An important guide
02 January 2007
Lennox Hill
The blinds in Kitty's hospital room have been drawn shut in an attempt to keep the light from aggrivating the headache that /just won't quit,/ despite the regular doses of painkillers she's been given (all pills- she can manage to extend her intangibility to a tablet or two, but anything beyond clothing, food and small objects is still nearly impossible for her). For the sake of the nurses who aren't used to treating untouchable patients, she is doing her best not to let herself pass through anything too noticable. Keeping up the appearance of sitting on the bed, though, is proving tiring. A few hours ago, she drifted off and nearly fell through the floor, startling a patient below by the appearance of her slipper-clad feet dangling from the ceiling.
You'd think startling a Kitty in a phased state would be a bad idea, wouldn't you? Well, apparently, Jubilee does not as she burst through the door with a little too much exuberance. And a balloon. "Kitty!"
Wesley follows in Jubilee's wake, offering a apologetic smile at a glaring nurse passing by in the hallway. There's a vase of some sort or another of flower, Wesley can't quite tell which, that he sets on a table beside her bed. "Heya Kitty. We broughtcha some flowers. How ya feeling?"
With doubt and guilt gnawing at her sides from her last encounter with Kitty, Rogue is understandably hanging around the back of the little visiting party. She slips in, pulling enough to swing the door back quietly. Her eyes dance fitfully from the bed to Jubilee, and even allowing a glance or two at Wesley. Her hands are balled and hidden deep in coat pockets, hair sliding and shifting about her temples as she manages to take attention in nearly every facet of the room save for Kitty Pryde. "Nice place," she remarks casually.
While the sudden influx of guests does startle Kitty, she does manage not to fall through anything. Once she recognizes the faces and voices, she's pleasantly surprised. "Hey," she greets her three former classmates. "Nice to see you guys. I'm... Well, I've been better, that's for sure." While she has no visible injuries, she does appear to be in rough shape. Dark circles under her eyes betray a lack of sleep and her eyes themselves squint at any exposure to light.
Jubilee frowns and edges far enough into the room that the others don't bump in behind her. "Dude, Kit-kat. What's up with the... you know?" She gestures vaguely at Kitty's...ah, lack of being, then moves to tie the balloon to a handle on the small bedside table.
Flower duty accomplished, Wesley finds a spot of wall next to the door and perches against it. "This hospital or no, I bet you got half the staff baffled what to do, hmm? And freaked out, I guess."
Rogue flits about for a moment, shoulders hunching as Welsey takes the wall position. Her feet drag herself forward, nose wrinkling as she lands a half step behind and to the side of Jubilee. "She ain't the first untouchable they've had," Rogue remarks with a snorting roll back of her eyes. "Though, Ah guess, it's different in a way. Got stuck in power mode? Welcome to mah world." There is little sympathy in her voice, all guilt railing against her gets ousted in a shied away look at the floor.
"I have a concussion, or so they tell me. I didn't phase fast enough, so my brain bounced around inside my skull a bit. Seems to have affected my powers. Er, obviously." Kitty passes a hand through the flowers to illustrate her point. "I can't turn it off, and it's harder to phase stuff along with me. I can manage food, clothes, little things like that, but I think it's going to be a while before I get back to pulling people through walls with me." She doesn't expect sympathy from Rogue. She honestly hadn't expected the girl to ever speak to her again, so things are actually looking up. Sort of.
"Really? Duuuude." Someone's had fudge for breakfast. She leans over the bed railing and reaches out to poke Kitty's shoulder, except doesn't, and slips a little in the effort, banging up against the railing. She inhales with a hiss and backs up, her hand pressing against her side. It's a moment before she resumes a grin for her old friend. "I'd say somethin' about provin' you had a brain in there, but it jus' doesn't work for you."
"That's kinda..." Wesley finally settles for "strange. Your doctor any good? How long're they gonna keep you in here?" He give Jubilee a close look at the hiss, but doesn't say anything about it.
