Paige, Scott and Serious Talks

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Paige and Scott's talk, postponed due to that thing where they went out and the jet went boom, finally has a chance to occur, when Paige demands Scott work on his tan. Sort of. It takes a while, but she finally gets the words she needs. And then they are cute, surprisesurprise.


Paige couldn't help feeling a little bit miffed at this entire situation; she'd taken the lead, she'd booked an appointment, she'd done everything right, and all of a sudden, everything went to hell and she was right back to square one. Scott hadn't been available all of yesterday, long into the evening, and now upon further investigation, wouldn't be available for an extended period of time for a good long while. They really needed to get a spare plane. But, speaking of the Blackbird, there was a silver lining there; Paige would at least have a very good reason to go coo at the very pretty baby.

Listening to the familiar sounds of tools working, Paige made her way down the steps on whisper soft feet, starting into a quiet prayer of Please don't be Haroun, please don't be Haroun, please don't be Haroun... before she could stop herself. Giving a tiny sigh of relief at the familiar red glint and mumbled very English curses, she leaned over, slipping into an amused smile. "Fickle mistress?"

"Battered mistress," Scott murmured, setting his tools down and stepping out into the open. Stretching would be good. "You didn't see a crazed Moor around here anywhere, did you? He went to take a second look at the X-rays of the wing."

"Mmm," Paige hummed, with a gentle continuous nod, and ran her fingertips along a smooth curve of her hull. Oh, she was so very pretty. Realizing there was a question being asked of her, she glanced up and just resisted a wry smile. "Oh. No, I must have just missed him, I imagine he stands out a bit."

Scott looked up at the plane. "It's not as bad as we feared," he said absently. "Won't have to replace the wing. Means a couple of days down, instead of a couple of weeks... which is a damned good thing because we are entirely too busy to be without transportation these days." He hadn't had nearly enough sleep, and wasn't quite able to keep the tension out of his posture or his voice.

"C'mere," she said evenly, having realised that she needed to slip into her low, soothing tones. "I read up on the spine and pressure points during my off time. I'll even promise to be appropriate and everything." Setting a small plastic container – crackers and cheese and an apple juicebox for him to find later – she even managed to include a little bit in the way of a firm, encouraging look. "You were lucky. And here I was thinking we'd finally run out. Is there anything I can do to let you sleep a little? I hear I'm a genius and have a rather brilliant lab partner."

Scott blinked at her, then thought about it for a minute. "We could put you to work," he said slowly. "Not sure what... Haroun's calling the shots as to what gets done when, obviously." My plane! the small, offended part of him that even after a year had not learned to shut up protested in a wail. Mine! "But he should be back soon... and I really shouldn't leave. Haven't finished the... um, what I was doing."

"I can talk to him later," Paige answered, sounding much more brave than she felt. She'd been coming up with reasons not to talk to him for weeks now and it was pathetic, really. This at least wouldn't let her squirm away again. Using his inner monologue as a distraction to her advantage, Paige came up behind her Captain, issuing a quick series of pushes, pokes and twists to his neck and shoulders, fast enough that he couldn't complain, before casually circling back to his front. "I didn't study long enough to try anything fancy, but you should at least wake up in the morning able to still move this way."

"That... feels better, Paige. Thanks." Scott smiled, a bit tiredly but still warmly, down at her. "It's been a long couple of days." He looked around, chewing on his lower lip for a moment. "Some air might not be a bad thing," he said a bit meekly. "My eyes are starting to cross and that's usually a good sign I should take a break."

Tsking, Paige reached into her back pocket, pulling out a small pad of paper, and then into the front of her shirt for a pen, scribbling quickly before ripping a piece off and sticking it to his work area. "Stolen by protégé. Back shortly," she informed him as she put her things away, and then took his hand, allowing no more protests, and lead him to the stairs. "If he gets cranky with you, you can tell him I've been whipping up low level airborne drugs in the labs and doused you. It's always the quiet ones."

Scott was remembering that he and Paige were supposed to be having a Very Serious Talk that had gotten more than a little derailed by the mission and then the broken plane. He had some suspicions as to what it might be about, too.

"Next thing you'll be dragging me into non-fluorescent light and my mood might actually improve. Which we couldn't have, really, could we?"

