(no subject)

[x-wither.livejournal.com]

Scott heads down to Georgia to pick up Kevin. On the way back, the two discuss Scott's past and Kevin's future.



Kevin hovered by the junkyard's entrance, lazily kicking a can back and forth with the tip of his boot. He stood just outside the rusted chain-link fence, leaning against the now useless 'Beware of Dog' sign. Those dogs had ceased to be a problem months ago. Kevin's watch beeped, chiming that it was now the afternoon. He glanced over his shoulder, through the fence, back at the crushed cars and other metallic trash parts that had decorated his makeshift 'home' for the past year or so. Kevin rolled his eyes and turned back around, facing the gravel road. He wasn't going to miss it.

The large black plane seemed to drop out of the low-lying clouds like some sort of raptor stooping for the kill. VTOL thrusters firing, it came in for a landing that could be described as smooth-as-silk and not be overstating the case. The engines powered down, and after a couple of minutes, the hatch opened.

Scott, dressed in civilian clothes rather than leathers, stepped out and looked around for a moment before he spotted the young man. He offered a smile as he came over, coughing on the dust the Blackbird's landing had raised.

"Kevin, right?"

Kevin ogled the black plane that seemed to drop out of nowhere, cruising in for a soft landing as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. He hadn't known what to expect when he'd been told that someone from the school would pick him up, but God, a plane? Then again, you must have to be rich to have a school for mutants. Kevin watched it with narrowed eyes, wondering how fast it could go.

Suddenly, a door opened up and a young man came out. Teacher? Kevin had never met him before. He shifted from one foot to the other, fingers picking at the corners of his long sleeve shirt.

"Yeah," He paused. "Nice plane."

Scott grinned crookedly. "Thank you," he said. "I helped build her - or at least modify her." He looked back over his shoulder at the 'Bird. "We don't always come to pick up our new students this way, but, well, you were in Georgia..."

Kevin shrugged and looked up. "Good thing you did. Hitch hiking would have been a bitch." He kicked up some dust around his shoes, suddenly self-conscious of his surroundings. "Um, do you have a name or I do have to call you 'Sir' or something?"

"Sorry," Scott said wryly, but didn't extend his hand. He knew a little bit about the boy's powers, after all. "Scott... Mr. Summers, if we're going to be formal about it. I'm the headmaster at Xavier's. Graduated from there myself, actually."

Kevin nodded, filing the information away for future reference. He noted that Scott's hand stayed at his side and Kevin flexed his fingers in response. At least there wouldn't be any awkward attempted hand-shaking going on. "Okay, okay. Well, um, we gonna leave? I've got my stuff and it's not like I've gotta say goodbye to anyone..." He trailed off, not sure what else to say.

Scott tilted his head towards the plane. "We can go, then," he said easily, falling in beside Kevin as the young man headed towards the ramp. "Should be a fun flight - most of our students who arrive this way consider it one of their best memories of Xavier's."

"Yeah, we'll see about that." Kevin replied as he walked up the ramp, eying the plane a little uneasily. He'd never actually been on a plane before and wasn't about to admit that to the guy who was talking about it like it was a ride at a theme park.

"We'll be back in Westchester before you know it," Scott said easily, leading Kevin into the passenger cabin. He'd stay back here, chat with the kid while they flew back. He seemed a little edgy, so some chatter would probably not go amiss. "Pick a chair, any chair," he said, indicating the more comfortable seats. "I'll need to check to make sure you're strapped in for take-off..."

"Yeah, okay, whatever." Kevin muttered, eyes sweeping the seats, trying to gauge which one would be the safest. Then, he spent a few seconds wondering why he was wondering such things. If a plane goes down, it doesn't really matter where you're sitting, does it? Rolling his eyes at himself, Kevin chose the seat closest to him and plopped his bag on the floor by his feet. "Wouldn't want me bouncing around during flight, huh?"

Scott checked the kid's harness, then gave him another reassuring smile before he looked in the direction of the cockpit. "Ready when you are, Sam," he called, settling into his own chair and doing up his harness. "We'll be able to get up and move around once we're at cruising altitude," he told Kevin. "It's just that the take-off can be a little... steep."

Kevin reached down, as much as the harness would let him, and scooped his bag up off the floor, clutching it in his lap, so it wouldn't go flying around all over the play during take-off. "Thanks for the warning...I guess." Kevin leaned back, not sure what to expect from a take off. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the junkyard through the window. He turned his attention back to Scott. "What's a school need a plane for?"

