Wanda and Scott

[x-scarletwitch.livejournal.com]

Two people on the edge due to stress take it out on each other. Unfortunately, Wanda's obviously in more need of a vacation than Scott and several things come to light.



There were all kinds of things he could be doing back inside, Scott reflected, but clearing his head was a good enough excuse to go for a bit of a walk. The office had been seeming a little claustrophobic, again, and Jean had said something to him about getting a little more sun anyway.

The trail he chose was one of the shorter lakeside ones. It would keep him out for a half-hour, tops, and then he'd go back in and tackle the rest of the to-do list. A plan.

With a grunt, Wanda tossed the abused axe to the side and sank down at the bank of the lake. The frustration levels had been building, still, and the physical exercise helped to clear her mind, somewhat. A bag of hers lay near bye, filled to the brim with books--some new, others so hold they were held together with duct tape--all on chaos theory.

No matter how she looked at it, she still wasn't certain what had gone wrong on the mission.

Scott heard the noise as he approached, and wasn't surprised to see Wanda out here chopping wood. Again. Physical activity was one of the first things she retreated to when she needed to sort something out, he'd noticed. Although the fact that she was still at it was mildly disturbing.

The noise he made was deliberate and Wand nodded her head at him. "Scott," she said, wiping the sweat off her face. Not exactly the person she wanted to speak to but she wasn't one to run away from much. He had...not been happy with her performance on the mission, either.

"I'm curious," Scott said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against a tree as he watched her. "How precisely is the obsessive wood-chopping going to solve the problem of whatever the hell happened in Peru? You'd be better off taking some extra Danger Room sessions."

Eyebrows raised, she stared at him over her shoulder. The blame she could accept, the questioning, yes. The pissy tone and attitude? Not even from Charles himself would that be tolerable in the mood she was in. "Maybe you have not noticed," she replied, the sarcasam in her words obvious, "but I have been. Unless you wish for me to occupy the Danger Room the entire 24 hours out of the day?"

"Don't exaggerate, Wanda. And I know you did an extra session yesterday, but that hardly classes as a trend. I'm just not sure what this-" He gestured at the woodpile. "-is meant to be accomplishing."

"This--" She copied his gesture, "is relaxing and is not meant to accomplish anything else but stablizing my piece of mind." Shooting a glare at him, she picked the axe back up and kicked over a fresh piece of wood. Leader of the X-Men and good friend of hers he may be, but she never took kindly to heavy handed attempts at anything.

Safely behind his glasses, Scott rolled his eyes. "The woodpile will grow and swallow us all, at this rate," he said. She was clearly peevish, but damn it, this sort of thing was his responsibility. Her report about whatever had gone wrong with her powers in Peru had been vague, to say the least.

The axe made a very nice sound as the wood neatly split in two. "I'll have to remember to drop some off on your doorstep then, won't I?" Wanda asked. It wasn't like she wasn't TRYING to find out what had happened but it was like trying to get grass to tell you what had happened days ago. Doable if you were a tracker but still hard if there had been other things happening. He was acting as if she wasn't trying and, oh, that burned.

"I sent some ideas for test scenarios to your email last night," Scott said. "Did you look at them yet? It's the usual problem with testing your powers, but it can't hurt to try a few new directions."

Honestly, it wasn't the words, but the tone. Wanda suddenly wished for the power to turn words into physical beings so she could cram them down his throat. Huh. Odd, that. "No, not yet," she sniffed, tossing the new pieces of firewood onto the pile. "I was too busy rereading the mission logs."

What the hell was she bristling about? She was sounding like one of the kids, damn it. The whole 'this conversation is boring me, go away now before I get really aggravated' edge to her body language was grating on him, too. "Were they helpful?" he asked, the patience in his tone perhaps a little forced.

His jaw looked like it was going to pop. "To be completely honest, no, they weren't." She heard him snort and her head shot up. "What on _earth_ is your problem?" she asked, finally, leaning on the axe with one hand while the other one ended up on her hip.

"What is my problem? What is your problem, Wanda?" Scott asked a bit incredulously. "You're not the first one to develop control problems with your powers, you know. Burying yourself in obsessive-compulsive behavior and getting your back up when one of your field leaders has the gall to push you on the subject is not going to solve the problem."

"Obsessive...obsessive-complusive?" Wanda looked so taken back for a second that it was almost funny. "Scott...oh I don't know what your middle name is...hypocrisy...Scott Hypocrisy Summers is what it should be! You are one to talk! And gall? You're the one who came out here demanding what good THIS is doing, making snide remarks about it, acting all holier than thou when you could have just asked me!" Without thinking, they had someone ended up closer to each other, both obviously right on the edge. The stress that Wanda had been holding back finally snapped.

Luckily for them both, she had dropped the axe.

"Oh, give me a break!" Scott snapped right back at her. "However you chose to read my tone doesn't change the fact that you have a problem that woodchopping isn't actually going to solve! And as for hypocrisy, trying to turn it back on me isn't going to make the Everest of woodpiles any less obsessive-compulsive, Wanda!"

