xp_logs | Aftermath: Kane and Darcy

Kane goes to see Darcy after the mission to give her a head's up.

The mansion always had a curious hum after the X-Men returned from a mission; cautious questions to make sure everyone made it home, a buzz of activity between the hanger and the med lab to get everyone obviously hurt into care and to clear the rest to leave, and individual post mission, born from superstition or just habit. Despite his injuries, Kane was still in his leathers and had been cleared through medlab. There was nothing serious enough that his healing factor wouldn't clear up with a few hours of rest and it was better to focus their resources on people who lacked that particular ability. Instead, he'd gone to his room long enough to transfer the file he'd started from the Blackbird into his laptop and clean up the language. Once satisfied, he printed the three pages of text at one of the printers in the common area and collected them, before heading to the opposite wing. There he knocked on Darcy's door.

The unexpected knock on the door startled Darcy, knuckles smacking into the cabinet with a quiet hiss of pain. "Just a minute," she called out. Two mugs instead of just the one, then, she thought, pulling them and some tea down before opening the door. "Kane?" She didn't bother hiding her confusion, raising one eyebrow at the man even as she stepped back from the door. "If you're looking for Terry, she's probably down in the kitchen or with Kyle."

"I'm having difficulty thinking of scenarios where I'm looking for her. No, this one is entirely for you." He said heavily.

"That's rather ominous, since I'm not sure why you'd be looking for me either," Darcy remarked, swapping her own mug for a less breakable version. "Unlike her, I'm not dating one of your X-Men. Unless you're here to tell me Maya's horribly injured, but I imagine... well, never mind that. Come in, have a seat at the table or on the couch," she continued, moving back to the kettle. "Tea? We've got Silkie, if you think this conversation needs something a bit stronger." She kept her hands steady as she measured out her own tea, keeping an eye on Kane as he moved into the room. His tone, the somewhat ginger movement... no, she probably wasn't going to enjoy this conversation at all, and pushed up on her toes to reach for the whiskey.

"I know you have access to the post mission reports we file through Snow Valley. But this one, I thought you should see before it goes public to everyone else." He passed over the three pages before perching on the arm of her sofa, careful not to get any muck or blood on it as he did so. "The details are there but the short summary is that we found out exactly what happened to Laurie Collins."

Darcy abandoned the idea of tea entirely and flicked the kettle off. The static shock that went through her as she touched the freezer door accompanied a gasping curse, and she pressed her face against the cool metal for a brief moment. "I'll read the details later. Since you're not leading with 'she's dead' or 'she's not able to hurt others anymore', maybe give me the expanded summary once I pour us drinks."

The bottle she grabbed out of the freezer clunked a little more forcefully on the counter than she normally preferred, but her hands barely shook as she uncapped and poured, which Darcy was going to count as the world's tiniest win. She grabbed the small first aid kit under the sink and finally moved into the living room, holding out a mug for Kane and taking a long sip from her own before settling next to where he was perched, letting out a slow breath. "Alright, give me the details. What are we dealing with here, with this resurfaced Collins?"

"There's some history involved. Over ten years ago... in our original dimension, we ran afoul of the state of Genosha. They had prefected technology that allowed them to take a mutant and essentially rework them with new powers and mental conditioning. So girl who can make sparkly lights with her hands becomes capable of melting through solid rock. But the conditioning was the key. It tore away their identities. Made them serville, bound to a master... made them... terrified of failure." Kane said, wincing at the memories. "The end result was called a mutate. A bunch of us got taken by Genosha. A few of them turned into mutates, including Laurie. Later, we learned the man behind the process - the Genengineer, they called him, was none other than Dr. Essex. He left behind the tech to reverse the mutate process for... whatever reason he had, but when Laurie was a mutate, she was capable of taking an X-Men team on her own and fighting them to a standstill."

He paused, taking a slow breath. "This Laurie was even stronger than that. Calls herself Malice and is the leader of Essex's shocktroopers. We didn't lose people because we were lucky. They're that good."

It was a lucky thing that Darcy didn't have super strength, the way her fingers tightened around her mug. She brought it carefully to her mouth, mind whirling as she let the various blends of alcohol attempt to thaw the cold rage expanding in her chest. She wanted to throw something, wanted to laugh hysterically at the ruin she'd brought down on them all by not just killing the woman when she had the chance, wanted to sob at the extra trauma this would inevitably cause some of her nearest and dearest. But she did none of that. Kane--no, since the man came to personally deliver this sort of news she wasn't going to refer to him by his last name--Garrison, then, didn't deserve to suffer witness to her issues after a night where the X-Men were lucky.

