him out of her clutches, and the way Jean and Alex both watched him, worriedly, was wearing after a while. Stretched out on the couch in the living room - which someone had moved so that it would catch the morning sunlight, which he didn't mind at all - Scott stared a bit blankly at the open door. He hadn't noticed that at first. Maybe Jean had just stepped out?

Betsy stood off to the side, studying him with a blank expression. Her head tilted to the side as if he were one of the students' biology experiments gone wrong. When he shifted his gaze to the door, Betsy took a tentative step forward. But no, he wasn't looking at her, was he? "I didn't mean to disturb you," she said quietly, waiting for his reaction. "I simply wanted to check-in on you before I left."

Scott blinked at her, and then concentrated on reordering his thoughts into something approaching coherence. "Hey," he said, then mustered up a faint smile. "Leaving. Where are you going?" It struck him as soon as the words were out of his mouth, what she meant. "Oh. Back to New York, right. Sorry."

"No worries," Betsy said, waving her hand in the air, aimlessly. Then looked at her traitorous hand, clenching it and pulling it back down to her side. "A lot's happened. Wouldn't be too surprising if it all gets muddled." She pointed to her head. "In there."

"Now that you're back home and safe, I'll be taking my leave." Betsy started for the door, feeling awkward and annoyed that her tongue refused to work properly. Was it really so hard to say, 'I'm sorry?'

Scott closed his eyes for a moment, telling himself to focus, and then opened them again. "Why," he said a bit foggily, then was silent for a moment. Why what? Oh, right. "Why were you here?" That didn't make any sense. She didn't live here anymore, and she'd been so angry at him...

"I may have been angry, Scott," Betsy said with a grimace, taking a moment to calm her thoughts, to quell her rising ire. "But. They said you were whole, I even felt it, but I couldn't go without seeing. Without knowing...." She clenched her hands tighter now, feeling her nails dig into her palm. "There'll be plenty of times when one of us will be driving the other off the deep end. But I highly doubt that you would let your anger stay in the way of...." Betsy cleared her throat. "Still, I'm satisfied seeing you put together. Mostly. And I'm sure Jean will be back soon." She motioned toward the door but remained rooted to the spot. "And you'll be needing your rest, of course."

"Don't seem to be doing much else but resting, right now." Although he wasn't resting very well at the moment, still in the sunlight or not. It was good to be back in his own suite, but a little unnerving, too. Things weren't... fitting together the way they should, and thinking about that too much made him uneasy. "I don't know where Jean went," he murmured, closing his eyes, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on his face. "I don't want to be alone... don't leave?"

'Slapped with stupid' would be the best descriptor Betsy could come up with. It was something she heard one of her students say an age ago, when she taught. But it fit. Because at this very moment, Betsy stared at Scott with an agape expression of complete and utter flummox. Then she felt herself pull back and her feet started moving on their own, and Betsy was sitting by his side in a matter of seconds. Her hand enclosed around his and the other pulling back the fringes of his hair with the other. "I'll stay for as long as you need me to. Or until Jean gives me the boot. Whichever comes first."

He managed another faint smile, this one with a touch of real amusement. "Just asked you to stay, you know... didn't really need my hand held." But his hand tightened gratefully on hers, and some of his visible tension drained away. "Just keep being afraid I'm going to wake up back there," he murmured, barely audible, his forehead creasing for a moment before his expression smoothed out. "Anytime I go to sleep. Still."

"Oh," Betsy said, looking down at her hands and trying to hide the flush creeping up her neck. She almost pulled back from him entirely but the squeeze he gave her ensured she left her one hand still on his. Though she did keep from molesting his forehead for modesty's sake. "Not really. I remember once telling you that I was petrified of the dark as a child and it was something I still hadn't managed to quit after I lost my eyesight. Imagine that, a blind person afraid of the dark?" She let out a forced laugh, a tightness coiled around her throat. "The Fates never seem to lose their sense of humor in the strangest and trying of times."

"You're more afraid of the dark when you have reason," Scott murmured, glad she wasn't on his blind side. He thought that he was probably going to be a little twitchy about that, for a while at least. "Makes perfect sense to me."

"Well, I'm glad it does.... to someone." Betsy found herself rubbing her thumb over a small patch of skin. Reassuring. "I've recently decided that I'm going to reside at the brownstone in the city. I've been holed up in my apartment on the Upper West Side since I've moved and well, it hasn't helped in building on my stellar social skills. I was thinking that perhaps, we'd throw a party. A house warming of sorts. And with Pete jetsetting across the globe, I doubt I'll have many objections to offering up free food and drink." She looked up tentatively into his face, studying his expression. "It might be good for you to get out and be amongst friends."

"I... I could do that, I guess," Scott said a bit uncertainly. 'Out' was a strange sort of concept. He was having some trouble wrapping his mind around it. "Once I'm not zoning out anymore." He smiled a bit wanly. "I'd make for a lousy party guest right now."

"Don't worry," Betsy said with a feral grin. "I'll just go over your schedule with your secretary. We'll find some free time to fit in our little gathering, I'm sure." She ran a pattern against his skin with the edge of her thumb. "But not right now."

"Not right now," Scott echoed quietly, oddly soothed. His eyes drifted shut, and he didn't try to stop them.

"But soon," Betsy whispered, as she felt Scott let go of his burden and fall into an aided but equally blissful sleep. When she looked down at her hands, she was surprised to see they were linked with his.