Scott and Jim, Monday morning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Before Scott makes his post about Jean, he gets a visit in his office from Jim, who tries very hard to be helpful. There's not much he can do, but he does provide a listening ear.


He wasn't precisely sure what he was doing. Well, all right, so Scott knew exactly what he was doing. He was doing paperwork. Really low-level paperwork, too; he was skimming new purchase orders for school supplies, signing his name at the bottom of each page. These things really did need to be done, he told himself.

The door was open. That meant something, didn't it? Jim took a deep breath and knocked on the doorframe. "Hey, Scott."

Scott looked up, gazing at the person in the doorway for a long moment before his brain properly engaged. "David. Hey. Something I can do for you?" He had half-expected Alison again. Or Ororo, or Charles.

"Not particularly." Jim was well aware he was nowhere near socially talented enough to make up a believable excuse, so he didn't even bother to try. "I just wanted to see how you were doing, that's all." He smiled faintly. "As well as that can be, anyway."

Scott stared at him for a moment longer, then looked back down at the paperwork, signing one last supply form before laying his pen down. "I don't know," he finally said, a bit abruptly. "I really don't. I don't even really... know what's happening here."

Jim took the action as an invitation. He moved inside the office and shut the door behind him softly. "It was . . ." He stopped, not sure how to continue. This was not his area. He settled for, "This was sudden?"

"We were planning our honeyman last week. This week, she's sending me emails telling me that she'd send the ring back but she doesn't think it's worth the postage." Scott's gaze was lingering on the wall, not on the telepath standing across from him. "Maybe she's possessed or something," he said, his voice still (somewhat alarmingly) flat. "There's precedent."

"Maybe," Jim conceded weakly. "I don't know. Sometimes people sabotage themselves . . . bottle things up so much they just -- get out of hand." She seemed happy. But there was no reason to tell Scott what he thought. It wouldn't make things any better. He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know her. But people . . . a lot can go on that we don't see. Or even know ourselves, sometimes."

"I wonder if this is denial." Scott caught himself rubbing at the scars on his face again and stopped. "She's left me, so of course she's possessed. Just because of what happened with..." He cut himself off, not wanting to go there just now.

"It's a natural reaction. Everything was okay, and now it's not. You want an explanation." Jim lowered his eyes to the desk, putting his hands in his pockets to keep from fidgetting. "You just have to remember that the one you want isn't always the right one."

Scott's attention wandered farther away from David, almost in subconscious rejection of what he was saying. "I don't know what to think," he said flatly. "I don't know that I deserve an explanation, if something was this wrong and I never realized. Or did anything about it. There's precedent for that, too."

Jim shook his head. "If there was something wrong, it took two people to let it reach this point. She could have said something. Before all this." Had she seemed on the edge of burning out in that first conversation? Jim wasn't sure. She'd said a few things about the students, but everyone did. But then, you know all about avoidance and downplaying, don't you, Haller?

Scott looked right at him. "We're psi-linked," he said, an edge in his voice for the first time since the conversation had started. "I have no excuse. Not like I had with Betsy." There, he'd actually said it. Scott shook his head, his eyes dropping back to the paperwork. "I had-" He stopped, closing his eye immediately at the telltale itch. His hand went up to cover it, even though intellectually he knew that wasn't necessary. Old habits died hard.

Jim noticed the rawness, and hesitated. He didn't want to make this more painful for Scott than it already was. He steered the topic away from what were obviously painful memories, but gently. "Psi-links aren't a guarantee," he said quietly. "Especially if the person on the other end is experienced. I've been linking with Charles for years, and I still don't know him. Not really." He glanced out of the window. The sky was clear and bright, a beautiful day. It didn't seem right, somehow. "And telepathy's a cheat, anyway. Letting the other person feel what we feel isn't the same as communication. It's easy to fall back on thoughts and emotions -- and we lie to ourselves about those. Every day."

"I should never have-" Scott bit off the rest of it, stepping hard on the thought as well as the words. No. He wasn't doing that. If this was really happening - and he didn't seem to be waking up here, so it must be - he was not going down that road again and losing the one thing he had left. "I may have mishandled this, all the way along," Scott said as evenly as he could, ignoring the tightness in his chest. "She's only been 'back' for a little over a year. I didn't precisely make it easy on her, at first... and then I suppose I probably rushed things."

"Nothing about this place makes something like that easy." Jim smiled, a bit sadly. "She might have pushed herself too hard trying to make a recovery. It happens. If a mistake was made, it took two people to make it." It had been said already, but he thought it was worth repeating.

