[Julio and Lorna] - Monday Morning
Aug. 28th, 2006 10:38 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsJulio and Lorna have a training session out by the quarry, and Julio lets slip that he knows about Lorna's "sabbatical" last fall. Both bring up things that have been buried for a while.
Lorna had come out early to walk about, make sure that everything felt and looked stable. The quarry was a good natural training ground but she worried about what the continue use of power would do to it. Maybe Forge could build come kind of neutralizer field when they started working on bringing the power levels up for Julio. She made a mental note to ask him about it and hopped off the quarry edge, lowering herself slowly to the rock floor.
Julio was up near the edge of the quarry, stretching like he was going for a run. He wasn't sure if it was necessary, considering it was powers training, but he figured it wouldn't hurt to limber up. It also gave him something to do while Lorna wandered around the quarry. It was a wonder he didn't ask her about Magneto the first time he saw her after that day with Amanda in the park. Instead, he held his tongue and bided his time, because how did you ask about that, really?
After she was satisfied with the state of the quarry, Lorna lifted herself back to the top and alighted next to Julio. "So, have you been reading those books I gave you? I think it's pretty important to understand the how of our mutations as much as we can until we get to the point where it all just stops making sense." She grinned. "Yours at least seem to be fairly straightforward which is nice."
"Yes, it is 'shake things,' pretty easy to understand," Julio grunted while he finished stretching his calves, then he stood and twisted from side to side. "Although, it is hard to read a science text when you are having to look up a lot of the words." He'd finally cheated and used one of Forge's translator programs. He dropped his arms to his sides and looked expectantly at his teacher. "Are we ready?"
"We are if you are. Learning the vocabulary will come with time. As long as you get the concepts, it's all good." Lorna paused, chewing on her lower lip and thinking about how she wanted to do this. "Okay, so I think that first we need to move back from the edge. If things go tumbling, I'd rather not have to try to catch you. Then we'll go ahead and start with some focusing exercises. There are some that I learned...last year...and I think they'll really help." There were times when she stumbled over the idea of using anything she learned while in Florida but there was nothing evil about the techniques in and of themselves...right?
The "That is when you were with Magneto?" popped out before Julio could stop himself. He clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, but it was too late. "Stupid!" He chided himself, slapping his forehead.
Lorna looked startled and it was a moment before she nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, that was. How did you hear about that?" She caught most of the gossip around the mansion and she didn't know that that was still a topic of conversation. It wasn't current like Scott's recent torture, nor was it flashy like the Askani. It didn't amuse or have the shock value of the invasions or the demons. Mostly it just wasn't talked about, though she didn't do anything really to encourage or discourage that.
Julio scuffed the ground with a bare foot. "Amanda told me. She said to look it up on the journals. And I did." He shrugged his shoulders in an embarrassed way. "I wasn't sure how to bring it up, but I just did." A small silence passed while a slight breeze tugged at their clothes. "I'm sorry."
She sighed and dragged a hand through her hair, "So am I." Amanda, well, that made perfect sense. Anything that made Lorna look worse. God, the girl was never actually going to stop hating her, was she? "It's okay. You can ask about it. There aren't many people who know what it's like, having been around him. I'll answer any questions you like. The most important thing for you to know is that I'm not going to hurt you. Ever. It's not like he still has any influence over me, okay?"
Julio nodded and cracked his knuckles, thinking. "It is not something to brag about. I should not have been surprised, it seems he has a history with half the people in the school," he said wryly. There was a hundred things he wanted to ask Lorna, but he figured he should probably ask the most important one first.
"Do...Do you ever stop being scared? I mean, that you'll turn the corner and there he'll be? And that you'll have to go with him all over again and there's nothing you can say or do to stop it?" He was sacrificing his pride here, but dammit, this was important. And she would know.
Lorna rubbed her neck, a habit she'd never fully broken from the days after getting the collar off. Some days she felt like it was still there. "The whole truth? No, you don't. It's...it becomes livable. And you eventually get to the point where you tell yourself...if he's there, I can handle it. I can do something about it. But you really don't know how true that is. For me...he was never overtly cruel. He let the others do that. But if I did turn the corner and he was there, I know I'd be terrified. I don't...it gets better. It really does. I can look back now and...it's not as bad as it was." She gave him a sad little smile, "Does that help?"
The younger boy scratched his head and sighed. "I got him all to myself," Julio said quietly. "It seems everyone else just saw the others, never him. I got to see, what he's really like." Julio rubbed the back of his hand where the i.v. scar was. "I'm scared to death of him. And I don't like it. Kids will joke, and call him 'buckethead' but...." Julio trailed off, it was killing him to admit this, "I'm still so afraid. He made me-" he swallowed, "helpless."
"I saw him. I saw him everyday. He like cilantro. A lot. And parcheesi. He's very good at coming off as this...kind old man. It's strange." Lorna took a deep breath and paced back a few steps. She usually avoided thinking about this but it would be unfair to Julio to deny him the chance to talk about it. "I lived with him for three months. I don't know how much you know about what happened to me but...there was a collar, and it was an inhibitor but it was also, well, it's complicated but suffice to say that I wasn't wholly myself a lot of the time. And when I was...myself, I didn't have any powers. When I did, he taught me...a great deal. I say he was never overtly cruel but...that's just to me. He doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He has no problem at all letting someone else do unto others." She lifted her chin and for a moment looked, hard and cold and anything but fragile then it all vanished, "I remember very much being helpless. I've got the scars to prove it too. Being helpless isn't something that you are forever though. You get stronger."
