Wanda and Jean

[x-scarletwitch.livejournal.com]

After a long week, Wanda heads to the mansion to kidnap Jean for a night out. There's some advice seeking on Jennie and some usual, and unusual, catching up.



"Please, please tell me I can kidnap you."

Wanda followed the plea by appearing in Jean's office door - she looked tired and wiped out as she gave her friend a beseeching look. "It has been forever since we hung out. I need a drink and, well, you work in the MedLab so I assume you always need a drink."

Jean arched an eyebrow at this theory, but didn't exactly disagree with the sentiment. Casting a quick glance over the piles of papers spread across her desk she made a quick tally in her head and then snapped the file she'd been working on closed. Standing up she said, "Yeah, not being here would be good, let's go."

Wanda clapped her hands together. "I knew you would not turn this offer down." She paused to root around in her purse, pulling out her cell phone after a minute. "You might be a telepath and all but I take some joy in causing your husband amusement. Or panic, when he realizes what I'm kidnapping you to do."

Slowly and with concentration, Wanda typed a simple message to Scott. Hi. I'm stealing your wife. Love and kisses, W

Jean laughed, peering over Wanda's shoulder to see exactly what the message was, then grabbed up her own bag. "I'm good with causing mild panic in him, and greater panic upon the rest of the world when we unleash ourselves upon it. Lead on, my dear. To Harry's?"

Wanda offered the redheaded doctor her arm as she shoved her phone back in her pocket with her other hand. "To Harry's! And god help any man or woman that gets in our way."

~~

With a sigh that was part exhaustion and part adoration, Wanda accepted her scotch from the waitress. She had skipped the beer and gone straight into the good stuff, deciding that it was a good night for dipping deep into her wallet. "Do you think with all the money I've spent in here, if I moved in Harry would charge me rent?"

For the moment, Jean was happy just sipping her beer, glad of the cold bottle against her hand. "I dunno," she said, leaning back against the back of the booth they'd appropriated. "Probably if you wanted to shower. The money pays for liquor, not utilities."

"I knew you were a smart woman," Wanda laughed. "Though I could always walk to the mansion in order to get my showers. It is a win-win. But then the places near me would suffer if I were to stop coming around - my money is wanted in a number of establishments." She leaned back and rubbed at the back of her neck. "How is life treating you lately, Jean?"

"Can't say as it's been the best summer on record," Jean replied, starting to pick at the corner of the label on the bottle. "There've been worse, I'll admit, but not a hell of a lot. You?"

"I was going to say better than most but I had to rescue one of my best friends from a mad scientist who's playing handsies with his, well, hand." Wanda sighed. "And summer has just started! Do you even remember what vacations felt like?"

"Vaguely. Very vaguely. But I mostly remember them being times when I didn't have homework, so they must have been long ago. Clearly this means I need to kidnap my husband and take him somewhere sunny."

"How's his leg?" she asked, letting the waitress take her empty glass and replace it with a new one. "If he's still not completely healed up, it would actually be easier to kidnap him, you know. Just put the coffee pot in the passenger seat and after he crawls in after, jump into the car and take off!" Wanda paused, hands in the air from her exuberance. "I might have thought that out a bit too much."

"Doing much better, actually. He's been off the crutches for a while. Your plan might still work, though, and it would be worrying that you've put so much thought into kidnapping my husband," Jean said, grinning, "except that I know perfectly well that that plan would work excellently on almost all of our friends, coworkers and relations."

Wanda snorted. "All you need to do to distract us is put some coffee, a pint, fried food or plane tickets to a tropical island under a box with some string and we are completely gone. That says quite a bit about our work lives, does it not?"

Jean laughed. "Put all of those together in a box and we'd sell our own grandmothers. I comfort myself with lies that other people are exactly the same only not to the extreme level we take it. Well, the plane tickets would probably work on anybody," she added after a moment.

"Especially in New York. You would think no one knew what a vacation was in the entire city. I think Fred the hot dog guy takes more breaks than the most of the suits." They fell into a quiet moment, the kind that wasn't uncomfortable at all - they had known each other far too long for that to happen.