"Noooo. We are in no way heading out towards the backyard and the place where I tend to read, I have no idea what you're talking about. Really," Paige deadpanned without a blink, making her way through the winding hallways she knew only too well these days. "And I didn't pick up the snack that was going to be woefully left to rot by your tools on our way out, either."

"You must have been learning sleight of hand." Haroun was probably going to kick his ass if he caught him sitting around having an impromptu picnic. On the other hand, Scott thought a bit crankily, the plane was his responsibility, after all. These days I'm just the occasional mechanic-monkey. And this, he was beginning to suspect, was one of those team-leader things he needed to do.

"I am like ninja," she continued, in her perfectly solemn tone. He was not in a good mood; she'd have to be blind, deaf and possibly even mute to miss that. Perhaps she would wait until a later date to do the serious chat thing, but that didn't mean she couldn't spoil him a little bit in the mean time. "Frowning gives you wrinkles, in case you missed the breaking news. Oh, and look! A door to the land of green."

It was good to get some fresh air, Scott thought, breathing deeply. It was cooler today, too. Very different from the dry blast-furnace heat out on the Salt Flats yesterday. "So we were supposed to be talking, weren't we?" he asked. "I confess I got a little distracted."

Making her way down a path only she could really see, Paige found herself leading Scott into the trees until she found a small clearing, finally settling into the longer grass. There was a large tree whose trunk she tended to lean against when she read, enough in the shade that she could stay outside all afternoon with little worry, but right now Scott looked like he could use the light. "Don't worry about it. This is good too."

Scott settled down in the grass, turning his face upwards for a moment. Sunlight. Happy, happy sunlight. "So," he said a bit more peaceably. "What did you want to bend my ear about?"

"Trainee stuff, what else?" Paige replied, doing without the formal to stretch out in the grass, as if this was her element; in part, it probably was. "Did you always want to do the Captain thing?"

Scott rubbed at the back of his neck, giving the question due consideration. "You have to remember," he said, "there wasn't really a team to be a captain of, back when we started. Just... a small group of us who were starting to build something new."

Paige ripped out a chunk of grass and threw it at him, rolling her eyes with an amused grin. "I did. I meant always figuratively. For a good deal of time, did you want to be Captain, if you're going to go all face value on me. Did you train specifically with it in mind?"

Scott shook his head. "I always figured it would be... well, someone else." After all, his sixteen year old self had reasoned, you needed a hero to lead heroes. Not... what he had been. "Charles shocked the hell out of me telling me that was the role he'd intended for me all along. Oddly enough, no one else was surprised."

"Ah," Paige answered finally, trying not to look disappointed, as she rolled out and over onto her back, covering her eyes with her arms. "Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. I can sometimes see that in you."

"You have to understand the context, though," Scott said, then hesitated. "I... well, whatever gifts I have, they weren't all that obvious when I got here." Not like you, he thought, but didn't say.

Paige didn't move a moment, just breathing and listening; this was obviously still not exactly what she had been hoping for. Everything was so... mixed up. "Everything's just so mixed up," she voiced out loud. "I'm not used to not having a plan, Scott. I don't do well without a plan."

"Don't... think of plans, for a minute," Scott said slowly, thinking through his words very carefully before he spoke them aloud. "Think about what you want, Paige. Just that. Not how to get it, not what it's going to take to get it... just what you want."

"Perfection," Paige answered quietly, letting out a breath. "Everything to make sense again. Solving everything that can't be solved. Wearing that special pin on my collar. Teaching kids who can kill me with a thought. Knowing someone will be waiting for me in bed, when I stumble in at two in the morning." She could feel herself close to tears and she swallowed, forcing a smile. "I really thought it was going to happen, too."

"There are moments of perfection," Scott said, his voice low. "There are. And they make the times when things go wrong, or badly, or just don't work at all worth it."

"I don't know what that means." Her tone was low, on the edge of breaking, and she cleared her throat, hating herself for it. "I mean, I do. And it's a beautiful thing to say. But it doesn't give me any answers."

"And did you really think it was going to?" The question was gentle, not sharp in the slightest. "If you want my opinion, you have to believe it. You have to trust that it's true, or you'll never be able to make it true. And you have to accept... that you can't have perfection. You can fight for it, but you need to know, deep down, that it's a holy grail and not a realistic goal. Or... well, we've both seen something of what happens if you don't, haven't we?"

