Jean & Vanessa | Sunday Afternoon

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Vanessa regains consciousness for the first time but it's not the happy homecoming moment anyone hoped for.

It was like being caught at the bottom of the ocean. Or at least it was what Vanessa thought being trapped down there was like. It was dark and she was sort of floating. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here or how long she'd been down here. That last thing she could remember were bright lights and gauze, being numb, hate, fear... This was so much more peaceful. But it was so dark and no matter how much she strained to see she couldn't make anything out. So she started swimming for what she hoped was the surface. Darkness stretched out as far as she could see, every direction looking identical. But she kept swimming. Each pull of her arm came with hope and ended with the nagging fear that she wouldn't get anywhere. Her arms were sore. Weak. They tired by the end of each stroke. She kept swimming. Vanessa wasn't sure how long she had been trying to find the light when she blinked and it was simply there.

At first it was only light. Bright and painful. She couldn't see anything more than she could in the darkness of the ocean. Then her eyes started to adjust and she realized it wasn't just all bright light. It was white walls. It was the gleam off of metal. What were those noises? She was so confused until she turned to look to the sound and saw the machines. An IV pump, bags of fluids hanging off a steel rod, something that seemed to measure a heartbeat from the look of the jagged line on the monitor. The began to spike quicker and quicker as panic set in. Oh God. She was still here. She was held down and she'd never get out of this place alive.

Vanessa pulled at the restraints on her wrists only to find there weren't any there. It also wasn't her wrist, but that wasn't too surprising. She did another visual sweep around the room and found the door was open as well. What is this? A test maybe. If they wanted to see if she was pissed off enough to find her way out of there they weren't going to be disappointed. The metamorph immediately started to pull at wires that connected to her by needles or catheters or electrodes or whatever these people had on her. The heart monitor made a high-pitched sound when it flat-lined after disconnecting from her chest.

Jean was in her medlab office, downing her third cup of coffee in so many minutes in an attempt to stave off the fatigue when she felt the rush of panic coming from the other room. She had hoped she would've been there when Vanessa woke up, but as fate would have it it would have to have been the first time she'd left the room in an hour.

She was already halfway down the hall when she heard the shrillness of the heart monitor and the blare of warning from the other machines, but knew Vanessa wasn't dead. Her mind was still too loud, as always.

Jean opened the door, pausing at the door way for a moment, but only a moment. ~"Vanessa. You're safe."~ she thought, and spoke at the same time. She didn't want to do it but she reached out to telekinetically restrain her, if only to prevent her from inadvertently doing more damage to herself.

"Do you remember when we were at the bar, and I helped you with James? Do you remember the burned breakfast after the birthday party at Finnegan's? Vanessa listen to me. You're safe. You're safe." It was understandable, and she did not fault her for disbelieving after months of being particularly unsafe.

Being restrained only made Vanessa panic more. She felt the invisible grasp on her limbs before she saw Jean. Each word she heard registered but was just as easily dismissed because she couldn't move. Not her arms, not her legs. In her struggle two bone claws shot out of the back of each hand, slicing through flesh as they emerged. It was the blood running down her hands that drew the metamorph's attention. She stared at her hands and again realized they weren't her own. But this time she realized whose they were. Without looking up she muttered, "I'm wearing Laura?"

Jean nodded. "Lucas brought her along, hoping you'd pick up her mimic. You did," she said softly, slowly approaching.

"I'm going to let you go but please let me tend to your wounds. Laura's healing factor is helping but it can only do so much. You can ask me anything you'd like. I know....I know its hard to believe that you aren't there anymore. It took us a very long time to find you," she said. The apology was deeply ingrained in her voice. Her telekinetic hold started to loosen, slowly. She didn't want her to make any sudden movements and tear any stitches not already healed by Laura's healing factor.

"They were very good at covering their tracks."

Vanessa finally looked up, Laura's brown eyes finding Jean. Her brain finally put the voice together with the face. Knowing Laura could spot an impostor easily, Vanessa sniffed at Jean. It smelled like her from what Vanessa could remember, but she was unconscious the last time Vanessa saw her. Maybe her memory was shot, though. Either way, she could feel the pressure holding her arms and legs to her body ease up until she could move again. If this was a trick it was a very elaborate one and she could escape it better if she wasn't telekinetically hog tied.