Rogue is not as polite. "Dummy. She /told/ you she was phased," she murmurs to Jubilee, her tone warmer than what the words express. Finally her gaze lands on Kitty, shy in both nature and hold on the hospitalized girl.
Dedicated though Piotr's vigil has been since Kitty was ushered gingerly to the hospital in the early hours of yesterday morning, there are some calls that even the toughest can not ignore, and so it is that he is now returning from the bathroom. He has changed out of his wrecked clothes of the night before into a tracksuit delivered by concerned hosts, but he has not taken the time to shave in his rush to return to Kitty's side and so his jaw is shaded dark to match the tired skin beneath his eyes. He heads up the hall, pace swift but just shy of a run in deference to his surroundings, and opens the door to Kitty's room, his hand freezing on the handle as he sees her other visitors. He draws a tense breath as guilt and worry battle for place in his expression, and forces a quiet, pained, "Hello."
"Well, if my doctor isn't any good, at least the painkillers aren't bad. My head's still pounding, but I can actually form coherent thoughts now. If, uh, somewhat slower than usual," the ghost girl tells her visitors, shrugging in an attempt at humor. Piotr's arrival makes her wince, ever-so-slightly. Yeah. She was going to mention that. She sinks ever-so-slightly into the thin mattress of the hospital bed.
Jubilee swings her head up at the door opening, and the weak grin assumed for Kitty slowly dissolves into a wide-eyed, frozen stiff, color-draining stare. Her breath escapes in a strangled little gurgle that sounds too loud in the strained quiet of the room.
Wesley looks up at the 'hello,' the half-formed greeting freezing on his lips as Jubilee's reaction sinks in. His mouth moves wordlessly a moment, before he instinctively crosses the room to stand beside Jubilee, offering a hand if she wants to take it. "Uh, hi Pete," he says tightly.
Rogue lets her eyes linger on Kitty, finally tagging them after the door. The smile that had just begun to form for her hurt friend jerks into a spasm of disbelief. As her brain finally triggers the situation, her body twirls around. Deadly grace accompanies her form as her feet get planted firmly apart on the ground, hands plucked out of their pockets. "Lookit what the cat dragged in," she snarls as the upper corner of her lip sneers. The toe of her boot edges forward, weight getting dumped eagerly on it. "You gotta lotta nerve, you sorry excuse for ah Campbell's Soup can."
Piotr winces visibly under the weight of Rogue's words, but it is the sight of Jubilee's reaction that bows his head in painful guilt. "Jubilee, I--" His words, broken already, fail him completely and he backs away into the door frame, trying to make himself look as small as possible. "I-- I am sorry. I did-- did not..." Fearful, aching stammering drags to a halt once more.
A very quiet murmur of "Ngn" comes from the girl partially sunken through the hospital bed. There is too much going on for her mind to follow right now. After a few failed attempts, she reaches for the blanket on the bed, extends her intangible state to it, and pulls it -over- her head. She's far too doped up and in pain to be dealing with this.
Jubilee moves away from the bed, opening up to face the room at large, one hand on the railing of Kitty's bed and the other grabbing at Wesley's offered hand in a hot, painful grip. Anger and fear flare combatively, alternating red and white mists across her sight and her thoughts and muffle the words being said until Peter's denials pierce the cotton-woollies. "/Yes/!" she hisses, surging forward, reigned in my the death grips still on the railing and Wesley's hand. "Yes, you /did/!"
Wesley clings tightly to Jubilee's hand, pulling back on it to keep her in check. His other hand hovers, ready to throw around her if further restraint is needed. "Don't do...anything you'll regret," he mumbles at her, at a loss for any other advice.
"Don't you dare even /speak/ to her!" Rogue snaps, stumbling forward on the newly placed weight as she makes up for his distancing. "What're you doin' here, you slimesack?" Her fingers start to pinch and rub, edging the material of her gloves loose around her fingertips for easy removal.
