It was hard to see this situation in any positive light, but being able to turn into energy could have it's advantages. She wasn't a defensive fighter, but with bigger and tougher mutants out there, she was learning she had to adapt. She glanced at Ty as he shook out his jacket, then glanced away. She shifted, hissing slightly in pain again then settling back down. It was hard to resist moving her leg. The bandages were already bugging her...

"So...what's your plan. I'm not dead, doesn't that make more problems for you?" She said cautiously. She danced around the subject of what he did. She still didn't know how she felt about it. Ticked off? Maybe? But when you didn't value your own life there was a point you couldn't blame people for feeling the same. Maybe she could blame him for not being successful. That seemed possible.

"It's one failed mission. Honestly...I'm glad I failed. I'd have never been able to live with myself if I had managed to...." He shook his head as his voice trailed off.

"The plan now is you.Get you back to health and feeling better. That's my priority. I guess for that duration, we lay low here. When it comes time for me to face the music, I will. Then, I'll take whatever consequences they throw at me, I guess." He shrugged, deciding to cross that bridge when he came to it.

Tses didn't respond, she just looked at him. Watched him, tried to decide where her emotions lied. In many ways she just felt drained. Not mad enough to stay mad, but still hurt enough not to let it go... It would be easy if it were one mistake, but all those memories, they still had pieces that were wrong, broken. The New Years date that didn't happen. The months he went missing and she had to fight her old boss on her own. She still felt claustrophobic after getting kidnapped, and she still felt betrayed by his attempts to erase her from his memory.

But she could remember the good times alongside that, and feel the ache of what she was missing. She was lonely, and sad, and depressed. She shut her eyes and laid against the pillow.

"If you get a chance, I left a back-pack of stuff back on the roof where I used to live... If I'm stuck here for awhile, may as well have that..." She didn't tell him everything that was in that bag, but he might guess at least a few things. The dumb tiara she never got rid of from Chrys, stuffed tigers, clothes... and the copy of Alice in Wonderland. With time, she was sentimental enough not to throw her past away, but she wondered if that made her weak. Should she have gotten rid of it? Should she tell him to just leave? Maybe...

But she kept finding herself pulling it all back.

Ty bit his lip as all fell silent. Not that he could blame her, really. He deserved far worse than the silent treatment, after all. "Yeah, sure. Just sit tight," He said, standing up and pulling his jacket on over his muscle-shirt and zipping it tight.

Tucking his hands into his pockets, he left the hotel, hurrying to her old apartment. As it entered sight, he felt the pang of more memories. Even more flooded his mind as he shimmied up the fire escape to the roof. Grabbing the backpack, he clutched it close to him as if to gather more memories than he'd already gotten with it. Not that it would work; he just felt the need to hold something close to him. He sat on the rooftop for a little while, thinking over everything.

When Ty left, Tses carefully pushed herself into a sitting position on the bed. The pain meds were kicking in, but she was still dizzy and sick to her stomach. She probably should have just rested, but another problem presented itself as he left.

She really had to pee...

Usually, going to the bathroom wasn't such a dangerous adventure, but with a busted ankle and bad shoulder, and halfway drugged, it took an exhausting amount of effort to get to the bathroom. Coming back...

Well, that was about when the meds finally kicked in.

Somewhere between the couch and the bed her head started swimming and she stumbled sideways, slamming her shoulder into the wall. A wave of cursing later she tried to stand back up, put her weight on her bad leg and buckled over in pain. Face hit coffee table, a large amount of swearing filled the room, and Tses rolled over onto her back, holding a bloody nose. For her, laying on her back in a hotel room, coughing up her own blood was about as rock bottom as she felt she could get...well, other than getting thrown into a sewer, that was pretty crappy too...

Curling up on the floor and burying her face against her knees, the tears that refused to come before started falling and she sobbed against the bloody stain on her jeans. This sucked, life sucked. The only one who was around was an x-boyfriend who tried to shoot her. She wanted to think he cared. She wanted to think he felt sorry. But she just felt like a miserable person and wouldn't have blamed him if he never came back.

Roughly five minutes after Ty had left. Roach had entered. He'd waited until she was in the clear, of course, but the matter of forcing the door was a simple one, and silent if you did it properly.

His little friend had been quick to report back; Ty really had been foolish to let her go... Then again, the consequences for letting her die, or killing her, would have been much more dire.

Upon entering the hotel, the giant cockroach wandered on over the couch, and plopped down, waiting patiently for his gracious host.

And how graceful was she? She fell against a wall, she tried to recover, twisted her ankle, smacked her head into a table, and cursed up a storm. It was beautiful. He mocked wiping a tear from under his eye. Sad thing about that; he really couldn't cry. She could apparently; he openly witnessed her blood-sobbing all over herself. He decided in his mind he would now have to coin that term, blood-sobbing.

