It wasn't that Serena didn't trust the University provided Doctors, it wasn't that she didn't think that the Doctors that worked near her apartment weren't well qualified or good about their jobs. But none of them were the Doc. It wasn't just that he was excellent at his job, or could cure ailments on the fly. It was that he was firstly, clued in about mutants. Secondly he was firm in his beliefs and very moral. And thirdly, and most important Serena liked him.

And as such, she tended to come out to the mansion for check ups, she liked to do it in the mornings nice and early just as he was setting up for the day. Before most people were awake. And more importantly before the X-men needed his services. At the end of the check up he nodded at her with his sweet smile. "You're looking all clear, perfect bill of health." He paused for a moment before adding. "How about the dreams, any recently?"

He was referring to her old habit of recurring nightmares, some of which revolved around her power. She shrugged. "Not much in the way of nightmares at least, I think I've dealt with most of it in my own time. No longer being in denial about being messed up by everything helps." She smirked. "The first step that people talk about really isn't a load of rubbish." She sighed and stretched out. The girl replaced her tank top over her sports bra and sighed, stretching out. "Any interesting gossip?" She asked mostly in a throw away manor.

"As it so happens, Aiden is back. Remember him?" Serena blinked and nodded. "Very recently in fact, I've not had a check up with him yet. Remind him if you see him please."

Serena nodded, thanked the kindly old man and set off on her morning run. She hadn't done one around the mansion grounds recently with the whole not living here all the time thing anymore, but she certainly hadn't forgotten about the layout or her normal route. She tended to do it this early, and with this particular route because she used to do this to avoid contact with others for one reason or another, it was solitary and good for clearing her head.

The mention of her old nightmares had her a little riled up today, so she took to the run with more fire than usual, skirting around some trees and a fountain with a good pace. She was quite clearly fairly fit. She hadn't seen anybody else on the grounds apart from some staff this early, so imagine her surpise when she saw someone else on the route, getting ready to run too.

She was little distracted by thoughts of her old demons, so it took her a moment to realise she recognised the man she'd just ran past. She skidded to a halt and turned around slowly. She blinked just to make sure she wasn't seeing things. She'd only just heard mention of him, and here he was. She pulled the headphones out of her ears. "... Aiden?"

Sleep did amazing things, especially when it was in the building that had proven itself to be more of a home than his parents' house had become. The only part of his childhood home that had truly been home, he had come to realize, had been his brother, but Conri was dead. It still hurt, but he could at least think the phrase without crumpling in on himself.

Sure, he had slept in a guest room last night, but still. It was the closest he had been to home in such an incredibly long time.

He'd woken early, body still used to farm hours, and had slipped out to run rather than wander the still-sleeping building in lost idleness. There was a ton of things he had to do, most of which he was probably going to hate doing, but it could wait. It was still so early. He'd just run for a while.

Running had helped him more than just about anything else after he'd woken up to find himself as... himself, in himself, in the way he knew himself to be. He hadn't fought nightmares all night but he still enjoyed the run. His body needed it too, both after the forced inactivity of traveling and before he slipped back into the chaos of being an X.

Whatever was going on now. The city was tense.

As he jogged, he began to see people around. Other early morning people, mostly out for a bit of exercise. He couldn't place any of the faces. They didn't seem to place him either, so there was the perfect level of socializing: a brief nod and nothing else.

Then someone called his name, and he stopped hard. She was... maybe kind of a little bit familiar? He rubbed a bit of sweat from his forehead as the last few snowflakes of his jogging settled to the ground and melted. "Hello?"

Serena understood the need to be outside this early, that was for sure. She felt like she'd spent more time running the grounds or swimming the pool than she had inside or in classes. There may even have been some degree of truth to that feeling. Though she was mostly out here today by coincidence, she couldn't even blame a sleeping pattern as hers was so sporadic as it was.

She blinked at the man, before realising it had been such a long time ago that he probably had some trouble recognising her. Heck, she had some trouble realising it was him. She'd only met him directly once or twice, and though she'd heard that he'd been affiliated with the X-men, he was definitely not a person that had coincided with her social circles. She felt bad though, she hadn't even known that the man had been missing. She felt empathy for people on a deeper level than some others, and she was angry with herself for not knowing.