"Please!" Piotr calls, an anguished yelp directed at both Rogue and Jubilee as he holds up his hands in front of him, not for protection but in supplication. "I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. That--" His breath catches with a squeak in his throat and the rest of his words are rasped with breathy difficulty, "was not me."
A scream shorn of volume escapes and Jubilee releases the railing to lunge forward. She's stopped short by Wesley's grip on her and she pulls against the restraint, turning to face him and leveraging her weight back, bending slightly at the knees, hot tears washing across her eyes. "It /was/! It was /you/ and they let you go?!"
Wesley is moved by the pleading, but not so much as to let her go. His grip tightens, an unspoken look of apology at Jubilee before he's distracted by the other live wire. "Rogue!" he calls at her, trying to keep his voice from escaping past the room while getting the other's attention.
It seems to be Jubilee's voice that finally snaps the patience of Marie. She growls and rips off her right glove, fingers flexed and pale under the fluorescent lighting. "Yeah, Wes? You want a leg or a thigh?" Brown, flashing eyes do not leave the larger man, and she does not quail to him. "The Professor ain't here to save you /this/ time."
"Please, do not do this," Piotr whispers to Rogue, a trail of desperate hope in his voice appealing to the woman he once called a friend keeping him from armouring up. It dies even as he speaks. He takes a step back, out of the door frame and into the corridor beyond, still in sight of all the room's occupants, trying to buy himself time to explain. "It was me," he admits, harrowed eyes and a shaking voice betraying his horror at the thought. "But changed, by a telepath, stripped of all my control."
"No, no, no, no," Jubilee whispers heatedly, still pulling against Wesley's control. She jerks hard, bouncing down in a movement intended to break the handhold, but only serves to aggravate her injury to the point she gasps and bends forward, her free hand wrapping around her stomach.
"ROGUE!" Wesley says again, more pointedly. His hand clamps down on Jubilee's wrist, gripping tighter as she tries to pull away. He glances around, for some way to manage both girls, and that failing, his free hand starts gushing water, trailing down to the floor and solidifying into a rope that flicks out, snagging Rogue by the arm and giving her a tug backwards. "Rogue, stop!"
Rogue fritzes like an angry cat, her lips curling into a horrible grimace as she breaths between her teeth. "Fuck you and your excuses!" She lunges, stopped short and hurtled back by her watery leash. The hair on the back of her neck pricks up as she attempts to breech her hold. Rogue aims a swing with her free hand, though she's short by a long ways.
"Please," Piotr whispers again, desperate and broken, his hands still held up ahead of him as he takes another step back, edging unsteadily towards the opposite wall of the corridor, away from the room and Rogue. "Please..." Even he has no idea now what he is begging for.
Jubilee rocks forward and hits her knees, one hand still in Wesley's, the other arm holding herself together as tiny shivers start to rattle her ribs. "Let me /go/, Wesley. Let me /go/!" The hand he holds starts to grow hot and tingly, and Jubilee glares up at him. "He /deserves/ it, he /does/! You /have/ to believe me?"
Wesley winces at the heat in his hand, but doesn't let up. He's too busy trying to keep his balance between the two forces pulling against him, throwing his weight to keep them away from Peter, and keep the watery rope solid, else Rogue goes flying. "Doesn't matter," he says through gritted teeth. "Not...gonna...let you."
"/Damnit/ Wesley!" The rope is test as Rogue sets her weight against it, her arm getting tugged painfully back as the rest of her body thrusts forward. Spittle forms at the corner of her mouth, her mind to pinned on one thing to make note of it. "C'mere, you metal plated snake, Ah'll knock you three ways from Sunday!" Her fist still wags feverishly on the end of a flailing arm.
The sight of Jubilee collapsing beyond Rogue hits Piotr like a slap in the face and he turns aside, pressing his eyes shut hard as his mouth pulls into a silent wail of anguish. He draws a deep breath and then a second, both shaking his shoulders numbly, and then he looks up, past Rogue for a second to the huddled form of Kitty on the bed, and then back to lock eyes with the murderous Southern Belle. Shaking, he steps forwards and puts out his hand, wrapping it around Rogue's bare wrist.
