xp_logs | Jean/Garrison: Aftermath

xp_phoenix posting in

Garrison is woken from his coma.

"Fuck!" It wasn't the most imaginative or significant opening line, but it wasn't as if Garrison Kane was operating at the height of his mental faculties. The last thing he remembered was pain; the cascading fire enveloping him as Olivier played his last bit of revenge on him. And then stumbling, burning, completely blind towards the pathway out, only the last dregs of his preternatural powers giving him the endurance to fling himself through before the darkness reached up and snatched him, dragging him down into oblivion.

And now? He knew this ceiling. He'd spent more than a few days staring at it at various times. Which meant he was home. Or, at least, he was in the mansion.

"Good morning. Can you hear me? It's okay. Take a deep breath," Jean said.

The lights were turned down as low as they could to keep from hurting his eyes. She had just taken the tape off of them a few moments ago. The heart monitor was beeping steadily, albeit more quickly due to his regaining consciousness.

"You're in the medlab. You've been in a coma for about 2 days," she said.

Kane closed his eyes and grimaced for a moment. "So it worked. Or I'm dead and this is the most boring afterlife I could come up with for an eternity."

"You're alive," Jean said, pulling out a small flashlight from her doctor's coat to check his pupils.

"I had to put you out to let your skin grow back."

"That spell makes a lot more sense now...he said he wanted me consumed. It-" Kane rubbed his fingers together. "Something doesn't feel right. Did I... did he burn away my omni-skin?"

Jean fell silent for a moment, turning off the light and tucking it back into her pocket.

"Yes," she said. "When we found you there wasn't--.It's gone."

"Huh..." Kane said, finally stopping. "It was part of a devil's bargain in the first place." He muttered to himself. "Did Amanda confirm everything? Olivier is locked away for good?"

She folded her arms, the relief visible on her face for a second. "Yes. He is," she said with a small nod. At least, that was the hope.

"I'd like you to stay here for at least another day or so until I can confirm you're fully 100%. Your healing factor likely took care of it, but I'd prefer to err on the safe side."

Garrison gave her a long look. "Half a day. I understand the concern, but if my healing factor hasn't caught up with anything by that time, it isn't there. Fair enough? You can put me through whatever paces you want to doublecheck first."

He wasn't trying to be a problem, but he'd been months in the most hostile environments possible. The idea of an extra day in an antiseptic environment was already making his skin crawl.

Jean stared back at him, narrowing her eyes. "Do you think I want to make all of you stay here? You were flayed alive. Your skin just grew back. My apologies for wanting to do my job in making sure you heal properly," she said.

All of them liked to fight her like they were damn children after horrendous injury when she wanted them to stay a little longer to make sure they were okay.

At least she told them the truth and didn't join up with an anti-human terrorist group to accomplish her goals.

"Know what...half a day's fine."

"Thank you." He saw the anger, but healing wasn't always about physical health.

Jean said nothing, pulling out her tablet to take some notes. "I need to check your vitals."

"Whatever you need. I think most of my vitals have grown back by now." It was a lame joke, but at least an attempt to lighten the mood a little.

The result was just Jean staring at him as she grabbed a cuff to measure blood pressure, wrapping it around his arm and squeezing the pump to inflate.

"118 over 79," she said once the cuff had inflated properly, writing the information down with her stylus before crossing the room.

"People almost died, you know," she said.

"Is this when you want to have the talk?" Kane said, giving her a sideways look. "Because you're right. People almost died. But you're missing the rest of the statement, which is the whole point of being an X-Man. People almost died in order to stop something far worse from happening to a lot more innocent people."

Jean spun around on her heel, a spark of fire in her eyes that quickly disappeared. "That is not the goddamn point, Garrison! It's what you tell yourself to justify your actions," she said, stabbing the air with her finger.

"It just happened to work out this time. You didn't even ask us for help. You took things into your own hands and went to the enemy. And if Magneto turned on you and killed you...you would have died alone. And innocent people might have died anyway. Do you have any idea what happened while you were gone? Or wait...did Amanda tell you? Because apparently the two of you know better than anyone else. I am sorry this happened to you but that is not the point of being an X-Man."

"You know, I wish I knew everything. Especially without asking. It makes life so much easier and judgements... fuck, judgements get real simple when you get to decide how things went down on your own." Kane said, but there was no anger in his voice. No real fight even. Just a flat, almost mechanical response.

"Get your vitals, Doctor. I'll be here for the next half day. After that, maybe you'll want the whole story or maybe you won't. But after that, you don't have to have anything else to do with me."

Jean narrowed her eyes. "Really? If someone else were in your position and had pulled that same crap without telling you, you would be just as pissed as I am. How can I not 'judge you' based on what I had to deal with? Do you know how fun it is to try to put Kyle's skull back together? Spoiler...It's not. I tried to ask you what was going on, remember? But then I still went. Because I trusted you. Because of what we'd been through. So don't give me that...'you'll want to know the whole story, or maybe you won't' shit. Of course I do."

"How fun do you think it was to turn Kyle's skull into that? I've been training that kid since he was a teen." Kane said, his voice still chillingly flat. "I don't mind you being angry with me. I don't even mind you judging me. But if you think I did this because of my ego or some inflated sense of my own infallibility, you have no clue who I am. And that's disappointing. I would have thought after everything, I'd earned at least enough trust to wait for an explanation before telling me my justifications are bullshit."

Jean shook her head. "You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that. But you have to realize how this looks from the outside. You only know how you feel. You don't even know how far I almost--" she let out a breath, swallowing.

"I'll take the vitals later. You--have a visitor outside."