xp_logs | Thursday afternoon: Scott and Jamie

x-crowdofone.livejournal.com posting in

After his appointment, Scott makes time to give Jamie a going-away present: one last flying lesson. They each manage to say a few things the other needed to hear.

The Blackbird's wings arched above Jamie as he stepped into the hangar; he cast a glance up to the ceiling high above, and took a deep breath. The air smelled like stone and metal, with a tang of jet fuel, and he wondered for a wistful moment if this was the last time he'd ever come down here. Well, maybe Mr. Summers would let him work on the engines a little before he left, or something. And speaking of which . . .

"Mr. Summers?" he called. "You wanted to see me?"

"In here, Jamie," came Scott's voice from the open hatch of the Blackbird. "Come on up..."

Jamie stepped into the plane, trailing his fingers across the cool metal. He found Scott in the cockpit, and was struck for a moment by the memory of the mindscape they'd shared, waiting for the real Blackbird--for this one--to arrive. He shook the memory off, giving Scott a little wave as he sat down in the other chair. "What's up?"

Scott didn't really look all that much better than he had earlier in the week. HIs face was still pale and drawn beneath still-visible bruises, and as he got up out of the pilot's seat, leaning forward to hit one of the buttons on the console, he was still moving far more stiffly than usual. He smiled a bit, though, at the familiar sound of the Blackbird's hatch closing.

"Flight lesson," he said without further preamble, waving Jamie towards the pilot's seat.

"Okay," Jamie said, brightening. He sat back, waiting for Scott to take his seat again, and his eyebrows shot up when that didn't happen. "Wait--you mean, me? Me flying? Me flying this? Up there?"

"Well, there's not much room in here to fly around." Scott gave Jamie a patient look. "Out of my chair, Madrox," he said. "Sit in yours and let's get this bird off the ground."

"Yessir," Jamie said promptly, all but leaping into the other chair. The Blackbird's preflight procedure was a whole lot more complicated than the Cessna he'd always flown in before, but he'd spent probably entirely too much time mooning over the technical manual, and managed everything with barely a hitch. He paused before thumbing the ignition to shoot Scott a sidelong grin. "This by way of giving me a taste of what I'm gonna be missing?"

Scott sank down into the copilot's seat, his shoulders sagging and his expression a bit distant. It took him a moment to answer Jamie's question, his lips tugging upwards in another faint, tired smile. "I'm not that devious, Jamie, don't worry. But I seem to remember promising you this..."

"Aaah. Well, I wasn't really planning on holding you to that, but . . ." The Blackbird's engines rumbled to life, the deeper hum of the retracting basketball court barely audible underneath. "Well, I'm . . . really glad for the chance. I mean, I'm sure Haroun's got something pretty nice set up over there, but . . ."

"Nothing like this," Scott said, every noise and vibration as familiar to him as if he'd been hearing it all his life. "And I know you weren't going to hold me to it. One of the reasons I decided to hold myself to it."

"Well, like I say, I'm not going to complain." Jamie's grin sharpened with more than just a tinge of nerves, and he flexed his fingers over the controls. "Okay, um, any tips for the VTOL part of our program? I'm working under the theory that bumping her into the walls is bad."

"Keep your eye on the angles," Scott said, "and keep her level." It really wasn't as hard to get the 'Bird out of the hangar as it might appear. "And keep your hands relaxed. No white knuckles." Tension in the hands translated to tension elsewhere, and that could be a problem.

"That one I knew from the Cessna, it's just the going-straight-up part that's . . ." The Blackbird rose off the ground, floating toward the patch of sky above." ". . . easier than I thought it was gonna be. Huh."

"She's a fair bit more responsive than a Cessna," Scott said, and a hand snuck out to touch the console in front of him in what was almost a caress. "Keep that in mind. I'd suggest an eastward heading, out over the water..."

"Yeah, like the Shelby's a fair bit more responsive than my dad's old pickup, maybe . . ." Jamie brought the plane around carefully once he'd gained altitude, curving out across the lake. "Damn, it's like she reads your mind." He snickered. "Which explains a lot, actually. You, sir, have a type."

It took him a moment to remember that Jean hadn't precisely made her extended-sabbatical plans public. "... I guess I do," Scott said finally, his voice level, if tired. He made a concerted effort to relax into the copilot's seat. If there was one place he should be able to relax, surely it was in the 'Bird. "Don't let your speed get too high," he advised Jamie.

"Sonic boom's one of those things I'm gonna miss out on, isn't it," Jamie replied mournfully, and throttled back a little. "Sonic boom, evasive action, making her do gymnastics for the Libyans . . ." He sighed a little. "Well, maybe we'll come back someday. Not too many people don't."

"Once an X-Man, always an X-Man. Or so the saying goes. I wonder sometimes," Scott said, his voice low, detached. "Whether it's not as valuable to leave as to stay. To take what you learn out into the 'ordinary' world..."

"Probably. Otherwise even this house is gonna get crowded, come a few years down the road." Jamie shrugged. "It's the people I'm really gonna miss. Everything else . . . I can mostly have out there."

"We'll miss you too," Scott said, trying to keep his voice light as the Blackbird soared towards the Atlantic. "It's a pity the cross-continental duping doesn't work."

