Xaviers!

After what felt like entirely too much explanation to the medical staff, Sam retreats to an unoccupied room in the building with a case of the former headmaster's vials. Setting them down on a counter, she looks at them and sighs.

After a few minutes, Will found her alone in the side room.

"You can be a hard woman to track down, Samantha McManus," he said, closing the door behind him.

In his arms, he held the bloodstained clay pot from earlier.

"I figured you'd want... a little time to yourself?"

"I didn't think you'd keep that around, though."

"Professional jealousy is one thing; this is a rather significant emergency, yeah? Any port in a storm."

He set the pot down on the ground, and walked over to the row of vials. "Still no progress getting stuff out of there and into us?"

"I've just gotten here. Getting a feel for them so I can find yours in all this."

"The science boffins out there are suggesting a long and arduous series of tests. I think that's just how they like to spend their free time."

"I know your spark. I've touched your spark. I can find it," she says, turning back to the rack of vials and closing her eyes.

Will sat down, cross-legged, across from the impromptu cooking pot.

The vials sparkled and glistened, metaphorically. With her powers intact, Sam would be able to sort through them without a problem. Without them, it was a much more difficult effort -- like trying to read a book through cheesecloth under a strobe light. 'Difficult' did not necessarily mean 'impossible', though...

Sam holds her hand over one vial, then shakes her head and moves on to the next. She does this a few times, getting a feel for each one, but none have felt right yet.

They're dim, almost like it's just her eyes seeing things in the residual light coming through her lids, but they're all unique in their own ways and there are two she recognizes almost immediately when she places her hand on them. Will's and what she can only assume is Robin's. But more than either of those two she sees her own, tendrils of light swaying in a non-existent breeze and brushing over the other lights in the rack.

Sam pulls out Will and Robin's immediately, setting them beside the rack.

Then, almost hesitantly, she reaches for her own vial.

The moment her fingers touch the vial she feels an almost instinctual twitch and her digits curl around the glass tube with enough force to shatter it, the contents splashing over her hand.

She can feel it rushing up her arm like a sleeping limb waking up with pins and needles, muscles toning just a little more, sinews and bones almost rippling and then it reaches her shoulder and slams into her mind like a door being thrown open and everything comes flooding back. The nearby minds, the air of people cleaning up and picking over a battle-field. The dozens and dozens of little spots of power in the rack in front of her humming with potential.

Sam shudders, a movement that doesn't seem quite restricted by her previously all-too-human frame. Her hair streams out to waist-length, threaded through with black feathers. Smaller downy feathers poke from her shoulders before being pulled back in. It takes a moment for her to find equilibrium, and she reins herself in to something that is a bit less Morrigan and a bit more Sam, though she didn't quite get all the feathers out of her hair.

"That... that felt good. A bit terrifying, but good."

"Like a roller coaster. Not worth doing if it doesn't get the blood racing.

Welcome back," he smiled.

"I don't quite know what came over me," she admits, rinsing her hands in a sink.

"It just... felt like it wanted to go that way."

"Well, it came back all at once, right? Going from 0 to 100 like that would overwhelm anyone; you're probably used to those sensations as...background noise, normally."

"You've, uh, still got a little bit of downy freshness to your hair, there."

"Oh?" She lifts up a few locks.

"Ah well, it's fine. Being the Morrigan is the one thing that didn't stop when he took my powers. That's... kind of interesting, but we've got more important things to do."

She reaches for Will's vial.

"Are you ready?"

"Always am, Sam. Hit me with the good stuff."

"Let's make it official, then."

She removes the cap and goes to pour Will's vial into the pot.

"Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. Or something along those lines, anyway," Will smirked.

"Fire burn and cauldron bubble," he added, sliding a can of sterno underneath the pot and firing it up.

"Part of your body, and your blood with mine."

"A fine way to give you back what's yours, I think."

And bubble it does. Most notably, some of the inside of the pot seems to slough off into the mixture and start letting out the occasional splorch.

Will closed his eyes and inhaled, slowly, as the vapors from the pot began to rise.

"It's a bit bitter," he noted. "I'll have to see about changing that in the future..."

"The one thing you and I have is time, aye?"

"And parsley, and sage, and rosemary," Will joked.

As Will continued to inhale, his form started looking...wobbly. Droopy, sagging, almost melting. The brown in his hair slowly started to recede, green highlights first being hinted at and then brightly standing out. He shuddered, causing shockwaves and ripples to flow across his form.

"The one thing you were never meant to be is just a boy. Be everything, or nothing. Be what pleases you, Will."

"Oh, the world's not ready for that," Will said, as he collapsed into a lump...and then, after a moment's pause, twisted, shook, and bumped back into a more familiar shape.

"But I missed this. So much. The rush..." he quavered. "I'm back."

"Perhaps you might want to absorb the cauldron?"

"Eliminate any... professional jealousy?"

There's a hint of a smirk on her lips as she says it.

"What, you don't want a souvenir from your time as a non-telepathic fledgling goddess?" Will laughed, placing his hands on the cauldron and closing his eyes, his fingers sinking into the hardened clay...

"It's yours. It was always yours."

"I just borrowed it."

"And you're always welcome to," Will grunted, as the cauldron, liquid, vapor, and even the sterno can all gradually disappeared, disintegrating and crumbling as they were hoovered up into Will's frame.

He flexed his fingers, turning his hand over and over. "Huh. Similar; not quite the same.

Still. Good to be back. And it should be easier to hand the happy pills out to the rest of the huddled masses. Fuckin' Lippencott."

"And now, since she's been so patient..."

Sam walks over and swiftly opens the door.

And as expertly intuited by the telepath who probably felt her mind outside, Robin goes stumbling into the door the moment it's opened.

She grins awkwardly up at Sam.

"Somebody mentioned it's working?"

"Eavesdropping, are we? And on a telepath, no less. Oh, Robbie..."

"Ah, you know how you would have felt if you weren't the first one I restored."

"See, that's why I came in with the pot. Always good to look like you're important," Will nodded.

"Hey, she was only gonna be a telepath again if it worked so really, getting caught that way just ensures I'm up Ay Ess Ay Pee." she says as she climbs to her feet.

"I suppose it's a good thing I already found which one is yours," she says as she picks it up off the counter.

"Yesss! Still looking out for me, even when it's a different universe." she chuckles. "Give me that good good juice."

"Worry not, we'll have you back to being an eight foot tall lion goat scorpion in no time," she deadpans.