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Okay, he got that jump - OH COME ON. Okay, okay. Fine. Jump right there, at that moment, and then not-quite-immediately afterwards jump again. One more time.

That was a voice, not the game. Aiden looked up.

He almost started to just sort of nod, but then he remembered why he was here. Waiting for Maya. To try to work on the second-worst thing that had ever happened to him. Like an adult.

Which he still didn't want to do, but he'd still managed to distract himself briefly with the game. He shoved the phone back into a pocket and pushed himself to his feet. Didn't want to do this. Didn't want to do any of this. Had to suck it up and do it... but he really didn't want to.

"Er, hey Maya," he managed. How obvious was it that he didn't want to do this but was trying to make himself do it anyway? Considering recent and distant history, probably very.

Please don't comment on it, please don't comment on it, please don't comment on it.

Good taste, huh?

How about no. Aiden let his expression sour a little bit, and then just reached into the glass to take out some of the ice Sam had so thoughtfully made. That was one aspect to cold mutations he would rather have over some of his details, sometimes. If he had to be heat-sensitive, the least he could do would be to make the heat go away at will.

The ice tasted a bit like the whiskey, and Aiden made a face at it, but it was definitely less horrible and overwhelming - and burning - in smaller doses.

"West coast branch. Training mission in Alaska." He looked at Sam, faintly and almost warily suspicious. "I'm pretty sure you would have at least seen a report about it, if you didn't actually sign off on it." Was Sam not doing his work, or had it just slipped his mind? Or was he just trying to get Aiden to tell the whole story?

Well, he wasn't going to get it in one go if he also felt like trading. Aiden hadn't really heard much of Sam's stories, though, and knowing that the leader of the X-Men had nearly died multiple times wasn't quite the same as hearing the details from the man himself. "Sounds a lot more pleasant," he muttered, and then swallowed the chunk of ice; it hadn't really melted at all, but whatever.

"Have anything more along the lines of just fine, nothing going on, then, oh, being on the inside of a TV after someone unplugs the cable connection?" Was that a little bit sarcastic? Would Sam notice or care that a trainee was maybe being almost not intentionally sarcastic towards him?

Was it even sarcasm? The description was seriously the one that felt closest after all this time.

Sam was saying something about enjoying.

Aiden was preoccupied with the fire attempting to liquefy his tongue and throat. It wasn't the same kind of heat as, say, the firebird that had attempted to live in his window once upon a time, but it was still very much NOT ENJOYABLE.

The coughing eventually tapered off, but it took longer for Aiden to get his breath back. And then for the redness in his face to go away.

At the end of all that, he just felt dizzy and there were still too many possible things to pin it on. He should probably sit down. Especially if Sam expected there to be lots of talking. On the other hand, sitting down would open that talking door wider.

He still needed to sit down. So he did. "I seriously don't know what happened. We were out on the glacier in two or three different groups. I think something happened in one of the groups." Sitting down hadn't really helped the dizziness, but time seemed to be helping. "And then there was a whole lot of nothing." He shuddered through the reminder. It helped hide the remembered pain too, pain he could never place but undeniably felt.

Aiden steeled himself and pushed the door open at Sam's shout. No turning back and crawling back into some semi-familiar hole. Not anymore. It took another swallow as he stepped inside, but actually seeing Sam was a little bit of a shock.

It wasn't like he'd been gone for a decade, was it?

So what was going on for Sam to be quite so unshaven and surrounded by alcohol this early? Sure, it was Sam: that there was alcohol at hand was a given. But something still seemed a bit off.

But that wasn't why he was here. He trusted Cafas, at least, to keep anyone around him from doing anything too incredibly stupid. Unless over-training was included? But anyway. His brain was sort of skipping over things like a cd player that wasn't held perfectly steady while running. What was he even here for-

Right, right. He cleared his throat a little. Very little; it was all for the purpose of actually clearing his throat and not at all to make noise. "So, I, uh, guess you've heard by now. That, well. I'm not dead?"

That was... an incredibly awkward way to start a conversation with his freaking leader. The first one after returning.

From being assumed dead by all parties.

Could he still crawl back out the door and find some dark hole in which to leave himself?

Aiden really, really wished he could just not be an X if it meant dealing with this.

Not really. Not at all. Being an X was something he actually took seriously, which was why he was sitting here waiting for Maya. Despite wanting to do this so very, very, very little. Even not directly thinking about it made all the muscles along his spine in his neck and shoulders curl in on themselves and try to make themselves as small as possible.

It was not comfortable at all, despite the designed-with-exhausted-people-in-mind chair he was in. Poking at his new phone and trying to find some random game to download that might distract him for a few minutes. Pretending he had slept properly. Feeling like he both had been back forever, had maybe never left, and was completely and totally out of place. Like him in a sunbaked frying pan of canola.

Hadn't been fun or appropriate, by the by. Like, at all. It had easily been the worst part of the trip.

He would rather do this than that. Or, rather, what he was waiting for. Which was sitting down and formally talking to a senior X about his mutation. And whatever the @#$%ing @#$% it had done. And how at least stop being so haunted by it, which logically (and by experience, little as he wanted to admit it) required that he know more about it.

He didn't want to know more about it. He knew that it hurt and it was empty and it had torn his life apart without even passing him something sticky to put it back together.

A few years ago, Aiden probably would have completely pretended it had never happened and just buried himself in video games and music and never thought at all, lest it rear up to haunt him more. He'd at least grown up a bit.

Which was stupid and unpleasant and he would rather go back to an ignorant kid with no responsibilities, because that's really what this was about, being a responsible X and not being a liability to the team he did really truly want to be a part of. A team he wanted to help however he could.

And right now, he would probably be less helpful than when everyone had thought he was dead.

...

More dead than he kept being in this video game. Not that the constant deaths stopped him from trying to get through the trap-studded dungeon. He just had to jump there at that exact moment...

For at least a moment, the game held enough of the former teenager's attention that he didn't look quite so miserable about life.

And now she was smiling.

He was lost. There wasn't going to be any recovering from this. He might as well just throw his hands in the air and walk away. Figuratively. It would be very rude to do that literally, and would kind of defeat the defeat. But not in a way he wanted.

Dealing with people was hard. Why was it so hard. Someone else should do all the dealing with people, someone alive and not so wound into his soul.

"It's not you in particular," Aiden said quietly, not quite a mutter but definitely less than full-voiced. Not that he ever really spoke loudly. He could, he just... didn't usually see a reason to speak loudly. He usually felt more like crawling into a dark, cold corner and pretending the world didn't exist.