Does the Green still run deep in your heart? Open

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

> "Oh… sorry! I’m… well, I think my powers are working a little differently than I’m used to?"

Josh leans into the hug with Bobby and Rogue, oblivious to the fact that Bobby’s leeching his body warmth until he tries to speak again.

“Your i-i-i-i-ice powers are b-b-b-b-back, too.” Josh folds his arms across his bare chest and tries to rub them together for warmth. “Sorry. You’re a l-l-l-l-ot colder than I remember…” He takes a step away from Bobby, and at that distance the air seems to be a bit warmer. Huh.

He looks around the room, but both Hank and Reed must be in the surgical suite or the offices. Josh turns back to Bobby. “So did they tell you what worked? Did the treatments restore your original mutation and cancel out the newer one? Or what?” At this point, he realizes that Bobby probably knows less than he does about the treatment method. At least I was participating in the same reality as Hank and Reed when they were designing it…

> "I'll leave you to your adoring public, Popsicle."

Josh glances back at John disbelievingly. You’re joking. You’re still angry with him? I thought the whole problem was how he went off and gave himself a death sentence without your tacit approval. He opens his mouth, but quickly shuts it. Never mind. Not now. But we’re talking about this later.

> "Um… sorry about that…"

Josh can’t help but smile at Bobby’s reaction. He’d suspected that Robert would have pranced naked through the halls (if Robert had been capable of prancing) without batting an eye. This was definitely a good sign. “Um. Do you want me to run up to your room and get you some clothes? I think everything’s still there. Robert didn’t make any major changes to your wardrobe…”

[Bobby Drake]

> " So did they tell you what worked? Did the treatments restore your original mutation and cancel out the newer one? Or what? "

Bobby shrugs, uncertain. "I guess so? I dunno, really. Last thing I remember was… my birthday party, I think? " That doesn’t feel quite right; it wasn’t anything like a party… but what else could it have been? “Then I woke up to Hank trying to crush my chest and kiss me. Which I’m pretty sure was CPR, but then again you never know with Hank, so… anyway, I dunno. But, yeah, I guess it was something like that… at least, I’ve got some kinda ice-powers back, and the network isn’t talking to me all the time. So that’s good, right?"

The truth is, he’s not entirely sure… his memories of the last few months are, to say the least, bewildering. He hasn’t forgotten anything, at least he doesn’t think so, but it’s all so weird and flat and creepy it’s almost as if someone else had done all those things.

> " Um. Do you want me to run up to your room and get you some clothes? I think everything’s still there. Robert didn’t make any major changes to your wardrobe…"

Bobby blinks at that, confused. "Robert who? And why would he – oh. " A bunch of remembered conversations, mostly with John, coalesce in his memory, and he winces in empathy. "Oh. Ouch. Um… wow. It’s been… I mean, I guess I’ve been pretty out of it lately, huh? Is that why he… " Bobby waves vaguely in the direction of the hallway John ran out into, then looks furtively down at his feet, suddenly ashamed by more than his improvised toga.

"Anyway, no..." He pulls away from the two of them, torn between the need for reassuring proximity and the need for safe distance and allowing the need for actual clothing to break the tie. "I brought a bunch of my clothes down here when I moved out -- " he almost loses it then, a two-month-old memory striking with all the emotional power it didn’t have when it actually happened, but manages to keep it together, turning his back to them so they can’t see the emotions that must be stamped on his face. He grabs a pair of clean jeans and pulls them on under the sheet silently, not trusting himself to say anything, then angrily pulls the sheet off and hurls it to the ground. "—when he fucking kicked me out."

Was I really that awful? He wants to ask, but he’s afraid to… Rogue would find a way to give him the answer he wanted to hear, however evasive she had to be to do it, but Josh might actually tell him the truth and he’s not prepared to hear it. Hell, he’s talking as if I was a whole other person; that should tell me all I need to know.

He pulls on a shirt and turns around with some semblance of self-control, then grabs another and tosses it to Josh. "There… you look like you need it more than I do, anyway. Sorry about that thing with the cold…" Which he’s already apologized for, he thinks, but he feels like he’s apologizing for a lot more than that.

"Hey, would you guys mind if we got out of here? Went somewhere... I don't care, really, just somewhere that isn't the medbay? I'm getting pretty sick of this place, to tell you the truth."