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| It's All Coming Back to Me; May 24 - very early morning | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 10 2013, 11:09 PM (15 Views) | |
| Magik | Dec 10 2013, 11:09 PM Post #1 |
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What IS an unseelie bitch, anyway?
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She couldn't believe she'd not only let St. Theresa see her cry, but that she'd actually cried on her. Illyana shook her head as she finished getting dressed. It'd been stupid. She felt fine - better than fine, really. She wasn't sure just what Stacy'd done when she'd tweaked her hormones around, but she felt as if she'd slept about 12 hours and popped a bunch of those vitamins they'd handed out as samples at the health food stores way back when. There wasn't any point to crying, just because... She swallowed hard and turned towards the mirror, pulling her still damp hair out from underneath her sweater. Her eyes still looked shiny, and she swiped her hand over them before pulling out the makeup she'd brought back with her from Muir the day before. She was not going to start crying again, not over a baby that had turned out not to have even been Jamie's. Lots of girls'd had abortions in the camp, under way crappier conditions. She just needed to suck it up and move on. Also, her eyes needed to stop with the watering (which was definitely what it was, because she wasn't crying anymore, period) so she could put on her mascara. Taking a breath, she abandoned the makeup for a moment and set it aside, retrieved her brush instead, and began tugging the tangles out of her hair. She really needed to get someone to trim it; the ends were still all jagged. Maybe add some color - that hair chalk that she'd bought in London a couple of years back was somewhere in the stuff she'd brought back from Muir. She could find Kitty, and... "Y'know, it'd be a whole lot easier to find you if you'd just stay in one place once in a while," a familiar voice complained as the door opened, and she spun to see Jamie standing in the doorway, wearing a put upon look and fighting a smile, to judge by the way his mouth was twitching at the corners. Her initial impulse, to race across the room and throw herself into his arms, died before she could act on it. Instead she shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest. "It's not like you sent a message you were coming," she pointed out, her eyes fixed on his face. He looked...better, she decided. Some of the tension from the camps was gone; with the slightly longer hair he'd acquired as part of the disastrous merge there, he looked almost like the Jamie she'd known before. Almost, but... She wasn't fooling herself. Couldn't. Forge was right; she needed to stop thinking in terms of might be's and if only's, and deal with what was. Jamie wasn't the Jamie she'd known anymore, and he wasn't hers. She'd made sure of the last part, herself. Still, she felt a definite pang as he entered the room, his smile fading as he closed the door behind him. "No, but I got one," he said quietly, his eyes meeting hers. "Why didn't you tell me?" She shrugged. "It wasn't your problem," she pointed out. "Why should you have to deal with it?" "Why would I...?" He groaned and covered his face with his hand. "You know that drives me nuts, don't you?" Her forehead furrowed and she looked at him, confused. "What does?" "That. You. When you decide I shouldn't have to deal with something. Or that I can't." He dropped his hand from his face and shook his head. "Did it ever occur to you that I might've wanted to know that you were pregnant? Or, y'know, that you'd been, umm - well, when you'd gotten that way, without me?" "No," she replied without hesitation. That part, she could answer easily enough. If it had been his - he might have wanted to know that, yes. She could understand that, even though she still thought she'd been right not to tell him. Knowing that she'd been raped? No, actually, she kind of figured he wouldn't have wanted to know that. What could he have done about it, anyway? Besides, if he'd wanted to know, he'd have known, right? He let out a soft snort - not quite laughter, but closer to that than anything else, even though it didn't sound as if there were any actual amusement in it. "Goes to show you don't know everything, Yana." "I never said I did," she pointed out, then frowned. "Who told you, anyway?" He looked awkward for a moment before answering, then took a breath and said, "Terry." Before she could do more than open her mouth to reply, he held up his hand and fixed her with a look. "Not going there. She was worried, said you wouldn't stop crying. Must've made a real impression on her," he added, smiling wryly, "considering she had Guido haul me out of bed this morning to get me to the computer." Guido? Confused, she frowned a little, running the name through the list of camp refugees and still drawing a blank. The only Guido she could think of had been Lila Cheney's bodyguard way back when, and she hadn't seen him since; for all she knew, he was still rattling along Lila's dyson sphere. "Who's Guido?" Jamie stared at her for a moment, then groaned and offered up a sheepish smile that looked so much like him she could feel something sort of tug in her chest. "Sorry, wrong memory set. Trust me, if you'd ever met him, you'd remember." She forced just a bit of a smile, almost grateful for the opportunity to change the subject. Two sets of memories, still. Not a surprise, but still. She'd hoped otherwise. And hadn't, all at once. "So, they couldn't help then, huh?" "Oh, they tried," he replied with a roll of his eyes. "I think their McCoy owns more needles than Moira, and was maybe a mosquito in another life. Or maybe a leech." He raised his eyebrows a little. "You didn't honestly think they'd be able to, did you?" She shook her head. "No," she admitted. She understood how it worked better