Scott and Logan, Sunday afternoon

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After this thread, Scott storms up to give Logan a piece of his mind. The conversation doesn't quite go as expected, and surprisingly, there is actually no breaking of Scott's hand on Logan's jaw today.


It didn't strike him until much later that there might have been a very good reason why Logan's door was wide open. That Logan was expecting him, and possibly had been even before Scott had as good as announced that he was coming upstairs.

Right now, he was too furious for that sort of complicated observation of cause and effect. "Where the fuck do you get off?" he snarled, storming into Logan's suite.

Logan was indeed waiting for Scott. "I'm sorry?" he asked, just as calmly as you please.

"I put everything that needed to be put into that report into that report!" Smug, condescending, asshole... "What's wrong, I didn't include enough of what you wanted to know? Didn't let Charles sift through my brain to find out the rest of what I heard, so that you could get your questions answered?"

"Do you think that's what this is about? I didn't get answers I liked, so I'm poking you?" he said with amusement. "Got news for you, cupcake. I've made peace with not getting what I want out of your brain. Editing debriefs is a real bad habit to get into, and self-debriefing is another. Why didn't 'Ro do the debrief?"

"I put everything that was important in there! What," Scott demanded almost feverishly, "you wanted me to describe how they questioned me? Outline my hallucinations for everyone? Fuck you."

"You know, Scott, you're a lot of things. But until right now I wouldn't have listed coward among them. You're afraid. You stink of it." he said. "You just can't deal with being weak."

"Fuck you." But it was weaker than the last time. "I didn't leave out of my report that I'd given them some of the information. If I couldn't deal with being weak, I would have left that out."

Logan just quirked an eyebrow at that.

Scott laughed. It was a tight, strained bark of laughter, and he turned back towards the door, hating Logan, hating himself for having come up here. He'd lost it on the journals. In front of the entire team, and wasn't that just the best way imaginable to prove that he had cracked?

"They know what they need to know, now," he muttered.

"No." he said. "No, they don't. They need to - deserve to - hear it from your lips directly. No hiding, no weaselling, no saving your own ass."

Scott looked around at him, every bit of color gone from his face. "So, what," he said in an incongruously soft voice, "I go to each of them in turn and explain precisely how I broke under torture, gave up some of the information, and gave up on the idea of being rescued?"

"If that's what you have to do to stop hiding."

Scott folded his arms across his midsection, more to brace himself than anything else. It sure as hell wasn't a gesture of defiance. "I'm not hiding. I wouldn't have written the report in the first place if I'd been hiding. Would you stop not making sense?"

"Bullshit." Logan barked. "You hid with that half-assed debrief. You hide by not bringing your trouble to your people and trusting us. You hide by running away, Scott. Poor little Summers, so broken under the weight of his duty."

Scott opened his mouth to snap something back at Logan - what, he didn't know, and the words didn't come for long enough that he closed his mouth again, so that it wasn't hanging open. Not quite thinking about what he was doing, he moved a bit shakily over to the wall, leaning against it. Rubbing at the scars on his face, almost hard enough to bruise, as he struggled to think of something to say.

"I thought if I said it," he finally said, his voice barely audible, "I'd stop hating myself over it. Or someone would tell me that I shouldn't..." Sad. Sad and manipulative, and Scott's shoulders slumped in something close to despair. "But I barely... I barely could write about it. I thought if I could get out the big details, it would be okay. What they wanted. What I told them. I kept blanking out, thinking about the rest of it..."

Logan moved over to rest a hand on Scott's shoulder. "Get yourself sorted out, Scott." he said in as kindly a voice as he could manage. "We'll still be here when you do."

Scott flinched at the touch, half-reflexively, half-irritably. Logan's proximity was... unsettling him, already-raw nerves being rubbed even more raw. But there was a part of him that wanted so badly to believe what he'd said, too. We'll still be here...

But he didn't. Or a part of him didn't, a part that was far too near the surface these days instead of down deep in the dark corners of his mind where it belonged. Scott gave a weak, defensive little laugh and straightened.

"Well, at least I didn't hit you this time."

Logan barked out a laugh. "One of these days you're going to break your hand doing that." he pointed out. "Would it make you feel better if I hit you first? Nah, you'd better take the first swing. Don't want to get busted for striking my CO." And that thought rang chimes somewhere, but Logan pushed it away to follow up on later.

"I don't want to hit anyone. Or anyone to hit me." Scott was leaning back against the wall again. Nice, steady wall. "I tried to go spend some quality time with the heavy bag this morning and my coordination was all gone..."

Logan nodded to that. "I'll bet." he said. Then he walked over to his dresser and pulled out a packet of cigars, and extracted one from it. On a whim, he offered Scott the packet.

Scott gave him a look that said 'Are you nuts?' quite clearly. He watched Logan light the cigar, and his expression went vague and distant, even as his eyes stayed locked on Logan.

"Someone was smoking," he said after a moment, his voice detached.

Logan didn't say anything - looking at Scott was like looking into a mirror sometimes. This was one of those times. He just took a drag from his cigar and exhaled the smoke in a Scott-wards direction. Purely to jog his memory, of course.

"They joked about... putting it out on Yuriko's hand. Like you do. Because she wouldn't flinch. That was what he said. That she wouldn't flinch, because they'd done a good job with her. On her," Scott corrected, still in that faraway voice, although there was almost a gray tinge to his complexion, he was so pale. He was leaning more heavily against the wall.

Since scent seemed to be doing it for Scott today, he ground out his cigar against his palm, ignoring the flash of pain and holding his hand up to Scott so he could smell the burned flesh.

The sheen of sweat on Scott's face was suddenly more noticeable, and he swallowed convulsively, bile rising at the back of his throat. Wasn't real, part of him insisted harshly. They'd duplicated the sounds, smells of Alkali Lake, trying to get him to tell them...

Logan withdrew his hand when Scott dumped a whole lot of fear-smell into the air. He didn't want to give Scott too big of a flashback, not in his room, not with Scott's power. That would be Bad.

Someone was rubbing at the small circular scar at the back of his neck - old and faded now, but still visible. It actually took Scott a moment to realize that he was doing it, as if trying to remind himself that it was in the past, that he was just remembering. Just a memory.

"I'm sorry," he managed, his breathing ragged. "I can't. Not yet."

"Then don't." he said, not unsympathetically. "At your own pace, in your own time. Besides, I'll outlive you anyway."

Scott nodded jerkily, pushing away from the wall. He felt wrung out, unsteady on his feet. "I think... I'll go wait for today to be over," he said, managing a travesty of a smile. "Tomorrow's... got to be better."

"Just keep telling yourself that." he said with the tone and the face of a man who told himself that every day.