The Blackbird ascended smoothly, and Scott grinned again, this time a little sheepishly. "That's a long story. One you'll find out the details of once you get there. Right now I'll just say that the staff of the school occasionally does some outside work. Call it public service. We sometimes have to get places in a hurry. Often places very far away."

"Okay, then." Kevin raised his eyebrows and then shrugged, not caring enough to press the issue. What they did on their free time was none of his business. As long as it didn't affect him. He glanced out the window again, getting an eye-full of the world from above and decided that planes were as bad as he thought. Not fun, but not bad. Kevin could get used to it. He clutched the arm rest. "Um, I haven't been to school in a while. By the way."

"We get people from a wide range of academic backgrounds." Too often, young mutants had their schooling disrupted for one reason of the other; perils of the genes, Scott thought sometimes. "When I showed up, I was sixteen, and I'd missed about a year and a half's worth of school. I managed to catch up eventually."

This was a new revelation to Kevin. Up until this school, he'd never really come into contact with other mutants. The idea that someone else also had their life plans thrown up in the air was a little comforting. "Cool." He stated, turning to glance out the window again, falling silent. Conversations with strangers had never been his strong suit and once he'd gotten the 'I missed some school' card out of the way, Kevin wasn't exactly sure what to say. He rapped his thumbs nervously against the arm rest.

"Do you have any hobbies?" Scott raised a hand, smiling, as Kevin looked at him. "I know, that sounds like the worst imaginable 'let's have small talk' line, but I was just wondering. We have students at the school that are involved in all kinds of different things. I'd like to see you find something you like to do, if we have it."

Kevin blinked and shifted his legs, jostling his bag. "Uh, well, I like to draw. A little. You know, just...sometimes there's not much else do to." Kevin had some mental images of what went on for fun at the school and some of them were well into the bizarre zone.

Mental note, introduce him to Angie. "We've got a well-stocked art room," Scott said cheerfully. "I'll have someone show you where it is. Anything that you'd like to use in there, you can feel free."

Kevin let out a shy smile. So far, his art supplies were whatever he could find in the trash or steal. Pencil sharpeners were not exactly easy to find and pens were not the best tool for an artist. "Thanks." He said genuinely. "My old school just had sports…and text books about the Soviet Union."

"We have a Russian doctor?" Scott offered a bit whimsically.

Kevin's smile widened a fraction. He bit his lower lip. "Good to know. Stalin's all I ever learned about in history." The mentioning of art had eased the tension in Kevin, making him feel a little more at home.

"Amelia isn't quite old enough to have been around in Stalin's day, but she can probably chat about Soviet history with you. If you're into that sort of thing." Maybe he wouldn't mention Illyana, on the subject of Russians. "We've got quite a few history courses, if that's something you'd be interested in taking. Good teachers for them, too."

"Thanks, I'll pass on the discussions." The one thing he'd enjoyed about his exile to the junkyard was the total lack of school. He wasn't about to whip out his opinions on the fall and rise of communism and he certainly wouldn't enjoy the classes. He shrugged his shoulders at the second comment. "Guess we'll see when we get there."

"Once you've settled in, we can figure out what you'd like to do this summer," Scott said. "But the important thing's to get there and get comfortable." Kevin reminded him just a little of himself, at around the same age. Not hugely so, but enough to provoke more than a little empathy.

"Do I have to room with anybody?" Kevin asked, the question suddenly presenting itself at the mention of being comfortable. Close quarters were not his thing and Kevin didn't want to risk touching anybody.

"You'll probably be in a suite with someone," Scott said after a moment, thoughtfully, "but they're roomy. Really surprisingly roomy, actually. And we can certainly make sure you have your own bedroom." Would only make sense, given Kevin's power.

Kevin swallowed and nodded and rapped his thumbs against the arm rests again. He'd be fine, right? Right. Of course. He could have his bedroom and nobody would die. "Good." He said lamely, nodding his head again, with a little more force than he'd meant to. "Just didn't want to get tossed out for killing anybody." Kevin added, sarcasm in his tone, but he was only half-joking.

Scott gave Kevin a long, thoughtful look, then tapped the side of his face. "See the scars?" he asked. As it was a rhetorical question, he went on. "That's because the eye on this side isn't real, it's a prosthesis."

Kevin gave Scott a confused look and then blinked, staring at the eye in question. "What happened?" The question came out before Kevin had had time to consider that it was probably rude. Oh well. Too late.

"An accident, but that's not the important part. My mutation has to do with my eyes," Scott said easily. "They make... well, we call them optic blasts. The problem was that I was in another accident back when I was very young, and the brain damage I suffered meant that the optic blasts were always on." He shrugged a little. "I missed school because I was blind. Had to be blind, because if I opened my eyes, I could demolish a building."

