LOG: [Jennie, Marius] Progress

[x-emplate.livejournal.com]

Jennie visits Marius in person for the first time since being released from the Medlab. She manages to throw nothing at his head.



Out and about, that's what she needed to be doing. Jennie didn't have the excuse of muscle aches anymore, and while she still didn't look completely human, it was better than what she was at the beginning of the week. And as she had been assured, no one cared what she looked like anyway. Which only served to make her feel like an overreacting twit.

After talking to her respective teachers, and collecting promises that she still would be able to graduate on time, she headed back up to the student wing. There was someone she needed to check on. Kyle seemed fine, on the surface anyway. And Jennie wanted to give it a bit of distance before she tried to talk to him in person, because the alpha thing was still upsetting. That left Marius, whom she hadn't seen or spoken to all week.

Kyle's roommate let her into the boy's suite with a nod, and then disappeared back into his own room. Jennie went to the door across the room and tentatively knocked. "Marius? It's me."

"Enter." The door opened to reveal Marius in the process of depositing the last of some errant laundry into his hamper. He straightened at her entrance, hair shifting across his face. With the exception of the shadows beneath them he was back to normal, which he expected was the least sort of benefit he should be getting out of a system made to process changes. Jennie, he observed, did not appear to be going at quite at the same speed.

"Mornin'," he said, stepping away from the hamper. "How've you been bearin' up, then?"

Jennie gave him an elaborate shrug. "As well as I can, I guess. Glad to see some progress at least." As she had noted in the mirror that morning, her eyes were now a strange light green instead of yellow, which meant the blue was starting to creep back. The claws were also noticeably less pointy. She'd had to lock herself in the bathroom and have a very small moment from relief.

"You? You've been awful quiet," she shut the door behind her.

Marius turned to his desk to stack some of the loose notes. "Talked to the prof a bit, as one does in times of trauma. An' of course the various concerned staff, or at least in as many as they've ascertained amongst themselves would be perceived as friendly concern rather than smothering. Not sure as I feel comfortable with the concept of outsider therapy, kind as the offer was. I contend the mysterious workings of my mind should be allowed to remain as mysterious as possible." He lifted an apple from his desk to inspect it for a moment. It spun as he flipped it underhand into the air and, just as quickly, snatched it back down again. "I have, quite literally, been receivin' one of these a day. Or the suite's counter, that is. It is convenient. Bein' quite the contested fruit in this flat it has drastically reduced the contention between Kyle an' myself."

"Yeah, better things to fight over at least." That so didn't answer her question. "Good to see that they're looking after you guys, though. I think I've scared the teen girl squad off what with my repeated insistence on being left alone. At least until the twitchiness goes away." Jennie stepped a little further into the room and had to fight the urge to adjust his desk lamp. "But seriously, how are you? I promise to be honest if you are."

Marius glanced at her from beneath the curls of his dark hair as he clicked open a binder. "I should hope you'd be honest under all circumstances. Exemplary as I am, perhaps this is one lead you should give a miss. We have seen that unfortunate ideas lie down the alternative. But no worries. I am fine. Recall I have the benefit of previous experience." The rogue pages were inserted onto the rings with precise care. The boy shut the folder with finality. "Copious, even."

"Lies," Jennie said before she could stop herself. "One of the things that has been making me crazy this past week is you." She gestured with one half-clawed hand. "You talk, at great length. About anything and everything. You did it to keep me from hideously freaking out. Yet now you request alone time in brief sentences and want to stay in the medlab? Seriously. I know you better than you give me credit for. You're not fine. You can deny it up and down the halls to whomever you want, but not to me. Please. Extend me that courtesy."

Marius paused, the tips of his fingers resting on the surface of the binder.

"Yes," he said, "I do talk. It is a skill of mine." The Australian's yellow eyes were fixed on the wall he'd set his desk against. His stance was very carefully still. "An' given my long and esteemed history of performance I should think I'm entitled respect for the odd moment of desired quiet. Rare as those may be."

Jennie stared at the boy who, in spite of what had to have been his own worst nightmare, kept her sane as best as he could. Seeing him like this hurt. But the way he was so obviously in denial to her, it seemed like he was treating her like she was too ignorant to notice, and that did not sit right. At all.

"You are entitled to shove your head in the sand and lie to everyone else if you want. But I'm entitled to an honest answer here. Don't treat me like I'm stupid, because I'm not. I was tied to a table a few feet away from you, remember? For once in our entire fucking friendship, can you give me an honest answer to the question 'How are you?'"

Slowly, Marius turned to her.

