xp_logs | Angelo and Madelyn, in the kitchen

Hank sends Maddie upstairs to take a break while the birth's ongoing, and she runs into Angelo. Who manages to worry her quite a lot.

After filling Jono in on what was going on, Angelo made for the main kitchen, and dropped wearily into a chair as soon as he had a cup of strong coffee. He had an urge for something stronger,
but... school grounds. A pack of cigarettes lay open on the table in front of him and he was playing with an unlit one and his lighter, but not smoking yet.

"I hope you weren't going to light that in here - Lorna would turn you into a pin cushion if you smoked in her kitchen," came Madelyn's voice from the doorway. She'd been ordered upstairs by Hank to get some food after her sleep - Dani was still in the early stages of labour, and as he pointed out, there wouldn't be time later. "You okay, kiddo?" she continued, ignoring the need for food in favour of keeping her promise to be an ear.

He glanced up ruefully, spinning the cigarette in his hand. "Can't smoke in here, can't have the coffee maker on the porch... coffee wins." He paused, then answered the rest in a roundabout way. "Talked to Jono."

"The proverbial rock and a hard place," Madelyn said with a brief grin, before settling herself onto a stool opposite him. "I thought as much. How are you? Both of you?"

"He's worried, but... I don't think much gets to him the way he is now. He doesn't know when time's passin', so." He sighs. "As for me... been better."

"No endocrine system," Madelyn added, and then elaborated as Angelo gave her a perplexed look. "Without a physical body, with all the attendant hormones and glands and sundry other purely biological responses to emotion, Jono's perspective is vastly altered. Stuff doesn't get to him, like you said, because he's looking at it from an entirely mental perspective." But she hadn't sat down to give him an anatomy lesson. "I know it's cold comfort now, but... she will get better. She's hit the lowpoint - the only place to go now is up, and she wants to do that."

He nodded slowly. "That's good. She'll be okay, with you all to help her."

She looked at him long and steadily. There was something... off in his reactions, not what she'd expected. This wasn't the doting boyfriend desperately worried about his girlfriend's health that she'd expected - yes, there was concern, but it was dulled by something else... The coffee maker finished perking, and she silently went and poured a couple of cups, bringing them back with the milk and the sugar bowl before speaking. "What are you most angry at her for?" she asked, apparently out of the blue. "For leaving or for coming back?"

"Not for comin' back, never that", he said quickly. "From what you've been sayin', she needs to be here. For leavin', but more for the way she left. She left... letters." His face twisted slightly as he remembered what had been in Jono's.

Madelyn nodded - that sounded like Paige, tying up all the loose ends, making sure there would be no reason to hunt her down. "How bad?" she asked softly, seeing the pain on his face. She took a sip of coffee, giving him time to think and answer, if he wanted to.

"Mine... wasn't so bad", he said eventually, holding his own cup in both hands. "Except, y'know, where it was tellin' me it was all off without Paige even botherin' to come find me in person. Jono's, though..."

"Some things should be done in person," Madelyn agreed. "But I don't think Paige was in a state to engage in any confrontation." She paused, and then asked, carefully, "What was so bad about Jono's?"

Angelo sighed and recited from memory - he'd read the letter repeatedly, trying to see any sign of the Paige he knew in it. "You were right. You are just a glowy ball of light. You can't hold me, or share life with me, and you don't even know how long I've been gone. You're not human anymore and I can't waste my life waitin' for the possibility that one day someone might figure out how to give you a solid form. Conversation only goes so far." He paused, then shrugged, fidgeting with the cigarette. "I burned it. Made somethin' else up when I told him."

Madelyn winced, both at the letter's brute frankness, and at Angelo's confession of what he'd done. "It was a cruel thing to say," she said. "Why do you think she put it like that?"

"Only thing I can think is she was cuttin' her ties", he said bleakly. "For good an' all."

"It seems like a pretty desperate thing to do," Madelyn observed, sipping at her coffee again, mindful of the time, but choosing to do this properly - Angelo needed to at least have his say, get this out of his head so it would stop festering. "To write something so hurtful to someone she loves, and then to leave it in such a place that the other person she loves is the one to deliver the contents. It says to me that she was trying to push you both away, by any means possible."

"...Maybe", he allowed after a minute. "But she was okay when she left - as okay as she's been for awhile. She went to Harvard. We checked."

Madelyn's eyebrows rose at that confession, and then she realised. Of course - Amanda. The girl had mentioned something about location spells several times in the past. At least they hadn't done anything stupid, like take off after Paige. "Well, there's a few things that might have been behind that. It might be like you said, that she was okay and went merrily off to Harvard to make a new life for herself without any reminders of this place. Or, it might have been that, desperate as she was, she was still smart enough to set up decent alibi for herself, something that would fool both the X-Men and her friends into thinking she was fine." She let that sink in, and then continued. "Or, it might have been she was making a last-ditch attempt to protect the people she cared about from what she thought she was becoming. Like the way Amanda with her addiction last year."

He started to snap something back, then stopped, slumping in his chair. He flicked his lighter open reflexively, lifted it to the cigarette, then looked at them and closed it again. The anger wasn't gone, but the concern was putting up a better fight now. "Maybe."

"There's only one person who can answer that, though," Madelyn said quietly. "Will you listen, when and if she tries?"

"If she wants to talk, I'll listen", he said flatly. "It's not gonna be how it was, though. She called it off, an' she had actual reasons."

"How about you hold off on the uncompromising statements until you've heard what she has to say, hmm?" Madelyn suggested. "There's always reasons, but they're not always what you think they are." She was about to say more when the beeper on her belt went off, making her jump slightly. The hand holding the coffee mug jerked, spilling a little. "Damn," she said, checking the message displayed. "I need to get back down to Dani. I'm sorry, Angelo, my timing's crap today. Do me a huge favour and clean up for me?" Already she was sliding off the stool, preparing to dash back downstairs.

He nodded shortly, standing in turn to reach for a cloth. "Sure. Hope it all goes well."

Not the way she wanted to end this, but she didn't have the luxury of time. "If you want to talk some more once the baby's born, look me up, okay? I meant it, about being an ear for you. It's just unfortunately me hands are needed more elsewhere." The beeper pinged again, impatiently, and she made a helpless gesture with her hands. "Duty calls. I'll tell Dani you wish her well, okay?" And with that she turned and hurried out of the kitchen, heading for the elevators back down to the medlab.