Wounds, she had wounds. Vanessa looked down at her hands and couldn't remember how to put Laura's claws back. Great. Then she touched her head. Bandaged. Her fingers moved to her chest, to her stomach, to her back. She hissed when a stitch pulled. Pain meds, that was why those spots felt numb. Then she looked down at the arm she knew had been skinned. It was covered in bandages, too. She didn't bother to check her side, it would probably be more of the same. "What's today's date? How long have I been here? Where did you find me?"

For the moment Jean remained where she was, to give Vanessa time to get her bearings. But she couldn't give her that much time. There were already bright splashes of red bleeding through her bandages.

"It's Sunday. October, the 16th," Jean said. Almost three months. "You've been here three days, after we rescued you. We finally found you...in Prague."

With her adrenaline fading Vanessa was starting to feel a little fuzzy around the edges. She didn't want to sit down because all she'd done is sit or lay for hours upon hours for days and days....for months. She'd been there for months. Now she really did need to sit down. Wait, she was already sitting. Vanessa itched at a metal staple holding a tube to her nostril. What the fuck was that? It itched and she rubbed at her nose but that only made it hurt and she hissed. "I was in Boston. They took me from Boston. Why does my head hurt? And why'm I fuzzy?" A hand raised, claws still extended, and her fingers danced near her temple. "Fuzzy and throbbing. Isn't fuzzy to stop throbbing?"

Jean finally approached, reaching out to put her hand on Vanessa's hand to gently try to pull her hand down. Adrenaline was a remarkable thing. It helped a great deal in keeping the mind in check, but once it started to ebb...

"Careful. Those are there to help. It may feel weird but the tube is there to replenish the nutrients you lost. You're also on a sizable amount of painkillers and a couple of other things to help with the healing process," she said with a faint smile.

"Things will be foggy for a little while."

"You mean itchy," the metamorph complained. She remembered the last time Laura had lent her the healing factor. Ah, the fun days of near evisceration. Her hand came down under Jean's and after flexing her fingers a few times she remembered how to get the claws back in. The wounds were just that, wounds. They weren't healing instantly the way they did when Laura sheathed them. Vanessa wiggled her fingers, shook her hand and then resorted to simply staring really hard at the spot with a look of strict concentration. Nothing. They just bled.

Vanessa looked up to Jean. "Is the healing factor working overtime?" she asked without any further clarification before she started to scratch at the bandage on her left arm. It was itchy now that she was calming down a little.

"Unfortunately, yes. You have...extensive injuries. I was able to do what I can to help patch up most of the damage but the rest is up to you. The itching is a side effect of the healing factor," Jean said. She kept her hand lingering over Vanessa's, hoping it might calm her, before some gauze and antiseptic floated over from the table and into her hands.

Jean let out a breath. "It will get worse," she added softly, then nodded to her bloody hand, holding up the medical supplies. "May I?"

Normally the question would have had Vanessa extending her hand without a second thought. This was Jean. She trusted her. That's what Vanessa kept reminding herself as she weighed the options. It would heal on its own eventually. That could be a long time for her to be bleeding on herself. She kept scratching at the bandages on her arm. God, that was infuriatingly obnoxious, like a really big mosquito bite that just wouldn't quit. Or maybe more like fire ant bites.

Eventually Vanessa forced herself to stop scratching at the gauze wrapping and gave Jean her hand. The trepidation was obvious, though not personal. It was easy to see the way Vanessa's eyes darted around the room now that she wasn't concentrating solely on the itching. A noise from down the hall somewhere made her twitch, almost jump. She looked like a caged animal. "I don't want to stay here."

There was pure sympathy in Jean's eyes as she put the antiseptic on the gauze and lightly bushed the blood away, making it as quick as she could judging by the way she reacted to her touch. "I know," she said. She wouldn't either if she'd been through what she'd been though.

