Vitiation - End

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And finally, a conversation between Marius and Jennie that does not involve some form of "go away."



Not for the first or last time Jennie sat in the waiting room to the infirmary, waiting on Dr. Voght to clear her for visiting. She stared at the hands in her lap, the clean fingernails and chewed cuticles. Bare except for the white bandage on her right wrist. Dr. Voght called after her, and Jennie looked up, pulling her sleeves down. It was chilly, like always, but even so Jennie's hands were slightly clammy.

Down a familiar hallway, to a room that had all but been reserved for it's occupant. Jennie raised a hand and tentatively knocked.

Marius jerked out of his doze, heartrate skyrocketting for a moment before he remembered where he was. He spared a moment to wonder whether it was nerves, the remainder of the degenerative biological agent, or multiple unfamiliar stimuli his senses were receiving from all the mutations still working through his system, then quickly reached the conclusion that it didn't matter. After the last few days a fading twitchiness was the least of his worries.

"Come in," he said, untensing his muscles. He shoved himself to a sitting position and rubbed at his eyes, stifling the urge to yawn into the respirator. Perhaps he should have been using the earplugs Kyle had left for him; being woken by every little noise was something of an inconvenience at the moment. Still, despite claims of sterilization he maintained a healthy reluctance to use anything that had at one point been situated in Kyle's ear canal.

Jennie pushed open the door and stuck her head in. "Hey," she said, a little uncertainly. She came the rest of the way into the room and shut the door behind her. Boy and girl stared at each other for a few moments.

"You know," Jennie said finally. "Somebody's written your name in sharpie over the room number out there. You think someone's making a point?"

"Yes. Well. I am something of a regular. At least this time there is a fix in the foreseeable future. Although I do not claim full responsibility for this completely unshocking turn of events. Why is it you never hit me with outsized plush toys? Not to say I don't always have it comin', just you could stand for a bit of variation. Been a bit typecast with the heavy wooden objects an' that. Although I have noticed you do rather have a system. Size increases exponentially in proportion to the bloody stupidity. So it's rather fitting."

Chatter, chatter. Marius thought dimly that he should've been prepared to this. He'd had enough time to think it, and yet somehow no amount of thinking could prepare him for the fact of actually coming face to face with the girl he'd inadvertantly used, and then attacked. Marius found himself wishing for a seminar. If anyplace would offer one it would be Xavier's.

"In my defense, there was a distinct lack of plushies in the woods. Next time you run away, could it please be somewhere more convinient?" She winced at the unintended bitterness, "I mean, try a pillow factory next time." Jennie sighed and grabbed a chair, moving it to it's customary position by Marius's bed.

"This is a dumb question, but how are you? Not...I didn't...?"

Marius shook his head hastily. "No, no. Not even a break. I am quite resilient. An' of course Kyle's generously volunteered his healing factor once again, as evinced by the dire need for a manicure on top of my usual loveliness. I would actually suggest that next time you aim a bit more to the left." His eyes flickered to her bandaged wrist, then the white tape just barely visible under her shirtcollar, then slowly back to her face. "Not as if I was the blameless party in that affair."

"Good, because, well. If I was even just a little bit off--" Jennie ran her hands through her hair, ignoring the look at the bandages. "You wouldn't have a head anymore. I sort of have this thing with you not dying."

"Right, well. You always did have rather odd priorities. Which is . . . which is appreciated nonetheless." Marius forced himself to go against every instinct to banter, and the equally strong ones to flee. The respirator hissed with his indrawn breath as he continued, tone softer, "Despite what can only be described as a truly piss-poor way of showin' it. An' sayin' it. An' . . . an' anything else a mate's supposed to be. Before, during or after the convenient excuse of all that can go wrong with mutation."

Jennie sighed, looking at this strange gulf that separated them, and then did the first thing that came to mind. She stood and hugged Marius fiercely. "You stupid, stupid...boy. Don't you ever run off like that again. Ever. Or I'll find you and drag you back. After dumping something even heavier on your skull. You hear me?"