"You keep saying that," said Scott, who wasn't blind to nuance, even at a time like this. "You're missing the central point, though. Everything around here is ultimately my fault." His smile was tight, crooked, and absolutely lacking in anything resembling humor. "Seriously. Check the school charter sometime. I know it's in there."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "Standards aren't too unattainable, are they? You can't control other people's decisions, Scott. You can inform them or negotiate them, but the choices ultimately get made in a place out of your control. It's personal accountability. You're not responsible when things go wrong in somebody else's life. Maybe sometimes you have a hand in it, okay, but that doesn't mean you're the only one at fault."

"Cut me some slack, David," Scott said more wearily, looking away. "At least when I say things like that these days, it's mostly a joke. A year and a half ago, I would have meant it." He picked up his pen, then, after a moment, set it back down. "I can't talk to her," he said, his expression distant, vague, "I can't find out whether there's anything I could have done, or anything I can do. Although I suppose she made herself quite clear. And she's told me before that sometimes you can't fix things. Maybe I should have kept that in mind all along."

"No. Sometimes you can't." Jim exhaled slowly, closing his eyes for a moment. "If you think you may've pushed her . . . maybe it's better this way. At least like this you'll know that if she comes back, makes contact, it won't be because she felt forced. Time doesn't heal all wounds, but . . . it does help. Space, too, sometimes."

The pen broke in Scott's hand and he swore softly, getting up and heading over to where there was a box of kleenex on one of the bookshelves. He wasn't sure when he'd picked the pen back up. "I ought to use real pens, not the cheap kind," he said a bit unevenly, wiping the ink off his hand, his back to David. "Wait and hope, huh? I don't think I have it in me anymore." He was managing to sound almost conversational again. Good. "This shouldn't be harder than when she died, but it is. At least watching that happen, it made sense. I didn't want it to, but it was right there in front of me and I couldn't pretend it hadn't happened."

He stopped, trying to ignore the increasing tightness in his chest, and smiled, tightly again, as he turned back around to face David. "I'm going to start having issues with knowing what's real, at this rate. Did she die? Did she come back? Did she actually leave me? It would be enough to drive one to drink, if one hadn't vowed to stay away from the self-destructive habits. I am not fucking up the job again, if that's all-" Scott bit his lip hard, somewhat appalled at having said all that. "Sorry," he muttered, going back to his seat.

"No," Jim said quietly, "it's okay." Watching the man struggle with this was wrenching. He wished he knew what to do, how to handle this, but his speciality had never been relationships. How am I supposed to give him anything useful? he wondered helplessly. He stuck with what he knew. "When I was still in the denial stage, Charles used to tell me the proof was in my head. Did it really happen, or was I just insane? For a long time I -- wanted it to be the second one. But the thing is . . . I was how I was. All I had to do was look at myself, and I knew." Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. This was getting too near an area he really didn't want to throw on the man, but he didn't know what else he should say. "The damage makes it real. It's the same here. What happened, how it happened, doesn't matter. It's in the past. You have to live in the present. Deal with that, and the past will follow." He gave the other man a lopsided smile. "That's what I hear, anyway."

Scott closed his eyes, and pushed all of it away, down deep where it belonged and wouldn't get in the way. "I'm not dealing with anything right now," he said tightly. "I won't pretend that I am - it would be dishonest. I can't deal with it, not until I find out what happened."

"Sometimes you really can't," Jim agreed. For a moment, the headmaster's desk became terribly fascinating again. "Give the wound some time to knit before rehabilitation. When you know more, when you're equipped to handle it -- then you can push yourself. But not right now."

"Well, I am going to DC tomorrow," Scott said with a ghost of a smile. "Going to talk to a few of the people I know she saw on the weekend, see if I can figure out what happened."

Jim nodded. He understood the need to understand, though he had a sinking feeling Scott's explorations would yield nothing good. What's worse -- never knowing, or finding out you've been believing in a lie? Out loud he said, "Just try not to push too hard. Don't break yourself apart over this . . . as much as that's possible."

"I won't," Scott said, the bleakly amused smile lingering. "I did it once. I've used up my get out of jail free card on that score."

Jim smiled a little at that. "Yeah, me too." He sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "I should get going, I guess. Let me know if you need a hand with the nuances of minor academia. As unlikely as that is," he added, remembering who he was talking to.

"Actually, I'm finding the routine kind of comforting," Scott said quietly, his eyes dropping back to the desk. "But thank you. For the offer, and the talk." If he started pushing away offered help again, that would lead to bad places. And no matter what happened, he wasn't going there again.

Jim suppressed the insane urge to laugh as he made for the door. Because you were so much help to him. "Routine is good for that," he said, glancing over his shoulder, "as long as you don't let it bury you. Take care of yourself, Scott."