"Sorry, you probably don't recognise me, we've met before." She let out a deep breath of morning air, she had just been running quite fiercely. "I'm Serena. I heard you'd just gotten back, from the Doc just a minutes ago." She replied with a firm but friendly tone. She remembered him being... Difficult before, to say the least. She hoped that he was a little more adapted to being social.

She seemed surprised that he didn't seem to remember her. So they had met before? Aiden racked his brain, but in all honesty most of his previous time here had been tangled up in denial and heartbreak and social incompetence. Some of the stress was going, but he still rated his social skills at maybe a one. If the scale was at least a hundred. Probably more, but rounding was probably okay.

And it made sense that word was getting around that he was back. It brought back the weight of everything he had to do, to play catch-up with. Couldn't he put off sensible for a while longer? He just wanted to be home for a while, and be able to just be.

"Last night," he confirmed, quiet as he always was. Was... was he supposed to say anything else? Was she expecting anything else?

Hopefully she'd ask. Or just keep running. It would be nice and calm if she kept running.

Serena wondered what the man could have been through, he had some snark about him the last time they'd met. But he had a sense of weariness about him. If the previous rumours of him being a member of the X-men had been true she couldn't imagine what it had been, but it can't have been easy for him one way or another. She wondered if he needed to talk about what it was. If he hadn't seen the Doc yet and he was being this quiet, she imagined that he hadn't.

Most people didn't realise that they needed to until they started. She was impartial one way or another and if he wanted to she'd probably listen. She smiled gently at the man. It made sense though that he hadn't been in a huge rush to get a check up from the Doc if he'd only just recently gone in. She did wonder just where he had been, but she decided she wouldn't push for any details. At least not yet.

She gave the boy a soft look and gestured towards the running route. "You don't have to talk if you don't want to, but would you like to run with me? It's better if you run with someone else, light competition is good for it." She spoke factually as it was backed by quite a lot of empirical evidence as far as she was concerned, there was a fairly obvious reason that most people ran in pairs.

The more he looked at her (not that he really looked at her so much as in her direction, especially unable to meet her eyes even if he could at least go around without sunglasses now) the more vaguely almost familiar she seemed. Especially with her accent. Accents and languages did tend to hold more impact for him.

Still, he couldn't name anything he'd done with her, or if he'd actually spent any time talking to her. A classmate, maybe? One of the people who was around enough to make a subtle impact without the enormous splash of someone like Cafas?

Aiden also decided he liked her more when she offered not-talking, and he nodded. He tried not to be relieved about not being prodded and nagged into pretending to chatter, but it still swirled up his spine like the scattered snowflakes that drifted into existence as he fluidly began moving again. That was something Cafas had given him: acceptance of his mutation, or at least what he truly knew of it, and then the habit of moving smoothly and gracefully whenever he was active. It wasn't flaunting his power, just building the subconscious habit so that it would be closer to hand if trouble arose.

"Running's been one of the only things I could do properly," he said after a while. If he told a handful of people the gist of what had happened, he'd get fewer questions. It would be less interesting, and he'd be left alone. "I'm a lot more used to running alone."

Didn't mean he wanted to talk.

Serena tilted her head at him. She wondered what had happened to him, she wasn't quite sure if she could place her finger on the unusual impression that she was getting from the man. She recalled him being somewhat close to her age, but again she'd not really ran in his social circles so she couldn't confirm that with 100% certainty. She didn't say anything much.

She nodded, without inquiring into the statement. She fixed in on the vibe he was giving her, she recogised it as being similar to the one she got whenever she was near Sam. Obviously without the smell of bourbon on his breath... But Aiden felt broken to her, in a way like that of Sam.

She didn't like seeing people in positions like that, and she certainly didn't like feeling like she couldn't say anything about it, for fear of scaring the socially impaired away. Life sucked sometimes, she'd just have to deal with it. It wasn't like it was her job to try and fix the people around her anyway. She'd come out here to run, so whether he'd join her or not she was going to run.

She nodded gently. "That's more reason to do it then, challenge yourself well you work off whatever you need to." She was speaking about both of them, and that much was evident. She slipped her headphones back in and took a breath in, beginning again at a jog, easing back into the pace she had going, she didn't look to see if he was running too, or avoiding her.

