Jean and Remy: Grey vs. LeBeau (Backdated)

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Jean x a Bottle of Whiskey + Remy + 2:00am=Argh




Jean pounded on the door to Remy and Ororo's apartment a little bit louder than she might've done under normal circumstances. After heading back to Wanda's apartment from Finnegans, Jean had wandered out into the hall for no particular reason and decided that now was a grand time to talk. It was 2 am. People were asleep and if you woke them up then they had your undivided attention. It made perfect sense.

Also, Wanda probably should've deadbolted the door. Whoops.

"Wakeup I need to talk to you..."

The look she received when the door opened was certainly on the other side of friendly. Remy was still up, his enhanced metabolism only requiring a few hours of sleep at most, but the Cajun was certainly not looking like he was ready to receive visitors. "Ororo is sleeping." He said, in decidedly frosty tones.

"Good. I wasn't here for Ororo," Jean said, her speech surprisingly not as slurred as it should've been as she completely ignored his demeanor. Been there, done that. She smelled very strongly of whiskey.

"Do I have 'defy me!' written on me somewhere?" she said, scrawling out the words across her chest.

"Because it happens a lot...you should see the tapes...Let's just ignore Jean and break people out of the medlab," she said, waving her hands around. They suddenly turned into fists.

"I saved his life. I pumped his stomach and fed him charcoal until he puked and sat with him for hours, waiting on him to wake up from a coma....And then...and then he decides that...no, fuck that...I'm going to leave...because it doesn't matter..I can do what I want. I am David Fucking North...Screw medicine...I help people and they ignore every thing I say because they think they are invincible and they know best because all those years of medical school meant shit. No...they know best. Next time...I am going to let him lay there..."

Her face turned pale at the thought.

"No I'm not but I'm going to kick him in the balls...you tell him...You're his goddamn leader. Maybe he'll listen to you. Because he certainly doesn't listen to me..."

Shaking her head, she turned to leave muttering curse words under her breath.

"What did you expect? North spends his days wandering 'round potentially hostile cities sticking his nose into other people's business and anticipating a bullet at any minute." Remy closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest. Clad in a t-shirt and jeans, without his usual armor of his perpetual trenchcoat and ability to simply appear in a shadow, he looked almost normal, until you noticed the pale surgery scars running up his arms. "Tends to make us bad patients."

Jean stopped in the hallway. She didn't expect him to reply even if yes, maybe she did. She spun around, a little too quick for her liking and put her hand against the wall to steady herself. Room kept spinning but it righted itself a couple of moments after.

"And so do I. So does the rest of my team. He can act like an adult not a 12 year old boy. Regardless of what he does, what all of you do you can show me some damn respect. I don't do this for glory I do it to save people. I spend countless hours giving him the chance to be able to live to skulk around those hostile cities another day." She rubbed her face. God.

"Whatever. It doesn't matter. He's going to do it, you're going to do it...I'm just yelling at the wind," she said.

"De point is, Jean, dat he's an adult. It's not about disrespecting you." Remy sighed. "North went to ground because dat's de only way he knows how to deal wit' dis. Common sense doesn't come into play. Oui, he takes his life a lot more casually den you do, and dat's because he doesn't value it de same way you do."

Jean just stared at him, then shook her head. She didn't know what to say to that. The haze of alcohol made it difficult for her to understand. Life was what she was about, saving it, in anyway possible...at least those who deserved it. She did feel he deserved it.

"He should."

Yes, they killed people but they should've known the void that left, for better or worse. For the good people, and the bad people that took from the world.

"I'm too drunk for semantics."

"Maybe. But dis is who he is. Who he has to be, really." Remy said. X-Force and the mansion mixed alot, enough that it was easy to forget that what they did and believed in was radically different, even if they both were on the same side. "Just like you'll go out and get drunk and rip youself up inside with de thought dat someone who you helped live, de second dey walk out of your medlab, could be killed de next day."

"So he has to be the guy who overdoses on drugs to cope? Who is careless about life? Bullshit, I don't believe that Remy...You can still do what you do and care enough about yourself to want to live. There's a difference between putting yourself in a situation where you may get shot and putting a gun in your mouth," Jean said.

"We're all messed up...in so many different colorful ways but I changed my mind...I'm not going to accept that...So...my warning still stands. You tell him. I'll tell him too next time I see him..."

"Jean, he doesn't overdose on drugs to cope. He takes them to make his powers more effective and operate more effectively in de field. De side effect of dat is dat if you fuck it up, you can overdose." Remy said, his tone hardening. "And to be honest, if mainlining heroin through his eyeballs is what makes him de best he can be out dere, I'll be de first one to cook it up for him. He's a grown man dat has made de hard decision 'bout what his life is going to be committed to doing. You think dat dis is de first sacrifice he's made? De first time he's decided dat something personally destructive but operationally advantageous is worth doing? You want me to tell him? Fine. But all it means is de next time he needs help, you won't be de one he goes to."

