Again, for the first time.
Jean: Her chest still hurt, badly, but it was time for the stitches to come out. Jean made her way to the medbay and sat on one of the tables covered in paper. She didn't like being injured. Her little game with Logan had laid her up a lot worse than she'd anticipated, and it was keeping her bedridden. Add in the near constant level of dreary cold, and Jean was pissed off.
She glared at the military orderly that was pulling the stitches out, but her gaze was drawn off by a man in one of the offices. He was standing in the doorway, looking at her. She cocked her head at him, raising a brow.
For some reason, there was a hint of familiarity to him. And she'd never seen him before in her life.
Sinister: It was Dr Nathan Milbury who stood in the small office doorway, arms crossed over his chest and leaning against the cool metal frame, looking at the bright red-head on the examination table. They had never met before, not in her thirty-one years of life or his apparent thirty-nine. Two perfect strangers.
He shouldn't smile, so he didn't.
Nathan was the great-grandson of Michael Milbury, a celebrated obstetrician and biologist, and maybe he looked something like that other man in the way his eyes narrowed as he focused or in some particular curve of his nose. Their work was more telling a link, stretching the years between them. Nathan was a geneticist and a surgeon and in full possession of his great-grandfather's obsession with the human genome.
Faces change but obsessions run deep. Sinister's face changed as necessary. Jean's--lovely little bird--hers had not changed so much as grown, lost some of the petulant teen around the creases of her mouth and gained a sharpness that became her. Sinister was glad to see her whole and well but he would have been lying had he said he was happy to see that she had obviously not wholly outgrown her childhood petulance.
"If you do not care to be a patient," he murmured after she'd been looking at him for a moment, "perhaps you should keep away from a cat's claws." Sinister did not worry about her knowing him as Robert Windsor, the man she had met on Xavier's grounds twelve years ago. Perhaps there were small physical similarities, things that on asubconscious level he kept as a reminder of who he was in order to maintain his sanity, but on the whole Nathan Milbury was his own man. He even had his own completely mundane psychic signature set up to mask the reality beneath, though if Jean had a mind Sinister knew she could blast through it.
There was something about the possibility that excited him. The potential.
He let himself smile.
Jean: She studied him, trying to figure out what the familiarity was. She had a good memory; hell, she had a photographic memory, beyond just being good, but she couldn't place him. It wasn't necessarily his face that was familiar, either. The inability to recognize what it was threw Jean, but she had to put it aside, since he was speaking to her now.
"It was the dog, actually." She winced at the pulling feeling in her skin, her arm over her head and her hand shielding the more sensitive parts from sight. Not that she was modest - far from it. It was more that this was not an appropriate place for her more... devious appetites. Her eyes focused on the doctor in the doorway, quirking her head to the side.
"Don't you have something better to do than stare at me?" Her tone was questioning, not sarcastic. Was she that interesting to this stranger?
Sinister: "Right now?" Sinister asked. He shrugged. "No, not really."
He levered himself off of the doorframe and walked over to her and the orderly doing his very best to get the job done quickly, but perhaps at the expense of a certain finesse. Sinister laid a hand on the man's shoulder. "Kelly. I'll finish." The orderly nodded and set his instruments down on the tray before sliding back the stool and making himself scarce. Sinister took his place, flicking his white lab coat out so that he wasn't sitting on it. He rolled the few inches toward Jean and pulled clean gloves out of the ready box.
"The work of James Logan?" he asked, even though he knew the answer from her chart. His fingers were impersonal on her around the stitches. She had a beautiful body; he wasn't interested in it.
Jean: Jean stared at him as he moved toward her, biting her lip. Whatever the familiarity of him was, there was something that Jean was experiencing that she didn't enjoy. She was drawn to him. Jean was never drawn to anyone; she drew people or drove them away. It made her more than a little uncomfortable.
She didn't express any of this in either her face or her body. She remained motionless as he took over for the orderly, and nodded to his question. "Yes. Not his fault, though." Jean wasn't going to elaborate on how it wasn't Logan's fault. If the story was going to circulate, the one she'd made up was the one the doctor would hear.
"You're new here, aren't you?"
Sinister: "Have you been to the infirmary enough to know?" Sinister asked with a quiet laugh, reaching for the tray and the forceps left on it. In the other hand he picked up the sharp scalpel. With his attention completely on the sutures, he lifted a knot only far enough to slice it neatly free and then draw the rest of the stitching out of the skin with a pull along the axis of the original stitch--it slid out neatly, barely a tug to her skin.
Jean: "Can't say that I have. Just making assumptions. Am I right?" Jean relaxed as the unpleasant tugging stopped, even though he was still removing sutures. She could feel it slide from her skin, but it didn't hurt anymore. She angled her eyes to watch him.
She couldn't shake it, that feeling that she knew him from somewhere. "Have we met before?" Jean knew the answer was no, but it was eating away at her. She needed to know if perhaps, in all her assuming and confidence in her abilities, shemight've met him and somehow forgotten. He was too familiar, and yet at the same time completely new.
Sinister: "We have not," he said evenly, shaking the thread out onto the tray. "And yes you are." Sinister's hazel eyes rose to meet hers. "Dr Nathan Milbury. I would shake your hand, but--" he held one gloved hand up and wiggled the covered fingers a little.
He went for the next knot. "So how does someone accidentally stab you? I'm just curious."
Jean: She leveled him with a look, narrowing her eyes. This was not a feeling she was enjoying at all. Her mind reached out tentatively into his, and she skimmed his thoughts. He was thinking about the structure of the sutures in her wounds. Other medical jargon relating to genetics floating around his mind as well. The only thing she noted was the completely clinical way he was looking at her, topless on his table.
