Re: jack's room, x-mansion
[He watched as she climbed up onto the window seat, marking her careful distance. She would have to touch him, she said, to see what he saw. It was a poetic statement, and normally he would have it filtered through the lens of figurative language. Not today. He took the words as literally as they sounded, and made the connection after a moment of looking. Gloved hands, the fiery avatar of destruction in the facility, pale hair and blue eyes. The whole world had become a stranger while he'd been locked away, Max, his own body, everything. The world was a new place, disorienting, overstimulating, full of rage.
Hearing her laugh actually did make it through, though, enough to see the rigidity in his posture loosen minutely. She didn't seem bothered. Max never seemed bothered by much of anything. She was so good at that, carrying on as if nothing had ever been wrong.]
[Bluntly.] If I knew you in flames, I'd know you anywhere. [It was succinct, simple, and rather unlike him. Words obviously weren't coming easily to him, not now. It was difficult just to fully focus on this room, and not the sounds on the floor downstairs or beyond the glass, or to let his thoughts be tugged back beyond today.]
I guess...just having sex and not talking won't going a possibility, this time? [Even absent a real smile, that shred of black humor was a sign that somebody hadn't managed to simply turn off every important part of him. He was struggling, and he was different, and he was still himself, the same way she was. He tipped his head up, really looking at her now that she was across from him. Physically it was almost as if nothing had happened at all. There wasn't a visible scratch on him.
Finally, he dredged up a question.] What happened to the others? At that place. [He wanted to know that those who had survived were a million miles away. He wanted to imagine good lives for them. That would be right.]