LOG: [Jennie, Marius] Done

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Marius finally seeks out Jennie to talk about what he's learned happened over the course of the last two months. Jennie shows him the lesson is far from over.





He'd never walked these halls in half-shift before, and it was more unsettling than he'd ever believed possible. The corridors looked dark, and wrong, and . . . small. Smaller than he'd remembered the school being. It had only been two months. It felt like an eternity.

Marius slid fully into phase, the floodboards beneath his feet creaking slightly as they took his weight. The half-shift was hardly necessary; almost everyone was in class right now. That and the habitual pattern of Amelia's rounds had been deciding factors in his timing. Second thoughts weren't tolerated. He had to start somewhere.

Marius knocked on the door.

Jennie jerked from the half-doze she'd been in. Da hell? She rubbed her eyes and pushed aside the covers of her bed. Crystal was at class, but maybe she'd come back. But why would she knock? Maybe it was one of the new girls or Laurie-

She put her hand on the doorknob and smelled the sulfur. Her heart dropped into her stomach. Oh shit, you knew this was coming. There was no way she could pretend she wasn't in, he'd have heard her moving around. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

The opening of the door almost sent him flinching all the way into a teleport. Marius took one step back and stopped himself. "Oi, Jen. I, ah . . . " His orange eyes flicked down in cursory assessment and he found himself distracted by the shadow of the ribs jutting over the collar of her tanktop. "Heard you'd been released. Just thought I'd . . . check up."

Jennie followed his eyes. "Behold," she said wryly. "My Kate Moss impersonation." The was an awkward pause. "Well. I guess you can come in," she stood aside to let him enter.

Marius nodded awkwardly around the respirator and entered, at a loss. Why was this so hard? All his life finding something to say had been easy. He could hold entire conversations on three words from the other party. Yet ever since that night in Monte Carlo he looked and found . . . nothing.

"So," Marius said, stopping a little ways into the living room as Jennie shut the door behind them, "you doin' all right otherwise? Docs saw you clear an' that?"

"Yeah," Jennie answered dully. "I have to eat, like every couple of hours. And I'm sleeping a lot. But," she shrugged. "Otherwise okay." Not like Manuel. Another broken body to haunt her dreams.

She figured she would be polite. "And you?"

Marius shifted uncomfortably. "She goes. Back to . . . back." Say something clever, he thought as the respirator rasped in the long silence. Go ahead. You're good at clever.

But nothing came.

Jennie crossed her arms and looked down at the floor. What else do you want me to say? She bit her lip. "Anything else?" she finally said.

Okay. He just needed to have it out with this. Marius took a deep breath. "Look, about . . . what happened. What I did with Manny's power. I'm sorry. I didn't know what I was doin' an' I apologise."

Jennie waited. Nothing else came.

"That's it? 'I apologise'? Wow. Thank you." Jennie said sarcastically. She put a hand to her heart. "Thank you for empathically coercing me into enabling you to eat people, steal money for you, and almost getting me killed. I'm touched by your shitty-ass apology."

Despite his determination to apologize, the hostility in her voice sent a prickle of rage up his spine. Marius balled his fists to stop the spastic twitching.

"An' what is it I could have done?" he said, sarcasm pitched in tones to equal hers. "Sorry, did I demand you help in carryin' my Napsack of Burning Personal Issues across Europe? Did I make a suggestion you embark upon a thrilling life of crime? Did I ask you to sodding lie to staff and parents? No. So far as I knew, those brilliant ideas were all yours. But of course! Empathic coercion! How could I have been so blind!" The heel of one hand smacked against Marius' forehead. "Because when your best mate volunteers to help you bleedin' survive that's the first thing that comes to mind! She must have been forced!"

So they were at this again. Jennie remembered that first fight, when Crystal had made it rain, and Marius had made her cry. She felt oddly detached this time. Like she was watching this from someplace far above.

"Well?" She said quietly, her voice hard. "Was I?" She held up her hands. The two red marks on her palms stood out starkly against her pale skin. "You tell me. Because I don't know."

It was instinct to lock onto a motion. His eyes seized on the movement, and for the first time he saw the discoloration on her palms. Two livid spots, the same size and shape of the mouths on his. Marius stopped dead, eyes wide, all anger abruptly ripped out from under him and replaced with cold shock.

What . . .

Slowly, expression never changing, Jennie lifted up the bottom of her tanktop as well. Her hipbones protruded obscenely, and Marius could count each an every rib. "Remember, when you wouldn't eat? I stopped. Even though I always eat, I have to eat. Or my body eats me. My hands-" she held them out again, "This isn't stigmata, Marius. This is called toxic empathy." She met his eyes. "If that was happening, if that was you, then what else was you? I've gone over every conversation, every action, trying to figure out if it was you or me."

"I didn't know." The words were almost a whisper. "I'm sorry. Jen, I didn't mean for this. I didn't. I swear I didn't. If I'd -- Jen, I'd never--" Marius stared at the girl who had for two months helped keep him alive, as wasted as he'd been his very first weeks at Xavier's, and wrenched his eyes away from her frightening thinness to meet her gaze. Skin on his fingers peeled against the razor-edge of teeth as he said in a voice edged with desperation, "I'm sorry."

Jennie looked at him dispassionately and tried to feel something other than numb. "Tell that to the girl you bought. Explain to her why you used her. I can understand why you used me, but she might not." Jennie shivered and rubbed her arms, feeling disgusted at the thin coat of down her body had grown when she was wasting. "Please go away Marius. I'm tired."

Nothing he could say. Nothing he could do. No way to justify what was unjustifiable. Marius studied Jennie's too-sharp face for a long moment, trying to meet eyes ringed with shadows as dark as bruises, and at his failure felt the last hope he'd be holding to crumble.

Marius said quietly, "All right, then."

Without another word, the boy turned and disappeared.

Jennie said nothing. She leaned against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the floor. She didn't move for a long time.