Jean, Tommy- midday

[x-traitor.livejournal.com]

Backdated to yesterday.

Jean comes into to talk futures and Tommy just wants to be normal.


"Tommy?" Jean said softly, tapping on the door to his room before
opening it. It was more the illusion of privacy than the actual thing,
since she almost never waited to be invited into the room, but she was
unfailing about fallowing through with it. And it wasn't as though she
wouldn't know if he wasn't prepared to deal with visitors. She had his
latest book request with her, but that wasn't the main reason why she
was coming to see him. "Heya. You feeling up for a talk?"

Looking up from 'The Count of Monte Cristo', Tommy blinked as the
doctor walked in. He was used to people just walking in by now and it
didn't phase him anymore. As long it was just the doctor and not any
more student visitors. Why should he have privacy anyway, when he was
the intruder here? He nodded in response to her question and put aside
his book. "Sure, I think. Depends what we're talking here..."

Setting the book down on his bedside table, Jean pulled over the chair
they'd left in here and sad down. "You've seen your x-rays - your arm
and leg are both healing very well and we'll be able to take the casts
off soon. You've also been progressing nicely with what physio we can
do and it shouldn't be that long after you're out of the casts before
you'd be able to leave the medlab, at least to a different room here
at the school. Which begs the question of what you would like
to do after you're better." He wouldn't necessarily be able to do
whatever it was, but it would help to know what he wanted to factor it
into their discussions.

Tommy blinked in surprise. "You mean I get a choice?" That was not
something he'd been expecting. He thought he would have to go along
with whatever they made him until he was able to get out on his own
and/or they kicked him out.

"There are a lot of questions about what will happen," Jean said, not
answering his question but not avoiding it either. "A lot of factors
to be taken into account. What you would like is definitely one of
those factors."

That raised an eyebrow. "What other factors am I dealing with here?
Whether your precious children can stand to have me here?" He couldn't
keep the sneer out of his voice, as he had no doubt that was one.

Jean's expression mirrored his and her tone was dry as she said,
"Whether we should be sheltering a felon in our home would be one..."
Another felon, she mentally amended, but if he was going to be
sarcastic she would allow herself the liberty of being arch.

Tommy blinked. "Felon? Why do I have this odd feeling that if my
crimes had been against humans not mutants, you would feel
differently?" He was *not* going to make this easy for anyone, but
also, lashing out helped hide his indecision. Stay here and get judged
by mutants or be released and be killed by the local, FOH influenced
police. Either were not very keen options in his opinion.

"Mmm, no, I'm fairly certain arson is a felony not matter who it is
against. And I wasn't aware the owners of the Coffee Quake were
mutants. But," Jean shrugged, "it's not actually the point. The point
is that there are many things which need to be considered before we
can decide what is best for you, and one of them is what you would
wish." Whether or not he believed that they wanted what was best for
him didn't concern Jean overmuch.

"What I wish is that this never happened." He grumbled softly as he
brought his one good hand up in front of his face to glare at it, as
if that would make it go away. "But instead, I'll take the next best
thing. I want to learn not to be dangerous so I can go live a normal
life, whatever of that I have left. I don't want to stay here but I'll
go whatever it takes to get a life back. A normal life." Tommy
would stress it until the cows came home. He didn't want to stay
here, but he would do anything to be normal again. And if that meant a
short stay in hell...he would get over it. At least he didn't have a
yellow tail or something...

Normal was difficult to define at the best of times, more often
established through what it wasn't than what it was, but Tommy was
also young and what was 'normal' for a teenager could, and often did,
change drastically within short periods of time. Jean nodded,
accepting both the spoken and unspoken comments. "All right," she
said, "that's fair. We're pretty good at powers training around here,
and you getting control is definitely a high priority for all of us."
Standing up, Jean smiled. "Is there anything you need?"

Tommy shook his head, opting instead to pick up his book again,
preferring to dwell in the world of Dumas then his own admission
that he would have to stay in their cursed place.

"Ok. I'll see you later."