Gregory gave it a good few moments to sink in before he started slowly clapping.

"Oh, my... good show, good show indeed! A little slapstick to start, and a hefty dose of tragedy to seal in the flavor." His small set of hands started clapping too, he brushed them aside, and stood from his comfortable position. He knew she was on pain killers; otherwise she would be too dangerous to approach. Approach he did, wandering slowly closer, to the left, to take a look at some inane object, to the right to tip over a vase for no reason. Still, ever closer. "Tess... Interesting name... short for anything? I must say, I've heard a lot about you. Pardon my bluntness, madame, but there really aren't more eloquent ways to say this. You look like shit." If you could imagine someone saying that sentence in the most gentlemanly of ways. That's how this was said.

"In short, you look exactly how I imagined you... You see... Like, you, I am a mutant. Obvious, I know, but I don't take you for the type to follow things quickly. Do pay attention, though, because I'm only going to tell you this once." He was quite close, now; whether or not she'd found it in herself to back away. "You have hurt some of your own kind. They were my friends. That is why I had you shot. Had I known Mr Fisher knew you, you would be dead right now. I want that to sink in... I really do. I came here tonight to finish you off..." He leaned down so that he could speak to her just above a whisper; the smell of death on his breath would make most men's blood go cold. "But now, I see that you are so deep in misery, killing you would be the nice thing to do. So, I'm going to let you live... provided... You never hurt another one of my friends... ever again. Ty is a good boy; I have taken a liking to him. He has a lot of potential. You... well, you are a bad influence... you will sever ties with him; we wouldn't want him to have to come to harm because of this unfortunate circumstance, would we?"

He lingered for a moment, and then stood tall. "Good. I'm glad we agree! It's been absolutely boring and pointless talking to you, may you screw up quickly, so that I may have you killed! Good day!" He tipped his hat to her, and turned to wander toward the exit, humming all the way.

Laughter broke through Tses' disoriented mind, and she lifted her head to face the sound. Disbelief registered momentarily in her mind as the images clarified, and her heart started to race in confusion. A giant cockroach... was sitting on the couch, talking to her. Maybe the drugs were stronger than she thought. But considering what she'd seen in the past, a bug mocking her didn't seem so unreal...

>>"Tess... Interesting name... short for anything? I must say, I've heard a lot about you. Pardon my bluntness, madame, but there really aren't more eloquent ways to say this. You look like shit."

She wanted to glare, but somehow, her gut told her now was not the time for it. The cockroach came closer, and the light on her arms momentarily flickered and faded. She moved ever so slightly backward, wiping the blood from her face. Or rather, smearing it across her face. It wasn't an attractive look for her in the long run. He kept coming closer though, still talking, words twisting through her mind alerting her to the danger she was really in.

>>"You have hurt some of your own kind. They were my friends. That is why I had you shot. Had I known Mr Fisher knew you, you would be dead right now. I want that to sink in... I really do. I came here tonight to finish you off..." Her pulse raced again, and she wondered if she could do anything to stop him if he tried. Could that light thing work again? She didn't have her knife handy, not her staff, and she was too weak to create an explosive. Her mind spun slightly and her stomach turned at the smell. The smell was something too real to imagine.

>>"But now, I see that you are so deep in misery, killing you would be the nice thing to do." In many ways, she imagined he was right. Maybe that's what made the verbal blow cut so much. She looked away, trying to tune it out, but the last threat carried. Threatening her was one thing, but Ty? Try as she might, she still couldn't handle the thought of him getting hurt because of her. "I'm pretty sure there aren't many ties left to sever..." She whispered. He tipped his hat and moved towards the door, and her drugged mind didn't register when he really left... The words were still just spinning in her mind.

She crawled back to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet, sick with the words playing in her head and the pain moving through her body. Then she collapsed on the bathroom floor and swore every corner of the room had a cockroach watching her carefully...

>>"May you screw up quickly, so that I may have you killed!"

Ty was much later than he'd intended. He'd lost track of time, both in his own thoughts, and because he went back to dispose of the gun he'd used to shoot Tses. And in the process, he swore never to use one of those blasted things ever again. He hated guns, which made his current predicament even more despicable.

He finally made his way to the hotel room. "Sorry I'm late, Tses. I got lost in my thoughts. Of you...I must admi--Tses?" He dropped the bag on the bed as his heart raced and his throat got tight. Frantically, he started to search, quickly finding her passed out on the bathroom floor.

"Oh God...you poor thing..." Carefully, he picked her up and carried her to the bed. Then, he rushed back to the bathroom, wet a bunch of rags, rung them out, and made his way back to her. Gently, he began washing her face free of the blood, then her arms and hands. Then, he ran another rag through her hair.