Proof that nothing exists in a vaccuum, much less in hospitals, things haven't been silent outside of the hospital room. Even without obvious shouts and crashing noises, the nurses of Lennox Hill are wiley and sly creatures. A phone is reached for, and a pager number input. Dr. Grey...? Ms. Pryde has a lot of visitors, and something's not right.
But telepathy trumps even the efficiency of the nursing staff, as concentrated angst wallops across the mindscape like a dash of vile green absinthe stood up against the lesser haze of worry, fear and tension that colours any hospital. "Oh no," murmurs Jean to herself, right in the middle of a microwave dinner snagged in the doctors' lounge. Curious collegial glances turn her way, but catch only the fluttering of her lab coat as she's already out the door. Stairs instead of elevator, and her pager's buzzing as she bursts into the ward and bolts past a baffled nurse, projecting and shouting a "Piotr, don't do it!" ahead of herself.
Jubilee expression darkens, and Wesley's hand is torn away from her own with a flash of light and explosive force. Before she can even get her hand down, she's turning around, slapping the ground with her other hand and using it to pivot. And stops, gaping at the sight of Peter reaching for Rogue. Memories half-formed and ragged swell to fill in the void left by fleeing reason, and she screams again, this time full-voiced and as pointed as the hand she lifts, energy boiling against her palm, toward him. "NOOO!"
"Stop!" Wesley calls out. Freed of Jubilee for a second, he gives a solid tug on his rope to hopefully catch Rogue off balance. With that, he lets the rope fall to the ground in a long puddle and lunges at Jubilee. That? Is going to hurt.
Eyebrows slant down, fear suddenly starting to crack the layer of unbridled anger. She is grabbed, a screech of fear erupting from her throat as her eyes widen and tense. Rogue is caught, now between a strong grip and a tugging Wesley. She stumbles, her knees letting go their burden of weight just about the time a burst of energy is aimed at was to be Piotr. But is not. Rogue is ripped from her grip, slamming into Piotr under the influence of the energy blast. It is only by luck that Piotr's powers activated enough to simply send the metallic girl sprawling.
The pain of Rogue's powers kicking in freezes Piotr, but his grip remains resolutely tight around her wrist. Wide eyed though he is, he does not realise Jubilee's intentions until the heat of her blast sears at him, and he armours up instinctively with a cry of, "Rogue!" trying to turn them to put himself between the woman and the energy. Reason catches up with instinct as the armoured girl slams into him with the clash of metal on metal and, half a moment later, he gasps as the steel retreats from his body, staggering under Rogue's weight as he reaches behind him for the wall of the corridor to keep himself from falling.
Out in the corridor, the nurses spring into action as Jean dashes through. Emergency pages calling for security to arrive go out, and Brenda Whitesides, RN and no-nonsense mother of three children all around the ages of the young adults falling out of Kitty's room, is hot on the heels of Dr. Grey, although she jerks back with electrified alarm at a desperate "Don't touch her, Brenda!" from Jean as she moves to try and assess the armoured and gleaming Rogue on the floor.
Out of breath, wide-eyed, Jean continues with a "Her mutation drains biological energy," as she moves watchfully, warily, towards Piotr and his wall, one hand outstretched and her eyes flicking to the doorways, looking for potential threats. "Piotr," she asks, quietly putting herself between the door and the Russian. "What happened?"
It hurts a lot. Jubilee is driven forward and flat by the weight of Wesley's tackle, and she screams again, this time in pain as tentatively knit ribs crack again and the interception of her blast registers. All air escapes in that breath, and she wheezes with her face partially buried against her arm.
