A reunion.

[girlverine]

Laura stripped off her uniform top and let it drop to the tile floor, the fabric a wet, sticky mess of blood stains and tears that could barely be called a shirt anymore. After the battle with the would-be goddess, Laura actually felt a little...tired. Almost sore, even. Apparently getting punched by a deity was a bit much even for her healing

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[girlverine]

Laura stepped backwards as Julian climbed inside, keeping one hand pressed into the top of the towel to hold it up as she felt it shift when she moved. On television those things always just stayed up on their own, but this one seemed insistent on falling. Her head was tilted slightly to the side as he spoke, just...watching him, smelling the frustration and irritation and a dozen other emotions rolling off him.

She understood most of it. She had wanted to check on Julian too, after he'd been rescued, but between being captured, and then attack on Utopia and being sent off to fight a goddess there hadn't been time. There never seemed to be time, really. Free moments always seemed to happen at the make-shift X-Force base, rather than the rare occasions they were actually near home.

If that was even the right word anymore.

She waited until he seemed to finish speaking, waited until his heart rate had slowed slightly, before she took a step towards him, bare feet curling into the rug slightly. "...I am fine, Julian." She held up an arm as if to indicate this, the arm that wasn't busy with the towel, anyway.

"...But thank you for wanting to check." She smiled faintly, just for a moment before it was gone. The fact that he had apparently come hunting across the country to look for her was...something. She couldn't even quantify it in her mind. Someone doing that and not wanting to kill her was a change. But doing it because they were worried?

That was completely new.

[ex_julianhe]

His eyes flicked to her arm, frowning a little because he didn’t understand the significance of that. What had been wrong with her arm? Laura never made gestures that didn’t mean anything. He raised a questioning gaze to her face, but then he noticed the way she kept adjusting the towel, and this…was awkward.

“Yeah, well I thought you might’ve been hurt,” he said, as though that was justification for seeing her like this. “And I wanted to find you. I’d have come looking, Laura, they wouldn’t let me.” It seemed important to let her know that. He knew what it was like when the people you expected to be there, weren’t.

…Not that she’d have expected him to be. Or whatever.

“I’m sorry for doing the window thing. I should…let you get dressed.”

[girlverine]

"I was hurt, but I'm fine now." Not that being hurt ever really stuck with Laura. The only time it had even been close was fighting Nimrod, and the dark haired girl was reasonably certain she would have survived that anyway. Not that Julian's assistance had been unappreciated. At all.

Still, something was wrong here, she could sense his discomfort, and while part of her wanted to fix it, part of her was curious enough to push at it too. The problem with smelling other people and using it to judge their emotions was that it was non-specific, and became even more so the more emotionally erratic a person became.

"I can't get dressed yet," she explained with a faint shrug. She hadn't exactly brought extra clothing to fight a goddess, after all. Domino had mentioned something about grabbing clothing from a shop nearby, and Laura had told her to get her something. It was probably a risk, but she rarely cared what she was wearing, as long as it wasn't...jeans. Or bright colors.

"I did not mind the window. Is something wrong?" She asked, stepping closer to him, turning her gaze to peer up at him slightly.

[ex_julianhe]

"No." He maybe said that a little too quickly. No, scratch that; he definitely said it too quickly, and he winced. Julian was damned good at talking to girls, and he knew it. Something about that was making this harder. She looked like she genuinely didn't get why he'd be awkward about seeing her in her towel. He ran a hand through his hair, wondering what he could say that wouldn't come out wrong. By wrong, he meant lecherous.

"Uh, what do you mean you can't get dressed?" Yeah, okay, so that was reaching, but it was a hell of a lot better than saying nothing. "What happened to you, where's the rest of your clothes?"

[girlverine]

Laura just watched him as she waited for him to answer, green eyes slightly narrowed as she tried to figure out what he was thinking. Some of it was obvious, of course, she could smell the reactions on him and she knew that it had to do with how little she was wearing. But the rest of it puzzled her. People always puzzled her in that respect. She could read the hard emotions, not the...middle ones.

She shifted faintly at his question, glancing back towards the bathroom where the remains of her uniform lay on the floor. "My uniform tore during the battle. It tore further when I attempted to remove it. I cannot wear it now, it is falling apart."

[ex_julianhe]

He frowned while she talked. Having a uniform that was ripped to shreds was nothing new to him given that it seemed to be pretty much a staple of every fight he'd ever been in with the X-Men. Which was why spares were usually around.

It hadn't escaped his notice that she hadn't answered his question, either. He stepped forward, trying to ignore the damn towel.

"What battle? What happened to you? Was it the Leper Queen?"

[girlverine]

"No. We were fighting Seline." Laura shook her head. "She was trying to become a Goddess but we were given the ability to harm her through ceremonial magic."

There was a faint hint of puzzlement in Laura's voice as she said that part. She wasn't entirely certain she even believed in things like that. And yet this had obviously worked.

[ex_julianhe]

His eyebrows shot up. There was no question that Julian believed in magic. He'd experienced it personally, both with the Kingmaker and then later, in Limbo. For him it wasn't just some thing that Doctor Doom and Doctor Strange did, hidden from everyone else. He just accepted it as fact.

