xp_logs | Post-Genosha Marie-Ange and Doug

While on the plane home, Marie-Ange checks on Doug, and while he swears he's 'fine', he clearly is not.

Marie-Ange had napped a bit on the plane, but Wade's restlessness was contagious and making her own restlessness even worse. It made it impossible to sleep for more than an hour or so, and after the third fitful nap that ended in twitchy legs and a foul taste in her mouth, she gave up, pacing the aisle quietly. People slept, people read, people stared off into space out the window, and that last simply did not seem healthy to her, not that 'healthy behavior' was really to be expected from any of them.

She slid into an empty seat in Doug's row and drew her feet up onto the seat next to him, resting her chin on her knees and digging her socked toes into the armrest.

Doug noted the slight invasion of his personal space by turning and raising an eyebrow at Marie-Ange's socked feet as he leaned back into the outer edge of his seat where it met the side of the plane. The sitting down next to him would have been a clear enough indicator, but the feet on the armrest, and directly facing toward him, was a clearer one. "Misplace your shoes?" he asked with a half-smile.

"I discarded them." Marie-Ange said. "They were hurting my feet. I have blisters." She wiggled the toes of one foot. "Besides, I have decided that after everything, no one will care if I am in socks on the plane." Considering the tank-top and sports bra and yoga pants, her appearance was startlingly un-groomed, but she didn't seem perturbed by it for once. "Wade may be using one as a cupholder. I am trying to make him drink more water."

Doug didn't really care that Marie-Ange was so dressed down. It was unusual for her, but they could all be excused a bit of unusual behavior in the wake of what had happened. He blinked just a little too hard at the mention of drinking water, trying to cover up the instinct to flinch. "Now there's a question. Does healing a ridiculous amount of damage to your body dehydrate you?" He had been quite relieved to discover that Wade was, in fact, still alive. He'd hoped, because he'd never seen a body, despite the Magistrates' observations.

"And makes you hungry, yes, and very tired I think also." Marie-Ange explained. "But better hungry and tired and thirsty than dead, yes?" She leaned forward a little, and prodded Doug in the arm with one toe. "And do not think I did not see you signing. My ASL is getting better, since I have been working with Artie. I saw the apology, but I am not quite certain of what else you said? You did not see... something?"

"A body. I never saw a body." Doug breathed out a sigh. "I hoped you'd notice." ASL was one of the languages he'd retained when their powers had been taken from them, because he had learned it 'the hard way' - with the young Leech and Artie sitting with him. "I'm glad he's okay."

"You are not the only one." Marie-Ange had hugged Wade, in public, without worry about what anyone thought, and she was still running too high on emotion to really care what anyone thought of her. "I was not sure if it was body or if you had said something else. I am also sorry I punched you." She rubbed her knuckles on her knee, and frowned. "I know it was not part of the plan. I... it... it just happened."

"I needed you to." Doug shrugged as if it was nothing. "Otherwise I couldn't have covered the way I did, without someone there to grab me and keep me from hitting back." And he would just carefully not mention the part at the back of his brain that said he'd deserved that and more for holding out on the information about Wade. Or wanting to resist Amanda's instructions to give up the false escape plan. Or a dozen other things.

"You can stop trying to protect me, Doug." Marie-Ange scooted forward in the seats she was taking up and looked up at Doug. "I know you still think of yourself as the knight in armor, but please stop. I am more than capable of protecting myself, and you, and others if need be. I hit you and it was not part of the plan and you do not need to shield me from whatever you may have felt about it. I am not going to run off to New Orleans again if you are angry at me."

Doug's face displayed little expression as she spoke, until she mentioned New Orleans. And even then, he tried to shutter away the worst of the pain in his eyes that dredging up those events brought. "It wasn't just for you," he said quietly, and looked away at the window briefly. Let her interpret that how she would, because he had crammed a number of nuances into those five words.

Marie-Ange breathed in, and looked over towards where Wade was either ... texting someone or possibly eating another sandwich, or very probably obsessively cleaning yet another gun, and then looked back at Doug. "Merci, then, because even if I do not understand, it is worth thanking you for." She nudged his arm with a toe again, indenting the skin just above Doug's elbow. "How is your cheek?"

"It's fine." Doug's tone wasn't precisely short, but it was somewhat dismissive. The skin was slightly yellowed still, but she hadn't broken anything, and he'd had several days since the punch to let it heal. The teams had had access to a mutant healer in the aftermath of the events in Hammer Bay, but Doug had practiced triage on himself and let the people with much more serious injuries - like Wanda's ribs - take precedence.

Besides, some injuries couldn't be made better by simply healing the body.

"Is it fine, or is it fine because you are going to refuse medical attention and you want me to stop asking?" Marie-Ange asked. "Because that way you say 'It's fine" seems more like "stop asking me." than not." She did not remove her foot, but let up on the prodding, resting all ten toes on Doug's forearm instead.