"So, how do you decide what to give up? When to give up? According to twisted logic, given my current position, I should stick to medicine and teaching and be... happy with that." The words were getting harder to say, slightly forced. "And, well. I hate to break it to you, but you're not much in the way of a good example of just having to be happy with what you have."

"I've been... relearning," Scott said after a moment, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "You really haven't been in the position to notice." It was said amiably, not a criticism, merely a statement of fact. "As for learning when to stop... and it's stopping, Paige, not giving up... any answers I may or may not have found, or be in the process of finding, won't work for you. Because they're my answers, not yours."

Paige made a whimpering noise, edging into a whine. She was being childish, but she couldn't bring herself to care; she was genius for Christsake, why was this so hard? "I don't know what to do. I just... I'm no help, I'm sorry, I can't even give you something to work with. I'm just very lost and I don't even know where I belong anymore and you know, that's never happened to me before? I know I should be thankful, but. I keep thinking about what if I'm wrong, and I make the wrong choice?"

"Then you do," Scott said, softly but firmly, "and you pick yourself back up again afterwards. And none of us," he said, "think any less of you. Paige, you're going to have to learn to live with the doubt. We all do."

"So. What? I go back to the way everything was, with a few new ways of coping with stress, and hope for the best?" Paige asked, removing the arm from her eyes to look at Scott. "You know I want on your team, sir. But I don't want to disappoint you again. Disappoint myself."

"Paige..." Scott shook his head a little. "Yeah, you do. You get back on the horse and you do your best. Because that's the only thing you can do. Not trying isn't an option, I know you too well."

She smiled at that, the brilliant smile that had earned her the nickname 'sunshine'. "That's all I needed to hear." Stretching out her hand, she looped her pinkie with one of Scott's fingers, relaxing a little. "Do you think I can do it?"

"I think you can do anything you put your mind to," Scott said quietly. "I don't think it's going to be easy. I think it's going to take time, and I think you probably will stumble and fall a few times, trying to get the hang of this whole 'not holding yourself to impossible standards' thing. But yes," he concluded, "I do think you can do it."

"Thank you." She gently rocked their linked hands, almost like a cradle, as she smiled. "I think that, the hope and the honesty, might be enough. I don't expect it to all be you, but I don't think I'm the kind of person who can hold myself up all alone all the time anymore. At least, not right now." Paige obviously didn't like saying it, but admitting not only to herself but to someone else, someone else that was him seemed, and felt like, a good thing to do. "I'm a heck of a lot of trouble for a protégé, huh?"

"There's something Charles said to me once, about students. The amount of trouble they give you has nothing whatsoever to do with how they turn out in the end. The bumps in the road are just that. The destination's entirely up to you."

Paige gave him a cheeky little grin, raising her eyebrows. "Does that very deep and Zen moment mean I'm back on the trainee team? Eh? Eeeeeh?"

"You never were really off the trainee team," Scott pointed out. "You just weren't on active training. And you know I'll have to talk to Ororo, Alison, and Charles about how to bring you back into active training, if that's what you want." He gazed back at her very seriously. "There's no waving a magic wand and resetting things back to how they were a few months ago. You need to be aware of that right from the start."

She nodded, closing her eyes against disappointment that she knew was silly to feel. She'd been expecting this; in fact, if they'd put her right back on the team, no questions asked, she wouldn't have respected them anyway. "How... how far back are you putting me?"

Scott blinked at her. "Paige," he said, a bit reprovingly, "have I had that talk I just mentioned yet?" He sighed. "I understand you want answers, but I don't make these decisions on my own."

"Right," Paige clipped quickly with a blush, pulling her hand back. "Sorry. Just a slip, I'm sorry."

"That's another thing you're going to have to get used to," Scott said a bit wryly, "if you're still aiming for that captain's role. There are multiple captains now and given how well the system is working..."

Paige gave him a level look, raising an eyebrow as best she could; two could play the desert dialogue game. "You may be surprised to hear this, but people actually seem to enjoy my company somewhat. My report card in elementary school had the little check mark beside 'plays well with other children' and everything."

"You realize that's one of the things I'll be watching for," Scott said, only half-teasingly. "We can't be islands in black leather. I learned that the hard way."

"Yes, sir," Paige replied, nodding not-seriously-at-all. "I will keep that in mind, sir. Will attempt to get out of my basement and go frolic, sir-yes-sir. ...wait a second."