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Its been a week since they've been returned. A month felt like ten years, or a million years, depeding on the perspective of it all. Lives lived, lives ended, in the real world and in the fake world that was fabricated due to the Shi'ar, and for once, they've settled into something that could resemble a bit of normalcy. At least.. Jean did.
For the cabin, the living space that belonged to Logan was breached by her and immediately cleaned, food that was purchased a day ago set out as she begins to assemble something resembling a dinner. A meeting, well a quiet one earlier in the day with Scarlett and Erik hangs upon her but it was something she clearly was not about to talk about.
On the menu, steak and fish. Fish for herself, steak for Logan. Gabriel's peculiar diet remained the same, a nice little vegetarian ensemble that seemed to feed a family of five instead of just one. And beer. Beer for the boys. Juice for her. It was turning out to be a decent spread.
*
Logan hadn't talked much since the return. Didn't seem like anything he could say. What he'd been through, he didn't want to talk about. Especially not to Jean. He hoped she stayed out of his head. Some of the things he had imagined, been fed - some of it had involved her and very little of it had been pleasant. And even the pleasant stuff he wouldn't want her to see.
He sips his beer and nods his thanks, taking a moment to eat carefully as he sits. He's in his own territory, at least, as close to comfortable as he's going to get for now.
*
Gabriel as well had been more quiet than his usual self since the return from the voyage. The escape and their depature having been kept quiet, what he had seen kept more quiet. It was different, an avoidance of eye contact that stemmed not from shame, or awkwardness. It was the way someone would not make eye contact because they were afraid of doing so and that it would lead to conversations, questions… things that he didn't want to answer.
Turning the fork around in his hand some, slowly, he pokes at the vegetables found there, nudging them back and forth rather than setting out to actually eat them. A motion to test how they repond to the touch.
*
Awkward. Awwwkward. The plates were dished out and Jean settles down into her own chair, her own food poked and prodded at. It was a mess, her idealizations and 'dreams' there were.. just something she herself didn't want to talk about. But.. was it coming? Yes..
The fork slices through the meat of the fish, picking it up upon her fork as she pops it into her mouth, her eyes lifting to stare at the two men, her head tilted slightly from left and right, the fork soon placed upon the plate quietly as she chews. She clears her throat, her lips forming into a thin line. "We can't keep avoiding this." She says quietly. "Someone needs to talk about something if we're not going to talk about the obvious."
*
Logan sets down his utensils and draws a cigar out of his pocket, his checked flannel unbuttoned enough to show a bit of chest hair. Spring's coming and all. He strikes a match and takes a few puffs before he speaks.
"Nuts to that," he says. "I ain't talkin' 'bout any o' that crazy shit. You guys wanna find a shrink, I bet Moira knows a half-dozen happy to take the job. Me? I'll drink to forget, if it's all the same to you."
*
Gabe forces down a snicker but it slips out regardless, his head shaking some. "I am sorry. I did not mean for you all to be pulled into this, drug into my past." The apology is given genuinely, eyes still focused on the way the potato moves when he slides it with the fork and the small holes that appear in it when he presses down. "If it makes you feel any better. What you saw probably wasn't real. At least, it wasn't real to you?"
*
Alright, so Jean had finally let out a little bit of a smile since her time back. The fork was taken up again, the fish cut into, bitten, chewed slowly, her eyes darting around to make sure that she wouldn't throw up and.. swallowed! Gabriel's apology gets a slight shrug of her shoulders, her gaze still away from him, and yet that smile disappears into nothing. She wasn't upset. She just felt like her brain was still attempting to catch up to the life that she's attempting to live.
"It felt real." She states, finally looking up towards the two men. "I mean.. most of them. A good portion of them. Not the one with the chickens.." She shivers slightly, then lowers her gaze to focus on her food. "Some of it was nice. I want to go to Tahiti now, admittedly."
*
Logan isn't about to go into details about what he saw, "Yeah, I get that. Ain't the first time I've had someone mess with my mind that way. Don't make it any more fun or mean that you forget it any faster," he sighs. He was as much tormented by the good as the bad, because the good was impossible just as much as the bad was horrific.
"Simple truth, though, is that we gotta just put it behind us. Ain't real, as ya say, an' the real world's what we gotta focus on. Seems like there oughtta be plenty for us to do right here to take our minds off."
*
Spinning the potato around, Gabriel nods both at Jean and Logan before his eyes lift up a bit. There is a bare hint of mischief there as he speaks. "I fought in thousands of battles, hundreds of wars. Lived them all." His smirk matches the glint of his eyes. "Putting it behind is one thing. But, what we were exposed to was designed to grant experiences so young could be made as wise as old."
*
"It was my first time.." Jean mutters glumly. But that was neither here nor there. She wasn't going to talk about it either, though Tahiti was still on the table. "Yeah.." She finally says, taking a look towards Gabriel with a little bit of consideration. They all had changed, whether if it was for the better was anyones guess. "I'd say me too.. but.." Well, her too. The fact that she's not puking up her food or blasting her emotions like a waterhose was something. In fact, all that surrounded Jean was dead air. Control. Clear control.
