Scott and Alison, Thursday morning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott and Alison talk about what's happened with Paige. They're both at something of a loss, and somewhat caught between their own reactions and that of their official personas.


Scott gave a sigh as he sat down behind his desk. A few phone calls had told him that Paige's excuse indeed held up, which didn't surprise him, but he couldn't help doubting that she intended to follow through with it. Not after how well the talk with her hadn't gone yesterday.

He removed his glasses, careful to keep his eyes closed, and rubbed at his temples. Had there been a better way to handle this? he wondered dimly. Something else he could have done, something that would have prevented it from coming to this point...

But he couldn't have made Paige's choices for her. Maybe it would have been better if he'd made certain choices of his own months ago, but he'd felt at the time...

No second-guessing yourself. He had never wanted anything but the best for her, and anyone quoting the old saw about the road to hell could go there themselves.

"You made the same calls I did, didn't you?" Leaning in the doorway, the knock never having been answered though she'd known he was there, Alison smiled a bit, though there was no joy to the gesture. Just a weary calm.

Scott reached out for his glasses, and once they were back on opened his eyes and returned a very similar faint smile. "Duplicating effort, again? My fault - I'm backsliding and didn't think to ask." Folding his arms on the desk, he leaned forward a little, giving her an oddly wistful look. "I suspected something like this, after yesterday. Was well within her possible range of reactions."

"Yes. It was. I was hoping it wouldn't be but..." Shaking her head a bit, Alison breathed in and out, slowly. Not quite a sigh. "And we needed to do it. It's why I didn't ask either. Ororo almost did too I think, then just gave me one of her looks when I walked in on her downstairs after lunch."

"For once," Scott said slowly, "what was best for Paige and what was best for the team were in absolute accordance. Doesn't make it any easier, I know, but we made the right decision." He smiled again, very slightly. "We have to trust that she'll do the same. And we have to be here for her, when she decides that she needs us."

Because she would. He was almost certain of that. For all of Paige's pride and stubbornness that she'd turned in on herself in such a destructive fashion, she was too intelligent, fundamentally, not to see it.

"It might take a long," she'd almost said 'fall', "time for her to see that. Or not. I don't... know anymore." Smiling crookedly, Alison shook her head. "I'm just hoping." She looked at Scott's desk for a moment, the papers stacked upon it. "I think we did what had to be done. And we gave her as much as we could in the doing." The calm would have been unnerving, were it not for the sense of waiting Alison also felt.

"I've been asking myself once or twice today whether we should have done this six months ago," Scott said, thinking about Paige and that drive they'd taken, her fleeing from the car, shouting at him. "I suppose I'll wonder about that for a while, but..." He stopped, shrugging a bit awkwardly. "Hope's all we have, in the end. I need to talk to Sam, though..."

"Went to see him this morning. Didn't talk, though. Not much. Just... dropped in to check on him." Alison shrugged, though it wasn't dismissive. She wasn't about to start wondering about what if, when they'd done their very best the entire time, when it was up to Paige now - and had been from the start. "It wasn't about us, Scott. It was about her. That's all."

"I know." If there was one thing that his own difficulties in the fall had taught him, that was it. To do this, to commit yourself to this life, involved making conscious choices about your own behavior - and learning when to bend, unless you wanted to break. "We need to decide what to say to the other trainees about it," he said, a bit more briskly. "Jubilee's asked already. I just told her that it was a decision we had to make for Paige's good as well as the good of the team."

"We'll need to work out their schedules too," Alison nodded. She didn't want to do it, didn't want to have to delete Paige's name over and over from the Trainee schedule. "I have no clue what to tell them." Looking entirely at a loss, Alison shook her head. "No clue."

"The more I think of it..." Scott paused, then made himself go on. "The more I want to tell them the truth. As much of it as we can. My instinct with Jubilee was to respect Paige's privacy, but..." He made a small, frustrated gesture. "This isn't just about her, that's the problem. If they understand, at least on a basic level, where and how Paige failed - " Because failed she had, in terms of the team, whatever the mitigating circumstances. " - they may be more alert to similar tendencies in themselves."