than that, or thought she did. Why it had happened with two separate Jamies she couldn't imagine, but when the original absorbed a dupe... Well, she'd watched that happen for nearly five years. Long enough to know there was no halfway, short of the mess he'd found himself in at the camp. And no backing out if he didn't like what he'd gotten. No, she hadn't expected any miracles in the other dimension. "So...lemme get this straight," he said, eyeing her as if he were some kind of detective trying to puzzle out a mystery, but with his lips twitching just a bit as he crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed. "You dumped me so that I'd go off to another universe, to get help that wouldn't work from people only half of me knew?" Had she? She considered it for a moment, then shrugged. "Pretty much?" she admitted as she came over and sat down next to him, leaving about a foot's space between them. "You left out the part where I wasn't sure how much of you was you, though." He waved that aside without a second thought. "All of me is me," he pointed out, then frowned, looking almost perplexed. "Including the part that remembers Terry dumping me because I still loved you, then you dumping me because I still cared about Terry-" "AND because I thought you'd be better off in the other dimension," she reminded him pointedly, cutting that off. She'd had good intentions there, after all. At least some. Admittedly, a lot of it came down to not knowing if he was still Him and being afraid to find out, but... "Which takes us back to just how much I hate when you do that. Right?" He turned towards her, expression earnest. "Please tell me you'll stop doing that. I can make my own decisions." He cocked his head a little as if considering that as she raised her eyebrows, and added, "Sometimes. With, y'know, a lot of arguing with myself. But it happens eventually." "I know," she admitted, then frowned a little as the rest of what he'd said sunk in. Part of it she couldn't bring herself to think about, but the rest... "You're staying?" she asked, trying to sound casual about it and having a distinct feeling that she was failing at it miserably. He turned a little more so he was facing her, and for a moment, he was the Jamie she'd known before the camp. Silly crooked smile, awkwardness, and all. "Well, if I'm not? You're going to have to give me a ride back, because I got you - other you, that is - to drop me off, and I'm pretty sure she didn't stick around for a return trip. And dropped me off while I'm still sleeping there, I think," he glanced at the clock on the nightstand, then nodded and shrugged. "But yeah. That was kind of the idea." "Oh." It wasn't much, but she couldn't think of anything else to say. Or rather, she could. Lots of things, but she couldn't bring herself to say any of them. What if - "Yana?" he said, and she looked up from the bed's SHIELD-issue blanket to see him looking at her, his expression serious. "Do you want me to go?" She bit at her lip, eyes dropping back down to the blanket as her fingers plucked at it idly. Felt the telltale sting in her eyes that meant no, she wasn't done crying after all, damn it. "No," she whispered finally, then looked up at him, blinking away the tears though new ones took their place almost immediately. "Jamie, the baby. It wasn't..." she began, but before she got any further, Jamie's arms were around her, safe and familiar despite her fears. Instinctively, she dropped her head to his shoulder and let the tears flow. "I know," he murmured, his fingers stroking through her hair just as they had when she'd shown up on Muir, with the world falling apart and a conviction that it was all her fault. "Guess we'll have to try again sometime, huh? I can pencil you in for next Tuesday if you're not busy." She let out a snort of what might have been laughter under different circumstances. Maybe it was, still - she wasn't sure if you could honestly laugh while crying. If you should, even if you could - it seemed like a contradiction, like it didn't fit. Then again, she never had, either. Not with the New Mutants, not in the Camp. There were only three people, really, with whom she ever had, who honestly understood. Kitty, who'd been there from the beginning. Forge, who'd been there himself. And Jamie. Who knew it all - everything she'd done, everything she was. And who'd loved her anyway. "What if I'm busy Tuesday?" she whispered, sniffling a little as her tears quieted. "You're the time traveller," he pointed out, and without looking up, she knew he was smiling. Not much, maybe, but enough. "You figure it out." Sniffling again, she peered up at him. Saw him looking at her, with an expression that was somehow familiar and new, all at once. And watched him smile a little - that same goofy smile he's worn so many times. "I've got some time now?" she said hopefully, a faint trace of a smile forming almost against her will. Granted, Stacy'd fixed things so she wouldn't get pregnant again for a while, but... He leaned in and kissed her. A little hesitantly at first, and that was new, but after a moment she stopped analyzing the differences. There'd been changes before, and they'd gotten through them then. One way or another, it was Jamie. She pulled back a little suddenly, frowning as a thought occurred to her. "What about the other dimension?" Jamie frowned, looking confused. "What about it?" "Well, you said you'd gotten me to bring you here. What about the Jamie from there?" "Oh." Jamie grinned a little. "I left a dupe. Told him he's now officially the Jamie Maddrox of Earth 617. He liked the idea a lot." He paused and frowned. "I should probably check and make sure that worked, huh?" "Later," she promised, leaning in to kiss him again. They'd make time for that, for hair dyeing, for waking Chroma to get him a uniform of his own. Later. That's what time traveling was for, after all. |
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3:33 AM Jul 11