"I'll never forgive myself for leaving you like this...making you like this." Tossing the wet rags on the bathroom, he pulled up a chair and sat by her bedside.

In Tses' delirious mind, she was running from a swarm of cockroaches.... Tiny laughing cockroaches, with hats, chuckling as she raced through the alleyways. "May you screw up quickly, so that I may have you killed!" They chanted. Sewer hatches opened, and monstrous creatures snarled at her, claws flashing and joining the chase. Birds flew from the sky and pecked at her, cawing with talons flashing. Shakes slithered from fire escapes, and crashed cars simmered in the streets. Like a haunted house of her mistakes, she tried to run away, the laughter following her.

"Go away! Leave me alone!" She screamed, tripping and falling in the street. As she raised her head, there was the sound of gunfire, and pain exploded from her shoulder...

The moonlight powered mutant woke up screaming and flailing. Thankfully for Ty, she also jerked into light form, and her wayward punch passed right through his face.

"Cockroach....in a hat...and..." She scrambled backwards, falling off the bed and lightly hitting the floor. She couldn't feel the floor...why couldn't she feel the floor... She glanced around in panic, looking for the giant bug, desperately trying to cling to the floor, but her hands rested weightlessly above the carpet fibers.

Ty blinked,he wanted to hold her, help her, but she was in her new...light form-thingy right now. And she punched him in--er...through the face. "Heh..." He giggled lightly. "Sorry...that kinda tickles." He took a deep breath, taking in what she was saying.

"Roach...he was here?" Ty's eyes turned cold all of a sudden. Roach had done some low-down stuff, but that...well whatever he did probably ranked somewhere a notch above or below shooting the girl you love. "Tses...you have to tell me. What did he do to you? He didn't hurt you any did he?" Okay that was a dumb question. He probably couldn't have physically hurt her more than Ty already had.

Tses missed Ty's chuckle, brain still turning with the flood of images in her head. She might have swatted at him again for laughing, but then they would just be in an endless cycle of her arm going through him and him laughing. Now wasn't a time for chuckles. She tried to lean against her knees but she was still stuck all glowy and incorporeal... She couldn't feel any pressure from the action, and the contact was what she needed.

"He didn't do anything, he just...knocked over the vase, said he was going to kill me then..." She couldn't breathe. Could light breathe? Laughing cockroaches were everywhere... It was a good thing she hadn't eaten all day, at least she was out of things to throw up.

That was all Ty needed to hear. In a heartbeat green gloves hit the floor. Bending down, he picked up the vase, focusing intently, weeding past every late night rendezvous, every honeymoon, everything else that vase had seen. The encounter was all that mattered.

By the end of it, Ty's brain was throbbing. "Ah man...I've only made things worse now...all I ever wanted was to have her back, but I always end up making it worse..." he muttered a little louder than he intended. He was out of ideas. He was out of plans. Maybe the two of them were just out of luck.

"I...what do you think?" he asked. "What happens now?"

>>"What happens now?"

The glow from Tses figure lessened, then gradually dissipated. The fear drifted away as she looked at him, still dizzy, but more focused on the question than her own concerns. "What happens is we listen to him...I'm not going to get you killed over me. I'm the one he's mad at. I'm the one who did everything to tick people off." She remarked, pain moving through her body now that she was sitting on the floor in a more solid manner. Her hands clenched and unclenched, the action sending prickles of pain through her shoulder blade and down her back.

Ty wasn't the only one with a headache...

Ty bit his lip, now from anger instead of pain and self-pity. "So that's just it then? We never see each other again? We just...give up? I've done some low-down, rotten, terrible things to you, I know. But all I ever really wanted was--nevermind. It doesn't even matter anymore."

He sighed."I've done so many things to fill the void leaving you left me with. And I admit this mess I'm in over my head in may be one of them. I like that life, I do...but...Tses it's not you. And now I can never have that again? I....Dammit..." He kicked at the ground, the vase he'd used his powers on being caught underfoot and smashing against the wall as he flopped back on the couch.

"Whatever...I guess I deserve no less anyway..."

Tses didn't have any strength left to be angry. Unlike Ty, she never really had hope they would ever work out again. In her mind it was just another scar, just another blow, just another hatchet buried in her back. You loved, you lost. Why hope it would change? But it hurt to hear him blame himself, hurt to say it didn't matter. Hurt to hear him talk like there could have been something, something could have been fixed.

"You always talk like that, but you never realized you deserved more..." She whispered, then tried to push herself back to her feet. One armed, one legged, she ended up cussing and kneeling awkwardly at the base of the bed, fingers clenched around the blankets in a fist. Roach was right.... just killing her would have been nicer than leaving her like this.