xp_logs | House of Wolves: All's Well

x-courier.livejournal.com posting in

Wanda returns from a final visit to the hospital with new information and new frustrations. She comes close to falling apart, and Jake tries to make her feel better.

(Note: Some mildly NSFW-ness at the very end.)

The aftermath had been surprisingly, thankfully, less hectic than the entire evening had been. The guards had managed to get back into the museum at the same time the local officers had arrived on the scene. They were still trying to figure out the young man at the local hospital (sedated, heavily sedated) and McNee had certainly made good his getaway. Video footage had clearly shown that he had been carrying something when he'd tossed himself out of an open window. What he had taken they weren't sure of and from Agatha's bizarre record keepings, it might take a while to figure out.

With Victor's help, any questions regarding their involvement had been quietly moved to the side and after an hour checkup in the hospital, with various bites, scrapes and bruises being checked out and fixed, they were released and were now resting until their flight was to leave later on Tuesday.

Well, most of them were resting. Wanda had just gotten back from the hospital, looking tired and pinched, from another botched attempt to get Agatha to talk. The old woman had been concerned in her own way for their well-being but refused to speak. Barely seeing Jake, Wanda sat on the edge of her bed in the hotel room and stared at the carpeted floor as she tried to piece herself back together.

"How did it go?" he asked sleepily from where he was stretched out on the other bed, eyes still closed. When there was no answer, he cracked open one eye and took in Wanda's shell-shocked expression. Almost instantly, he rolled to a sitting position facing her, fully awake.

"Hey," Jake said, reaching out to caress her cheek gently, waiting until she dragged her gaze up from the floor before continuing. "Are you okay?"

"No," she said and winced at the sound of her own voice. "Agatha is difficult at the best of times and these at not the best of them." Suddenly she surged to her feet and paced to the window and back again. "There was only one thing she would tell me. You know, that symbol on that man's back? She's seen it before."

Out of her back pocket came a piece of paper and she tossed it on the bed. It held a weird symbol that meant nothing to Jake but a great deal to Wanda. "She had stumbled upon the meaning of this in her office the night of the attack and doubts it is connected. We first found this symbol carved on crosses in the sewers. Later, we discovered them all over an abandoned village in Ghana; a village I almost did not walk back out of." Pace, back and forth, nervous energy and frustration boiling off of her with every movement despite her bruises and cuts from the previous fight. "Agatha believes it is a symbol for chaos and there are rumors of a stirring among a newer, stronger cult..."

"Chthon," she hissed, hands clenching. "On top of all this shit and Chthon lands on my plate again."

Jake warily watched her pace through the room, recognizing the tension and frustration for what they were--a desperate attempt at distraction, a clung-to focus to keep herself from falling apart at the seams. He'd been there two weeks previous, and it had taken Manuel's ministrations and this vacation to get him back to anything resembling functional. Not for the first time, he found himself hating Agatha, but he stopped himself before he said something; Wanda clearly didn't need to hear it right now.

He thought about asking about Ghana, but he wasn't sure he wanted her to get any more worked up than she was. Instead, he held out a hand. "Hey. You're making me dizzy. Come here."

The fact that she paused for a moment before reaching out a hand was probably one of the more telling things about her mental state. Reluctantly, Wanda let Jake draw her to the bed until she was sitting next to him. "This mess just made a ton of other messes to clean up and sort out, if Agatha even will talk to me about what was actually stolen when they figure it out."

He again bit back the urge to say something disparaging about Agatha. "Do you have any idea why she doesn't want to talk to you about it?" he asked, his hand tracing soothing circles on her back.

She shook her head. "No idea. Agatha has always played things close to her chest, especially once Arthur died. But she was never this closed off. And, of course, she refuses to tell me much about the magical nature of a lot of those artifacts we saw." Suddenly her voice turned bitter again. "As if I hadn't had free reign of it most of my adult life."

Agatha might have been harsh at times but she'd been like another mother since Wanda had first come to the college. Wanda just wasn't used to dealing with those kind of emotions, the walls she'd put up because of her father and previous issues with Pietro were starting to fall down around her ears.

Jake leaned his head against Wanda's so that she couldn't see his smirk; it was all too familiar to his own situation. "I could go punch her in the nose," he suggested, deadpan, at a loss for what else to do.

She laughed quietly at that. "Oh, she'd kick your butt but good, even in that hospital bed." Wanda quieted down and with a sigh fell backwards onto the bed. She laid there and stared up at the ceiling, stubbornly wishing the sudden prickle of tears away.

It was the last straw for her and she curled her limbs up on the bed and into herself, desperately fighting for that balance she'd carefully cultivated most of her adult life. It wasn't just Agatha's hurtful response to her but there was guilt there, the abstract kind that was hard to pin down. If she hadn't gotten Hanzi that job, he wouldn't have been that frightened, broken man in that hospital room.

"Hey..." Jake followed, stretching out next to her on the bed. He bit his lip, hesitating, then reached out and wrapped his arms around her. "It's okay. Everybody's going to be okay. We stopped the bad guys." He continued to murmur nonsense into her hair, rubbing her back.