"Yeah, I was really hoping that wouldn't, well, totally blow up on me. Maybe with some practice." Jamie looked a little mulish. "I mean, it obviously worked for Skippy somehow, who knows where-all he went. I'll figure it out someday." He shook his head. "If you don't mind me saying, sir, I really was looking forward to the chance to get to know you a little better."

Scott opened his mouth and then closed it again, reminding himself that Jamie didn't generally say things... just to be pleasant. He actually smiled, if a bit crookedly. "You might not have liked me very much, Jamie. Cyclops can be something of a bastard at times, according to some of our teammates."

Jamie snorted. "Yeah, what with that making sure everybody's on top of their game and pays attention to details and doesn't slack off, how dare you. Never mind that you're twice as hard on yourself as you are on the rest of us." He gave a wry chuckle. "Anyway, if you're something of a bastard, I'm really in trouble where I'm going, because I hear my new CO is an evil bitch from hell."

He almost laughed. Not quite, but almost. "She's a big softie at heart. You just have to know her weak spots. Drop a few hundred feet of altitude," he said, seeing that they were over water.

Jamie angled the plane's nose down a little, marveling again at the smooth response. "I think I managed to figure out a few, over the years. We'll see. Does she have one of those tactical review gadgets out there? Because I really like those."

"She doesn't have a nifty table, no. But you can do a tactical review with just a simple computer program... we should send her a table," Scott murmured. He felt... oddly relaxed, really. Maybe it was being in the air, he wasn't sure.

"They're fun with the tables. But I . . . actually kinda like them either way," Jamie confessed a little shamefacedly. "I thought I was gonna like the Danger Room best, but the tactical reviews are like . . . they're puzzles, only in about eight dimensions, and they're significant. And challenging. And, I dunno, it seems like it should be weird that I like them, but I do."

"If you want to know a secret," Scott said, "I always thought that in a few years, you could have had my job if you'd wanted it."

Jamie's jaw dropped and he shot the other man an incredulous look; the plane drifted off-course a few degrees before he started and corrected the heading. "We did the flabbergasted sentence fragments thing already about me flying the plane, Mr. Summers. No fair springing something like that on me." He shook his head, still a little dazed, but then glanced over again curiously. " . . . Why? I mean, I never would've picked myself as a leader type. Ringleader, maybe."

"You're responsible. Highly responsible. You do amazingly well on the tactical reviews, you're creative, you're a quick learner... and you don't take yourself too seriously." Scott smiled a bit. "All very good qualities."

"I guess." Jamie blinked a few times at the sheer enormity of the vision. "Jeez, though, I never even led my Cub Scout den, I can't imagine giving orders to somebody like Nathan, or Mr. Cassidy or Mr. Marko."

Scott's smile grew, just a little. "Would it amuse you to know I've always felt the same way? I knew Cain's opinion of me from well before he joined the team. Sean has done and seen so much... and Nate was doing the effective equivalent of my job around the time I was graduating from training wheels."

"I dunno about amuse, but it reassures the hell out of me." Jamie quirked a grin. "Doesn't show, y'know, that I've ever been able to tell. How'd you get past it?"

Scott's smile faltered a little. "I suppose I... just stopped thinking about it. Did what needed doing, when I was in the middle of a crisis, and saved the doubts for afterwards."

"I did that, I think," Jamie said, tilting his head slightly. "In Asgard. All the time we were there it never occurred to me that we were gonna do anything else but find everybody alive and at least rescuable, and get home safe. And then after we did, a few days later I woke up wondering if I'd been insane, there were so many things that could've gone wrong so easy. But at the time, it just felt like . . . there were things that somebody needed to do, and there I was."

"'The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been'," Scott said, then gave Jamie a slight shrug. "Henry Kissinger."

Jamie chuckled. "I'd take that as a compliment if I'd done any leading, but, well, Doug did the talking, Angie and Rahne's Hrimhari did the navigating, Shiro wasn't, y'know, in a following mood most of the time . . . mostly what I did was nudge. The group dynamics got a little weird. I was glad when we hooked back up with Alison."

"You've had a weird few years," Scott said after a moment. "This is not your grandfather's high school experience..."

Jamie laughed. "Knowing my grandfather . . . well, okay, yeah, I did kinda go a little above and beyond the call." He watched the water flickering past underneath them for a moment. "But I wouldn't trade any of it. Even the bad parts . . . they're part of where I am now. And where I am is pretty good."

I wish I could say the same. But it helped, just a little, to hear one of the students say it. Made him think that there had been successes, had been things he'd done right... Scott looked away for a moment, out the canopy. Just long enough to get his expression back under control.

"That's all that I can hope to hear, you know," he said, his voice subdued, but calm. "Thank you."

"Thank you," Jamie corrected him. "Wanted to make sure you knew, in case it's a while before I get the chance to say it again. How much I appreciate everything you've done, over the years."

"That's good to hear, too." If that sounded a little more hoarse... well, Jamie would forgive him. Scott looked around at him, mustering a smile. "Keep on your current heading," he said. "We don't have to go back just yet."

Jamie patted the console gently. "Hell, I could stay up here all day."