Aiden continued to utterly fail to even attempt to make eye contact. Serena didn't try to talk or nag or pry, though, and that was good. He could appreciate that. Being near people who didn't try to rip him open was okay. It wasn't the same as being alone, but it definitely wasn't like being tossed around by a staring, jeering crowd.

It was...

He wasn't sure he'd call it nice, but there was a sort of reassuring calmness to it. Just being with someone, without all the negative connotations and associations of being with people. It had mostly been Conri who'd pulled that off, and Conri had been special. Aiden had since come across other people he could tolerate, or appreciate in other ways, but while he had nothing but respect and appreciation for Cafas it wasn't exactly calm time.

He thought a lot more when he ran without music, he'd found. He was closer to being able to getting music back, but not yet. So he thought, and then thought about thinking.

"Something happened while I was on a training mission with the west coast branch," he eventually said. When he did say it, it was quiet but not hesitant. He'd had a lot of time to think about this. "My mutation was involved somehow but..." he shook his head. "And then I couldn't even get word back here. I couldn't do anything until spring." And spring was late-coming there, so far north and so deep in the mountains.

One of the best ways that she'd dealt with traumatic things in the past funnily enough, was running. Even if you had crippling dreams that made it hard to sleep, if you exercised regularly and thoroughly enough your body refused to let you get anything less than restful sleep when you did lay down and close your eyes. Of course, the most permanent solution was a bit less direct, and involved actually facing down the cause of whatever was troubling you...

She ran in silence for a bit, vaguely aware of the sound of her controlled breathing as she moved. Serena may have not been a wall of muscle, she may not have had the kinetic energy behind her movements that somebody like Sam, or Mirror or even undoubtedly Cafas likely had. But she was light, her body was sleek. And she was fluid. There was very little wasted energy in her movements, and as a result she found herself more comfortable with marathon running than sprinting, which suited using up time in a morning like this one just fine.

She glanced to the side just a little, not making a huge show of checking if Aiden was running with her, but he was there. That was what mattered, he was willing enough to maintain a gentle social contact, which was also fine.

Serena turned her music down intentionally to be able to hear if he started to speak. And so he did, only quietly. She pulled her headphones out as she moved, listening to him quietly. She waited a minute or so after he'd finished before replying simply. "I know a thing or two about traumatic experiences with mutations." She paused, glancing to the side gently. Studying his body language she softly added. "I'm sorry." there was a genuine sympathy in her voice.

Gahhh he missed running with music. It was so hard not to concentrate when all he could hear were footsteps and breathing and fabric-on-fabric!

He'd spent so much time running, or carving out paths in the snow so that he could run. It wasn't cold or anything, the problem with running in six feet of snow. It was simply being able to physically move through it. Especially wet, heavy snow. There were so many times everyone openly expected him to die of hypothermia or at least get sick from the cold, but the worst snow ever did to him was bruise.

That was more ice anyway. The main thing in common between snow and ice, though, happened to be the only part that he'd willingly, openly label good: they were both cold.

It was not cold here. It was looking like it was going to be ungodly hot once again... at least by Aiden's very biased standards.

Why had he worked so hard to come back to somewhere so warm gahhhhhhhh

Because warm or not, this was where the people who cared about him were. There wasn't exactly an excess of those. Plus he had a job to do. He'd both agreed and decided to do that job, so he'd better get back into it.

"Have you ever been somewhere where there wasn't anything?" Nothing but pain. He should at least learn how that had happened so that he could avoid it ever happening again.

It was like a literal version of how the world had felt after Conri died. Empty, so empty that it wasn't even dark. The only real thing was the pain.

Serena preferred running in the early hours of the morning. In the winter, the sun was just coming up and it usually wasn't bitingly cold yet, and in the summer the sun was just coming up, so it's rays hadn't been given the time to heat up the environment to the point that just a short run was dehydration inducing, which was not a fun way to feel after exercising to improve your health.

The blonde kept up a steady pace, smiling to herself that Aiden was able to keep up with her without very much trouble. She wasn't sure on the specifics of his power either, but she did recall their first meeting involving snow, so she assumed that his powers were in the same sphere as Sam's, at the very least.

