Log: Morgan and Garrison
Jan. 11th, 2009 05:13 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsGarrison gets a visitor, and Morgan manages to finally make him drop the walls for at least a moment.
If she'd thought about Kane returning and her trying to go to see him afterward she'd have assumed that sneaking into the medlab would have been par for the course. Apparently, though, he was back and fine. Morgan had doubts as to how fine he was, honestly, because you don't disappear for more than a month, show up, go after Apocalypse and have it all fine. Usually there's horror stories in there. Being attacked violently and kidnapped reminded her of when she was the unlucky one to be captured by the enemy. Her turn had been in Palestine a few years back. Morgan wasn't going to ask about details, but she did have a mission anyway.
Knocking on his door softly so as to not wake him if he was sleeping, Morgan waited outside of Garrison's door with a paper bag resting against a hip, arm wrapped around it. While she would have loved to say she felt totally at ease about this, it would have been a lie. As it was, she could feel that the mask wasn't in place. Part of her worried that he'd notice the way she knew Adrienne could notice. That wasn't the point, though, so the mercenary pushed it to the back of her mind.
"I swear I'm going to put one of those number reels at the door." The voice behind the door grumbled, and opened a crack. The expression changed slightly as he saw Morgan at the door, and he opened it wider. "I was wondering whether or not you'd drop by, or just wait for me to leave and boobytrap the front door."
She wasn't exactly sure why she'd boobytrap the front door and the raised eyebrow said as much. "I didn't put off leaving for nearly two months only to avoid you when you did turn up alive," she told him with a quietness Morgan didn't usually possess. Maybe he hadn't registered how long he'd been gone or maybe he'd forgotten that she'd already said goodbye to him and had planned to leave the mansion before he'd been attacked. It didn't really matter if he had forgotten, did it?
"So, how'd they end up keeping you? Or did one of Pete's people make a deal instead of the mansion?" Kane said. He'd seen her with the rest in the battle, and had wondered briefly which team she was on before dealing with everything else wiped it away. The guns spoke more to X-Force, but you never knew. Kane had a feeling that she wasn't going to leave the mansion in the fall.
She gave him a questioning look, but it seemed he didn't get it. "I didn't leave because you had your arm ripped off and there was no body. I wasn't leaving until I saw you alive or paid my respects." To be honest, Vanessa sort of wanted to smack him for not getting that on his own. "I don't abandon people that matter. Not even when they don't know they're being abandoned." Her eyes dropped to the floor for a moment and she willed her calm back so her stomach would stop doing that flipping thing whenever her heart didn't do that sinking thing. Once she felt herself still on the inside she looked back up at him. "I owed LeBeau some time. He paid for it and didn't use it all the first time around. That's the only reason I was there with the fighting."
Kane was silent for a moment. The fact that she'd stayed here, waiting for knowledge of what happened to him could have meant months, years even. It was hard to fathom, especially since the blue skinned woman did her best to cultivate a professional, arms-length image for the world.
He stepped back to allow her to enter the room, watching her closely. "You might never have known, Morgan. That's--" He stopped, discarded all the logical statements to follow that up. In the end, logic wasn't what was important here. "Thank you." He said, simply.
She shrugged a little as she slipped into the room and past him. "Maybe I wouldn't," she told him and set the paper bag she carried down on a table. "And maybe three or five years from now if there was nothing I would have reevaluated that stance. Or maybe by then I'd know enough on that Sabertooth bloke to go hunting and hurt him until he died or told me where you were 'cause I didn't have that in November. I have a terrifyingly solid resolve when I decide something, though." Her voice was deadly calm as she spoke, calmer than it usually was. There was a sense that nothing would have changed her mind. Either she would have stayed and waited or she would have hunted down Sabertooth even if it meant her own possible death.
