Vanessa & Garrison | Tuesday evening

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Another day means another night hanging with kid sister so she can try to get through the night alright. Only when Vanessa turns up early she runs into another friend...who seems much gloomier than she would expect, even given the recent events.

Turning up at the mansion every night was already becoming an easy habit Vanessa didn't have to think about. The drive from the city became so second hand that her exhaustion didn't seem to weigh as heavily on her ability to navigate as she thought it should. Driving back in the morning, however, would be a different beast altogether. The few hours she'd passed out for with Callisto in the afternoon would do nothing to make up for the sleepless night ahead. The coffee she had been mainlining for the better part of the past week must have been wearing out because Vanessa nearly walked right into Garrison when she came in from the garage, motorcycle helmet in hand. Her free hand came up to land on his chest in time to stop any actual collision. "Oh, hi. I'm fully alert, I swear, I just clearly really felt the need to be close to you," she joked lightly and took a step back to give their personal bubbles a chance to expand back out.

"Hey Vanessa." Kane said, oddly bypassing the banter. Normally, any opening line like that would have been the invitation to a dozen comments. "How was the ride in?"

The metamorph narrowed her eyes at him a little, an eyebrow quirking up just a little. "Fine. A little dull except when I nearly collided with a tree. You know, the usual." She was joking about the tree but her delivery was dry and casual.

"I keep telling you that you shouldn't be driving that thing when you're tired. And no, coffee does not replace sleep. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd pull you over myself and put you in a cell filled with pillows for at least 36 hours."

"Counter productive, I don't sleep in jail cells. Not even when I don't have issues sleeping in general. Even with all those pillows it's still a cage and I don't do well in those." Now if only Jean had known that when she had woken Vanessa up from that medically induced coma months ago. "Besides, I am on teddy bear duty here and I've napped. I'm fine to drive here, it's just getting home that gets problematic. I'll convince someone to come get me in the morning. Unless you feel like hauling me back to the city yourself. Assuming you're going into the office tomorrow."

"Hang on. Let me check if there's still crime in America." Kane paused. "Yeah, I'm likely going in." He had gone back to work pretty much immediately, ignoring Duncan's attempts to make him take some leave time. It was soothing being back in the office in someways, and for the first time in his life, he was more comfortable armed than not.

"Well, if Laurie is awake early enough and you don't mind, then I may be waiting for you by the car." Normally she wouldn't have been so hesitant to simply appropriate him as a ride, but Garrison seemed a bit more somber, and understandably so. Being polite seemed more important.

"Good. You can buy the coffee on the way in." He fell into step beside her as they headed through the mansion. "How's Laurie doing?"

She nodded her agreement with his coffee stipulation, then frowned. "On a scale from bad to worse? Not great. She's mostly okay during the day when she's got her people nearby. The black space in her memory is really doing a number on her and nights are particularly rough on her. I think she'll come through eventually but I think it's going to take a lot of time, too. She called me a few nights back in a panic because she couldn't reach Eamon. Thom's gotten word to him that he needs to get here, though, and I spoke to him." Vanessa shrugged a little with one shoulder. "I didn't tell him much, just that some stuff went down and Laurie needs him. I figure it's the sort of thing he should hear from her or at least in person. He can be a touch on the reactive and irrational side where she's concerned, though I don't know that she really knows that. He's trying to get out of his contract. Hopefully he'll be here soon. I think having him around will help her a lot. Someone who has nothing to do but be there for her, who loves her intensely and who is so obviously protective of her it'll be hard for her to not feel safe...that can do a person a lot of good."

"I think it's a little optimistic to assume anyone is going to feel safe any time soon." He said, but trottled off any further comment. It was good that Laurie had someone - more importantly, even if he couldn't help, he would at least not make things worse. It was easy to forget the value in that. "It's good that he's coming. If he doesn't make her feel safe, he can at least distract her from feeling scared. That's something, I guess."

"I like to think if someone is frantically trying to reach someone while flipping out in the middle of the night that it's because that person is what they need to feel safe and grounded." Vanessa shrugged again. "I don't really get the whole 'my boyfriend makes me feel safe' thing, but I get that it's how other people feel depending on the girl and her boyfriend. And I tend to think that's how Laurie feels about Eamon, though I can't be sure." Vanessa tilted her head and looked at Garrison a bit more closely. "But how're you doing after everything?"

"Fine. Other than a surprising leap through body modesty issues, I just got beaten up some and forced to sleep at the YMCA for a week. Can't really complain." He said offhandedly.

She was looking for some indication that he was covering something up. Not lying, per se, but avoiding. "Should I believe you? Because I'm not entirely sure I do given the comment about people feeling safe." Granted, he backed off when she didn't want to talk about stuff so she would afford him the same luxury. Vanessa just wasn't sure whether or not there was actually stuff he was actively not talking about and whether or not she should keep an eye on him because of it.

"A group of kids got targeted and kidnapped by a whole country. I think that likely is going to need more than a reassuring presence to sort out." He pointed out, not unreasonably.

"Yes, but a reassuring presence is a step. And for some people it's a necessary step before they get can down to the business of coping, dealing and moving past it." Clearly it had been a necessary step for Vanessa after being abducted by New Son, but she didn't bother spelling that out. They were both fully aware of the fact. "But I'm not really talking about everyone, or all the kids or what have you. I'm asking about you. Because a comment like that doesn't usually exclude the person making it."

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to be ready to hit the panic button every time one of these kids is ten minutes late to class without notice for the next little while. Security around here is hard enough without the dash of paranoia that tells you someone who you didn't even know was on your radar is planning something." He shrugged. "Price that we pay, I guess."

"I believe classes are out for the summer," Vanessa pointed out as a sort of roundabout assurance. Though, really, that probably made it worse. If the kids had nowhere they had to be then there was no way to keep track of them. "Maybe it's the price the team pays, but it shouldn't be the price the kids pay. It's unfortunate, that there is no way to help them the way the school does without also making them targets." There was, of course. Dissociate the school from the team, make Xavier less noticeable as an interfering force. But the practicalities of that were difficult at best, which was to say nothing of the desire to do it.

"Well, I'm sure Xavier's exciting summer of therapy will do them all wonders." Kane said sourly as they climbed the stairs, and he turned towards his room. "Good luck with Laurie."

"If any of them go or want to be there," Vanessa commented mostly to herself and shook her head. "Thanks. I guess I'll see you in the morning." The ex-mercenary was left frowning at her friend's retreating back. Everyone had wounds from Genosha. Almost everyone, anyway. At least someone like Laurie asked for help in her way when she needed it. Garrison...wasn't asking. Clearly she'd just have to do what he had done for her: be around in case he did.