Serena always wondered how people would react to her power. She figured that Aiden wouldn't be too freaked out by it, as some people had a tendency to do around her. He seemed... She didn't know if strong was the right word, he seemed somewhat shaken by things that had gone on, but he was still here. And he was still in fairly good condition all things considered. It was a common trait among mutants, she found.

Serena tilted her head at his comment, and thought about the words for a minute, letting them bounce around in her head for a bit. A memory flashed to mind, her after just having moved out of the mansion, rocking on the sofa in her old apartment, before realising what a bad idea living in the place that she'd spent most of her time with her late loved ones in was. She remembered it vividly. It was so... hollow.

The blonde bit her lip. "You could say so, yes. But probably not in the same sense." She answered, thoughtfully.

It took Serena a while to answer. She probably didn't really get what he meant. He shouldn't have said it anyway. He barely knew her, knew basically nothing about her. They were just running the same direction on the same path at the same time. In a story of any medium, this scene would get cut for its useless pointlessness.

And then when she did speak, it was like she was agreeing with that thought. Not the same. Never the same. Sometimes he almost forgot that he was the weird one. The outlier. That puzzle piece that didn't fit anywhere properly and had kind of a weird, vague picture that made you wonder if it was even supposed to be part of that puzzle to begin with, except it didn't match any other puzzles either so it was probably just a factor defect. Mis-cut and mis-printed.

Aiden's pace slowed a little bit. It would be best if she pulled ahead of him and this awkwardness just went away. He couldn't edit the pages out of his life, but he could at least change the scene to something more useful. Like...

...

The mansion had writing supplies for students. He might not be a student anymore, but he could probably still hijack some paper and a pencil. He didn't need fancy stuff to draw.

Serena felt a slightly frustrated feeling build itself in her chest, like carbonation gently building behind a cork. She'd dealt with this kind of awkwardness before, and she usually felt herself compelled to try and help people push through it. Hell, if she could be good friends with James, who would almost have a heart attack if a girl so much as smiled at him, she could get through to an anti-social snowflake.

She heard him slowing down, starting to pull away and searched her brain for solutions to this that wouldn't come across as too hard handed... Why hadn't the adults at the mansion, teachers and stuff helped him get over this by now? She knew that he'd been away for a while, but he was certainly her for a while as a teenager. Ughhhh.

The blonde gritted her teeth where he couldn't see her mouth and exhaled gently, turning her head slightly, easing her pace a little so he couldn't escape that easily. Why was it always her who dealt with the social phobes? "You doing okay? I can slow pace if it's too much for you." she managed to make it sound friendly, avoiding any condescending tone in her voice, surprisingly enough.

She didn't want to leave?

Usually people felt the awkwardness as much as he did, or at least noticed it. Most people didn't want anything to do with the awkwardness, or him. Or if they wanted to have anything to do with him, it was with their perception of him rather than him as he really was, or they wanted to take advantage of him. Once in a while, someone genuinely wanted to help, but he hadn't expected Serena to be one of them.

But she wasn't leaving, even though he'd given her the perfect opening. No, she was offering to slow down so that they'd keep running together.

And she wasn't calling him out on trying to get her to leave him behind either.

So what was he supposed to say now? Because flailing around in his head in general confusion was not producing words. He was just flailing around in his head in general confusion.

"I- I'm fine," he forced out. WHAT WAS HE SUPPOSED TO SAY? "I just-" Nope. No words to continue that.

Now, Serena wasn't exactly an expert at reading body language, she wasn't even a psychology student or anything. But she wasn't too bad at it, and it seemed like her action bad startled Aiden, and not even necessarily in a bad way. She did her best to keep her facial expression neutral, but somewhere in there a concerned smile popped through her expression.

She gave him her most intentionally reassuring, relaxing look. "It's alright, you don't need to be too tense around me. I'm not going to judge you or anything, I'm just here to run and relax." She replied to him gently.

Serena wondered what else she could say to him, her earlier flash of irritation fading quickly, it wasn't his fault he had trouble with the whole social thing, so she cut him a little slack where that was concerned.