"Let me guess. That's what all the walking corpses were about. Who did ceremonial magic on you?"

[girlverine]

"Yes. She revived all the dead mutants on Genosha," Laura frowned faintly. There was something inherently 'wrong' about that, beyond the basic boundaries of what was right and wrong that she usually ran by. It felt like...a desecration of something. After a moment of silence she shook it away.

"Warpath. There was a lot of makeup. I've been washing it off." Hence the shower and lack of clothing.

[ex_julianhe]

"You fought her on Genosha." It was a ruin, he'd heard. Before Julian had ever been a mutant, he'd heard about Genosha and what it stood for. What it had been before Magneto took charge there, and what it was like after. It was no small part of why he'd looked up to Magneto, when he was younger.

You should never meet your heroes. That was a lesson he'd learned.

"I'm glad you're okay. The dead guys showed up at home. Wish I could've been fighting them with you instead."

[girlverine]

"X-force handled it fine. You were most likely of significantly more use on Utopia." Laura said that because she thought it was true, but after the words were out some part of her mind that was getting better at the whole 'social interaction' thing pointed out that it had probably been somewhat crass.

She turned to consider him carefully for a moment. "...Thank you for wanting to help me, though." she added. "I would not have objected if you were there as well."

[ex_julianhe]

Yeah, he'd been real useful. Actually, she was right, he'd been fighting with Nori and David and they'd have had a harder time without him. Of course they would, he was one of the most powerful mutants in that place.

So why was he there and not on a team? That never failed to annoy him. It didn't surprise him anymore. Cyclops didn't trust him and Frost had let him down. They didn't want him on one of the teams. Apparently neither did Laura.

He tried to not let that eat him up. Least not while he was with her. He just looked up again, meeting her eyes.

"Being there's useless when the people I like are somewhere else getting kidnapped and fighting vampire goddesses." He let out a huff of air. "And Utopia sucks when you aren't around anyway."

[girlverine]

Laura wasn't entirely sure what to say to that. She missed Julian, but she didn't particularly care about Utopia one way or the other. She wasn't even sure there was a place for her there now, after the things she'd done with X-Force. It was all going to come out eventually, and she had no regrets, but...

People were rarely understanding.

"I'm sorry." She finally said, and she meant it. "I go where I am sent. It...does not involve going there much."

And part of her was glad Julian wasn't on X-Force. Not because he wasn't capable, but just because she didn't want to see him turn into the mass murderer the rest of them already were. Julian seemed to miss her though. Would that trade-off be worth it?

Probably not.

"You can stay here for tonight if you wish. If that would help."

[ex_julianhe]

He didn't care about Utopia either. There was a part of him that thought the whole idea of Utopia was ridiculous, an island where mutants walled themselves off. Once upon a time he'd seen the X-Men in their mansion in Westchester, and they had the life he wanted.

This wasn't the same. That dream had died a long time ago, and Utopia was nothing but a shadow of that. They weren't secret heroes anymore, they were holed up and fighting for survival all the time. That wasn't what he had wanted to be. But these days, he couldn't imagine being anything else. When Laura was around, things were different for him. He liked her in a genuine way. He wanted to spend time around her.

When she asked him to stay he looked up at her, trying to read her face. He failed, as usual. He never knew what she was thinking, could never even guess at it. She gave so little away. And what did she mean, if that would help? Help what? Help him not to miss her? He'd learned that was a given, no matter what else was going on.

"It's not gonna mean I don't want you around," he said, after a minute. "But I'd like that. A lot." He took a step closer to her, slipping off his jacket and moving to put it around her shoulders.

[girlverine]

Laura remained silent, one arm pressed across the front of her chest to keep the towel held in place, as she waited for Julian to sort out his thoughts. She could tell he was thinking...she never knew what, exactly, but she could tell from body language and scent that he was...working through things. So she waited.

"You may stay, then." She echoed her previous offer after he spoke, giving a little unnecessary bob of her head that she probably didn't realize she had done. She didn't react at all when he stepped closer, just watching him, her eyes slightly narrowed. When his jacket wrapped around her shoulders, there was a momentary unconscious shiver at the warm material against wet skin.

"It is going to get wet." She pointed out. Not that she tried to take it off. Her arm shifted slightly to draw it around her some, though it didn't cover enough to make the towel unnecessary.

[ex_julianhe]

He made an amused noise and smiled a little. "Yeah, I guess it will." He very carefully lifted her hair over the jacket. That was a natural thing to do because she was soaked to the skin and looked freezing, even though she probably wasn't. But as soon as he'd done it he was aware of being close to her, much more so than he normally was, and he dropped his hand again.

"Best I can do, I didn't exactly bring a suitcase." He found her eyes, because looking anywhere else was quite frankly dangerous. "You should probably dry off, though. I'll give you space."

He was giving himself space, too. She'd made him think about a lot of things, not all of which he liked. And the part he liked least was that absolutely none of it changed the fact that he didn't want to leave her without--

Without what? Whatever it was he wanted her to understand, he couldn't even name it to himself. Couldn't articulate it. And he was thinking too much. He moved to the door. He'd wait in the hall till she was ready.