Re: jack's room, x-mansion
[Jack looked back at her. He didn't mind her silent company, didn't mind watching her toy with her touchscreen for a distraction. He liked looking at her, knowing she was here and alive. It was reassurance that no amount of guessing could have created inside the facility.
The 'physicians' had liked to imply that there were other facilities like the one he was locked up in, and that all those who had been hit by the pulse had been rounded up. They would claim that it had been months instead of weeks, blaming the drugs or his weak memory under torture. He didn't know why they did it. There must have been a metric they were noting down - fear? Confusion? The effect of a threat to loved ones? Locked in a windowless warren, it was too easy to being to believe it, to imagine the torture being inflicted on the people he cared about most. Here was Max, though, safe and sound, checking her messages and sitting with him in a windowsill. Yesterday morning he had woken up to the sound of emergency sirens.
He couldn't resist touching her entirely. It would have been nice to forget about everything entirely, to fall in with her and fuck and get as close as he'd wanted to when he recognized her at the facility, all in fire. He didn't want to think about the dead, or try to parse his lack of words, or make sense of any of this. Downstairs, he could hear the quiet clink of washing plates and the hum of electricity through the room. He tugged her gloved hand away from the touchscreen, turning it over in his, smoothing the fabric down over the back of her hand with his thumb.]
[Roughly.] Not we. I.
[He wouldn't be sharing that moment. Not with anyone. And he didn't seem the least bit ashamed.]