"If there were a way to treat you at your apartment I would do it. But you need time to heal in a place with the proper equipment and conditions in case things go wrong. The itching will get much worse. And it can be a problem." She glanced down for a few moments. "There's something I do with Kyle. When he gets badly injured. It's up to you, but...it'll get you through the worse of it."

The word "wary" didn't come close to properly capturing the expression on Laura's face as Vanessa looked at her. "What is it?" Suspicion was in her voice and Vanessa didn't register it until the words were out of her mouth. The whole place set her on edge. It didn't matter that this was Xavier's. It didn't matter that it was a safe place. Then again, there were mutants who worked with New Son. This could have been a trick. An illusion constructed from things they had pulled from her mind. She only tensed further at the thought.

Jean put the bloody gauze in the trash. Vanessa's thoughts were blaring again, but not by her choosing. It was the fear, and the pain, and the panic that did it. She'd seen the look in her eyes before, these thoughts from Scott when he had been taken so long ago, when he had been tortured, made to disbelieve all he saw.

"Vanessa, look at me. You're safe. I promise you, you are safe. This is real. As I said before, you can ask me anything. There's not much I can to do convince you you're safe if you don't believe you are, but it is the truth."

The metamorph's eyes narrowed. There was nothing she liked less than someone shoving her weakness out in front of her face to be stared at. The person in front of her was a telepath or in communication with one. Maybe they were a shapeshifter, able to do what Vanessa couldn't and match a mental image at will. With a telepath involved there was no proof anyone could give short of a DNA test but the data from one of those would mean nothing to the ex-mercenary anyway. All she could do was watch, wait for them to slip up and get her validation one way or the other when she could.

"You didn't answer the question," she pointed out rather shortly.

Jean maintained a calm expression. "I didn't answer the question because I want to give you time to process things first. It's a medically induced coma. Again, it's entirely up to you. But should you refuse I can try to do what I can but the next few days will be very difficult."

New Son wouldn't need permission, they just did whatever they wanted. Jean would ask, though. She was that sort of person, never mind an actual ethical doctor. But someone wanting to pass for Jean, well, they would ask. "How many days?"

Jean looked down. "Two to five weeks ...Laura...doesn't really have Kyle's track record when it comes to getting hurt so I'm not sure what her rate of healing is compared to Kyle's," Jean said.

"The coma would allow the healing factor to work better to heal you. When you get overly stressed or excited the claws will pop out of your hands, adding more for your body to heal. This would get you through the worst of it, I think."

Vanessa stared at her, obviously unable to process that she was really being told this. "You want me to let you knock me out for a month?" she asked, incredulous. "You have got to be kidding."

Jean shook her head. "I wish I was. I can give you a couple of days to think about it if you'd like. If you decide not to it will take a lot longer to heal. Like I said, I will do what I can but it will get worse before it gets better."

"Will you give me the days outside of," she stopped before she said something that got her into a sort of trouble she probably didn't want to be in. Vanessa gestured to the room around them. "Out of here?" There was a challenge in her voice, as if she dared Jean or the Jean impostor to say no and confirm her suspicions.

The doctor in Jean reflexively had some hesitation for that, leaving the sterile environment, but she was willing to make an exception if the end result would allow her to heal quicker. Besides, some time away from said sterile environment would probably help ease some anxiety.

"As long as we stay on the grounds. If anything happens I want to be able to get back to the Medlab quickly. I can put you in a room next to Warren and myself if you'd like," she said.

Warren. The mention of him made Vanessa flinch. She both missed him desperately and didn't want to go anywhere near him. There were myriad reasons why on both accounts, but the latter reaction trumped missing him entirely. "When, precisely, did 'we' come into the equation?" Vanessa's tone had grown noticeably colder. She didn't like the leash this person wanted to keep her on so she could be reeled back into their land of impromptu medical procedures whenever she fancied it.

Jean's eyes did not leave Vanessa's. "There is not much I can do to convince you you're safe, and I understand that. But if getting you better means having you think I'm evil for awhile, I am more than willing to piss you off. Right now my concern is keeping you alive and getting you well rather than tip-toeing around and sugar coating things. So if you want to leave the medlab, yes, 'we' comes into the equation," she said.

