After the throw-down in the street she had wandered off, still drunk and probably concussed from the killer sucker-punch to the jaw. Streets all blended together and she wasn't paying attention to how far she had gone, too distracted by the constant drip of slowly coagulating blood into her eyes. There was an ache where she'd been hit, and her forehead smarted a bit, but she was out of it enough that she didn't really feel how bad the wounds actually were. 

Juniper stumbled into an Alley and sat, propped against rough, cool cement as she let her head fall into her arms and just focused on breathing. Her head was swimming in that way that signaled she'd gone overboard with alcohol. The few random drinks she had while at the party would have been enough to dull all of the confusing, nagging thoughts in her head, but no. Since when had she ever made a smart decision like that?  Xander had gotten on her nerves and she'd stormed off with a stolen bottle of vodka in her hands, and now look where she was. 

Bruised, bleeding, and fighting off the urge to throw up everything that had led her to tonight's bad decisions. She closed her eyes and let herself drift off into the void, uncaring of where she was or how cold it was at that moment. 

--

She woke up like a frozen corpse the next morning and for a brief moment thought she had straight up died. It was disorienting coming too in a dark, unfamiliar place, in nothing but dress pants and a form fitting black body suit with skeleton bones on it. She'd even forgotten about the paint on her face until she noticed the black smudges on her arms, and some of it came off when she touched her face. Which, in retrospect, was a bad idea.

Her whole upper body felt like she had been hit by a freight train. Attempting to move her head and neck was agonizing, and even gentle touches on the skin of her jaw set a ripple of fire through her nerves. Ouch. Elke really had been trying to knock her head clean off her shoulders, hadn't she? 

It took entirely too long for her to get to her feet, and much longer than she liked to find her way back home. Of course... once she got there, there was also the problem of whether or not Xavier would be home. She really didn't want to run into him yet. Maybe not ever. How was she supposed to apologize for starting a fight with his girlfriend when she didn't really feel bad for it? 

She slipped in through her front door when it seemed like the coast was clear and headed for her kitchen to get a bag of frozen corn for her aching jaw. Berry heard her shuffling around and came bounding from the back, meowing excitedly. 

"...Hey, baby..." It hurt to bend down to pet him, but she managed.

Blue had been very well behaved lately.

For the most part.

He spent a short amount of time as a cat, the time after with a lot of sulking. Juniper had taunted him significantly for how 'cute' he had been, and how he managed to lose his fire-proof pants. But there was dignity he had to regain. He burned a few Christmas trees out of spite. Did some questionable arson around festive displays. But that wasn't anything unusual. Heck, he even left the more charming decorations intact. He was downright merry if you asked him.

But he had a lot to sort out. A lot in his head. He tried to ignore the sensation of frustration with the second rate killers who had tried to finish them off. He also tried to ignore this whole awkward roommate imbalance he had seemed to find himself in with Juniper. It was just, he didn't keep people around as friends. He didn't stay in one place, or grow attached. But from cat, to attacks, to murdering people for her, to her disappearing, it was hard to ignore they had become a bit, well, complicated.

Seeing her come home injured, that was complicated. And the 9-layers of hell that spawned in his chest that caused the floor to scorch was also complicated.

Don't burn down the apartment, rule number 1!

That was hard to focus on as he pushed the heat closer to his torso so he didn't cause more damage, but his eyes seemed to have a darker blue to them. The heat was real. Blueberry seemed to pause and retreat behind Juniper, disliking just how hot it had become.

"Who hurt you," he hissed, and there was no mistaking the murder in his face.

Blue's voice popped up out of the blue and she winced, rolling back up from her half bend. How had she missed him? Maybe it was the massive hangover. She didn't notice the heat, or the anger, or Berry smartly hiding. She did notice his expression though and raised her hands like she was trying to placate an angry tiger.

"Hey now," Rising her voice hurt her throat and her own ears, so she kept it low. "S'not what it looks like, Promise." Lifting her eyebrows also hurt, because it jostled the wound she apparently hadn't even bothered to clean. Drunk past Juniper was absolutely just the worst.

"I got in a scrap, but... like, I kinda started it. Uh... ended it too, I think." Did deciding you were done and leaving count?

She went to lean against her own counter and flinched when it pushed into one of the many tender stops she'd gotten from rolling haphazardly down the fire escape stairs.

"You... should see the other guy?" She laughed, instantly regretted it, and stopped. Vodka hangovers just plain sucked compared to all the other kinds.

"I'm fine, probably, don't worry about me. I just need ice." It had been a while, but kinda hard to forget the process. Ice it, disinfect it (generally if you had any alcohol left), and sleep it off. The rest could be covered up with makeup.

"D'we still have frozen stuff? Need to ice my jaw." She was back to gently pressing on it and moving it slightly to see if she could ease the ache.

Not what it looked like.... Blue’s brain barley registered what he was being told. It looked like blood. It looked like cuts and injuries and pain and he wanted to bust someone else’s face for doing this to Juniper’s.