"Oh my..." Wesley gasps, rolling aside as the ill wisdom of that particular move dawns on him. He glances i[, catching the sight of Jean in the hallway. "Jean!" he calls out. "Thank gawd you're here." The presence of someone else to take control of the situation is a great relief and his shoulders sag as that responsibility is lifted. He struggles to his knees to turn to Jubilee. "Are..." That question seems foolish, and he replaces it with "Where does it hurt?"
Rogue lifts her head, obviously dazed as the stiffness of the metal works into her brain. She looks around, finding herself crumpled onto Piotr. "Lord, what happened?" The belle asks in a sloshy, disoriented voice. Rogue rolls off to her side, attempting to stand, though her feet can't keep her own. She instead peers at a metal had, gripping it tightly.
As Jean approaches, Piotr shakes his head desperately, hunching away from her with his eyes pressed closed as he tries to breathe. If he had any answer for her, it is cut off as Rogue falls heavily against him and he gives a gasping choke, reaching to her to try and steady her as she rolls off, unable to support her armoured weight and doing nothing more than deadening the thud as she hits the floor. "Help Jubilee," he implores Jean quietly.
"You get away from Rogue first," Jean directs, fixing Piotr with a sharp look and then seeing that he does so by calling for "Brenda? Can you take Piotr down to the nurses' station and get him some coffee?" Brenda looks at Piotr, and mutters something darkly amused, likely the impossibility of moving him if he doesn't care to be moved. That done, Jean plunges her hands into her lab coat pockets to retrieve latex gloves, and goes to do as she's been asked to, still sharp, and still combat-tense, with movement quick and spare and her mien alert for trouble. "Ribs?" is clipped out as she steps into the hospital room.
Jubilee doesn't move from her sprawled position--just pants shallowly and rapidly. "/Yes/," she wheezes, turning her head away from Wesley's concern. And then realizing that she's mad at Jean too. << /Fuck/. >> Anger slashes with prickly jabs.
Wesley slides back to allow Jean room to examine. It doesn't take a telepath to interpret that reaction. He mumbles something containing the word 'sorry' before getting back out of the way, looking between his hands and various places around the room.
Kitty has been, for some time now, unconcious. The blanket is no longer phased with her and has been partially merged with the hospital bed. A portion of her head has sunken into the pillow- luckily not far enough to obstruct her breathing. She could have /suffocated/ while her friends tried to kill each other!
Rogue finds herself wrapped up, a metal heel lifting to knock him away. Saved by the grace of her gifts, his power fades before the kick can connect into his thigh. "Gerrway from me 'fore Ah finish the job." Eyes glare hard at Piotr. "You must be cracked, Rasputin. Grabbin' me like that. Didn't find me /near/ as soft t'touch as Jubilee, did yah?" Anger festers again, the strength in her now metal-less mass pushing herself up on her knees as gets a feel of her surroundings.
"Excuse me, miss..." Security has arrived in the form of two well-built men in their late thirties, and has focused attention on the one remaining person on their feet and snarling. "Don't touch her bare-handed!" barks one BRenda Whitesides, RN, quick to internalize information.
Piotr's knuckles scrape against the floor as he tries to extricate his hand from under Rogue's metallic bulk, then flies whipcrack away at Jean and Rogue's joint instructions. "I am sorry, Rogue..." he whispers, staggering back against the wall once more, trying to push himself up as well. "I did not mean-- not /that/..."
Anger's prickly jabs from Jubilee recieve a baleful look from Jean -- almost. She manages to direct it at the wall at the last minute, and to wrestle the imp of irritation that's been roused to whisper that Jubilee's doing it on purpose. She's somewhat short as a result. "I'm going to lift you onto the spare bed in here. And then I'm having the residents take you down to X-Ray. Swear at me later. Wesley, go keep Piotr company."
Jubilee glowers, but allows assistance to her feet before jerking free on another gasp. "He wouldn't /need/ ta keep him company if he'd been still locked /up/," she growls, then sets her jaw into a stubborn line, lips pressing closed.
Wesley gives a reluctant look toward Jubilee before nodding. "Okay," he mumbles, crossing the room to Brenda and Peter. "I..." he starts to speak, then realizes he doesn't really have anything to say.