Jean blinked and laughed incredulously. "How much of an advantage can he get while lying on the floor in his own vomit? He wasn't in the field when he overdosed...he was in his apartment, in withdrawal and drunk out of his mind and so he took too much to make the feelings go away and it nearly killed him. Diabetics have to control their diet, medications, and insulin intake. They can't decide 'fuck it,' get drunk and stop taking their medication then go binge at a bakery just because they were having a bad day... It's a problem. Just like its a problem here. Especially when that problem can effect other people on your team and those around them," she said.

"So don't be hypocritical by saying my powers potentially going out of control can endanger your team when it's totally okay for one of your teammates to be completely reckless by mixing alcohol with the drugs he takes to help his powers 'operate more effectively in the field' when he knows what the consequence will be..in this case an overdose. Yes, the current state of my powers make me a liability. You knew that. I know that, which is why I went off active duty. I'm taking responsibility for any potential harm. And I think North should accept accountability for the potential risk as well. It's one thing to need the drugs but another thing to be so unable to manage his use of them in a way that it makes people have to beat down his door and take him to the hospital in the middle of the night. God forbid it be on a mission. He might not have intentionally wanted to end his own life but he wasn't exactly trying to save someone's either."

"And it doesn't just effect him, or you, or your team. It effects everyone. When he decides that he needs one more hit even when he doesn't and takes too much again...I might not be there. Or I might. And I don't want to have to put my focus on him because he's so goddamn negligent that it prevents me from being able to help someone who got shot or stabbed or blown up for actually doing their job or was in the wrong place at the wrong time and they get killed..."

Jean shook her head.

"It's not that simple and you know it. You're so focused on protecting your team that you don't see the problems within sometimes. I'm not saying this to start a pissing contest. We're all in this together. I may not know North as well as you know him but I know enough to see when there's a problem. And that is what frustrates me."

"You done?" Remy said mildly, still leaning casually back against the door. "I've already made my assessment of North, and spoken to him about being a liability in de field as I see it, de same as you. But don't kid yourself dat because we in dis together, dat what we do is even close to de same thing. You've decided dat he's an addict and dis is his sickness dat needs to be cured to protect him. Which is fair, except fixing it means I end up wit' a third of the operative he is on de drugs, suddenly we're dat much weaker."

He finally uncrossed his arms, standing up from the door. "Everyone in dis Brownstone is one day going to be sent out to die, Jean. A bad day for dem is when dey have to leave a person who's only crime was to have de wrong information at de wrong time behind to be tortured and killed for telling us what we need to know. North started living in dis world while you were still playing wit' dolls, and he's got a lot better psychologist den you riding shotgun regarding his issues." He came nose to nose with her. "You don't understand, and if you're lucky, you'll never have to. But don't ever show up at my door in de middle of de night and tell me dat you know what's best for my people. It disrespects what dey have to live wit', and it's insulting to me."

Jean unflinchingly did not back away, her own eyes narrowed, green, blazing, perfectly rigid. She was suddenly no longer drunk but rather enraged. This whole 'us vs. them' thing was really pissing her off.

"Bullshit, " she said, trailing behind him without breaking her stride. She'd talk to the door if she had to, and so she did.

"Don't even presume to know what I understand. My husband was right beside you in that prison being tortured and interrogated. My teammates and my students were stripped naked, nearly beaten to death, their teeth knocked out, noses broken, enslaved and forced to watch while a child perished right beside yours. We were all treated the same, no special treatment, and yet...here we are, arguing amongst ourselves.

"I'm a leader, just like you. I send my team into situations that could kill them and very well almost have, just like you. The difference is whether or not we pull the trigger. Sometimes its a hell of a lot harder not to. And your perceived line in the sand about how we're so different is what is insulting to me when ultimately we're very much not. We're all fighting for the same thing. I don't want to fight with you. I never did. But separated, squabbling amongst ourselves? How is that going to help anyone? This is not what we need right now."

But it was what he needed, apparently.

"Dis isn't squabbling, Doc. And de difference is a lot more den whether or not we pull de trigger. De fact dat you think it boils down to dat is de point. He's not just some junkie looking for a fix. He's something dat I've seen a thousand times, and de more you lecture me 'bout it, de less it seems dat you understand it at all."

His red on black glare had gone hard and cold; the dead eyes of a shark, despite his voice never rising or sounding angry. He paused for one second and turned, opening and closing his door behind him without a look back.

Shaking her head, Jean headed back to Wanda's apartment and slammed the door.