"Entitled," he repeated. His tone was still even, but his eyes had narrowed. "An' why, one would ask, is this? By virtue of the pecking order imposed by the mad scientist in his collaborative theatre of Obsessive Mental Defects? Sorry, Jen. My mutation isn't the sort to provide the handy steppin' stone. I am not Kyle. Not like him at all, as a matter of fact."

Jennie felt all of the blood drain out of her face. "That's...that's not it at all. I--" She put her hands to her head and exhaled. "I can't be the only who's freaking out. I'm...I'm not okay. All right? I'm not fine, not at all. On top of last week I've got Kyle who can't stop being submissive to me, until this morning I thought that I was going to be stuck looking like this forever, and meanwhile everyone's walking around like it's no big deal...and then there's you. I'm worried about you, and that's not whatever the hell he did to us, that's just 'cause I'm me and I care. And I suck at it, obviously."

Seeing Jennie's expression, Marius felt some of the coldness leave him. "Here, look," he protested, body loosening at the awareness his friend looked like he'd just slapped her in the face, "that's not what I really . . ." But how could he quantify it? What he was really upset about, what he did not what to talk about? He tried to regroup and calm some of the blood thumping in his ears.

"See, I--" Marius' hands clenched, nails grooving the inside of his palms. She was still looking at him. "Just--" staring at him, like Wipeout pinned beneath him so close the stink of the man's breath mingled with blood, eyes fixed right on him like Ms. Munroe standing there waiting for him gun at her side covered with red "I -- sod, I -- AAAAHHHH!"

The rage had to come out, but not at Jennie. Spinning himself away from her, hands balled so tightly they drew blood, Marius drove his foot into the wooden bookshelf with a sickening crack.

Violence always was the easiest response.

Jennie took a step back as he destroyed the bottom part of his bookshelf. The last time she'd ever remotely seen him this upset was the unfortunate argument in the medlab last summer where he'd torn his skin off and showed her what he was becoming. She felt a painful stab of guilt for driving him to this, but a small part of her whispered that he'd chucked water all over her in March, so it was only fair.

She looked up from the remnants of his shelf to his back, and waited.

Marius backed away from the shelf, panting. Breathing too hard, heart beating too fast. Control was slow in returning. The hands needed to stop shaking first. He put them down at his side and stood there, muscles loose, face tilted towards the pile of books and wood on the floor. Then, calmly, he straightened up and brushed a tangle of hair out of his eyes.

"Well," he muttered. "I feel better."

That got a small snort out of Jennie. She looked down and rubbed the back of her neck, trying to think of something to say. Something to undo the damage, something that would make him laugh or make him feel better or at the very least get him to keep talking. And drew a complete blank. She looked back up at him. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

"Don't believe there's any way you can twist reality to take the blame for this one, Jen." Marius stared fixedly at the ruined bookshelf. Inexorably, one of the disarrayed textbooks slid down the pile as they watched. "This would be why I don't have Moments," he said, rubbing his forehead. "Now I've got to feng the room's shui all over again."

"You're telling me. I may or may not have spent the entire evening yesterday re-organizing my closet by color, clothing style, and date of purchase." Jennie cracked her neck to relieve herself of some of the tension. "If one more person is pointedly unbothered by this," she waved a hand in front of her face, "I swear to God I will do more than shatter a bookshelf."

The boy's head bobbed as he crouched to begin collecting the books. "You've picked a scant market in which to corner the shock. It's not quite on the same level as Mr. Sefton or Yvette. I would posit it's several steps shy of half the staff switchin' genders in one go. You can drop an entire outer layer of skin an' get barely the flicker of an eyelid." Scartissue pressed against the spine of a book. "Because, after all, it's quite silly to fixate on something as inconsequential as your entire body turning a sharp about face an' goin' about on a map it borrowed off some bloke at the pub."

"Perhaps it's something of me projecting then. My face is a friendly reminder of the week I just spent in hell, courtesy of a guy who had a hard-on for Dr. Moira. Is it too much to ask for a villian whose main motivation is not creepy stalker?" Jennie knelt to help Marius collect the books. "As for some other people, who shall remain nameless but whose name ends in Forge and have all the sensitivity of a brick, it's not bad unless it's happening to them."

"I was speakin' with irony. Yes, I know. Still your disbelief that my understanding of it goes beyond the strictly academic." Marius attempted to refold the pages of a text that had been pressed neatly down the middle by the impact. The crease were going to be there forever. "An' for shame, Jen. Have you learned nothing? Of course it only matters when it happens to you. Regardless of mum's tendencies towards esteem-crippling verbal castration, I find it quite likely that she spoke the truth when she decreed no one ever holds oneself as dear as, well, oneself. Besides, the trauma here is so frequent an' varied one can hardly expect peers to keep up. It's quite impractical to trouble yourself with the fate of others. Then you'd have so very little cope for trauma of your own. Or so was my reasoning back in the Idiot Days."