Vanessa was careful to keep her back to Garrison because she knew she didn't have the best control over her face right now. Instead she pulled out a container from Harry's that smelt suspiciously of hot wings and a six pack of Moosehead. She'd forced her usual steely calm back into her features before she turned to face him. "I realize you're not in the medlab and my 'sacred duty' was in reference to something else entirely, but I thought the gesture was fitting." He'd bestowed Morgan's sacred duty upon her back in the summer or so when he was dragging Adrienne off on some mission to save the world like he did. It didn't exactly apply here but she'd remembered and she thought the gesture was enough to say things she knew she wouldn't.
"I thought you had forgotten," he said, looking at the table, although it was pretty clear that his thoughts weren't really on the food. He felt personally responsible for what happened; the pain caused to the people at the mansion, friends, people he cared about, people he loved. It was all overwhelming right now. Before she could slip away, he caught her hand, just feeling the reality of her presence, holding it as he muttered again: "Thank you."
Her heart was in her throat the minute he took her hand. It felt like him and even though her brain kept telling her that there had to be something off--because there was no way he got his arm ripped off and came out the other side of it the same--she couldn't help but be convinced that this was Garrison. The guy who hung out with her and Adrienne at Harry's, watching baseball or just having beers or chopping wood without a shirt on and distracting her when she walked by. Despite wanting to pull away Vanessa didn't, she was frozen to the spot just as she had been when she'd seen him after he'd taken his mask off after Apocalypse was dead. "I just thought...sometimes people need proof to be reminded that people care. Showing up and asking how you are, or saying they do, it doesn't really get the point across. You deserved to know." Her voice was soft and when she glanced up she met his eyes only for a moment before going back tostaring at the hand that held her. She was left to only hope, once again, he couldn't notice the shift in her when the mask that was Morgan slipped. It was exactly the reason why she kept dropping her eyes instead of meeting his.
Even wrapped up in his own confusion and pain, Kane could tell something was different. Garrison Kane was good with people. His nature was to try and understand people, as opposed to simply talking at them. He didn't know exactly what was going on with Morgan, but there was something different there. What had the two months held for her that he'd missed, lying in a chamber like a test subject?
"I don't know really who I am right now, or where I need to be. But I do know that some things haven't changed, and that includes us." Garrison said, groping for the words. Overwhelmed, that was the only description. The enormity of what had happened, the seductive urge to push it all behind a wall and pretend to slip back into the life that he had once known, his own stubborn need to find a way to be honest with himself and others. He pulled Vanessa close, resting his head on her shoulder. "So that means at least something's got to turn out alright, before I start to fucking cry." He choked out thickly.
She frowned, her concern for him pushing its way to the front of her eyes. An arm wrapped around Garrison's waist and the protectiveness of that small gesture was undeniable. Her other hand came up, fingers running through his hair in an effort to soothe him. "Nothing's changed between us," she assured him quietly. "Maybe we've changed, but it doesn't change who you are to me, you got that?" As much as she wished she could, in fact, change who he was to her she couldn't and that had come crashing home to her the moment she'd laid eyes on him. "But sometimes, you've got to learn to stop being strong for everyone else. Sometimes you've got to find someone you trust enough to let go with. 'Cause sometimes what you need is to fucking cry and let it the fuck go." The softness of Vanessa's voice hadn't changed, but she'd gone from hurt and vulnerable to hurt and protective.
Without dislodging him, Vanessa inched the two of them toward the couch and pulled him down onto it with her. She kept him cradled close to her both because she thought he needed it and because she didn't want to let him go. "I don't know what happened," she whispered to him, "but I know you're not okay. You can admit it or not but until you really do I know you won't figure out who you are right now. You just need to be with friends. People who love you. People who will rip the fucking heart out of anyone who tries to hurt you ever again." A soft kiss was brushed across his forehead. "All that is what I remembered while you were gone."
Garrison didn't say anything, just allowing himself for the first time since getting back to let go; to stop hanging on by his fingertips from screaming, trusting that Morgan wouldn't leave or judge him right now. Finding a moment to drop the thousand questions in his head that tore at everything he was, and to just let himself be. Safely.