He felt rage. And that was normal, but the angry twist of coiling emotions still felt unusual. It was the same when she vanished and left him behind, waiting like a wounded animal here in the apartment. He had wondered if they found her, wondered if he should have tracked her... why did he feel betrayed then, and why did he feel pained now?

He...he was not hurt. But when she came home like this, that felt like a knife. He did not like it. He did not like this confusing situation, and how useless it made him feel.

Ice. Of all the damn things in the world she wanted ice. He made it to the freezer in what seemed like two strides from his long legs and yanked it open. The handle sizzled. The air steamed quickly as he tried to turn down his flames. Cool off had a whole new meaning with him right now. He touched an ice tray and it let out steam in a loud hiss. He cussed, and tried to pull his powers back. Reached, hiss.

”First aid kit. And a cloth....” he changed direction and snatched the kit from under the counter, managing not to melt it. He got a clean towel which he almost threw at her face when it started to get hot.

Ah, @#$%, that hadn't been what she'd meant at all! Blue took it upon himself to march on over and try to get it for her. She couldn't muster up the energy to try to stop him. When that ultimately failed he moved on; Juniper remained silently watching as he went along.

She wasn't dexterous enough at the moment to fully avoid the towel but flinched on instinct and it landed on a shoulder instead of her face. "Thanks..."

It was warm in her hand, and dry, but it was better than nothing. She still had all the paint on anyway. As gently as she could she set about wiping the black and white paint off, carefully avoiding the most painful areas.

"...Sorry." She hated apologizing. Seemed to be doing it an awful lot lately, though. Even if she wanted to be sorry, she was never really sure if she was. You were supposed to regret it, wish you could go back and change things, feel bad... something, right? She struggled with that on good days. Right now it was hard to feel anything.

"I..." Back and white mixed to splotchy grey, and the more of the paint she wiped off the more the angry, still welling bruise along the entirety of her jaw started to show through. "... don't wanna upset you. Like, I would have come back sooner, but I was really drunk when it happened and I just kinda passed out after the fact."

The towel was ruined by the time she was done. Her face wasn't even close to being clean, and her tender scrubbing had caused the cut above her eyebrow to re-open a little. There was no dramatic seeping of red though, just a little dribble.

She didn't like the feeling of people she liked being mad at her, or around her in this case. It made her feel helpless and that was something she tried hard to avoid.

He threw a towel at her. Blue had a moment of what a normal person would have taken for sheepishness but it vanished in the empty cave where all his emotions seemed to drown. He had other emotions there. The feeling of abandonment when she hadn’t returned. The grief over the dang cat who used to live here. But rage always stayed on top. It was easy to be angry. Angry was natural for him, as natural as burning things around him.

Blue started to get her water, but a bit of steam and he abandoned the bowl he tried getting. She was making smudging makes all over her face. He waited.There was blood, so he he returned to the bowl, and dabbed at it. Damn....he couldn’t sense temperature! Uh, heat...heat was energy....he didn’t feel much energy so it must be cool? ”Uh, here. You need to clean it.”

He got another towel, wet it, then held it out. No steam. He finally had the flames back under control. Blueberry took this chance and hopped onto the counter then batted at the little box where Blue stored his food. Blue tossed him a few little kibbles then returned to helping Juniper.

”Stop talking.” he could have said a lot to the apologies. His eyes flashed once when she mentioned being drunk and passed out somewhere, but he didn’t say anything. That was her choice, even if he thought she was trying to do the more straight and narrow thing. Heck, even he was committing less arson... But she was upset, and that led to drinking. For now, she just needed help. He managed to clean the cut and fished out a butterfly closure to secure the wound on her eye. There was a speed to his actions that showed he fixed up more than enough wounds in his day. He had lots of fights. Not all of them he could roast his way out of.

"Thanks." She didn't have any mirrors around the apartment as decoration, but she had one in her makeup bag and there was of course one in the bathroom. Having caught the wet rag he'd give her she headed off to her room to get her makeup back, and then came back. She would need a shower eventually but just didn't feel like it yet.

Her jaw clenched at his, uh... demand? Request? Whatever. He was right, though. She didn't need to ramble needlessly just because she was anxious. She swallowed the immediate 'Sorry' she had been about to spit out and focused on rubbing off the rest of the facepaint. Underneath it became all the more obvious that she looked like trash, but, in a positive light it wasn't the worst she'd ever looked.

"Never been punched that hard before." She muttered it mostly to herself while twisting her lips away from her bruised cheek and stretching the skin to try and see it a bit better. Previous injuries had always been dealt with as a careful show of dominance. Not really intended to land her in the hospital. She was just plain lucky that Elke hadn't knocked her straight into next Tuesday. She was really getting sick of looking at the inside of hospital rooms.

