Log: Jubilee and Alison

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

When: Backdated to Friday July 15th 2005 at 12 midday.
Who: Alison, Jubilee
What Happens: Alison finds Jubilee in an aggravated state and helps her calm down enough to talk about it.



Jubilee placed the mat she'd brought at the Indian reservation on the ground before sitting down firmly and drawing her legs up into classic meditative position. She was still sparking all over the place and she was glad she’d gotten out of the mansion before she'd said something unforgivable. It was one thing to be so angry you could spit; it was another thing to have a go at someone in a public journal entry. She'd learnt her lesson in that regard and thus, meditation had seemed a safe and viable alternative.

She breathed out slowly, letting her head fall back to take in the blue of the sky above before circling it slowly to relax the muscles in her neck.

She knew she'd never actually get her powers turned off right now but maybe she could work on controlling them so the sparking wasn't quite so dangerous. Perhaps if she concentrated on drawing it along her arms?

The kaleidoscopic light pattern wasn't the most obvious thing from a distance - unless you were used to looking for that kind of stuff and had personal associations to light disturbances in not entirely dissimilar patterns.

Anger, Alison found, was a familiar light and colour no matter what the power emitting it translated as.

Diverging from her usual jogging path she headed down towards the source, slowing down gradually to keep from coming to a stop too abruptly once she reached her target. She didn't need to look at Jubilee's expression to know she was seething – the sparks and lights said it all. Instead, she deliberately made her thread that much heavier, announcing her arrival from a fair distance, before winding down to a slow walk nearby.

Jubilee glanced up as she heard the heavy steps, trying to get her emotions into some semblance of order. She could just choose not to think on the things that were making her so angry. Unfortunately, it didn't deal with it and she'd come too far along to simply start cutting herself off from her emotions again. She'd feel this, and control it. "Alison." she murmured in greeting, sending the sparks arcing from one fingertip to another before willing them to slide up her arms. She couldn't stop them from travelling onwards to burst above her head but at least they were confined to that small area for the moment.

"Hey..." She had no clue what had set Jubilee off, but considering her condition, that wasn't really important at the moment. Settling her down enough that she had her power back under control was, though. Plopping down to sit in front of her unceremoniously so, Alison stretched out her arms forward, apparently unconcerned by the sparks dancing around Jubilee, then rested the back of her hands on her knees.

"Breathing exercises, I think. Long and steady. Concentrate on one sound only..." Alison closed her eyes and listened for a moment, then smiled. "Wind'll do. Ready?"

Jubilee nodded, suddenly grateful that Alison was here. She closed her eyes, focussing in on the wind around them, listening to its unique sound. She still had trouble sometimes, focussing on just one thing. Her mind was a mess of images and thoughts and always how she 'felt' about all of it. But if she could just focus enough, sometimes she could bring everything to one steady pulse, sound and emotion and image, all working in concert. Today did not seem like it was going to be one of those days, as a fresh burst of anger as an image of Manuel and Dani flashed through her mind. They were so...irritating. Always going on about how horrible the emotions in the mansion were for them. How much of a burden it was, and how their only solace was to get away or go to the box.

She'd tried to be understanding, felt sympathetic when things like anger and fear were running high in the mansion. She knew those times weren't nice for any of the psis but this, their reaction to anticipation. It was infuriating, and simply impossible to feel sympathy for them any more. She'd been of half a mind to find them both and shake them to within an inch of their wits before she'd decided to take herself off for some meditation.

"Breathe..." Alison crooned out the word soothingly, feeling the heat generated by the sparks around Jubilee intensify where it had started to nearly die out entirely. "Listen to the wind, to everything it moves. Nothing more."

She opened her eyes, then, staring at the sparks popping and crackling pensively as she waited for Jubilee to settle down enough that talking about things would be more comfortable for her and not about a loss of control.

Jubilee breathed out, concentrating on the sound of the wind as she slowly relaxed one muscle after another, working her way from her toes and on upwards through her entire body. She breathed in again, filling her lungs with as much air as she could before letting it go in a slow, controlled breath. She didn't talk, knew that she wasn't ready to speak without babbling out a hundred different incoherent notions. She needed calm and control. She concentrated on retrieving both. A few months back, when they'd started, she might have started fidgeting by now. Back then the very idea of just sitting down on the ground and not talking for hours on end had seemed a horror beyond imagining. She no longer felt the need to fidget, although she still hadn't conquered the need to speak.

Smiling a bit as Jubilee's power manifestation slowly began to subside, Alison nodded to herself, unaware of the gesture. Months ago, Jubilee wouldn't have managed this without indulging in a screaming fit, first. Heck, months ago, Jubilee would have just gone straight to the screaming fit and not even bothered with trying to calm down, at that. Waiting until Jubilee was breathing evenly and easily, not a single flicker of plasma energy in sight, Alison finally spoke, softly so.

"Good."