Kevin leaned forward in his chair, caught up in the story. Optic blasts with the power to demolish buildings? Sounded pretty nasty on an the crappy mutations scale. At least Kevin could do every day things like open his eyes. "And the school, what, helped you control it?" Maybe there was hope after all.

"I used to wear glasses. Ruby quartz glasses," Scott said, his lips twitchy. "Were kind of geeky at first. Eventually I redesigned them so that they looked like really cool sunglasses. I didn't mind the geekiness," he said seriously. "I could see again. I don't think I can tell you what it felt like, after months in the dark..."

Kevin's eyes flickered down to his gloved hands as he imagined what it would be like to touch someone again. He looked back up at Scott and tried to imagine him with the glasses he described. "Kinda makes it sound like a disability."

"In and of itself, no. It was the brain damage that was the problem... my blasts are supposed to be under my control. When I had the second accident," Scott said, his mind flashing back to that night in Seattle, in the rain, "I lost my eye. But the mutated part of my brain, the part that had suffered the damage, could handle the optic blast when it was only coming from one eye." He smiled a bit, wistfully. "So suddenly I had an off switch."

Kevin's first instinct was the ask if Scott was fine with now having only one eye and off switch instead, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. If losing a hand gave Kevin the ability to turn off his powers, he wouldn't complain. "Sounds like you got lucky." He paused, thinking how that sounded. "In a weird way."

"In a way, yeah." Scott gazed across at Kevin, still smiling a little. "I don't know that I would have been able to handle it, if I hadn't had all the help that I did at the school. We've got people who've forgotten more about mutation than your average thousand scientists ever knew."

"Good to know. 'Least you guys seem to know what you're doing." Kevin ran a hand through his hair, wondering what kind of things were being cooked up over at Xavier's. It was obviously way more than any average school, mutants aside.

"There's someone with a mutation similar to yours - one of the staff. You might want to meet her," Scott said. "I know that 'we're in the same boat' isn't necessarily comforting, but it might be good to have someone who understands what it's like to be afraid to touch someone."

Kevin's eyes, which had been wandering aimlessly around the plane for the past few minutes, snapped back to Scott. "Really?" The question was almost breathless. "Yeah, I'd like to meet her!" The lonesome feeling that had been following him around since his powers manifested released its grip a little. He'd take someone with 'similar' powers any day.

"Her name's Marie. I think the two of you will find that you have a lot in common," Scott said, inwardly relieved by the enthusiasm. It was a toss-up, in a situation like this, as to whether the kid would jump at the chance to meet someone who understood or be cynical. "She's another graduate of the school. She teaches yoga and goes to college."

So, on the whole, Kevin decided that coming to Xavier's had not been a bad idea at all. If anything at all, the other girl, Marie, seemed to have a future and if she could, Kevin could too? He tried to organize his thoughts, tried to remember the newfound questions he had for Scott, and then, suddenly, he was worried. What if Marie was just a fluke? What if Kevin never had a normal life and Marie was just lucky? "Cool, yeah, I'd like to meet her," Kevin said absently, distracted by his thoughts. "We should arrange something..."

"No need to arrange something," Scott said with a brief grin. "She's one of the residence advisors. That's what she's there for."

Kevin blinked. Advisor? Okay. A little awkward. Maybe meeting this Marie wasn't such a good idea then. "Sounds good!" Kevin lied.

Some kind of hitch there, clearly... "Did you have any more questions?" Scott asked, moving smoothly off the subject. "Anything you want to know about the school, the students, the staff..."

Kevin inhaled through his nose and thought. Then, thought some more. "No, I think I'm okay." He hesitated. "I could ask you if I thought of something, though. Right?"

"Absolutely. Myself, or Ms. Munroe - I'll introduce you to Ororo when we land, she's got the same job I do." Scott smiled again suddenly. "And there's a journal system, for the school - it's online. If you've got questions you can always ask there, too."

"An online journal system?" Sounded a little weird, but Kevin assumed that it was to provide a feeling of 'home' and safety and yadda, yadda, yadda. "Do all the students use that?"

Scott nodded. "Some more than others. It's sort of what you make it, really - no one's going to force you to post." He suspected, however, that it might be a good way for Kevin to get to know his fellow students, at least initially, if he was leery about close contact.

It certainly sounded better than being forced into close quarters with someone and carrying on an awkward conversation. "Guess I'll give it a look or something. Hey, how long until we're there?"

"A lot sooner than you think," Scott said with a grin.