Rogue's hands ball as she finally manages her feet, swaying as she debates taking a step towards him. "Ah know what you meant! You tried to /use/ me for that, you sick sun'va bitch!" Two pairs of hands clasp on the jean jacket material covering her shoulders. She sends a startled look back at the security guards. "Oh, /hell/."
Even as she drifts back into the waking world, Kitty's mind is simply a static-filled whisp compared to the very solid, tangible and drug-free minds of the others in the room. Once again, her first reaction upon waking is confusion. There is a startled yelp as she begins to fall through her bed and she struggles against thin air for a few moments to right herself. "Whuh...?"
"Miss, you're going to need to come with us..." the more senior of the two security gards intones. "I've paged Dr. Mehta down from Psych," says Nurse Whitesides. The guards raise a mutual eyebrow. The hands on Rogue's shoulder tighten just a little. "All right then. Miss, you're -really- going to need to come with us now."
"I am sorry..." Piotr whispers again, to Rogue, to Wesley, to anyone who can hear him as he grabs for the wall again, easing himself finally to a standing position, though his eyes press firmly closed. "I--" A harsh, choked breath battles its way up from his lungs and he shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts, to open his eyes.
"Jubilee, later I will talk to you," Jean promises, strained and low as Kitty makes herself heard and adds a new variable to a situation teetering on the edge of containment. "And Kitty... honey, you really don't want to know. Brenda!" "-Yes-, Dr. Grey?" "Can you get one of the second year residents up here? We need to do an admission."
A medical resident appears. Perhaps there's some sort of summoning circle outside. He's mid-twenties, earnest and cute, and is quick to offer Jubilee a hand up onto the spare hospital bed.
Rogue attempts to struggle against their hold. "What? Where are you taki-- why /me/?" There is a string of curses as she digs her heels into the unyielding linoleum floor. They slide as she is turned and marched off. "Jubilee!" Rogue gasps out loudly, twisting her head as far back as physically possible. "/Jubilee/!" Her last cry is stopped short as they pull her into the elevator, the doors closing mercilessly on her angry, frightened splutters.
Oh, man. Hope he's around later, when Jubilee isn't too pissed to appreciate him. She starts to struggle in response to Rogue's cries, but one look at Jean's face settles her back into place, silent and grim.
The initial arrival of her former classmates currently inaccessable to Kitty's bruised brain. Jean's warning aside, she is still trying to make sense of all this. "When did- why is- Where's-" was Rogue shiny? Why was Rogue shiny? God, her head hurts.
Wesley waits by the door while Rogue and Jubilee are ushered/carried out. Once they pass, he slips through the door himself, wordlessly, headed the opposite way toward the red Exit sign.
And then there was one. With a long sigh, Jean pulls up the visitors' chair beside Kitty's bed and settles in it, a hand covering her eyes and pressing fingers to her temple. "Don't think too much about it," she encourages her. "I don't even have a concussion, and it's still confusing."
In the hall, Brenda has managed to smooth out ruffled feathers at this chaos in her domain. She solemnly hands Piotr a paper cup. There is coffee. There are no sedatives in it, despite a longing flicker of thought.
Sedatives, perhaps, would have been kinder. The bitter scent of coffee stirs Piotr's senses somewhat and he jolts as if just waking, blinking twice hard as he tries to focus his vision on the nurse in front of him. He reaches out and takes the cup with a barely audible, "Thank you," bringing it to his lips in a shaking hand and taking a tentative sip.
Trying not to think about the chaos she woke up to, Kitty looks down at her hands for a few moments, then runs her fingers through the mattress below her as if it were a pool of water. "How long am I going to be stuck this way?" she asks her former teacher. She doesn't give a voice to the part of her mind that worries that she's going to be like this for the rest of her life. Rogue's powers don't turn off, neither do Scott's. It's not like missing off switches aren't common.