"Jean," Wanda broke the silence after a moment, "have you ever turned around and realized that you were not there for someone and had no idea that you were even needed?"

Jean cocked her head, considering the question carefully. With her powers, being 'helpful' when someone didn't want her around was more likely but... "There have been moments," she said after a bit. "What happened?"

Jean was medical staff and Wanda was willing to wager that the doctor knew. "Jennie," she said softly, tossing back the rest of her drink.

Jean did, indeed, which was readily apparent by the way she knocked back the rest of her beer and flagged down the waitress to get something stronger. "She didn't want us to know, at least not at first. I know it doesn't help, believe me..."

Rubbing at her face with one hand, Wanda reached blindly for the new drink and managed to pick it up without spilling anything. "I'm supposed to be her mentor - or at least, I was. Time just got away from me, the jobs, the classes. I was stopping by but not as much. Maybe if I had been here more often, I would have seen something."

She looked at Jean in dismay. "Oh my god, I sound like a parent. Is this what the school does to people?"

Jean snorted at that, downing the shot she'd asked for and then picking up her cocktail, although she didn't drink yet. Simply breathed through the slight burn. "What, you didn't notice how all of the staff who've been around the longest have such over-inflated sense of personal responsibility for the world's problems? Have you just not been paying attention?"

"I thought it was just personality disorders!" she half wailed. It was, mostly, in jest. "Before, though, when things got bad I was there for her. Ahab, the rest of it. I feel like I looked away for a moment and lost months." Her entire life had been on the move, physically and emotionally. Wanda had to wonder if physically staying in one place meant she was harder pressed to move emotionally faster. "I have no idea how to even fix it."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Jean said somewhat morosely. "Both feelings, actually. Only thing I can suggest is being their now. She still needs you. Us. Everyone. She lost the baby, but it's not over. Not for her."

And now the hard part, really. Everything after would have been the hard part. "She's trying to convince herself that she would have been a horrible mother," Wanda sighed. "To make it easier. But you're right - though she may act like she can be on her own, she really does need us. It will just be a matter of convincing her of that."

"She was actually doing that before she lost the baby as well," Jean said, seriously considering another shot. "Can I please stop having to deal with my former students' pregnancies?"

Wanda was a step ahead of Jean as she waved down the waitress for another round. "I can see why Jake's so taken with leaving everything behind sometimes. Not that I could do it now, far too many ties, but the temptation is there." She gave Jean a wry grin. "I just might need that vacation we were talking about."

"We have one planned, Scott and I," Jean said, and intellectually she knew she probably ought to cut herself off soon but really she wasn't ready for that. "Seems like we always have a vacation planned. Maybe because we only ever manage to go on a third of them. If we're lucky."

"Seems sensible to me - if I were you, I would plan one every other month just to cover my bases. Where are you two attempting to jet set to?"

"My vote for tropical beach paradise is winning, Bora Bora specifically, followed, alarmingly, by a trip to see his father, maybe."

Wanda peered over the top of her glass at Jean and stared. "Is he sick? Alien abduction? Did one of the children either spike his drink, hit him in the head or both, perhaps?"

The redhead snorted slightly at that. "I've been wondering that myself. Particularly given it was his idea. But I'm not asking questions too loudly; it'd be good for him to relax a bit where his dad's concerned."

Father issues were something Wanda could appreciate; she had a soft spot for people actually liking their fathers whenever they could. "It is nice to see him getting beyond the 'You're a pirate, I hate you!' stage and perhaps more into the 'You're my father ... I might like you!'"

The waitress had finally made it back with their next round and this turned out to be a bad thing as Jean was caught off guard almost spit her drink onto Wanda at that. "Oh, God..." she gasped, laughing so hard she was in serious danger of falling of her seat. "That's... that's perfect. That's exactly it. I'm telling him you said that."

On the other side of the table, Wanda had obviously gotten caught up in Jean's laughter. She leaned back against the booth, one arm wrapped around her ribs, the other against her mouth in an attempt to muffle the giggles. "Only ... only," she choked, "if I can see the look on his face when you do!"