xp_logs | Scott and Jean, backdated to Friday afternoon

Backdated to Friday afternoon. After Jean's visit with Nathan, she returns to the suite and Scott. The conversation turns to Mystique and the choice they made in Tibet.

"Des."

The little black-and-white cat made a noise that Scott could only interpret as mocking and dashed away from what was left of one of Jean's shoes. Scott picked up the ruined piece of footwear, grimacing at it, then at the cat standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

"You'd better watch it, you little monster. Or I'm going to get you declawed." Des turned her back on him airily, tail straight in the air and twitching at the tip as she bounded into the bedroom. Scott shook his head and went to dispose of the shoe. "See," he said over his shoulder, "all you've done is ensured that I need to take her out shopping. And leave you. Self-defeating tactic, cat."

Jean shot a curious look at Scott's back as she let herself into the suite and caught the tail end of his conversation with the cat. "I'm in favor of going shopping, sure. Er, why?"

"Um." Scott held up the shoe, wincing a little. "I was down in the office and she took the opportunity to attack footwear. I think she was probably waiting for the opportunity."

Jean sighed as she walked over to look at the ruined shoe. "She would go for the slingbacks," she said, shooting a look at the cat. "What, you couldn't have killed some of my uncomfortable shoes?" Returning a wry look to Scott she nodded for him to go ahead and throw it out. "I think we've established that your cat doesn't like me. Or was she trying to eat my footwear before I came home?"

Des promptly confounded everyone's expectations by trotting over to sit down at Jean's feet, purring loudly. Scott rolled his eye at her. "No, actually, I think this is a game... I did mention she's utterly insane, yes?"

"Oh ho, now we're a suck up? Such a crazy cat." Jean grinned at Scott. "Clearly, it runs in the family. Secretly, Horatio is probably nurturing a severe case of OCD." Turning back to Des she added, "But not the boots. Eat my boots and we will have words."

"Brat," Scott said - to the cat, not to his wife. He bent over and scooped Des up, and she promptly went limp in his arms, her purring even louder. "I've been entirely too tolerant," he told Jean. "So did you find Nate?"

"I did," Jean said, reaching out to scratch Des under her chin until her eyes shut with pleasure. "God but Rachel's gotten big. She's got a vocabulary." I missed her first words... "And it was good to see Nate. Told him I broke Mystique's ribs, and we made it retroactively in his honor."

"Mmm. I bet he appreciated that," Scott said, then tilted his head at the couch. No point in standing in the middle of the room just to pet the cat. "And Rachel's enormous. I don't know what they're feeding her in Scotland but I swear she comes back bigger every week."

"Ah, that's standard for toddlers, although I fear what sort of a monster she will be when she hits her terrible twos." Moving to curl up on the couch, Jean asked, "So, how've things been while I was out?"

"Not too bad..." Scott let Des curl up on his lap . She was still purring. "I did manage to get some paperwork done, which was good. Still have that stack of marking there waiting to be done, though." He made a face at the memory.

"The marking never ends," Jean said. "I'm a little surprised I didn't come back and find magically appearing marking lying in wait."

"You could mark some of mine," Scott said wryly. "Really, I wouldn't mind at all." Des kneaded her paws on his leg, doing her very best impression of a blissful feline.

"I think I'll pass. Not actually seeking marking to do. Just feeling a little odd that I have none."

Scott nodded slowly, still stroking the cat. He didn't say anything else for a moment, and when he spoke, his tone was almost diffident, and not quite natural-sounding. "About Mystique... do you suppose the Chinese would have managed to hold onto her?"

Jean blinked at the topic change, and at the odd tone to his voice. "It really depends," she said after a moment, "on the guards who find her. Chinese military vary a lot. She would have stayed under for several hours, easily until some of the men woke up. After that, I don't know."

"I didn't really think much about it, at the time..." The mild concussion probably had something to do with that. "It would have been difficult to get her back up the mountain to the plane and back here, I suppose. Although we could have tried." He shook his head slightly, mustering up a faint smile at the way Jean was looking at him. "I suppose it is a toss-up as to whether they managed to take her into custody."

"We could have tried..." Jean said slowly, "yes, but then she might have found out where the Rose was, or gotten out of American custody again, or... I really don't know how it would have ended. And I really don't know what the Chinese would have done to, or with her when they woke up, found the Rose gone and her there."

Scott's expression was very distant as he looked down at the cat on his lap. "You know what?" he said quietly. "She's gotten two free passes, this fall. When Kurt helped her get away - I don't blame him for that, it was a hell of a confused situation and he wasn't in a good state of mind - and when the Czechs refused to let us go into Smichov." He shook his head. "She put herself there," he said quietly. "Started the whole damned thing. If the Chinese took her into custody... then they did." His voice was even, although his expression was bleak.

Jean reached out and took his hand. "And you're... not comfortable with what they might do." The word 'torture' hung unspoken in the air.

"No. But we don't know - whether they took her into custody, whether she got away. And we can't go back and make a different decision, in any case." He mustered up a very slight, humorless smile - but did squeeze her hand. "If they have her, and if they want to know what she knows... it wasn't just our choices that put her there."

"On the bright side, they might just shoot her..." Jean's smile was just as humorless.

"There is that, too." The smile twisted a little. "I used to be more ethical than this. That part should bother me more than it does."

Jean nodded. "Yeah, I know. A part of me points out that the American justice system had it's chance to deal with her and failed, but that doesn't stop me thinking it's a little bit wrong. And yet, I don't regret it."

"Not much point in regretting it or not regretting it, is there? It's done, whatever has happened or is going to happen as a result." Scott shook his head, snorting softly, and squeezed Jean's hand again. "Listen to me. You didn't come home to a pod-husband, I swear."

"Well, you're my pod-husband, so it's ok." Jean squeezed his hand back.

"Well, that makes it okay, then. I can revel in my weirdness." Time for a subject change, definitely. "So, did you and Nate talk about anything else beside the rapidly growing baby telepath? Wait, no... let me guess. Smichov," Scott said, seeing the confirmation of that in her expression, "and... whether you were planning to rescue him from his only-telepath-on-the-team status anytime soon."

"It came up, yes, which makes you two for two."

"Damn, I'm good. So...?" He gave her a thoughtful look. "You didn't act much like you'd been away from the team at all, in Tibet."

"Tibet was... There was a lot of training getting done in Tibet, in part due to there not being much else to do. As far as I'm concerned, I'm ready to go straight back to active duty, although that's up to you and 'Ro and Charles."

"Well... up to 'Ro and Charles," Scott temporized. "But that's really good to hear, Jean - we're so short-handed these days."

Jean nodded. "Yes, I'd kind of gotten that impression." Of course, there were other reasons to have brought Logan to Tibet, but a lack of choices would have forced his hand.

"Between the exodus to the West Coast and the one to Snow Valley, and all of us lazy people on the bench..." Scott gave her a slightly awkward smile.

"But what does it say that Charles and we have taught and trained and worked with enough people to staff three mutant oriented facilities?" Jean raised her eyebrows. "A hell of a lot of progress from not that long ago, even."

"This is true." And he was... oddly tickled by her resolutely positive outlook, actually. Then again, she'd always been the counterweight to his pessimism, hadn't she? I'd forgotten how much I missed that.

"So, there you go," Jean said, "and here we are. Nothing to do but go forward, and all that. And I'm thinking there should be dinner in the near future."