"Frankly, I'm glad you're coherent enough to be defensive. It's a good sign. But you have a long road ahead of you and I'm afraid you're stuck with me for the long haul, Nessa."

She was right, there was nothing she could say to convince Vanessa she was safe. Vanessa wanted out to prove whether or not she was in the facility still. Science Experiment Central didn't have the same lay out as the mansion so eventually if there was supposed to be a hallway or something there would be a wall. Any new people in the mansion could be made up just as easily as anything else in an illusion or projection, but you couldn't completely change the layout of your own building and she didn't think anyone could easily convince her that a hallway turned when it wasn't supposed to in her memory. Unless they completely fucked with her memory too. There wasn't really any winning here.

Than Vanessa looked down at her hands. The claws, the bloody wounds on the back of her hands...why make her hallucinate that she has Laura's mimic on? Why make her think she could heal unless they were actually healing her? New Son's people hadn't seemed very interested in her being healed unless she could do it herself. The feeling she had gotten was that she hadn't been as impressive as they had hoped.

"Fine. Do it." If she was still in that place maybe she just wouldn't wake up, which was preferable to slowly dying from infection, loss of blood and whatever else. If she was really with Jean, well, the real Jean could be trusted. With a tone that begged no argument Vanessa added, "But I want out of here when I wake up."

Jean smiled softly. "That's the ultimate plan, anyway," she said. "If you still want a couple of days we can try to do that but I really recommend not a lot of moving around and avoiding high stress situations. You will also have to use the wheelchair." There were a few things she could let slide but not that. It was already a big enough risk to take.

"I said to do it, didn't I?" Vanessa held out the hand her IV line seemed to be hooked up to. "How many times do I say something and not mean it? Or mean it three days later and not at the time?" She wondered if Jean was trying to be nice or if the telepathy-based illusion had gone wrong. After all, if they were looking into memories for other people maybe they would overlook ones of herself.

Vanessa had asked for days out of the Medlab so Jean wanted to make sure if she still wanted them she would give them to her. But now that seemed to change. Jean wasn't going to say she was too unhappy with the choice. It meant more time for her to heal. "Very few," Jean said, giving her the expression she usually gave her when she was trying to be in her zen place and prevent a future argument. "Okay. I'll be right back," she said, disappearing out of the room.

She returned a few moments later with a glass vial that appeared to contain a white milky substance and a syringe. Some of the respiratory equipment slid a couple of feet, coming to a stop beside the bed. "This is propofol. When I inject it you may feel a little bit of pain at the injection site, followed by a sense of mild euphoria before the drowsiness sets in. When you wake up the euphoria will linger for a few minutes as the drug starts to wear off. There is a potential side effect of apnea and low blood pressure but I will be monitoring you closely, and if I'm not here Hank will be," she said.

She didn't mention Amelia as of yet as she remembered Amelia was still 'dead' when Vanessa was taken and her miraculous 'resurrection' would probably have further made Vanessa think this still wasn't real.

The metamorph, of course, eyed everything that came back into the room with the doctor. She'd also inspected the room. Everything she touched felt right for the shape, size and weight of material. She didn't venture very far because she really was growing increasingly fuzzy as time went on. Not knowing much about medicine didn't help her confirm the validity of things but being left alone in her room with the door obviously open and unlocked did a little. "Are you using propofol just so I'll be in a better mood when I wake up?"

Jean actually laughed. "Not entirely. There are a couple of other options but this one has the least amount of negative side effects. I've made sure the painkillers and antibiotics I've given you create the least reaction possible with the drug. Are you ready?" she said.

Vanessa waved a hand dismissively. "You're doing it so I'm in a better mood, reasonable justifications are just a bonus." Her tone was flat, though despite it she seemed to be joking from the very slight upturn at the corners of her mouth. "Yeah, I'm ready. Shoot me up and we'll see if I wake up like the perky cheerleader I'm wearing or not."

"If you did I would be very frightened," Jean mused as she drew a small amount of the liquid into the syringe and pushed out the excess air. She smiled softly.

"Alright, here we go," she said as she inserted the needle into the injection port.

"I'll be here when you wake up."