Paradoxically, this question brings relief to Jean, despite the real worry colouring it. This, she can handle. Unable to touch, even as little as one of her usual brief comforting pats, she does the next best thing and rests her hand on the mattress beside Kitty's intangible knee. "It's hard to say," she admits, honest if not totally reassuring. "I'd really like to try and get an MRI of your brain, but we'll have to do it during the wee hours on a non-peak day, because we're going to have to seriously mess with the power levels to get your brain to be picked up properly in this state. But from Piotr's description of the accident, and from observation, it looks like all you've got is a nasty concussion."
Out in the hall, Brenda eyes Piotr and his coffee. She's silent for a long moment, and then points out that "The girl that just left, she'll probably be gone for a half hour before she's rooming with your girlfriend."
Agony creases Piotr's brows once more, distracted from his coffee completely, the cup lowering unsteadily. "Will I--" he mutters in question to Brenda, then cuts himself off and turns to the door to where Jean and Kitty sit talking, his breath catching again. "Jean?" he mumbles, timid but loud enough to be heard. "Can I come in?"
Normally, Kitty's mind would be racing right now, pondering just how her electro-magnetic-based powers would affect an MRI machine and how detailed of an image it could get. Instead, with a mind slowed by pain and drugs, the best she can do is "I don't wanna break the machine." Even doped up on painkillers, Kitty still worries about the well-being of all things techy. Take that as you will. Piotr's voice draws her gaze upwards and towards him. She squints, trying to block out the light from the hallway. "I missed something big, didn't I?"
"You leave not breaking the machine up to me, young lady," Jean informs with a tired smile, lifting a hand in an aborted attempt to squeeze Kitty's shoulder. She drops it back beside her knee again instead, and turns at Piotr's quiet question. "Of course," is the answer. "Although... you'll probably want to be gone when Jubilee gets back. I haven't had a chance to talk to her..."
"I will," Piotr promises, mumbling, as he heads slowly for the door, nodding a tiny, thankful, cheerless smile to Brenda as unsteady footsteps take him towards the pair in the room. He halts in the threshold once more, wrapping a hand around the door frame, and then hesitantly pads in towards the bed, his coffee held out ahead of him. "I am sorry for this, Katya, Jean. All of this."
"If it makes you feel better," Kitty offers to Piotr "I... have no idea what just happened. It's probably best that way, I think. Right?" In other words, please don't make her try to wrap her aching mind around what just went down. "Um. I'm feeling pretty drowsy again, I think maybe I need to lay back down. Can someone come check on me to make sure I don't fall through the floor and scare the little old man in the room below me again? He was nice about it and all, but I'm pretty sure he has heart problems and I'd rather not, you know, give him a heart attack or something."
"Maybe I'll see if we can scout out the old Alkali Lake facility and find you an adamantium sheet to sleep on," Jean quips, black humour lending her strength to stand and nod. "I'll leave a note with Brenda, and... I'll leave you Piotr to keep you company while you drift off. I'll be back in a couple hours to check on you, OK?"
"You will find out soon enough, I am sure," Piotr tells Kitty, his words shrouded in misery and regret as his eyes flicker upwards to follow the standing Jean. He nods as she speaks and takes a seat on the side of Kitty's bed, the paper sides of his cup caving slightly as he resists the urge to reach out and offer her some contact in comfort. "Rest, Katya. I-- I will probably be gone by the time you wake. I am sorry. I will come and see you when I can."
"Thanks," she says to the both of them, genuine and full of the warm affection that only the really good drugs can provide. She lowers herself back down. Aside from the lack of her usual cocoon of blankets, sleeping in her phased form isn't quite that bad- literally floating on thin air. It doesn't take long for her to drift off, though she'll probably have to be woken up every so often to prevent falling, suffocation and other intangibility-related risks.
Wes, Rogue and Jubilee come to visit Kitty in the hospital, and find Piotr there. The angst monkeys have a little tea party, with china cups and pretty ribbons in their hair.