"Yes. I do. That sounds quite fair." His hands twitched at the contact, a noticeable tremor strong enough to alarm. Marius froze, tensing under her embrace, thinking for one wild moment that he needed to pull away.

And then:

Oh, bloody sod it.

Fingers curled into fists, Marius carefully raised his hands to return the hug. Not more than the lightest settling of knuckles against her back, in part because Jennie's arms were actively pinning his upper arms, but . . . enough.

"An' no offense to you, Jen," Marius murmured, "but next time I'm set for the murderous rampage do us both a favour an' give the heroic cliche a miss. While the gesture of tryin' to find me on your own was both touching and admirable, you are somewhat near the bottom of the list of people I fancy chasing through the woods on a dark an' stormy night. Off it entirely, as a matter of fact." He added, "An' in addition, your power is driving me absolutely mad. Bloody shimmering makes my eyes itch."

"Like I wanted to go chasing you on a dark and stormy night. I got lucky and found you. Again, next time you run off in a fit of melodrama? Try for someplace dryer and easier to reach. And welcome to my world, try living with that every day for five years." She withdrew a little, but her hands were still on his shoulders. "We need to stop doing this. We fight, don't speak, and then something really bad happens. It's a vicious cycle. I'd rather not try and top this."

Marius snorted. "Oi, you won't see me contesting that resolution. The inadvertant foray into inept supervillainy was bad enough, but I just had a tree dropped on me an' then had my ass handily returned to me by bleedin' Kyle. Mr. Marko, all right, but Kyle? That would be what we class as a wake-up call." The moment of levity faltered. Marius' eyes lowered to the bandage on Jennie's neck again, covering the wound he'd felt tear open under his hand. "I rather . . . I should apologise to Yvette. I . . . well. Yesterday would be rather on the low end of what she's owed an apology for, eh?" Marius looked away. "But even still."

"Yeah, you should." She sat back, perching on the edge of his bed. "I already did. She doesn't really remember what happened, but. She forgave me for it anyway," Jennie tugged her sleeves down again. "She was the one who asked me to find you, by the way. She was so upset--worried about you. It's kind of why I didn't go and do the smart thing and tell the adults, didn't want a false alarm. And now she's going home to her Mom."

"Oh." He was relieved, and disappointed, and . . . he didn't even know. Marius let his hands slide back against the sheets, cloth pulling slightly beneath the teeth. "When? For permanent?"

"Tomorrow, actually," Jennie shrugged. "And she doesn't know. She would like to come back, she says. And this really is the best place for her. But, it depends on her Mom."

"Right. Guess it would." He knew he couldn't leave the Medlab. It wasn't just Moira and Amelia's flat declarations keeping him; with his body struggling to recover he had no reserves. There was no telling what the exertion of a teleport would do to him in this state. And, understanding as the staff had proven, somehow he doubted "please send down the young girl I bought" was going to fly after he'd just attacked a student.

He was stuck. And right now Marius honestly didn't know whether that was good or bad.

The boy raised one hand to push back his dreads. "Well. She comes back, I apologise. She stays . . . I go to her. Sort it out when it comes, but one way or another it's gets sorted. Even if I have to bloody hitchhike."

"Ah, it'll get figured out. My money says she comes back. She's the most adorable little sharp-thing you'll ever meet, really. I think she likes apples even more than you, and that says something." Jennie sat back and eyed her friend. As long as they were both talking about Europe.

"Marius? There's...there's something that's been bothering me for a while. It's related to when we were gone? Remember, that night up on the roof? What I said after I..." Jennie exhaled quickly, "I meant it. I did. Or, I mean it now."

Marius stared at her for a moment before he realized what she was talking about. The empathy. The influence. The insidious thing strung between them for those two long months blurring the boundaries between them to an extent they'd never even known, and now never could for certain.

But . . .

