Madelyn, Wanda - Sunday afternoon

[x-madelyn.livejournal.com]

The Great Fact-Finding Alaskan Road Trip Part 1! Madelyn and Wanda talk during the drive into the very small town that was the closest thing to civilisation for the settlement Nathan grew up in.



Wanda stretched her legs out carefully, trying not to bump the small cooler that was currently living by her knees. With the gear in the back packed tightly enough that it wouldn't be sent flying by a bump in the road, there had been need for food and drink that wasn't tied down. The trip so far had been uneventful, to which both she and Madelyn had been rather grateful for. "Congratulations," she said, grinning, "I think this may turn out to be the calmest thing I've been through while at the Mansion."

"Law of averages,' Madelyn replied with a grin, carefully steering around a large pot hole - the roads had been steadily getting worse the closer they got. Thank goodness for four wheel drive - she had a feeling they were going to need it. "One of these trips _has_ to go smoothly eventually. Besides, it's us - we're generally the non-trouble attractors."

"You _do_ realize who you are traveling with, correct?" Wanda replied wryly, reclasping her hair for the third time in the last hour. "Maybe we'll offset each other, though. Trouble tends to happen around me but not around you...we even out the odds, so to speak. Or we hope. The last thing we want is there to be activity on this kind of thing."

Madelyn glanced over, raising her eyebrow. "And when was the last time evil mutants attacked you at the mall?" she asked with a faint smile. "But yes, definitely no activity. The most excitement I'm after on this trip is beating the locals at pool when we're done."

"Hey, I was kidnapped once, you know." She grinned at the last. "I haven't played pool in ages. Mainly because no one ever gets a chance to win when playing against Scott. The man has another mutation and that's being a pool shark."

"Ugh, tell me about it," Madelyn said with a dramatic sigh. "I'm never playing him again - or at least, I'm not putting bets on. At least he let me cut it back to one night shift for Jean."

"You even betted against him?" Wanda gave her a look that said she was either a very brave woman or very insane. Or, well, both. "He'll get his. One of these days. _Somehow_." She wasn't pouting, no, not at all.

"What can I say, I like to live dangerously," Madelyn said with a grin. "Besides, I was sure I had him that time. Alas my distracting conversation failed utterly." They hit a large rock, and the SUV bounced. "Whoops. I hope you don't get car sick."

"No, thankfully all the traveling I've done has cured me of that particular sickness," Wanda replied, resettling herself. "I'm just glad you can drive a car since currently I'm still at driving motorcycle's. We'd have a far more interesting and yet painful trip if I was the one doing the driving."

"Motorcycles?" A sudden gleam entered Madelyn's eyes. "It's been an age since I last got my hands on one of those. I wonder if there's somewhere in town that hires out?"

"A woman after my own heart. If I hadn't decided that being a lesbian wasn't for me, I'd ask you to marry me." Motorcycles on the open road in all this wilderness...Wanda nearly melted at the idea. "They might be better to get around some of the areas in..."

A laugh greeted that comment. "We could always come back via Canada and get the licence..." she teased. "And yes, I was thinking we'd need to do that for the settlement itself and the Inuit community's pretty remote from what the local sheriff told me."

She snickered slightly. "Oh, I'm sure _Hank_ would be rather disturbed by that," she said lightly, giggling. "'Hi honey, I just got married to your teammate. We're going to go off and live in sin now, bye!' That would probably not go over too well. Ohhh, good idea about the bikes, though. This is a very good vehicle but if the roads are as bad as I think they'll be, lightening the load will help."

"Either disturbed or aroused - it's hard to tell with the average male," Madelyn said with a snicker. "Not that Hank's average in any sense." A slightly sappy smile crossed her face. "The thing about dating? You get to find out all this stuff out about a person that you never realised when they were just a friend and a co-worker. It's fun."

Always highly attuned to a perfect time for gossip, Wanda shifted so she could look at Madelyn better. And then grinned. "Yes, dating is fun. And I'm glad you two are happy. You're both very cute, especially when you're in the MedLab together." She paused. "So, should I chase the first part of what you said with asking about how Hank ISN'T your average male?" Such a wicked grin she could make.

"Well, seeing him with Billy, for a start... he's besotted, and it's absolutely adorable. And he's the first man in ages who doesn't run screaming because I've got more than two brain cells to rub together - he says it's a turn on, actually, an intelligent woman. It's very... reassuring." Madelyn replied, and then flashed a brief grin at Wanda.
"What, you thought I was meaning something else?"

