Scott and Madelyn, Sunday evening

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Scott heads down to the medlab to check on the situation. He finds Madelyn at the end of her rope but holding on.



It couldn't hurt, Scott thought. If neither Moira nor Madelyn had the time to answer his questions, he could leave them alone and sit with Betsy for a while. If things had slowed down a little, he could possibly get the latest on Alison's condition - and check on the two of them, too. He paused at the medlab door, then went in.

If she had any more coffee she'd be ill. Madelyn looked darkly at the coffee pot in the corner, then sighed and dragged herself to the refrigerator instead. Ah, Jolt. Faithful companion during college. Clarice must have brought some down. Or possibly Jubilee. Snagging a can for herself, Madelyn headed back towards the jury-rigged Soundproof Booth (well, not _entirely_ soundproof, because Heart Attacks Were Bad), squinting slightly through the newly-polarised glass of the isolation room, trying to make out amid the glare the shape of her friend. Alison was still radiating light at dangerously hot levels, but at least the Professor had managed to calm her down enough to stop the feedback effect.

No Moira. And no Madelyn... oh, wait. He heard what sounded like a soda can being opened and followed the sound, right to the door of the isolation room. "Maddie," he said softly, glancing at the window and then away, back to the woman standing here with him rather than the one lost in the light inside the room.

"Scott. Hi," Madelyn replied, trying to summon some life into her voice. She grimaced as she took a sip of the soda - yes, it _was_ possible to have Too Much Caffiene, and she was there - and turned back to the window, the light warm on her face even with the polarised glass. "How're things upstairs? Can we expect any more trouble?"

"Nothing on the horizon," Scott said quietly. "Can't make any promises, though." He gave her an assessing look, noting the signs of fatigue and stress excessive even by recent standards. He hadn't really expected to see anything else, of course. "How is she?"

"Stable. Best we can hope for right now." Madelyn raised her hand to the glass, wincing at the amount of heat she could feel in her fingertips. "She's improving, slowly - if we keep the stimulus down, that _should_ give her a chance to power down. Should being the operative word." She laughed a little bitterly at that. "Christ, I wish Hank were here."

Scott reached up and laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. "So do I. But you and Moira and Charles are doing what you can." His eyes went back to the polarized window and he sighed. "Couple of weeks ago, I would probably have been up on the roof getting ready to throw myself at this point," he said, not entirely flippantly. "Now all I can think of to do is keep going and make sure everything else is taken care of so that the three of you can take care of things down here." He smiled a bit bitterly at her. "Even if all I want to do is park myself beside Betsy's bed for the next few hours."

"You probably could. Cook's probably got the place locked up tight enough that we'll get word in plenty of time of the next invasion." It wasn't a joke - Madelyn's voice was flat with resignation. "And we're doing all right. Moira's asleep for now, and I sent Rahne to bed about an hour ago, but Clarice and Amanda are handy. Moira'll relieve me in a few hours." She rubbed eyes that were gritty with lack of sleep, and turned away at last from the window. "I can't even go in there and hold her hand, reassure her."

"You have to believe that she knows you're there," Scott said, the ache he felt then solely and entirely for Madelyn. Oh, it had to be hellish to be a doctor anywhere, knowing that there were some battles you wouldn't win, but here... "On some level," he said as Madelyn looked at him. "That she has faith that you're out here, doing your best for her." He smiled suddenly, sadly. "This is Alison we're talking about, after all."

She gave him a faint smile, but at least this time there was no bitterness to it. "I was telling Kurt pretty much the same thing last night. Or he was telling me. We ended up doing that mutual reassurance thing." The shadows under her eyes made her look years older. "It's just... I don't know how much longer we can keep this up, Scott. Any of us. Moira looked like death warmed up last night, and the kids... People keep telling me to let them do more, but how can I push that on them? Amanda already does too much with the healing, and Clarice is this far from some kind of breakdown herself, only she won't say anything because she doesn't think her problems are important enough, and Rahne... She's amazingly mature for her age, but this has _got_ to be getting to her. And all I can think of right now is whether it's going to be someone I know lying in that morgue the next time." She was perilously close to tears, but she wouldn't do that, not now, not yet. She didn't have _time_.

Scott thought of Ororo, who had spent the bulk of the last day and a half on the roof keeping a thunderstorm just-about-to-brew in case there was a sudden need for lightning, of Kurt and some of the other members of the perimeter teams who were going to be walking zombies soon if they didn't get at least a little sleep, of Nathan, who had scanned the grounds and the immediate area continuously for the better part of twelve hours because neither Betsy nor Charles was able to do it. Of the kids, walking around with fear written all over their faces and him unable to do anything about it... "Down here, up there... I think we're all reaching the end of our endurance," Scott said heavily, then focused again on Madelyn. "But we can't stop," he told her, his voice a bit hoarse as he reached up and squeezed her shoulder again. "We go on because we have to, we do the best we can, and we catch each other if we fall."

She lay her hand on the one covering her shoulder, squeezed it slightly. "I know, Scott," she said, shoulders slumping a little. "We'll get through this crisis. We just need a break, a chance to catch our breath, but apparently that's too much to ask for. So we'll just keep going regardless." She moved away from him slightly, letting his hand slip from her shoulder, taking a deep breath and willing herself to not collapse in a heap then and there. "Too bad we don't have a magic wand that could cure all the earth's ills, eh?"

He recognized the distancing move. It wasn't as if he hadn't done something like that often enough himself, when he'd been all but out of stamina. "Is there anything I can do for you?" he said quietly, taking refuge in practicality. "Anything you or the others need..."

"Get that blue furball out from whatever rock he's hiding under and drag him back here?" Madelyn joked weakly, but there was enough desperation in her voice to make the joke fall flat indeed. She scrubbed one hand across her face. "Shit, I don't know, Scott. Lorna's been making sure we're fed and the coffee maker's well stocked. Keeping non-essentials out would be a great help - I wasn't up for arguing with Haroun yesterday, and besides, I couldn't blame him. I'd feel the same if I was him." She glanced back into the iso room as there was a particularly bright flare. "We'll know in a day or two how bad the damage is... up 'til then, there's not a lot to be done except watch and wait."

Scott nodded to himself, coming to a decision. "You let me know if there is anything," he said quietly. "Me or Ororo - one of us will be on-call at all times."

"I will," she said with a tired nod. "I'm sure there's something, but I'm too brain fried to see it." She took another sip of soda and nearly gagged, turning and setting it down on a nearby guerney. "Et tu, Jolt?" she murmured to it, before turning back to Scott. "Sorry, you were saying?"

"I wasn't," Scott reassured her, his voice still low. "I'll let you get back to work, Madelyn. I have to go check on the situation upstairs and get a perimeter team back out there. Sun's gone down."

She glanced at her watch, surprised. "So it has," she said with a mirthless smile. "Time flies when you're having fun."