If she'd thought about Kane returning and her trying to go to see him afterward she'd have assumed that sneaking into the medlab would have been par for the course. Apparently, though, he was back and fine. Morgan had doubts as to how fine he was, honestly, because you don't disappear for more than a month, show up, go after Apocalypse and have it all fine. Usually there's horror stories in there. Being attacked violently and kidnapped reminded her of when she was the unlucky one to be captured by the enemy. Her turn had been in Palestine a few years back. Morgan wasn't going to ask about details, but she did have a mission anyway.
Knocking on his door softly so as to not wake him if he was sleeping, Morgan waited outside of Garrison's door with a paper bag resting against a hip, arm wrapped around it. While she would have loved to say she felt totally at ease about this, it would have been a lie. As it was, she could feel that the mask wasn't in place. Part of her worried that he'd notice the way she knew Adrienne could notice. That wasn't the point, though, so the mercenary pushed it to the back of her mind.
"I swear I'm going to put one of those number reels at the door." The voice behind the door grumbled, and opened a crack. The expression changed slightly as he saw Morgan at the door, and he opened it wider. "I was wondering whether or not you'd drop by, or just wait for me to leave and boobytrap the front door."
She wasn't exactly sure why she'd boobytrap the front door and the raised eyebrow said as much. "I didn't put off leaving for nearly two months only to avoid you when you did turn up alive," she told him with a quietness Morgan didn't usually possess. Maybe he hadn't registered how long he'd been gone or maybe he'd forgotten that she'd already said goodbye to him and had planned to leave the mansion before he'd been attacked. It didn't really matter if he had forgotten, did it?
"So, how'd they end up keeping you? Or did one of Pete's people make a deal instead of the mansion?" Kane said. He'd seen her with the rest in the battle, and had wondered briefly which team she was on before dealing with everything else wiped it away. The guns spoke more to X-Force, but you never knew. Kane had a feeling that she wasn't going to leave the mansion in the fall.
She gave him a questioning look, but it seemed he didn't get it. "I didn't leave because you had your arm ripped off and there was no body. I wasn't leaving until I saw you alive or paid my respects." To be honest, Vanessa sort of wanted to smack him for not getting that on his own. "I don't abandon people that matter. Not even when they don't know they're being abandoned." Her eyes dropped to the floor for a moment and she willed her calm back so her stomach would stop doing that flipping thing whenever her heart didn't do that sinking thing. Once she felt herself still on the inside she looked back up at him. "I owed LeBeau some time. He paid for it and didn't use it all the first time around. That's the only reason I was there with the fighting."
Kane was silent for a moment. The fact that she'd stayed here, waiting for knowledge of what happened to him could have meant months, years even. It was hard to fathom, especially since the blue skinned woman did her best to cultivate a professional, arms-length image for the world.
He stepped back to allow her to enter the room, watching her closely. "You might never have known, Morgan. That's--" He stopped, discarded all the logical statements to follow that up. In the end, logic wasn't what was important here. "Thank you." He said, simply.
She shrugged a little as she slipped into the room and past him. "Maybe I wouldn't," she told him and set the paper bag she carried down on a table. "And maybe three or five years from now if there was nothing I would have reevaluated that stance. Or maybe by then I'd know enough on that Sabertooth bloke to go hunting and hurt him until he died or told me where you were 'cause I didn't have that in November. I have a terrifyingly solid resolve when I decide something, though." Her voice was deadly calm as she spoke, calmer than it usually was. There was a sense that nothing would have changed her mind. Either she would have stayed and waited or she would have hunted down Sabertooth even if it meant her own possible death.
