1333/Fire and Life Incarnate

Fire and Life Incarnate
Date of Scene:	07 July 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Cypher, Phoenix

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Cypher has posed:
Doug is lying on a bed down in the medbay. There is a vitals monitor strapped to his wrist, but otherwise, everything is quiet. He's wearing a gray Xavier's School T-Shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants... his pallor is also gray, shot through with thin threads of black veins. Still, he seems comfortable.

There is an iPad next to him, forgotten, and he managed to procure a dinged-up, ancient copy of 'Dragonriders of Pern' from somewhere, which he is reading, his eyes glimmering faintly red. He looks dramatically bored.

Phoenix has posed:
Dressed in distressed jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with the cover of Lil B's 'I'm A Mutant', Jean Grey enters the medbay with a KordBoy-shaped clamshell box and a broad, only lightly rehearsed smile. Other occupants - if, indeed, there are any - get passing waves, greetings, and brisk words of encouragement, but her attention always returns to the bored, dead boy consuming classical spec. fiction.

"Doug!" she exclaims as soon as she's close enough. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to welcome back you sooner-- someone came by and left a mess in my lap the other week."

The privacy curtain draws shut as she crosses its threshold, expression briefly darkening as she apologizes-- and remembers Senator Creed. It doesn't quite recover afterwards: the smile is smaller and doesn't quite make it to her eyes, which analytically roam across his oddly patterned flesh.

"How do you... feel?" she wonders, tone falling once she's beside his bed.

Cypher has posed:
Doug had closed his eyes -- he opens them. "In here -- things are quiet, and combined with the Professor's psychic blocks that are reducing the white noise in my head, I'm okay. But I'm just bored." He tilts his head, and gives a little smile. "Hi Jean."

Then he pushes himself up onto his elbows. "I'm alive." He looks horrible, his pallor, his eyes.

"The Techno-organic virus brought me back to life, it would seem, but it's continually trying to keep me there, even though I'm pretty sure I'm as alive as it's possible to be. And it... talks to me. In my head. It's making me feel a little schitzophrenic, to tell you the truth."

He looks down, and says, "Have you heard what they plan to do with me?"

Phoenix has posed:
As Doug describes his experiences with the virus that gave him life, Jean's smile vanishes entirely, and for a breathless moment, she stares as if there's a ghost over his shoulder.

The smile that comes afterwards is pure theater, honed over the past few years to put young minds at ease; it is, of course, worthless now, but that doesn't stop her from trying. After swallowing, she begins to take a step forward, both hands rising with the box gripped between them-- only to pause as Doug's head lowers and he continues to speak.

"I-- " Her brow briefly wrinkles. "-- 'Do with you', what? No-- what do they plan to 'do with you'?" Following a sharp exhalation, she tosses the box to a corner of his bed while a chair slides in behind her. Her hands find his shoulders as she sits and leans in for his answer.

Cypher has posed:
Doug Ramsey blinks in surprise, and then he says, "I don't know! I can't really go back to my parents' house, I've been dead for two years. Hi mom, hi dad -- not dead! Even though you buried me and I'm pretty sure the funeral was an open casket, haaaa!" He rubs the back of his neck.

"I didn't mean it like they were going to turn me out in the woods or anything, I just..." He says, "I'm just not sure what's going to become of me is all." He turns to reach out for the box, and he takes it in both hands. "What's this?" He studies it, but doesn't open it, before his eyes flick back up to Jean. He's sturdy -- he was always a sturdy kid, for a computer nerd. Dance classes and such. And despite his pallor, physically he seems in *rude* good health. "You know," He says, "It used to be that my power was something you could do with Google--but now it's.. I see how things fit. I went outside and I understood what all the birdsongs meant." Doug grins, at that. "Birds are *awful*. It was one giant beautiful booty call."

Phoenix has posed:
Visibly relaxing, Jean draws her former student in while wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders as he laments his parents.

"Obviously," she murmurs, "you can stay here as long as you need-- or want-- but, yeah, you're-- you're right, it's-- gonna be complicated."

A shadow falls across the redhead's face as she tightens her grip for a second-- only to relinquish it as her impression of a smile mostly returns. Her eyes flick towards the box when it's called out, and the comment about birdsongs draws a polite chuckle.

Gesturing towards the gift, she explains, "It's one of those little micro-computer kits-- a Jackfruit Sigma, version It's On A Sticker Somewhere Inside The Box, Sorry. Also, some tools! No, y'know, screen, but I thought you might enjoy the challenge." This is accompanied by a brisk wink, and then the smile begins to drop into a neutral line.

"Your powers... is it-- well, is it the virus that's altered them, do you think? Or know-- I mean, you say it talks to you..." She waves briskly as she trails off. "Sorry, I know that was, uh. Abrupt. But this isn't exactly-- territory we have a manual for, yet, y'know?" Her eyes flick towards the ceiling as she pushes out a heavy sigh, then drop back to Doug with an apologetic expression.

"Have you been able to pick up anything else new and beautiful, yet?" she then wonders.

Cypher has posed:
"It's very odd." Doug says, "The things I see. Like, if I watch you, I can read what you really mean when you speak in the microexpressions on your face, and in your body language - I was never able to do that before. I can predict what people are going to do before they do it, because it's like their bodies are going to talk to me. And I don't know. Maybe? Maybe this is what my powers would've become if I hadn't--died. It's like... everything is language, and as such if I just watch I have the potential to understand everything. Illyana got upset with me because I responded to what she was saying but not vocalizing. I'm working on not doing that." He opens the box, and his grin is bright. "Neat."