"I didn't read your tone, Scott, you advertised it on a billboard large enough that people in CHINA can read it, despite the language difference!" When it really came down to it, she had a horrible temper. But normally one that she was able to control. Obviously, this was not a normal time. "And yes I goddamn know I have a problem but my powers aren't exactly something EASY! I can't just throw myself off a damned building to figure out why my flying didn't work that time, now can I?!"

"No, but you can read the damned scenarios I send you to see if you think they'll be helpful, as opposed to hiding in the woods chopping wood!"

"You sent them to me at 1 am, Scott, 1 am! And I am _sorry_ that I did not get right on it in the morning but unless you forgot, I do things off campus as well! And if you really want to know, I spent MOST of today reading books on chaos theory!" Wanda gritted her teeth and snarled a couple of curses at him in whatever language she could grab a hold of in her head.

"So why didn't you say that five minutes ago? Or when you saw the email? Damn it, Wanda, I'm not a mindreader, and if you're pursuing a direction that you think is going to be more fruitful than running you through questionably valuable Danger Room scenarios, you could have told me that!" Scott gritted his teeth, swallowing the rest of what he'd been about to say. Instead of getting on your high horse and treating me like the enemy because I'm not treating you with kid gloves would have been a satisfying conclusion, but not particularly productive.

"Because. You. Didn't. Ask. You have been angry at me since the damned mission, Scott! And we have barely said two words to each other since! Instead, you toss emails at me without asking how I'm coping with this because, damn it, I'm supposed to be in control of this uncontrollable thing I tap into every time I use my powers!"

Wanda, so deep in her anger, was completely unaware of the leaves falling all around them or of the woodpile rattling very gently. "Between this and Stephen leaving--" Oh that was not supposed to come out, "--all you could have done as _ask_ as Scott and not Cyclops!"

Scott eyed the woodpile and the leaves warily. "Maybe," he said, filing away the comment about Stephen, "but you haven't asked for help, either. Have you?"

"I could have but I thought I was dealing with it just fine!" Wanda threw her arms into the air as a largeish wave suddenly lapped up from the lake and a limb fell off from a tree. "And don't you even try to tell me that throwing myself into my work is not a viable way of doing things because God knows you do it!"

Scott eyed her for a moment - and then, closing his eyes and keeping them carefully closed, slipped off his glasses and tossed them lightly away. He heard them land in the leaves somewhere to his left.

The sudden movement scared the living daylights out of her, and what he had tossed did more to throw a bucket of water on her than anything else he could have said. "...what the hell?"

"Look at me," Scott said, quite calmly. "Think about what you saw when we overflew what was left of that lab. All I did was take off my visor and open my eyes, Wanda. For about five seconds." He listened to the sudden stillness for a moment, and then went on, just as evenly. "Ten years after Charles and your father came up with the solution so that I didn't have to stay functionally blind for the rest of my life, and I still have nightmares regularly about losing the glasses, or the visor, and opening my eyes at just the wrong time. I'm at a disadvantage on missions, because all it takes is for someone to know that and take the visor, and suddenly I'm useless as best, and more dangerous to my teammates than the enemy at worst."

She was shaking. Reaching up, she buried her hands in her hair and gripped hard, willing those breaks in the lines of chaos to calm down, soothing them by force if necessary. "I...the wrong string, Scott, and I could start a chain reaction that I cannot see the end of. I am not a precog, I do not have the ability to see my actions, only sense that they will not kill. It is not a stable power at its core but I have it under as much control as I can and I lost that control the other day, something changed. Somewhere a butterfly flapped it's wings where I could not see it and it affected everything I did. I can turn out to be more of a liability than anyone..." The hex rings around her hands flared as she sought for control, basking everything in a supernatural red glow.

"Then we sort it out." He could see the change in the light through his eyelids, but he stayed where he was, standing there calmly. "It's a hell of a complicated power, but you're in the best possible place to find out what went wrong."

"It's been a hell of a few weeks," she said softly. Turning, using the red light around her hands to see better in the fading light, Wanda fished his glasses out of the leaves. "For both of us." Brushing them off, grateful to see they weren't broken, she gently pressed them into his hands. "I am sorry."

"Me too. I get tense and I get blunt." He slid the glasses back on carefully. "We will work it out, Wanda," he said, blinking at her. "Temporary glitch. Try and think of it that way, rather than you losing control. It'll make it easier to tackle."

"And I get bitchy and sarcastic." There was a slight. "More, I should add. And I try to think of it that way but...last mission was _off_ in a way that should not have been." Reaching up, she pinched the bridge of her nose hard. "It has been a very rough few weeks."

"We will work it out," he said again, just as quietly but more forcefully. "For now, though," he went on, a slight smile playing on his lips, "why don't you leave the poor woodpile alone and come join me for a walk? I think it's been whimpering in surrender for a while now."

Casting an embarrassed glance over at the pile, she laughed. "A walk would be nice, yes. Company would be even better." As they turned and started walking, Wanda sighed, "Did I really call you Scott Hypocrisy Summers?"

"Yes, you did," Scott said amiably. "And I am a hypocrite. Very big on do as I say, but not as I do when it comes to work habits and so forth."

"We both suck."

"Yes, but suckiness loves company."