Jennie tilted her head at her friend. She was well-versed enough in his speech to read through the lines. She watched his hands as he tried to fix the pages of his textbook, olive-skinned with the brief flicker of white scartissue. On impulse, she reached out and touched the back of one, gently. "It's not just this week, is it? There's something else, isn't there?"

Come on Marius, tell me what's bothering you.

His hand twitched slightly at the contact. Marius' eyes never rose from the pile of books on the floor, but a decision seemed to be reached.

"Based on the evidence at hand," he said slowly, "it is probable that the predisposition towards pack mentality was paved by the introduction of Kyle's mutation. True?"

"True," Jennie said, unsure of what he was getting at.

"Right." Marius hesitated, then asked, "Have you not wondered what was used to instill the urge to hunt an' rend mutants?"

"I could guess," she said softly.

"Yes, well. Should you be curious as to why I am not takin' this experience quite well, I imagine that may be a factor." Marius began to work the cracked shelf out of the pile of books. "Bugger, curse my potent rage . . . ah, well. Suppose it's a bit like my own personal mirror. Which is quite tiresome, as I spent the majority of last year seated squarely in front of this particular pane and should like a change of scenery." He shook his head at the broken board and set it aside. "Thus."

"Marius," Jennie said slowly, "You have these ...instincts, instilled by your mutation. I mean, I'm intimately aware of what they do, as I'm sitting here I'm also reading you right now. But... even though they're there, I don't want to attack you. And I won't. I'm fairly certain you don't want to attack me either." She ducked her head until she met his eyes, "Logic for the win, here. The sum totality of you does not equal this part of you."

"Yes. I do understand that. Samson an' the professor has invested many long hours of therapy cementin' such. Nonetheless, it is a bit of a kick to the soft areas. But, as we established, life never does wait. So we bear on. With the occasional property damage." Marius finally looked back over to his friend and smiled. "She'll be right, Jen. I promise. I've no interest in sinkin' into another spiral of self-loathing. As I have said, that is far too 2006. I just need a bit of time to get my head around this. It does not adjust well to Thoughts."

"So long as the lessons of 2006 actually stick, I'll be happy." Jennie said. She exhaled loudly, all of the tension draining out of her posture. Suddenly tired, she leaned forward, book still clutched to her chest, and rested her forehead on his knee before looking back up. "I'm also here if you need me. You know. I have no idea what for, but the offer's there."

Marius arched his eyebrows at the girl looking up at him from the vicinity of his lap. "Fluffy though this moment is, I have no idea how you thought to escape the inevitable jokes spawned of offers to satisfy my needs."

"Careful boy, I am perilously close to some soft, vulnerable areas and I have a mean right hook." She held up a fist and raised an eyebrow before settling herself so the back of her head was resting against his knee. "I think delirium has set in. What does 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep feel like? I wish I could remember."

"I choose to focus on the bit where it's preferable to repeated respiratory arrests. I find myself oddly grateful for my body's utter decay last year. It makes for quite the point of comparison." Marius jogged his knee slightly. "Should I sing you a soothing lullaby? Or perhaps you could entreat forcible sedation from Laurie." He scratched his head, curly hair ruffling. "Granted, I'm not certain it works like that, but there's been worse abuses of mutant powers. I believe it could be written off as to the greater good."

"You know, there is something seriously wrong with you. You did not just suggest I use my roommate as a sleep aid." In getting Marius to admit the root of his problem, part of the weight lifted off of Jennie. She had been afraid of another downward spiral, but his admitting to her what was wrong was a giant step forward, and hopefully meant that he would make his way back up. Simply because last time this occurred, there was that whole wacky not-kidnapping. She stretched and gave him a smile, before looking at the pile of textbooks that surrounded them. "You made a mess. Hey, this is quite possibly the first time in our entire relationship that property destruction did not result because of me. It's progress!"

"I assure you, I well with pride. An' a distinct lack of concussion, for which I am forever grateful." Marius flopped over backwards, knees still bent under him and demonstrating no particular sign of discomfort. "And now, spent."

"I totally dare somebody to walk in on us like this." Jennie adjusted so that her head was resting much more comfortably on his leg. "You realize, of course, now that I am comfortable you are never allowed to move again."

Marius draped one forearm over his eyes. "I find that plan acceptable."