(Untitled)

[prettymorlock]

WHO: Skids and Archangel
WHERE: All That Jazz
WHEN: June 15th! Late afternoon
WARNINGS: angst?
SUMMARY: Sally and Warren Deep Discussion V3.0
FORMAT: paraangst

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[ascending_angel]

Warren had been sitting in his chair with only his laptop and a bottle of rye to keep him company. Actually he'd been doing that a lot lately---the drinking, that was. It wasn't as if a healing factor allowed for one to get completely wasted, but keeping the stream of drinks constant at least gave him a buzz--made him a little too bleary to think too hard about his problems. That was all he wanted.

Only it made it harder for him to work, and that was why he didn't hesitate a second to invite Sally in. "Sure I do. You're ready to talk, I take it?"

[prettymorlock]

"Yeah."

No, not really, but she wanted to at least try and talk. She sat down on the chair across from his desk, and pulled her knees to her chest. She stared at the laptop, the wall, a speck of dust on the desk, anywhere and everywhere that wasn't directly looking at him for what seemed like an eternity. The words she wanted to say couldn't seem to actually make it out of her mouth, which she kept opening and closing every few moments, trying to make herself speak.

"You really scared me," she finally said, her voice barely audible.

[ascending_angel]

And her answer took just as long to get back to her, too. Warren knew he scared her. He knew he needed some serious help controlling this. It was so easy to say that it wasn't his fault and it was all Apocalypse's for ruining his fucking life and not letting him die when he wanted to in the first place. It was easy to say it was the Purifiers' fault for wanting his wings, or Rahne's fault for eating them, or Scott's fault for not doing anything about it.

But taking the easy way out and blaming everyone else but himself wasn't really Warren's style---at least not usually. Since coming back into The City last July, however, Warren had only been blaming Warren.

"Somehow I don't think sorry is going to cut it, is it?" he finally answered back.

[prettymorlock]

Sally shook her head. No, an apology wouldn't do it, not even if she really wanted it to be enough. But he'd already apologized and that hadn't helped any so there was no use lying to either one of them.

"I scared myself more, though, Warren," she murmured, still unable to look at him. "I never thought I had it in me to do that." She took a shaky breath and forced herself to say what she'd done; she felt she owed it to those who died. "To kill."

She could still vividly see each and every one of the HIVE members die. "But you...he," she wasn't sure how to refer to his Death side. "He just kept killing and killing and killing."

[ascending_angel]

"I can't stop," he told her, voice low and almost choked sounding. It really hurt to admit that and with his pride it was the worst thing. But Sally deserved to know after all he'd put her through; Warren thought the least he could do was make her understand. "That's what he programmed me to do. I can fight it sometimes, but..."

He bit his lip to keep it from trembling, and then took another swig from the bottle. "...most of the time I can't."

[prettymorlock]

Sally was crying now. She tried to be quiet about it, and hugged her knees closer to her body so she could press her face against them. "You were you," she thought out loud. "At first, it was you. But then you changed." She didn't think she'd ever get his other voice out of her head.

"If I hadn't been stupid and checking out those buildings he wouldn't have needed to come out and do what he was programed to do." Neither of them would have needed to kill in order to survive. Not that the HIVE would even be alive, but at least they wouldn't have murdered anyone. "I don't remember you getting like that."

Maybe she hadn't been paying too close attention though. She'd been younger and possibly self-absorbed. "Is it worse than it was?"

[ascending_angel]

"There was a reason I didn't come back to X-Factor right away," he mumbled, and purposely avoided watching her cry. It hurt more when she reacted like that, and he felt even more helpless and guilty. Not that she could help it, obviously, but he'd try if he could.

"It got better before because I gave it time to weaken but it's not doing that now. Back home it's been almost a year since it happened and it's....not getting any better. Just don't blame yourself because if it wasn't you it would've been the next person I found."

[prettymorlock]

She wiped at her eyes, and looked at him. "Have you been able to give yourself time away since it...came back?" she asked as she tried to control her breathing. From what she knew of the future, she didn't think there was any chance anyone had downtime recently. It always seemed like everyone talked about things getting worse and worse whenever they were ported in.

[ascending_angel]

"No. Just any time away that I've had here in this dimension--so four or five days at most?" he admitted. Each of the words was spoken slow and low, as Warren forced himself to be completely honest with her. Just like with Scott, though, that was a lot harder for him that it sounded. He was a man with a lot of stubborn pride, and saying this stuff was like pulling teeth.

"Between the team and my businesses, I haven't had any time to myself. When I first got ported here, I didn't have this problem and created all of these responsibilities for myself. When I came back I couldn't just drop them all."

[prettymorlock]

"That's not good," she murmured, and rested her head against the back of the chair. Sally moved so she was basically curled up on the thing, still hugging herself tightly. "Maybe you shouldn't worry about business in Colorado and actually give yourself a break so you can better?"

Sally wasn't too sure what 'better' would entail, but she had a feeling anything besides him slipping into the Angel of Death would fit the bill.

[ascending_angel]

Of course, he'd considered that. However, contrary to popular opinion, people had to work hard to make the amount of money Warren did and the business wouldn't run itself. There were ways to cut corners, of course, and he'd already considered them. "I plan on working from home. Laptop."

He gestured to the computer on his desk and frowned before dropping his forehead into his hand.

"I'd probably go crazier if I had nothing at all to do."

[prettymorlock]

"Yeah."

She hated seeing him look like this; he seemed almost helpless and that was scarier than being face-to-face with his Death side. "Idle hands or whatever the saying is."

Sally watched him carefully, and slowly uncurled herself and scooted the chair closer to his desk. "Are you going to be okay?"

[ascending_angel]

"I don't know," he answered truthfully. He'd already told her this much, so there was no point in sugar coating it. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see and hope nothing else happens to trigger it off."

[prettymorlock]

"Is that why you're going to Colorado?" she asked, still watching him. "So there's less of a chance that anything will trigger it? Because if that's it you should still be careful. I thought Colorado would be far enough away from everything when I picked my college, and sure enough the rest of the world found me there."

God, if she ever did get ported home, Sally didn't know what she would do about college. Bobby had told her she'd make it through the whole mess with his clone, but she didn't think the school would be too welcoming after the whole mess.

But that wasn't important right now. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

[ascending_angel]

"It's pretty far away from the city," Warren explained, and reached over to take another drink. There was just the briefest of pauses to allow him to type a few things into a message on his computer, and then he was back to ignoring it completely. "If anything does happen, I won't be near anyone, so hopefully no one will get hurt."

As for things she could do to help? An omega class telepath hadn't been much help, nor had a geneticist. Warren didn't want to be too rude and say there was no hope, though.

[prettymorlock]

"But then if you're not near anyone who's going to be able to help you if something goes wrong?" Sally asked with a frown. Being that isolated definitely had it's perks, but there were also plenty of downfalls. What if he was ported out and no one even knew? "How...how long are you going to be gone?"