Log: Eamon and Laurie

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Eamon's arrival is serendipitous.

Thanks to Cozza for socking Eamon. :)



Normally he would have done a few things different. First of all, he would have stopped off and gotten a hotel room so there was an easy option for escaping all the kids at the mansion and for being greedy about his girlfriend. Second, he generally tried to not be a walking bruise when he turned up because he figured knowing he was a mercenary was potentially worrying enough without Laurie seeing how beat up he got sometimes.

Whatever was going on, Eamon had not been put under the impression this was a time for standard operating procedure. That was why he did his best to squirm his way out of his contract, including repaying most of his fee despite having been on the job for months now, with minimal damage to his reputation as being reliable and a man of his word where contracts were concerned. It was also why he had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder when he walked up the steps of the mansion.

There was a scab where his eyebrow had been busted open, stitches where a broken bottle had cut up his bicep and he had a busted lip. This was to say nothing of the purple bruise on his jaw and the healing burns on his leg. All in all, Eamon was a little bit of a mess but he looked far worse than he felt. Except for that sinking feeling he had since the messenger Thom had sent found him. Even now he knew very little of what was going on. Vanessa had been cryptic on the phone so when he got to Laurie's suite and knocked on the door the mercenary had no idea what to expect.

Laurie had been about to head out to the Med lab when she heard the knock on the door, so she quickly tapped out a 'I am going to be a little late' to Jean on her phone before opening the door. It was due to her concentration on her phone that she didn't immediately jump the man in front of her and was able to make a good accounting of his various seen injuries before a grin broke out on her face.

"You're here!" she said, slipping her phone into her jeans before wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

Eamon's reaction was a little delayed on account of his girlfriend's new skinhead make over. The duffel fell to the floor and his arms did get around her waist, albeit a few beats after she'd attached herself to him. "Aye, I'm here." His voice came softly with their proximity, though his confusion was obvious in his tone. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, now? Nessa wouldn't say and all I got were these really panicked voice messages from you. Aye, and where did you leave your hair?"

Laurie didn't answer for a moment, too busy just breathing in his scent and reassuring herself that yes, he really was here and it wasn't some sort of weird hallucination brought on by too many fumes from the Medlab or something weird like that.

"I was kidnapped by Genoshians and they shaved me bald," she replied, as if that somehow explained everything.

Leaning back a bit so he could try to look at her, Eamon gave Laurie an incredibly perplexed expression. "You were kidnapped? And they shaved you? Was this a Genoshan with a bald fetish? Is all of this supposed to make sense to me, pet?"

Laurie released him, standing now in the circle of his arms with her own held loosely at her sides as she avoided his eyes. It wasn't that she didn't want to tell him what had happened, it was only that she didn't remember. She only had the reports that the others had filed in the X-men archives, and even those were sketchy, as if they'd deliberately decided that doing a blow-by-blow summary was not helpful. She'd wanted to scream when she saw the brief mentions, no one seemed to understand that she needed the details. She needed to know what had been done to her, and what she'd done, she couldn't even really explain why, just that she needed.

They'd been good at keeping her company during the day, all of her friends, even Jean-Phillipe who was not one to usually show any particular fondness or gentleness had been kind to her. She couldn't even explain to them that it was driving her mad to be so needy, even while she clung to everyone and could only seem to panic when they weren't there, when they couldn't tell her that she was herself and not mutate 42, whoever that had been. It was the blanks, how could she possibly know that there weren't other blanks, other times when she wasn't herself unless other people were around to tell her?

"They did things to me," she finally said, looking anywhere but his eyes as she explained. "They turned me into a weapon and used me against my friends and I don't remember any of it."

This was more than just a little outside of Eamon's realm of experience. Somehow ever since Nessa had come here it had been one completely unbelievable thing after another. Brainwashing he understood somewhat. Turning people into weapons, sure. But not doing it in the time that had transpired since he had last spoken to his girlfriend. And certainly not wiping minds of all memory afterward. It was like an ongoing sci-fi novel.

"Pet, you're going to have to give me a minute for this to sink in, aye?"

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? What the hell was he supposed to do with that? His impulse was, of course, to hunt down the people who had done it and kill them. That wasn't a particularly viable option, likely.

Eamon sighed, thumb tracing down the side of Laurie's face from her temple to her chin. "How okay are you now?"

"I'm alive," Laurie replied, and it really could have been a different story there, so she was grateful that it was so, even with the fear that she just couldn't seem to shake. "And I'm myself, Haller and the Professor say they could tell if something was awry in there."

They couldn't fill the blanks in her memory though, something about the mutate process, it just wasn't something that could be fixed. Not by them, anyhow.

"You realize that's not particularly reassuring the way you say it." He would have claimed she hadn't answered the question, but Eamon supposed in a way she had. If 'alive' was her designation then she was clearly not alright. Though the mercenary was at something of a loss at what to do about it all. "Alright then, what can I do to help?"

"I don't exactly feel all that reassuring," Laurie replied, finally moving to wrap her arms around him again, hoping that it would take any sting out of the words and just glad that he was here and that she could hold him rather then just dream of it. "Maybe let me cry on you a bit if I have a panic attack in the middle of the night? I just really need you nearby right now, that's all."

Eamon's arms fell around Laurie's shoulders and pressed her in close to him. "Aye? I can do nearby. I'm quite skilled at existing in proximity," he told her lightly, trying to raise the general mood in the corridor a bit. "I'm told it's one of my finer traits, even."

"You know, I had heard that about you," she noted, a wistful smile peaking out as she lent her head up to kiss him somewhat seriously. "I love you, you know. You didn't get into any trouble for coming here so fast?"

Head tilting to the side a little, Eamon shrugged. "None that I can't handle. A stampede could not have kept me." He smiled and tilted Laurie's head up with his thumb under her chin. Eamon stole only a brief kiss before grinning at his girlfriend. "Now, do you have somewhere to be or can I demonstrate my astounding existing-in-proximity skills?"

"Jean-Phillipe is currently out trying to convince men to let him show them his mug shot, amongst other things," Laurie noted, curling one hand around Eamon's wrist to pull him into her suite and eventually her bedroom beyond. "We've got at least a couple of hours before he staggers home with whoever he picked up."