The hand that was covering her breasts dropped away, and she leaned onto her arm, still staring at him. "Sleep-walking, apparently. I don't know myself. I was talking to him, then I was skewered." Her lies came easily as her back arched slightly.
Sinister: "Stay still please." There was not the barest of glances given to the fine young breasts pushed into his face. Sinister was not interested in Jean Gray; if she was to be the future of the mutant race then he could have nothing to do with her. His own genetics were not pure. Faye was a constant memory and reminder of how badly emotions could destroy science.
"Really?" Sinister asked with interest. "It's unusual for a somnambulist to have direct contact with someone without waking up." He sliced another knot free and pulled the stitch, tapping it off the forceps onto the tray. "Not unheard of, however. I'm surprised you didn't notice he was asleep. Usually the eyes are glassy." He glanced up at her. Her face.
Jean: A smirk tugged at her lips as he ignored her little display and she stopped moving. She didn't feel like being in any more pain than she already was, since being laid up was making her stir-crazy. Her eyes watched his hands moving along her ribs, and she sighed heavily. It would be nice to be able to shower without worry about snagging a stitch again.
His logical dispute of Jean's offered excuse made Jean have to hold back an eyeroll. "I wouldn't know; it was dark outside. I just saw him run past me, followed him out, then he stabbed me. He seemed to come to shortly after that."
Sinister: At least she was still. Sinister removed another two stitches in silence. Just to be near her was calming in some way. Jean was here, she was near him, and he would be able to do what he must in order to protect her. To help her towards his goal--what should be every mutant's goal. She would be the mother of a higher species.
He realized that he was staring at her skin, pocked by the stitches' wounds. Sinister blinked and pulled up the knot on a third. "Perhaps you should stay away from him in the future when it's dark." The stitch was snipped.
Jean: Watching him carefully, Jean's eyes narrowed. Her mind probed into his further, finding a blase upbringing, memories of a girl with whom the relationship obviously had ended, more medical jargon. He was completelydisinteresting by the measure of his mind.
Yet she was still drawn. Something was not right here.
"I'll take that under advisement," she said with a bite to her voice. Sighing heavily, she glanced at his hands again, checking his progress. "So, Dr. Milbury, was it? What did you do before you came here?" Small talk. The most obnoxious way to get something from someone.
Sinister: "Passed around by army projects," Sinister said. He had been alive long enough to know that every time he changed a face he needed facts to go along with the years. It was tedious but paid off. One more stitch and he put down the instruments. "Did you give me your name?" he asked, picking up an iodine wipe and tearing the packet open.
Jean: His answer was very much a brush off, and Jean's patience with him had ended. Her expression went stony, and she stared at the wall, waiting for him to finish. He wasn't someone who could amuse her, nor was he anyone with anything interesting to offer her, memory-wise. He was just another personStryker brought on for whatever the hell the team was supposed to be working on.
"Jean Grey. Sometimes called Phoenix." Her body tipped away instinctively from the cold of the iodine, but she forced herself not to move anymore. "Done?"
Sinister: Phoenix. Lovely.
"Anxious to go play in the snow, Jean?" he asked. There was no reaction to her new clam shell attitude. No matter how much he wanted to interact with her it was better to keep himself apart. He should get used to it. It seemed that her generally disposition had not improved from the last time he had seen her. Sinister picked up the shirt she'd put on the side of the table and handed it to her. "I'm sure you're cold."
Standing, he picked up the instruments that he'd used and carried them over to the ultrasonic for sterilization.
Jean: She sighed, pulling her shirt over her head. More than anything in that moment, Jean was pissed off. There was something there, something she couldn't pinpoint. It was bothering her, and being around him and unable to figure it out was making her mad. "I'm anxious to get out of here, yes." She needed to go hurt something. Her mind was projecting to anyone in the vicinity; angry, violent thoughts.
"You didn't answer my question. Are we done here?" She stared at him now, her face impassive.
Sinister: The buffet of her thoughts made his hands tighten fractionally on the gloves that he'd pulled off before he chucked them into the hazard bin and turned to look at her, his face just as impassive as hers until he gave a wan smile.
He wanted to teach her the lessons that Xavier had not. She was still behaving as if she were five and tantrums were acceptable. Sinister cleared his throat lightly. "We are. You need to continue to be careful with yourself for the next week, restrict your movements. But the wounds look well on their way to healing."
Jean: She nodded, staring at him. Whatever it was, it would go away. She figured that she must have met someone related or who looked the same. Not that Jean was ever one to not trust her own judgment - hers was the only judgment she did trust. There was something wrong, she hadn't found the answer in his head, and she was frustrated by it.
Frustration that could be remedied by avoiding him.
"I'll do that. Anything else?" She cocked her head to the side before stepping toward the door.
Sinister: A world of something elses, little bird, Sinister wanted to tell her.
Nathan Milbury only continued to give that bland smile. "No. I think we're set." He turned the ultrasonic on and it's quiet hum filled the room. "You missed your top button," he added as he headed back toward the office.
Jean: She glanced down, rebuttoned the shirt, and her jaw set, adding a hardness to her face. "Thank you," she said in a taut voice, pulling the door open and letting it slam shut behind her. Her body still wasn't up to par, and the painkillers they had her on tending to make her sleep a lot more than she wanted to. Jean headed back to her room, plotting her next 'outing' away from camp.
Crawling into bed, Jean let out a frustrated sigh, rolling her eyes and starting at the ceiling. She had no idea what the hell happened in the medlabs, but she was upset by it.
When she finally fell asleep, she dreamt of red eyes, dreams she'd only vaguely remember when she was awake again.