Vanessa was careful to keep her back to Garrison because she knew she didn't have the best control over her face right now. Instead she pulled out a container from Harry's that smelt suspiciously of hot wings and a six pack of Moosehead. She'd forced her usual steely calm back into her features before she turned to face him. "I realize you're not in the medlab and my 'sacred duty' was in reference to something else entirely, but I thought the gesture was fitting." He'd bestowed Morgan's sacred duty upon her back in the summer or so when he was dragging Adrienne off on some mission to save the world like he did. It didn't exactly apply here but she'd remembered and she thought the gesture was enough to say things she knew she wouldn't.
"I thought you had forgotten," he said, looking at the table, although it was pretty clear that his thoughts weren't really on the food. He felt personally responsible for what happened; the pain caused to the people at the mansion, friends, people he cared about, people he loved. It was all overwhelming right now. Before she could slip away, he caught her hand, just feeling the reality of her presence, holding it as he muttered again: "Thank you."
Her heart was in her throat the minute he took her hand. It felt like him and even though her brain kept telling her that there had to be something off--because there was no way he got his arm ripped off and came out the other side of it the same--she couldn't help but be convinced that this was Garrison. The guy who hung out with her and Adrienne at Harry's, watching baseball or just having beers or chopping wood without a shirt on and distracting her when she walked by. Despite wanting to pull away Vanessa didn't, she was frozen to the spot just as she had been when she'd seen him after he'd taken his mask off after Apocalypse was dead. "I just thought...sometimes people need proof to be reminded that people care. Showing up and asking how you are, or saying they do, it doesn't really get the point across. You deserved to know." Her voice was soft and when she glanced up she met his eyes only for a moment before going back tostaring at the hand that held her. She was left to only hope, once again, he couldn't notice the shift in her when the mask that was Morgan slipped. It was exactly the reason why she kept dropping her eyes instead of meeting his.
Even wrapped up in his own confusion and pain, Kane could tell something was different. Garrison Kane was good with people. His nature was to try and understand people, as opposed to simply talking at them. He didn't know exactly what was going on with Morgan, but there was something different there. What had the two months held for her that he'd missed, lying in a chamber like a test subject?
"I don't know really who I am right now, or where I need to be. But I do know that some things haven't changed, and that includes us." Garrison said, groping for the words. Overwhelmed, that was the only description. The enormity of what had happened, the seductive urge to push it all behind a wall and pretend to slip back into the life that he had once known, his own stubborn need to find a way to be honest with himself and others. He pulled Vanessa close, resting his head on her shoulder. "So that means at least something's got to turn out alright, before I start to fucking cry." He choked out thickly.
She frowned, her concern for him pushing its way to the front of her eyes. An arm wrapped around Garrison's waist and the protectiveness of that small gesture was undeniable. Her other hand came up, fingers running through his hair in an effort to soothe him. "Nothing's changed between us," she assured him quietly. "Maybe we've changed, but it doesn't change who you are to me, you got that?" As much as she wished she could, in fact, change who he was to her she couldn't and that had come crashing home to her the moment she'd laid eyes on him. "But sometimes, you've got to learn to stop being strong for everyone else. Sometimes you've got to find someone you trust enough to let go with. 'Cause sometimes what you need is to fucking cry and let it the fuck go." The softness of Vanessa's voice hadn't changed, but she'd gone from hurt and vulnerable to hurt and protective.
Without dislodging him, Vanessa inched the two of them toward the couch and pulled him down onto it with her. She kept him cradled close to her both because she thought he needed it and because she didn't want to let him go. "I don't know what happened," she whispered to him, "but I know you're not okay. You can admit it or not but until you really do I know you won't figure out who you are right now. You just need to be with friends. People who love you. People who will rip the fucking heart out of anyone who tries to hurt you ever again." A soft kiss was brushed across his forehead. "All that is what I remembered while you were gone."
Garrison didn't say anything, just allowing himself for the first time since getting back to let go; to stop hanging on by his fingertips from screaming, trusting that Morgan wouldn't leave or judge him right now. Finding a moment to drop the thousand questions in his head that tore at everything he was, and to just let himself be. Safely.
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Date: 2009-01-12 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 01:06 am (UTC)