Once her mug was drained she set it carefully, almost delicately on the table in front of her, studiously ignoring the tremor in her hands in favor of letting her forehead fall forward to press against one of Garrison's leather-clad knees as she took a few deep breaths. She ignored the grime, knowing she'd be spending time in the shower after this news regardless of how dirty she actually was. When she finally spoke, the sudden exhaustion in her voice was muffled slightly by her position. "Do you have any scrapes that need cleaning that you'll have trouble reaching? Or need something to eat? Least I can do for you after delivering the shitty news in person. And perhaps an apology, since my inability to clean up my mess is directly affecting the rest of you now."

"There's more you need to know." Kane said, not sure how to react to her physical reaction to the news, but well aware that her trauma at Laurie's hands was by no means entirely resolved, "Essex convinced Laurie, maybe even before you were in the picture, that he was recruiting her to save the world. Some mutant threat that only he could find a way to stop with her help. I knew Collins. He found the right mix of ego, arrogance and desperation to creak her open like a pro. And now, if I'm right, she's been bound mind and soul to that kid you talked about in your incident report with her. Broken fucked up person she might have been, but that person is now gone. Body and soul, she is Essex' now. I don't know if that hurts more or is a comfort, but that's the fact now. Malice is all that is left."

Warm tears mingled with the grime and blood as she processed the news. It didn't add to the hurt, the grief and despair that she'd thought she worked through, but the news wasn't a comfort either. "After," Darcy choked out with a surety she still rarely felt when it came to those memories. "She was so lost. Miserable. Snappish. And then she went on a retreat in Tibet and came back, with tentative smiles and more evenness in her behavior. I thought she'd made peace, but... finding Essex. Working with him, because he could fulfill her wishes and make her feel like one of the biggest heroes in the room at the same time... in hindsight, that makes more sense." Her fingers flexed in her lap, nails digging into the flesh of her palms. "Anything else?" she was struggling to keep her control, and she'd need something to partially divert her attention if he had more bad news to share.

"Just a warning you likely don't need but I need to say. I don't think Essex cares about the mansion, save when we're useful to him or directly in his way. But Collins has something to prove and if he lets her slip the leash from time to time, she's going to try and get revenge. While she was busy gloating over her change to me, your name came up. So if she comes after you or to you, either put her down immediately or get the hell away.. Don't listen to her. Don't hesitate." People tended to forget that Kane's other degree was psychology. "I might not have all the details right, but I can tell you, I believe totally that she's looking to make us pay for how she thinks we wronged her, and a few corpses is the best way she thinks she can do that. Especially people at the top of her shit list like you and me."

Darcy closed her eyes against the onslaught of rage-guilt-grief that crashed over her at the warning. "If she knew me half as well as she thinks she does, then she'd leave me for last. Go at everyone I love best until I lose my shit and she can say 'See, she did it to herself,' and continue on without regrets." Not that she thought Collins would have regrets unless it suited her. The hint of thought that she was near the top because she was dangerous enough to the other woman emotionally to stop her was immediately pushed aside as an impossibility. No, if she was near the top with someone known to loathe her, then it was because Collins had convinced herself that Darcy was responsible for her pain and suffering.

She straightened up, head still bowed. "Apologies for borrowing your leg," she said, voice stiff and slightly detached. "I'll heed your warning. Thank you for letting me know."

"No worries, eh. Look, nothing may come of this... but if it does, trust us. We'll do our best to make sure she doesn't get a chance to hurt anyone else more. Including you." He said before straightening up. "I've got to get down to the med lab. Tandy should be coming around any minute and I want to be there when she does, but if you need more information or... I don't know, just need to talk, feel free to let me know. Or if you want to push it down and just have some company getting drunk watching pre-season reports at Harry's, I can make that happen too."

Darcy stood, finally looking Garrison in the face with shiny eyes. "If we're her enemy number one, I'm sure something will come of it. She never could leave well enough alone." She stepped back, giving him space to stand and move towards the door, feeling like she was almost watching from the third person. "Go on, get out of my suite before I do something awful like hug the stuffing out of you, Garrison Kane." She aimed for her standard teasing smile as she opened the door, but was pretty sure it ended up as lopsided as she felt.

"Can't have that. Doug hasn't had a reason to be jealous of me in, like, weeks..." Kane quipped, a quick waggle of his eyebrows as he walked past, obviously not serious as he stepped past her and headed back down to the subbasements.

"For a hug? Pffffffft. Tell the others I hope they feel better soon, and get some damn sleep yourself," Darcy called after Garrison's back, easing her door shut and sliding down against it, chilly numbness seeping into her bones and through her extremities. She felt like she had third person control of her body, movements detached, robotic. Awkward. She wanted another drink. She needed--no--yes--fuck it, she was having another drink. Maybe several. But first, she needed to let Marie-Ange and Kevin know she wouldn't be in the next day. Where was her phone? A brief email explanation. A text.