"Then we need to put this to the test." She states, popping another slice of fish into her mouth. "And I need a job."
*
Logan snorts, "You feeling a little pinch around the purse, Jeannie? I guess with Xavier off on sabbatical or whatever, probably not as easygoing with the pursestrings around the mansion,' he says.
"I dunno. Part of me thinks I should stick around here, kick some things into gear. Another part thinks I should go back to being a friggin' soldier and stop pretendin' to be a hero."
*
"It is difficult to.. pretend." Gabriel confirms to Logan. "I often feel like I am pretending, but I do not know why. Well, didn't know. But that is fading." He sighs softly, forking the potato once again before he glances at Jean. "A job? I do not think you need a job.. or did you mean work as opposed to a job?"
*
Jean shakes her head at Logan. "In essence, I can get what I want." Which was true. The fork lifts itself into the air and slowly begins to spin, the food slowly beginning to split itself apart as she watches it flay so easily. "But I choose not to. It'll keep me busy. I miss the bartending lifestyle. I'm going back to that." Though, if Logan wanted to go off and do something, she wouldn't stop him, yet it was Gabriel who caught her attention the most.
"Do you know why now?" She asks quietly. "All the time.. before this was happening, was it pretend?" She smiles sadly, then watches as the food and fork floats to the plate once more. "Both work and a job. I suppose. There's too much trouble in the world when it comes to us mutants. I want to stop that, like Charles intended. And.. I think I want to give singing a try." She smiles once again, her gaze lowered, though not in a shy sense. How could she be after all that's happened?
*
Logan smiles a bit wistfully. Jean was young and still had plenty of dreams in her head. That was good. After going through some of the things they'd been through, it would be easy for those dreams to get crushed out of her, shattered into dust. That she still thinks about pursuing them means that she's going to be okay.
Or, at the least, she wasn't broken yet.
Logan takes a puff on his stogie, "Hey, if you bartend, you know I'll be hangin' around gettin' free beers," he winks. "Maybe I oughtta open a bar or somethin', an honest business."
*
"Is any business truly honest?" Gabriel asks towards Logan, a small smirk on his lips as he does it and finally he takes a bite of the food that Jean prepared, out of habit from being sat at a table for that long. "Normal is not a bad thing. But at the end of the day, the three of us here at this table… we can try to wear normal but that isn't what is in store for us. And we know it." He glances between them, from Logan to Jean. "If I exist.. then another exists that is more dangerous. If you exist… there is someone else that is more dangerous. So I guess that means having to deal with them."
*
Jean grabs her juice, lifting it briefly to tilt towards the two. No business was honest, but a business was business. And maybe for them, something to do. "Free beers it is." With that said, she nods slightly towards Gabriel, her lips pursing into a frown. "After what happened, or before, I wouldn't have believed those words." She takes a sip of the juice, then shrugs her shoulders. "Now I do. But should we even question that -we- are the dangerous ones? All of us here at this table?" She looks to both of them in kind, then asks the question that she.. really didn't hesitate to ask.
"Who's going to deal with us, at the end of the road?"
*
Logan shrugs, "I think so. Plenty o' folk who just put in an honest day's labor, take their pay, live their lives. Some of 'em are assholes, some of 'em ain't. No saints in the world, but honest? Yeah, honest is a real thing. I seen too many liars in my day not to know it."
"An' I ain't never had any illusions that I wasn't dangerous, even before they wrapped my claws in metal."
*
Gabriel shrugs and nods his head slowly, "Dangerous is one thing I suppose. Accountability? Trust? Believing in the necessity to be more than the baseline but to be the peak of example?" His eyes blink a bit, looking at Jean as he speaks. "The city on the hill, the beacon of light… that sort of crap. That is what keeps us in check. Being willing to let the eyes of the world judge, and being able to, at the end of the day; stand up to their judgment and be held to account."
*
Jean bites her lower lip, then shrugs her shoulders. The both of them had very solid points, so much so that the thousand yard stare appears upon her face as she looks out the cabin window. It was going to be spring soon, or maybe it was already.. it was a little bit hard to tell. "So we move on. Take care of the threats. Open your bar.." She nods towards Logan, "..and I'll go work in one." And that just leaves Gabriel. "What are you going to do?"
*
Logan gets up to get another beer, opening up the fridge and grabbing another. A bar. Might not be the worst idea in the world. He remembers the old saloons, where you could get a room on the cheap, a bit of whiskey, a bit of company. Not that he wanted to be a pimp. But maybe there was room in the world for something like that still.
"I mean, if I open one, I figure I might have you work in it, girl. At least you won't rob me blind."
*
"Me?" Gabriel asks towards Jean, eyebrow lifting. "Well I've probably lost the construction job since I didn't show up for a few days." A bit of humor is in his tone and then his gaze drifts upwards then back to her. "I have a few ideas, but need some time so sift through them all."
*
"No." Jean tells Logan. "We're not supposed to shit where we eat." She lets out a grin, then rises from the table. "I'm going to go and find the dogs. You two be good."
*