"Do you know what the odd thing is? Sometimes I swear I think at it and it responds. If I could just--" He taps his forehead, "Communicate with it more clearly I feel like... like I could talk to it. Does that make any sense."

Cypher has posed:
After a moment he adds, "For instance I can tell that when you talk to me, you're afraid for me; but you're also wary, because you know that people don't just come back from the dead. You wonder what else is at work. You don't completely trust me." He holds up his hands. "Which is OK! I'm not sure I completely trust me, either."

Phoenix has posed:
"Like reading their minds," Jean says in hushed astonishment, studying Doug anew. "Like reading my mind," she adds a little quieter, a small, but genuine chuckle bubbling up as she shakes her head. Combing her fingers back through her hair, her eyes fix on his and she nods along with the rest of his explanation, wincing when Illyana being upset is mentioned.

Inside, as promised, is a box with a tiny, current-gen circuitboard and another with a set of tools, including a magnifying glass. As he grins at the contents, she lets her shoulders fall a little, relieved.

"Well," she begins to say, "If-- "

Doug isn't quite finished, though-- and his reading causes her to stiffen and recoil. It takes a beat before her mouth shuts; another for her eyes to slip down rather than staring as she's reminded - not for the first time, exactly, though it rather feels that way - of what it's like to have her inside exposed the way the rest of the world's are. After another moment, a hand comes up to rub at the back her neck and her head slowly begins to shake.

"You're-- " Her eyes flick up to meet his briefly. "-- pretty-- good," she murmurs. "There's a-- " She swallows, hard, and her other hand comes up to knit behind her neck. "-- lot-- a lot-- that we don't understand about. Well. Any of-- " Her hands unknit to gesture around the air between them for a couple of seconds, palms facing the gray-skinned boy. "-- this-- and that's obviously gonna be worrisome, on all kinds of levels. But-- however concerned we might be, it's for you as much as it's because of you-- more, even! Because we don't. Understand. Any of this. And that's..."

Again, her hands unknit, only this time, they return to Doug's shoulders. "... well, things like this, they've got to have some kind of a cost, right? So. We're going to figure this all out. Together. For you."

After a long beat and a squeeze, she quietly adds, "In case you're some kinda ticking timebomb who's gonna kill us all, which, not gonna lie, it's gonna take an awful lot of words I don't understand from Hank for me to not worry about that, a little. I blame my upbringing," with a small, tight smile.

Cypher has posed:
"But that's just it!" Doug says. "I'm not reading your THOUGHTS. I'm reading your face! The pitch of your shoulders, the way you blink, the way your fingers move, the set of your mouth. And I just... I *know*." He says. "I know what it means. It's just so obvious to me. I don't quite understand it, but Jean, it's not telepathy! I swear. Illyana thought I was psi too... but I'm not. Think of your..." I don't know, "Your paternal grandmother's maiden name." He pauses. "No idea!"

Then he says, "It's not just me you're worried about, either, is it. It's... something else. I don't know exactly what." He tilts his head, and his eyes narrow, sleepily. "You're looking for something in me. Some sort of answer about why I'm not dead. I don't know, Jean! I got... infected with a space virus because my best friend is -- was -- a space alien and somehow some... guy in a carnival mask was able to use it to make my dead husk live, and I think he's going to use it to do something horrible and I'm worried I might dissolve into a pile of slime at any moment, or turn into a robo-zombie except something about what I'm hearing from this STUFF tells me that's not what it wants."

"I should be dead. But I'm not. I'm not. And you'd think it'd be thrilling, but it's mostly just scary."

"Like, am I really Doug Ramsey, or just some sort of imposter?"

Phoenix has posed:
"'Like' reading my thoughts, Doug." Tapping her right temple, Jean quietly assures, "I know you're not psychic-- you're still describing something incredible, in terms of what your powers 'should' do."

Her eyes flick down at herself once it occurs to her that he's-- looking-- at her, again.

Still.

A sharp breath is pushed out as her right hand returns to his shoulder, and a moment after that she peers into his strange, red eyes. Which makes it that much easier to see her grow bemused as the story goes from a space virus(okay) to Doug's space alien BFF(okay, but Warlock was/is weird as hell) to a festive, malevolent necromancer(what!) and the lingering possibility of a second death(perfectly reasonable concern, actually).

"Are you Doug Ramsey?" she gently wonders in reply. "Do you feel like him?" Her own head tilts a little as her hands spread from his shoulders and rise - slightly - to hover near the sides of his skull. "How much do you remember about yourself-- your life? You can take inventory, if you haven't-- or, we can investigate, if you'd rather. Maybe even find a way to communicate with-- It. Anything you need to work through this, find some kind of-- well. Equilibrium, if not 'peace'."

Cypher has posed:
Doug closes his eyes, briefly. "I remember my life. I remember my friends. I feel like Doug Ramsey but just..." He says, "There's nothing. I remember being shot, and I remember it going dark, and cold, and then..." He says, "Pain. And something reaching out, pulling things into me. Which in hindsight was probably organic matter within a reasonable range of my corpse."

He looks up at Jean briefly, and meets her eyes, and says, "You're doing this as much for you as you are for me. You feel a connection between us." He blinks, once. "I'm okay with that. You don't have to explain yourself. I want to live, Jean. And if my powers have changed, if they've grown... then I need to grow with them."