This time she went willingly, tucking her head into the space between his neck and shoulder. It shut out everything but him and Wanda thought of patterns and meditation cycles that she'd known for so long. "McNee escaped with something, I have no idea how often Agatha has kept me in the dark and Hanzi..." Suddenly she pushed away again, shaking her head. "This isn't me, it isn't and I need to be me again." Collected, calm and not the old her, the younger her. The younger one wanted to run away and she was inclined to agree.

"Wanda..." Jake sighed, rubbing at his eyes, trying not to be hurt over being pushed away. He pushed himself up so that he was braced on his hands, arms behind him. "What isn't you?"

"This mess, that is what is not me." She didn't sit up but she did actually look at Jake. "I am sorry. This is not something I wish to dump on anyone but you certainly do not need this."

Jake stretched out next to her again, propping his head up on one hand. "I don't know that anybody 'needs' this," he said, gently tracing one finger down her cheek. "Besides, I'm the one who showed up on your doorstep with my mess. I think it's fair for you to fall apart on me for a change, if you need to."

Wanda reached up and grabbed his hand but this time she just held onto it, looking exhausted. "It's just not what I do," she murmured, sounding confused.

It was heartbreaking and unsettling to see Wanda so determinedly falling apart at the seams. Jake brought her hand up to hold it gently against his chest, utterly perplexed; he had no idea what to say to Wanda, and every time he tried to touch her she ended up flinching away. And while he understood, on some level, it was still frustrating--they had always been physical, comfortable with one another. He watched her for a moment before speaking again. "What do you want me to do?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know." Deep down Wanda knew that this was simply a breaking point for her. She had soldiered on past the attacks that had nearly killed her six months ago and had even managed to put away what Jeremy Stevens had done to her. Put away, not dealt with, not really. She was very good at that and now this seeming "betrayal" by Agatha and Hanzi's injuries were about to become the linchpin to undoing those walls. "I wish this was a simple thing that had one of those silly solutions like kissing it and making it better," she joked feebly, still clutching at his hand.

He laughed softly, squeezing her hand. "We could always try," he said, putting on his Serious Scientific Face. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. "Better?"

The laugh was soft but more relaxed sounding than she had been the entire day. "Maybe," she admitted grudgingly, finally giving him a small smile.

Oh thank god. Goofy and charming and un-serious he could do. He proceeded to kiss his way up her arm to her shoulder with short, light pecks. "Better?" he asked again, intentionally bonking her head with his, gently.

She snorted in laughter, half-heartedly pushing him away but since she didn't mean it, he didn't go anywhere. "Are you going to keep that up until I admit I'm better?" Wanda asked in amusement. If she focused on the now, she wouldn't drift back into maudlin thoughts or nightmarish daydreams.

Jake's Serious Scientific Face got Even More Serious. "Absolutely." He kissed his way up her shoulder, then up her neck, not really thinking about where he was going until--

He blinked, realizing that he was nose-to-nose with Wanda. Ah, fuck it, he thought, and kissed her deeply.

The kiss had come mid-giggle and the sound was now muffled by Jake's mouth. Wanda's brain struggled to catch up with the sudden turn of events even as her body decided it was tired of waiting for the brain and she kissed him back without hesitation, sluggish mind or no.

Besides, this was Jake and it seemed like a natural progression even as her hand clenched even tighter around his.

His free hand came up to thread through her hair, one thumb caressing her cheek. This was at once the most terrifying and most exhilarating thing he'd ever done. He'd panic about it, except that panic involved thinking, and he was currently entirely incapable of stringing a coherent thought together. Instead, he rolled onto his back, pulling Wanda atop him.

Bruises and her arm protested at the movement but Wanda ignored them for the greater good. Besides, there were too many new sensations and feelings to focus on. And it had been so long since she hadn't been the one to start and probably longer since it had been a complete surprise.

With some reluctance, Wanda pushed up against Jake's chest and ended the kiss as she sat up, arranging her legs so she was more straddling than sprawled. There was no time to sulk at the end of the kiss for Jake or to think for either of them before she'd grabbed the collar of her shirt and yanked it over her head.

He followed her up, hands slipping down to circle her waist as it appeared beneath her shirt, tongue trailing up the hollow between her breasts and to her neck. He bit gently at the soft skin there as his fingers wandered up her spine to undo the clasp of her bra. "Better?" he murmured into her skin before kissing his way back up to her mouth.

She hummed in agreement as she bit his lower lip, a little harder than the nip before on her neck. The pleasant sensations were temporarily overriding the stress and confusion of the last few days. Not one to normally question any activities of this sort, Wanda had no issue with throwing herself completely and utterly into it now. She fisted her hands in his hair, pressing herself up against him.

Jake moaned at the bite, fingers splaying against Wanda's back as she moved against him. He wrapped an arm around her back, pivoting to drop her onto her back on the bed, and pinned her loosely. With a quick grin, he dropped his head to explore her neck and shoulder with his tongue and teeth before either of them could say anything.

They moved in silent agreement: No thinking. Just feeling.