"And it will be exactly what Paige will have feared the most. That she'll be represented as a failure. It's probably why she left." She had to point it out. "I think - perhaps re-inforce that there are reasons why we try to frame them so much, with medical reviews and regular visits with Samson? Make it about why there are things in place for them to make use of, and that we need to them to make sure they do?" She paused, and then shook her head. "That they're a team in their own right, even as trainees, and need to rely on each other."

"I can't help a self-comparison here," Scott said, not answering the rest of it just yet. "Back in the fall, I flamed out - " Haroun's choice of words had been oddly appropriate, to his mind. " - right in front of you all, in a position where doing that could have been catastrophic, rather than just... tragic. If I had let my pride get in the way, let that stop me from making the changes I needed to make in the way I was approaching this job... you and Ororo would be leading the teams now, and I don't know what I would be doing. On the outside looking in, in any case, and that would have been where I belonged." His mouth twisted a little, but he made himself go on.

"I can see it, the need to allow her a route back if that's what she decide she wants. But her pride is part of what got her in this mess in the first place, and humoring it is not in the cards even if she decides she wants to come back." It came out a tad more vehement than it should have, and Scott took a deep breath.

He didn't like it, sometimes. This ruthless streak he found in himself. It was like biting down on tinfoil, unexpectedly. But it was there, and that part of him, the Cyclops part, didn't mourn Paige's departure. Regret, not sorrow, that was the Cyclops-reaction, and even as Scott had sat here wrestling with the situation, that part of his mind had been turning options over and over, examining them in detail.

"That being said," he said on a bit more calmly, "you're right. Best to take as positive an approach as possible, focus on the support structure and how important it is." It was basic psychology, really.

Paige was already going to have a long road towards coming back to the mansion itself, never mind being a trainee once more, Alison thought. "It serves the current trainees just as well," was all she said, nodding slowly. And then looked at Scott for a while, pensively.

"And us too."

"Us every bit as much as them," Scott said, quietly but firmly. He took a deep breath, leaning back into his chair, his eyes moving to the ceiling as if there might be an answer written up there. "You remember back in the fall, when I told you about how I felt like two different people sometimes? Scott and Cyclops, I mean." He rubbed at his jaw, looking back at her. "Running headfirst into that division here today, too. I have two very different reactions going on here, and I know that the middle ground is where I should be aiming. But it would be so much easier to be Cyclops and shut out everything except the impact on the team, or be Scott and throw everything else aside for now to run after her..." He smiled sadly. "Which I'm not going to do, don't worry. Scott got enough of a share of the common sense to know how well that would work."

"I know." It was bright outside, the sun drawing her to go out, the promise of quiet solitude too much to resist. "I still work on that. Still new to being a CO... Haroun helps." Before Scott could respond to that, though she gave him a quiet smile. "I may need a leave of absence as well, in a few days. Not before, though."

Scott nodded. "Whenever you need it," he said gently, having read the email from Haroun. "Just let me know. Things have been quiet." He rapped on his desk lightly. "Plus the knee has passed Jean's scrutiny, so I'm back on active duty, even if I'm still short an XO for a while yet."

"I will." It was nice when things were this... calm and level. They didn't need to go into detailed explanations. "Poor Kurt. Think we should bamboozle Ororo into letting us draw straws on him for the next while?" It was asked innocently enough.

"Don't think much bamboozling would be required." Scott's expression suddenly lit up, just briefly, with what might have been termed fiendish glee. "Oh. Idea. In fact, brilliant idea if I do say so myself... I'll have to talk to Sam to make sure he knows this is no reflection on him, but I think I might nab myself an acting XO for a few weeks. Redundancy in leadership training is never a bad thing."

She'd just set up something evil, Alison suspected. With a small smile though, she merely nodded in agreement. "Looks like you have something to sit in your den of evil and cackle about, then," she teased him, straightening up just a bit. "Should I let you work on that? I'm thinking I may go for a walk outside. Avoid some of the morning chatter and all."

Scott nodded, his expression fading back to calm - somewhat amused calm, admittedly. "I'll talk to Sam," he said, "and hunt down Ororo to see what she thinks, in terms of what to tell the trainees." He smiled a little. "Enjoy your walk."

"I will. I have my comm with me," she and Haroun always did, and she smiled sheepishly at that, "so just let me know if you need anything."