Once she was apparently clean enough Blue stepped in to apply a little bandage she wasn't familiar with to her forehead. She reached up to touch it like a genius and winced when she pressed too hard. Butterfly closures were one of the many things she was not familiar with. Bambi had always just used regular old bandaids from the store, whatever kind her mom had bought, and when she was on her own she hadn't bothered to use anything at all for the few minimal injuries she got over the years.

"...What kinda bandaid is this?" Her mom hadn't been a bandage kind of person. She kept rolls of hemp cloth on hand and had an army's worth of salves and herbal ointments. She had been heavily into the 'Air it out' theory when it came to cuts and bruises anyway, so unless Juniper was gonna bleed out from something wounds often got a splash of alcohol, and then she was just supposed to let them clot on their own.

Blue didn't know why her surprise was, well, surprising. Maybe it was her confusion over the actual bandage that seemed unusual. But, then she asked what it was. Blue had never thought of a butterfly closure as unusual, but maybe it was something you tended to use when you harmed yourself more seriously. Blue did not phase like Juniper, and as such, he couldn't always escape the incoming attacks. Like a knife that had almost killed him not so long ago...

"Butterfly. Pretty normal for a cut like that. Deeper ones I'm more keen to just super glue. Guess you normal come out on top of your fights," he mused.

That felt reassuring. Why it felt reassuring, he didn't know. Maybe less danger to watch for? No, he would always be on the lookout for danger. He was getting a headache, and moved to sit back on his spot on the cough, Blueberry torn between following and staying with Juniper.

"So, you staying around this time?" He asked, voice managing to stay even now.

She blushed red. Normal? It was a normal one?

Her hand dropped from her band aid so that she could turn and watch him as he moved back to the couch, and she didn't comment on the thing he'd said right away. Did she come out on top of her fights? No.. not normally. Normally she didn't fight. The fight with Elke had been... a first, actually. Normally when she was in that condition she'd head straight to bed to avoid making poor choices and because nothing quite compared to blackout sleep, morning hangover included. One of which she was still dealing with.

Eventually, she headed for the couch as well, because there wasn't anywhere else to sit without looking goofy, and fiddled with her hands in her lap.

"... Probably?" She winced, both from muscles protesting and from her own non-answer. "...I... don't deal with...stuff well. Like.." Jesus, how did she explain this without making it sound like an excuse?

"I just had to go. I didn't-... I didn't think of anyone else."

Juniper frowned and it pulled on her cheek painfully, so she forced herself to stop. Carefully keeping her face neutral was going to be hard seeing as her default expression in situations like this was scrunched and sour.

"I haven't had anybody who would care if I left for... years." Since Mason died... Since Bambi and Kermit. "I'm sorry... really. I'll try to stick around, or like... talk..."

Picking at the skin around her fingernails, she wondered if that was enough. It didn't feel like enough, but... she didn't know if she was capable of more. Promises never really felt possible to keep, so she didn't often make them. Like.. ever.

"I don't really get in fights often. I was mad at Xander, so I drank a lot and came home, and I heard Xavier's girlfriend yelling at him and... I just got so mad because she's just such a b*tch to everyone. So I threatened her and we fought and it didn't really feel like I won much but I knocked two of her teeth out, so..." She pointed at the wound on her head as an explanation of how it had gotten there.

"...and I was still mad, and I didn't wanna come home because I didn't want to explain why I had started the fight." She sighed and melted back into her couch. "...so I just found somewhere to sleep it off and figured I'd worry about it later, and here I am, future Juniper, figuring it out now I guess."

She fixated on the black paint and bits of dried blood still trapped around her fingernails and reminded herself she still needed to shower.

"... My mom never believed in like, band-aids and stuff. She believed in letting stuff air out, so... when I got like cuts and stuff she'd just slap some alcohol on it and let me bleed until it dried." A piece of cuticle was tugged aggressively off before it was ready and it stung. "...I didn't have my ability back then, so I couldn't exactly escape, and-"

She clammed up immediately. Nope. Couldn't do it. Nope nope nope.

"I should go shower." She stood.

Blue wanted to say he understood. He hated the way Juniper looked, a flicker of guilt mixing with her pain and discomfort. He wanted to tell her it was okay she left, but there was a wall in his chest, a layer of cement that seemed to cover his throat and stop him from speaking, breathing.

"You never seemed like the staying still sort, darlin'. So I shouldn't have felt surprised."

The words sounded more like a whisper than he meant them to. But he wasn't angry. If anything, he almost sounded sad. He knew what it was like to not be missed, to vanish without a trace and have the freeing sensation that no one would follow him. He could imagine there was an appeal to her when she left and just vanished for awhile.

Why should he, and Blueberry, and anything here matter?

He never had a parent that would have fixed his wounds. Never had a friend that would have checked if he was injured. Not until now, not until Juniper fell into his life. The flirting and the fire seemed to fade, but it left this discomfort, and he hated it. When she moved to leave, Blue didn't stop her.

"I'm glad you're sticking around, at least for now. Cat's a pain when you're gone...and we need groceries."

Whatever. That was enough for now.