Common People (Cain, Amanda)

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While Remy's calling for reinforcements to help renovate the brownstone, Cain pays a visit to one of the other occupants. Some catching up is done, and old issues are resolved as the concept of redemption and fresh starts is discussed. And Amanda lets out her inner fourteen year old girl with aspirations of pop singer stardom. Really.




It was just as well the building was largely unoccupied - the small CD
player Amanda had set up in the kitchen of one of the apartments was
cranked up as far as it would go. You couldn't do manual labour
without tunes, after all. Dressed in the oldest, most threadbare jeans
she owned and an equally old and faded Ramones shirt that could quite
conceivable have been Pete's at one stage, to judge from the size of
it. Wielding a scraper, she was attacking the layers of truly ugly
wallpaper from the moving room - it had blotches that looked like
spiders marchign across the walls. As she worked, she was humming
along to the music, occasionally breaking into snatches of song.

Until Pulp's "Common People" came on. It was a song that demanded
dancing around insanely, singing along at the top of your lungs. Which
was exactly what Amanda was doing:

"Rent a flat above a shop, cut your hair and get a job. Smoke some
fags and play some pool, pretend you never finished school..."
Amanda's voice wasn't the most tuneful, but it didn't matter for Pulp.
"But still you'll never get it right, when you're laying in bed at
night. Watching roaches climb the walls, if you called your dad you
could stop it all. You'll never live like common peop--"

Of course, dancing around singing into a scraper went far better when
you didn't have an audience.

Slowly, Cain clapped his hands from where he stood leaning against the
wide doorway. "Ain't the worst caterwauling I've ever heard, but it's
a good thing you've got a day job now." He nudged the paint buckets
he'd been carrying into the room, pacing around to frown at the
horrible wallpaper. "Looks like you been taking better care of
yourself, kid. I like the hair."

He finally smiled, gesturing to the room. "And your own place along
with a job. Who'da thought?"

The blush could have lit up several city blocks. "Um, I didn't hear
you there." Of course not, with the music still blaring. Moving to
switch it off, she smiled a little shyly. "Um, thanks. The time off's
been good for me." She nodded at the paint cans. "I've gotta say, even
if you picked up neon pink, it'd be better than the wallpaper in here.
Someone had awful taste."

"You've seen how Emma dresses," Cain replied, hauling two paint cans
onto a piece of plywood between two sawhorses that was serving as a
table. "Point made. Looks like you got enough space in here for your
own disco if you want, though. Place is old, but roomy."

"It's huge, after my place in New Orleans," Amanda agreed. "Don't know
what I'm going to do with all the space, but I guess the books'll
start taking over like they usually do. I think Strange is sending me
some of his stuff."

Cain nodded and looked out the window. "So Chuck tells me this job's
some mutant think tank thing. Of course, with Remy and Pete at the
helm..." he arched an eyebrow, leaving the thought unsaid. "You sure
this is the kind of work you're cut out for?"

She shrugged, turning back to the wall and starting to scrape again.
"The think tank job's research, mostly," she said. "And I'm trained
for that with the magic - most of it's reading and chasing things up
and I didn't lose that part. And I've got a good memory and learn
things fast, so what I don't know I'll pick up. Same goes with the
languages - I'm keeping those up and learning more when I can. As for
the rest of it... I don't see myself getting into the thick of things
that much. They all want me out of the firing line. My end of thing's
mostly keeping everyone in touch, checking things out book-wise, that
sort of thing."

Cain ran his finger over the windowframe, frowning at the enormous
clumps of dust and flaking paint that drifted to the floor. "Good.
Leave that stuff to the folks who need getting shot at once in a
while. Helps keep 'em on the straight and narrow."

He chuckled, turning around to look around the room and then once more
at Amanda. "You and I, we ain't always seen eye to eye. Ever since I
known you, you ain't done much but make stupid decision after stupid
decision, and get yourself deeper and deeper in shit. Half the time I
figure everyone'd been better off if Chuck would've let me just wring
your neck and toss you in the quarry."