"Well, mostly the first, a little bit the second." The toes in the arm were getting more and more annoying, but Doug knew that Marie-Ange was intentionally needling him a bit. "I mean, seriously, it's a bruise, it's already healing. Nothing broken, no need for medical attention. So you don't need to ask anymore."

"Can I please show concern, just a little bit?" Marie-Ange asked, straining to not let her voice get louder, despite her annoyance. "I hit you. I think it is only fair that I apologize and ask if you are still hurting and offer to help. That is how an apology works." She huffed a little, and drew one foot in close to herself, leaving just the other with the toes on Doug's forearm.

Doug's eyes shifted off to the side when she mentioned apologies, and Marie-Ange's toes dug deeper into his arm for a moment. He belatedly realized that the toes were not so much to annoy him as to try and keep him from staring off and brooding. Granted, he kind of -wanted- to brood, and lick his mental wounds in private. But it didn't look like she was interested in letting him do so. "Fair enough," he allowed. "But like I said, it's healing well. How's Wade holding up?" he asked.

For a moment, Marie-Ange considered just saying "Fine" and seeing if Doug did not like that answer just as much as she did not like it. But that was unfair, and besides, he could tell if she was lying. "Exhausted. He keeps falling asleep, and he is ... twitchy, is perhaps the best word. He keeps trying to cuddle his guns, as though it will prevent something bad." Everyone was paranoid and twitchy in their own way though. "I had to talk him into shipping most of them home, but I did not want to wake up to him hugging a semi-automatic."

"What, no teddy-Glock?" Other peoples' recovery and general state were much easier topics for Doug, even to the point where he could crack some jokes. He just had no desire to talk about himself, and his body language tended to close off the more Marie-Ange might push.

"I would prefer no teddy-Glocks, yes." Guns were not appropriate for the bed. The nightstand, a shoebox under the bed, even a shelf next to the bed, those were all fine, but not in the bed itself. "He had ... things in his lungs. I do not like to think about it. He was so, ah, out of it, that he did not even think to look for me until well after all of the fighting and we had seen to our personal effects and gotten clothes." Even if her clothes were filthy, and she intended to throw them out when she got home, she was glad to have the cards back. "The first he saw me, and thank God I was not in that orange ... thing."

There was a more familiar Marie-Ange, always conscious of appearances. "Mostly I'm just glad he wasn't actually dead." Doug liked Wade, quite a lot. No awkward turtle. He would have been very upset if the man had died. He just wished that he could have had the same relief about Rachel.

"I am too. He said he did, briefly. His heart stopped, he said. He woke up while they were putting him into a body bag." Marie-Ange had coaxed it out of him in bits and pieces. "He seemed to think I was going to die here, because there was a ... tarot card incident." When had that happened? She couldn't quite remember. "Those seem to have happened quite a bit lately."

Bile rose in Doug's throat, remembering the 'incident' that had happened recently in the conference room. And then previous incidents regarding his own misinterpretation of her readings. He knew if he looked away, though, her toes would just dig into his arms again. "Hazard of the power, I suppose?" he asked with a false cheeriness to his voice.

"We all have them." Marie-Ange said quietly. "Some more subtle than others, I think." She curled into the seat a bit, leaning her head against the headrest. "And some of us manage to hide it better than others."

That earned her a sidelong glance from Doug. He wasn't sure how to interpret either comment of hers. Speaking of subtle. "How do you mean?" he asked, finally, hating the part of him that just couldn't let a comment like that pass without asking. He wasn't very good with not knowing things.

"The last time you had hair this short was October of 2008." Marie-Ange said quietly. "You were in my head, long enough to share information with me. I know what you were tempted to let happen." She pulled her feet back, resting them on the armrest but no longer on Doug's arm. "I remember the last time, and the time before that, and every time you have had problems with your powers. You are hiding it well, but not from me."

Even if she were to dig her toes in his arm, Marie-Ange couldn't have kept Doug from looking away out the window for several long seconds, long enough for him to scramble at gathering some shred of composure. There was part of him that ached to reach out to her, to anyone, and let the walls down. But he was trapped behind them, and couldn't seem to find his way out of the labyrinth his fear and hurt had built inside. Besides, she had Wade now. They weren't those people anymore - she had built walls to keep him from running away. He was the one who had built these ones. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. Even he couldn't have articulated what it was he was apologizing for, though. Maybe everything.

Marie-Ange bit back a biting comment, and then another, and forced herself not to pull away her feet and stalk off. Fighting would do neither of them any good and she was too tired to fight. "We already said we were not going to play the who was at fault game. I just want you to know you are not going to be allowed to try to hide away and try to pretend nothing is wrong."

Doug couldn't even really protest that he wasn't trying to blame himself with the apology, because that was a lie. He was too tired, also, and hadn't meant to spark a fight unthinkingly, as he saw Marie-Ange rein herself in. "Got it." That didn't mean he might not try, though.

"Good, because having a fight about how neither of us wants to have arguments? Is silly." Marie-Ange said. "And I am much too tired and worried about you to want to have a fight about it."

"That works for me." Doug was tired too. Very tired. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Maybe he could at least get -some- sleep during the flight.