Jennie had decided it was enough for her, and that was enough for him.

Slowly, Marius inclined his head to her, his gaze never breaking.

"So did I," he said softly.

"Yeah," she said, just as softly. She reached out and touched his knee, briefly, eyes slightly watery. "I would have stayed anyway." She looked down and sniffed, then she looked back up and smiled. "God, we really are the worst supervillians ever, aren't we?"

Marius grinned, the shakiness mercifully hidden by the respirator. "Yes, quite. In fact, I feel rather cheated. There we were, youth of questionable morality fleecing our way through the casinos of Monte Carlo, and did you once have the decency to don a corset and do it properly? No. There's one great school myth utterly shattered."

"You're one to talk, leather pants. And did you not see that dress I wore? Or rather, what passes for a dress these days. That thing was frigging cold." She surrepticiously wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "Oh! Did you know that we've been blacklisted from all casinos in Monte Carlo? How many seventeen-year-olds have that bragging right?"

"Bloody few. For which I am sure the staff offers daily thanks. About the illegal gambling, not how I look in leather pants. Thanks for the latter feature an entirely different branch of humanity." Marius swallowed hard as Jennie swiped her eyes with her arm, and felt the inexplicable urge to do the same. On impulse he reached out to brush his fingertips against her back, carefully, grazing the sharpness of her shoulderblade. Thin. Still too thin . . . but recovering.

"Right," Marius said, retracting his arm. "So . . . might as well make the best of things. Maybe now you can show me how you do that bit with a deck of cards. There is rather a window of opportunity."

"Yeah," her grin turned mischevious. "Speaking of, want to see something really cool?" Jennie jumped off the bed and went to the cabinet in the corner, reaching for the tub on top that contained things for the bored and recovering. She withdrew a pack of cards and set it back, and then returned to the bed. She sat down and handed the deck to Marius. "Start shuffling that," she said, and then gestured around the room.

"See all that white shimmer? Notice how it's, ah...got a different sort of, I dunno, frequency? To it? Concentrate on that, see if you can make it louder. While you're shuffling."

"Louder, she says to the bloke already stackin' the end of Terry's mutation on top of Kyle's . . . yes, yes, I know what you mean." Marius concentrated on the cards, shuffling like she'd taught him months ago. He would give himself this for the last year: control of borrowed powers was getting easier to intuit. Not that that was always a good thing, given how he'd put it to use.

Then again . . . he had to wonder. How much actual chance had it been that he'd just so happened to teleport in front of the unseen Cain -- the one person on-scene experience had shown could take him down?

Jennie watched the boy as he shuffled, and invisible to anyone but the two of them, Marius's fingers began to glow ever so slightly. Inwardly, she marveled just a little, about being able to share just how she saw the world. Then she unconciously rubbed her neck. If only it had been under better circumstances.

"Okay, now flip the deck and just spread it out."

Marius fanned out the deck dutifully, and paused.

The cards lay in an arc from ace to king, sorted by suit.

"Ah, mutant powers," Marius said, a smirk twitching his lips for the first time in he didn't know how long. "With great power comes great responsibility, yes, and yet in the end what does it always come down to? Amusing party tricks."

"Reverse entropy." Jennie grinned. "Theoretically I can save lives, but at the moment I am killer at Jenga." She picked up the deck and began to shuffle much faster than Marius, pausing every so often to flip over an ace. "And I now solemly vow to never use my powers for evil, because the universe will always bitchslap me if I do. Maybe one day I will do something wonderful with them, but I am content with the little things for now." Her fingers glowly brightly and she pulled out the last ace, holding it up. "Care for a spot of rummy?" she mimicked a chirpy British accent.

Marius cocked his head at her, orange eyes-half lidded. "Rummy? Suddenly it becomes clear why we were such an utter hash at supervillainy." The expression lasted all of seven seconds before it fell back into a smile. Unseen, true, but that didn't matter. "Ah well. You deal."