Exhaling, Cain nodded slowly. "But he didn't. And you turned yourself
around. Suppose I'd be the biggest hypocrite around if I said you
ain't deserving it. Good and the bad. You been through some shit, and
that ain't a lie. Ain't saying you came out smellin' like a rose, but
you came out of it. I respect that. And this?" He nodded to the room
around them. "'s moving on. Proud of you."

As Cain had spoken, Amanda's scraping had gotten slower and slower. At
him talking about wringing her neck, her hand had tightened on the
scraper, half-sure she was about to find Cain's large hands on her
neck to do just that - he'd never hidden his opinion of her and she'd
seen his response on the journals to what she'd done. But at the last
she turned, eyesbrows raised. "You're serious?" she asked, and then
shook her head. "No, of course you are, ignore that. I was just... I
didn't expect to hear you say that, not after what I did." Raising her
chin to meet his eyes, she smiled slightly. "Thank you. I fucked up so
much, and I know there's never going to be anything I can do to make
up for it, but... I'm trying. Real hard. And it helps, you seeing
that." She grinned suddenly. "Especially you, actually - you never
were backwards about telling me I was a fuck-up."

"Everyone else might go for the touchy-feely crap," Cain explained,
"Ain't my style. Besides, you're making good on it now, trying to use
what you got to help people. I ain't no stranger to that idea," he
said, tapping his belt where his X-Men communicator rested. "And if
you can make Remy's life hell in the process, more power to you."

"The thing about the touchy-feely crap is you never know where you
really stand." It sounded more wistful than anything else. "And people
wonder why Pete 'n Remy are so important to me - they're straight with
me, at least most of the time." She fiddled with the scraper in her
hands, not really sure what else to say. "You've said that to me a few
times, 'bout making good. I suppose I'd be out of line asking what it
is you're making up for?"

"I got a second chance," Cain explained. "I shoulda died about forty
years ago, hell, before nearly everyone I know was born. Instead, I
ran. Pissed off at the war, pissed off at the Corps, pissed off at the
world. I should've died there in that goddamn rice paddy with the rest
of my troop, and instead..." He shrugged. "I wake up in a hospital
with two decades gone by, and big enough to punch out a locomotive.
Spent too long wasting that time and not giving a damn. Figured there
wasn't anything worth giving a damn about."

He paused, looking out the window over the East Village. "Then I went
and helped Nate out in Greece, cleaning up that mess. Seeing how a guy
like him who'd been through so much shit was willing to die for his
friends, risk his life to make sure things got put right. Kinda shamed
me a little, I guess. So I figured it was time I made the choice to do
the same."

Amanda was quiet for a long moment, taking in what he'd said,
processing it. Her face heated again, but this time with some of that
shame he was talking about. Oh, she could understand, all right.
Turning the scraper over in her hands, she said, slowly: "That's
pretty much why I'm here. Askani gave me a second chance back there at
the Hellfire Club. In New Orleans I was going to do it the normal way,
going back to school, taking lessons from Tante to make sure I
understood the magic thing. When my powers came back..." She smiled a
little. "Moira said pretty much the same thing, about it being the
chance to do things over, not make the same mistakes. I'm trying to do
it without the magic, be as much use as I can. It feels... right, I
suppose." Leaning back against the wall, she considered him. "Thanks,
for telling me that. I know how much you like to keep things to
yourself."

"Most folks ain't likely to understand," the big man confessed.
"You've been through that kind of hell. You know what it takes to get
yourself back from it. You got what it takes to make the hard choices.
Speaking of," he leaned over to pick up two paint cans. "Got some
robins' egg blue left over from Nate painting the nursery, or seafoam
green from god knows where."

Pushing herself off the wall, Amanda went over to look at the paint.
"Almost makes me wish for neon pink," she said, teasing. Hmm. "I like
the green," she said at last. "Reminds me of those bridesmaid dresses
at Nate and Moira's wedding."

The memory brought a smile to Cain's face. "Didn't do half a bad job
dancing then, either," he teased.

"Only because you let me stand on your feet," she pointed out, before
breaking into giggles.

Cain smirked, brandishing a paintbrush at Amanda teasingly. She'd been
able to keep up then by standing on his feet. Now she seemed to be
doing just fine, standing on her own.