Jubilee opened her eyes, smiling wryly at Alison. She'd felt her powers subside, eternally grateful these days that Alison had seen fit to take her into hand all that time ago. As much as she'd hated it then, it was probably one of the most useful ways she had of controlling her powers, albeit a slow one. One of these days, she'd need to learn to do this faster, and on the fly. She wouldn't make a very good X-man if she had to sit down on a mat and concentrate for ages just to stop from creating collateral damage. "Thanks. I had a bit of a blow out, readin' the journals."

"Oooh." Tilting her head to the side, Alison waited patiently, breathing still regularly following the beat she'd established while talking Jubilee through the meditating. Not that she'd needed to do that much, this time. "Want to talk about it now or later?" She wasn't worried yet, really - and if it was something to be concerned about, she liked to think Jubilee would talk to someone about things, whoever that person was.

That she now thought this of Jubilee brought a slight smile to her face, briefly so. She wouldn't have been that calm about such a thing, even a year ago, where the girl was concerned.

Jubilee continued to breathe in and out, concentrating on the movement of her chest as it went in and out with each breath. "Talking is good. Just, don't know how fair it was of me to get so angry. Bobby posted this journal entry asking if anyone wanted to go to the bookstore with him to get the new Harry Potter book. Anyway, there was a whole bunch of reactions, ranging from 'cool!' to 'What's the big deal over something that's just a kid's book?' and then there was Manny and Dani. Started going on about how all the anticipation was such a burden to them. An it wasn't just this time, ya know? If it'd be just the once, I coulda shrugged it off. But it's been every single time anything major has been going on. This constant 'woe is us, we can feel all your emotions and we think you're disgusting' thing that they do. Like, how dare we ever feel anything strongly, or somethin' like that. This was the last straw, ya know? Along with the whole 'kid's book' thing."

She paused for a second, seeking her centre as she pushed the anger out, releasing it with the next breath out. She was always surprised at just how well meditation worked to calm the rolling emotions she sometimes felt swamped by. It was a small bit of control in a world that often seemed so fast as to be impossible to keep up with.

"It ain't even that they were callin' it a kid's book. Not like we don't know that already, ya know? But it was the whole feelin' that cause it's a kid's book they couldn't understand why we'd be excited. Like, books written for kids can't possibly be just as interesting and wonderful and engrossing as a book written for adults. An it just stung me, cause I've been readin' kids books a lot lately. The Dr Seuss ones, ya know? They're really good for gettin' focus, weird as that sounds. But even if I weren’t usin' them for that, I'd still read 'em. They're fun. I know I totally over reacted, s'why I came out here."

"Mmm." She remembered the comments, having looked at them briefly, skipping over most as soon as the tone of them had come across – which hadn't taken long. "I know. I read those books to Miles." She took a deeper breath, breaking the pattern briefly to stretch her arms out, before settling down again. "A lot of them are books I used to read myself as a child. And some are new. They're still fun to read. It's nice not to have become jaded about things like that. To have kept a sense of wonder about things." She chuckled a bit, looking down at the grass, the wind ruffling through it briefly. "Miles helps there, mind you. Everything is still new for him at times - it's a reminder of how little time he's had to appreciate his life, still."

"Kids are like that, they give you this whole other view of the world. Think it's why I like watchin' cartoons so much in the mornin' with the little kids. To them it's this amazing world where the good guys always win and considerin' how much the kids round here know that's not true of the real world, it's nice for them to be able to have that in a story. Keep wantin' to tell people that. That stories are about doin' what we can't do in real life."

"And you can still see that yourself, too." Smiling just a touch, crookedly so, Alison cocked her head to the side. Jubilee was still keeping to the breathing pattern and was still obviously now in control of her power, even when she'd been going on a touch more hotly earlier. "I'm going to ask Scott to take Miles in later, to buy the new Harry Potter book," she murmured. "It's not about the book so much as just the whole experience for him." There was a hint of regret in her eyes as she spoke.

Jubilee noticed the look, remembering that Alison had an X-man mission today. "That's right, there's a mission today. Ya know, I'm gonna be goin' too, I could take the video camera, capture the whole thing so you could watch it with Miles when ya got back. S'not the same as bein' there, but it's somethin'." she replied. It felt good to have talked it out, and as always with meditation she felt much more in control then when she'd started. "And yeah, I do still see it. It's why I'm glad this place exists, so the kids can have a normal life. Get to go a bit crazy eatin' ice cream or getting really into a book. Not havin' to be responsible for every little thing cause we're there to look out for 'em and make sure they don't go too far."

'We're there.' That brought a sudden flash of a smile to Alison's face, though she didn't comment upon it directly. "I'd really appreciate it, the whole filming thing. I'm letting Miles take the digital camera with him, and I figured people would be taking pictures of him too - but yeah. Video would be nice." She sighed a bit wistfully, still wishing she'd have been able to just be there herself. But she'd known this would happen again, as it had happened before, now and then. "Thank you."

Jubilee smiled brightly, tilting her head to look up at the blue sky overhead. "S'cool. I'll grab the camera before we go. Least you got blue skies for the mission, hey? Nothin' like rough weather to make flyin' in the Blackbird a pain in the butt."

