31 - Video - Backdated to 4th

[fireincarnate]

[It's amazing, what playing with life and death will take out of you.

She's not sure what she did, exactly - just that she fixed something that was broken, and it took near everything she had. And it came on top of everything else - a month of being helpless, the chaos of the collision, the loss of everyone on Mirror Barge, their own people still missing.

(If she thinks about it took hard - about where Anya might be, if she's even alive - she thinks she might break.)

So she's just been resting. Recovering her strength, regaining her equilibrium. Talking to Morgana helped and hurt in equal measure, but it gave her the push she needed.

She knows how to put on a good face - to look calm and assured, even when she's twisted up inside. Her smile is warm and open, lit by the fire dancing round her fingers.]

I know we're all recovering right now. For those who don't know - I'm something of a therapist. If anyone wants to talk, I'm here.

[Current Patients]

How are you doing? Do you need anything?

[Wichita]

[Her smile turns rueful.] I'm sorry it took me this long to check in. Did you come through everything okay?

[Emperor]

[This is the first time she hesitates. She's not sure how she feels, now, about the choices she made on Mirror Barge. About how she's changed and what that means. About what his goal really was, in guiding her.

But ignoring it would be cowardly - and whatever his reasons, he helped her. He made her feel strong, secure, in ways she didn't think possible.]

I wanted to thank you. [Yes, that's true enough.] I know you had a bigger agenda, there, but I - I think I would have been a lot worse, without you there.

Comments

[private]

[routemistress]

She's still me, Jean love, and no incarnation of mine lies down and dies easy. Trust me on that one.

Right, I'm bringing a bottle up to the consulting rooms. Mine or yours?

...and mixers, since you're new to it.

[private]

[fireincarnate]

I...mine is fine. [Comfortable, and safe, in ways she hasn't felt for a month.]

[private > spam]

[routemistress]

[Iris has fallen, easily, into the habit of being open to Jean at all times, and today is a day when her mood comes into the room ahead of her like a crackling cloud of electricity. It's a dangerous, intense kind of mood: relieved and angry and worn and angry and guilty and angry and grieving and angry, and she has already poured enough gin down it to confuse it even further. She barrels into Jean's office, sits down and pours some more into the glasses she brought with her.]

'Ooray, we won the sodding war. I've got tonic, pineapple juice and bitter lemon. Cheers.

[fireincarnate]

[Jean welcomes the storm of emotions, as easily as she accepted Bianca's last moments. She gratefully accepts the glass, and gulps a bit too much, frankly, before setting it back down.]

I'm beginning to think most wars don't actually have any winners.

[routemistress]

[Iris wonders, offhandedly curious, whether Jean can even be affected by alcohol: part of her mind is detachedly observing, gathering data, partitioned off neatly from her turbulent emotions.]

No, they don't. Only thing worse'n winning a battle's losing it.

[This is partly a lie; when you lose at least you can rest, or else you're too occupied getting out alive to have to worry about what to do next. Or, of course, dead, but Iris discounts that.]

'Ave you been in many, Jean love? I mean, I know you've been around, more'n you look.

[She always thinks of Jean as so very young, but Iris knows very well there's more layers to her than most humans. Her curiosity is so ingrained a part of her that it doesn't even read as an emotion: it's Iris' default state of being.]

[fireincarnate]

[Jean frankly isn't sure either, but she enjoys the way it burns on the way down. She savours it, swirls it round her tongue before swallowing.

Then she's grinning, fierce and bitter.]

I've been fighting a war since I was sixteen.

[And she opens her mind up, lets the images pour - not too hard, not too fast, but crisp and blazing. Their first battle with Magneto at Cape Citadel, being captured by Trask's sentinels, thwarting Lucifer's second invasion, rescuing Xavier from Factor Three. It's a maelstrom of chaos and colour, fear and excitement, exhaustion and exhilaration, marred only by the occasional loss and the oublic hatred growing and seething around them.]

It's funny that I miss those days. [And she takes another sip.]