"...maybe?" She beamed at her for a second, trying to
look completely innocent and failed, giggling helplessly. "Well, alright, of course I did. This is me, after all. But I can see why that would be so reassuring...intelligent women tend to scare men away because they feel inferior." Wanda smiled a little bit. "Finding the ones that are either smart enough to keep up or simply don't care that you're smarter
is rather hard indeed." She paused. "Deer to the left," she said calmly, not swaying all that much as they narrowly avoided the doe.

Madelyn cursed a little under her breath and focussed her attention back on the road. Random wildlife just made the drive all the more interesting, she reminded herself. "Well, there would be something else as well if something had actually happened, but between taking things slow to start and then the baby, it's not like there's been a lot of time for anything beyond the odd breakfast together." There was a definite note of regret in Madelyn's tone - obviously the waiting was getting to her. "Still, it was me wanting to take things slow - I wanted to be sure, you see. It's been a while, and I haven't always made the wisest choices in that department lately." She slowed down to steer around a fallen tree covering half the road, and then continued, obviously changing the subject. "So, how's that counselling gig going for you?"

Wanda shot Madelyn a sympathetic glance as she caught the tone. She more than understood the frustration of going slow--something she was, simply, not used to. "I can understand that, especially after the wrong ones have come and gone. I've made more than my fair share of mistakes in the past. Well, maybe Hank can be convinced to have a babysitter in the near future?" she asked. She wouldn't mind the task, she rather liked babies. "As for the counselling...it's interesting, that is for sure. I can handle everyone so much better than I would have if I had just been stuck teaching. Teaching people who are not college age is just not for me. And I've had a few knocks at my door at 3 am with people worrying about said college. Jack keeps me sane--or makes the insanity worse, I cannot tell."

"It's more a matter of convincing Hank than me - he's got the doting new father thing and doesn't like to let Billy out of his sight. And that's as it should be - young babies need the security." Madelyn would have shrugged if she hadn't been wrestling with the steering wheel - the road was terrible. "We'll sort something out, even if I have to arrange a kidnapping." She gave Wanda a crooked grin before turning her attention back to the road. "Jack as in Nathan's shrink? Yes, he's a good guy. I'm surprised Nathan hasn't driven him to drink yet. And I hear you on the teaching - it's why I go for the older kids instead of the younger ones. I don't hate teaching as much or as obviously as Haroun does, but I'm not the most patient of instructors, and some of our lot have the attention spans of hummingbirds on crack."

At this point in the drive, it was probably a good thing Wanda was bracing herself firmly, both feet planted and a hand on the door. "I meant Jake," she said, grinning as she realized she'd done it again. She'd gone around for a week calling him Jack just to annoy him out of his office. "Bit of an inside joke. I've never met Nathan's therapist, though I hear he's good. More of ours should be in therapy, I'm thinking. And why on earth does Haroun even bother teaching if he hates it so much? He could always be staff doing so-ow-mething else." Making a note to keep her tongue away from her teeth during this drive, she continued. "His students must either hate him or be terrified of him. Or both."

"You're asking Jake for counselling advice? You're right, you are insane." Madelyn snorted. While she didn't fight with Jake quite as spectacularly as she did with Remy, she wasn't exactly relaxed about the Infonet employee. Although it had helped, the sessions on the firing range. "Remind me to give you Jack's number," she added with a laugh since the usual wink was impossible at this stage of the journey. "As for Haroun... pride, I think. He feels the need to earn his keep, and not just by being an X-Man and the Blackbird's mechanic. Teaching's something he can contribute between missions. And a lot of his problem is cultural clash - he expects the kids to act like young people at home, and that's bound to fail from the start." They bounced over a rock and Madelyn's head hit the roof briefly. "Dammit, this had better be worth the effort - I'm starting to wonder if we've missed a turn or come the wrong way..." Just as she was saying it, they rounded another corner and the woods they'd been driving through opened up to reveal a rather run-down looking town.
"Speak of the devil."

"I think the instant that I offered to room with the man was probably a good sign of my mental instability," was the reply, through gritted teeth. "And thank God for small favors, I think I chipped a tooth. I'm hoping Alison's influence will rub off on Haroun a bit, just get him to, as the kids would say "chill out". I understand all about cultural differences but he has to realize he's not home any more and they act different here." Wanda gazed out the window and studied the town as they drew nearer. "This has seen better days."

"It has." Madelyn's tone was assessing as she cast a professional eye over the town. "A lot of these towns sprang up as housing for miners and the like - now things are moving off-shore, the towns are dying off. Kids are leaving to get work, the old folks stay... Even back in Nathan's time it wouldn't have been much more than this, and that was probably attracted the settlement in the first place. Only the barest amount of civilisation for them to use as a supply route." She drove carefully down the dirt road into the town, not wanting to kick up too much dust. "Well, here we are, finally. Let's find that motel and see if we can't find some people who remember Nathan's people."