Jubilee had really only had one experience of flying in the Blackbird and that had been at Alkalai lake, so she couldn't really say what it was like all the time but generally planes weren't fun in howling storms.

"Ah, but Haroun is piloting." Alison's smile was calm and confident,
at that, a hint something else lurking there contentedly. "And we'd have a smooth flight no matter what the weather with him at the controls." Lips quirking just a bit, she ducked her head. "Which is a good thing, because while my flight training isn't going so badly, I'd still rather not have to fly in bad weather, thank you. Still can't believe I'm learning to fly at all, really, half the time. It's a touch surreal." Which was a ridiculous thing to say considering everything else she'd done in the past year, when you stopped to think about it, but it still felt that way to her.

"Sure you're not that bad. Did Haroun tell you about my first hand-to-hand lesson? Kinda put my foot in it, an I'm glad he doesn't go in for the 'break a few bones to show them how wrong they are' style of trainin', cause I'd so be in a cast right now. Was great though, learnt a bit about the way I'm gonna have to fight, speed rather then brut strength. S'nice to have somewhere to work from." Jubilee replied, noting the softening of Alison's eyes as she talked about Haroun. Jubilee knew that look. It was good to see Alison relaxed and confident, especially remembering back a few months to how injured she'd been. Jubilee would never forget the lesson Nathan had given her there, other people were just as important as you were, it's what she wanted to make Manny and Dani see. Just, maybe not in so drastic a way.

"I'm learning to fly a freakin' plane," Alison replied, a touch merrily so. "And yeah, he also filed notes on your file and uploaded the training session to the server. And then added notes to that too."

Haroun took any training he was involved in seriously, anyone else's training seriously too and then made a point of keeping his own training up to snuff or else. "Muttered something about you like the soft form stuff I do, too." There was, at that, even more merriment, Alison having been decidedly pleased to hear about that, much to Haroun's continued grumbling on the matter.

Jubilee laughed, eyes twinkling merrily as she remembered Haroun's reaction to her calling him Sifu. "He told me he didn't want me callin' him Sifu. And was totally down on my wearin' slippers. And! Hank is gonna help me with some stuff too, the 'Dealin' with havin' to attack a bigger guy.' type stuff. Which, I could probably get Cain to help with too...Dude, so many people to go to for help. Kinda cool, just bein' able to ask. Even if they were too busy or somethin', there'd be someone else there anyway and like totally different ways of doin' things, the lot of 'em. Been watchin' the Danger room tapes, tryin' to get familiar with the way everythin' works."

"You certainly want to ask Kylun as well, actually - I think his style would very much complement your personal preferences in terms of gymnastics and all." She wrinkled her nose a bit at sounding near pompous as she spoke, then shrugged it off blithely. "And yes, there is. I'm still learning myself," she grinned, shaking her head. "And boy am I glad some of these tapes don't always get distributed at large. New powers training angles do not always work out." She shook her head at Jubilee's curious expression. "Nu huh. Not telling. My ego's been dented enough on that score."

"Dude, so not fair! Ya can't say somethin' like that an then not share. Know what'cha mean about powers trainin' though. Scott's been makin' me go through control drills and I *suck* so bad. Sometimes I think all the things I think I can do with my power will never happen cause all I can get it to do so far is pretty light shows. Totally frustrating." Jubilee replied, pondering Alison. "Sooo. Say I found a way to get hold of those tapes. Would it be okay to watch them? Or is this a case of 'never, ever even try.'?"

While she could possibly get Doug to see if he could find the tapes, she didn't want to do that if Alison really didn't want anyone looking at them. However, if she was okay with it, might be a nice challenge to see if they could find them.

Alison gave Jubilee a very solemn look. "Never, ever even try." She kept the sober look for as long as it took to get a meek nod of reply, before sniggering slightly. "It was really that sad, let's leave it at that." Tilting her head to the side, she gave Jubilee a faint smile. "Remember where your powers and your control were when you first got here?"

Jubilee nodded, thinking about how she'd been. Then there'd been the time after the attack when she'd had to wear the collar. She had come far from then, and it had taken time. "Guess I'm not that great with the patience when it comes to myself. Want things to go as I want them now, rather then later. Grandfather would say that one of the true wisdoms is knowing when to be still and wait, rather then dashing about all over the place."

"Look to where you were when you got here and where you are now,"
Alison said, trying to resist the impulse to adopt a Yoda like voice. Common sense was just that though, and she smiled a bit wryly as she continued. "It's the changes in the way you think and approach things which will help you the most. That's what happened with me, when I finally started training properly." With that, she rose to her feet, smiling down at Jubilee. "I think there's still some of that ice cream left, you know..."

Jubilee stood, reaching down to grab her mat. Looking back at the mansion, someone had left the front door open to catch the cool breeze. "You know, I think there is. Race you for the peppermint choc chip!" she replied, taking off at a run, her laughter floating back on the wind.