Julio clenched his fists and frowned, "It was so strange. He kept acting like a gentleman to me, right up until....but everyone else. He-he killed a lot of people to get to me," he dropped his hands to his sides. "And when I wouldn't give him what he wanted, he had no problems hitting me until I did," the last he admitted dully, not looking Lorna in the face. His lip trembled ever so slightly. "It makes me so angry to see people talking about him, agreeing with him. Like he's some sort of intellectual. He's not. He's a monster. And I hate him for what he's done." Julio finally looked Lorna in the eyes. "A part of me wants to see him again, just so I can kill him."
Lorna looked away, out over the quarry, to something she couldn't quite see because it was only in her mind. "He never hit me. He let Sabertooth do that. Or Mystique. It...I think he wanted me to trust him. He told me that I was his daughter, you know. I didn't know then if it was true or not." She blinked rapidly then finally turned back to the boy, "I understand wanting to kill him. I couldn't do it, myself. I...he taught me how...it's so easy to just turn people off. I swore I'd never use that. It's okay to hate him, Julio. It's okay to want him to pay for all the hurt that he's brought but we can't become what he is. And part of that is treating lives like disposable commodities. We can't kill people, even if they really really deserve it."
We can't kill people. Julio crossed his arms and looked down into the quarry. What Lorna said rang true, killing Magneto would make him a even more of a murderer as well, but perhaps it was worth damning his soul to save the hundreds that Magneto would kill in the future. Julio ran his hands through his hair and sighed again. "Right," he said, "You are right."
"It's not fair. In a lot of ways, I know." Lorna sighed, "Believe me, Julio, if there was a way to stop him, I'd be first in line. But we're doing the best we can without just replacing him with us. It's not just about stopping him. It's about stopping the whole philosophy. He's got followers and we can't kill them all even if we did take him out." She paused and bowed her head, "There are people who think the solution is killing. But those people...generally they don't believe that good things happen."
A part of Julio wanted to ask, 'What good things?' but he knew. The good things were here at this school. Even being bothered by the reporter and seeing the memorial in central park hadn't been enough to ruin the trip to New York. He'd sat next to Sooraya on the way in, and somehow managed to explain New York to her. And Kyle had managed to eat at exactly 37 different hot dog stands. Julio was amazed at how normal that day felt, how normal he felt. And he would do anything to keep it that way.
"This school is one of those good things, yes? Even if it is not always safe, it is still better than the alternative." He bend down and picked up a piece of gravel, and absently flung it towards the quarry.
Lorna nodded, "The school, people who are willing to devote their lives to making things better. Not like the X-men do, that's not really that impressive. But...people like Moira--she spends all her time at Muir, studying ways to make lives just a little bit easier for those kids who weren't lucky enough to have a mutation that didn't turn on them. Sometimes, it's hard to remember that there are lots of good things in the world. And when you lose sight of those things, when you start to see the world as dark and painful--that's when killing becomes a real option. Because you don't have anything left to really value."
"I wonder then," Julio said quietly, "How he has lost the things that he valued. I read Forge's book, all of it, finally, and yes he lost a lot. But," Julio cracked his knuckles again. "That still isn't a reason for hurting so many people. For using us." All the sharing was starting to make Julio feel uncomfortable. He was letting Lorna have a peek at where he was still raw and angry and unhealed, and already he felt he had said too much.
"No, it's not. And you can't blame circumstances for making you what you are." Although it was tempting, too often it was tempting. "Horrible things happen to lots of people. The way you come through them...it's not just as simple as a matter of choice but a lot of it has to do with that. Are you going to let things change you? Are you going to embrace the way that you were treated? Or are you going to get mad and fight it, refuse to let it break you down to their level." Lorna shrugged one shoulder, "You can't ever make things like nothing ever happened. When I got back...I hated myself. I wanted so much to just...well, I had a lot of people around me who refused to let me give up. I think the hardest thing is being alone with your pain. Because then it's just an echo chamber."
Julio shoved his hands into the pockets of his yellow training shorts and frowned. He didn't want to share this pain with anyone, mostly because it was wrapped up in a tight little ball of anger. Sometimes Julio would get so angry he would frighten himself. "I don't want to make it like it never happened, I don't like who I was before." Stupid, selfish, and immature. "But, I wish people would stop treating me like I am broken. I am not. I'm just-" he rubbed his face irritably, "I am different. But I am not broken. He couldn't break me. I won't let him have that."
"Good," Lorna said calmly, "That's a good attitude. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't deal with what happened. You're not broken. And you did nothing wrong. So there's not anything wrong with taking care of yourself after. Talk to someone about this, don't just shove it all down." She could read the frustration in his posture and tried to figure out some way that she could give him something proactive to do. Anything that would make him feel like he was in control now. Her tone shifted, became more light-hearted and teasing, "We really should be practicing. Don't think that I don't see through your attempts to get out of class time."
The boy smiled wryly. "I would never try to get out of class time. I am a good student. For the most part." He shrugged, and let his public persona slip back on. The cheerful, smiling boy who seemed like he had never met Magneto and had been irreparably changed. Perhaps, if he kept it up enough, the angry, hopeless feelings would fade. He could only hope they would. He rubbed his hands together. "What do I get to destroy first?"
Lorna had come out early to walk about, make sure that everything felt and looked stable. The quarry was a good natural training ground but she worried about what the continue use of power would do to it. Maybe Forge could build come kind of neutralizer field when they started working on bringing the power levels up for Julio. She made a mental note to ask him about it and hopped off the quarry edge, lowering herself slowly to the rock floor.
Julio was up near the edge of the quarry, stretching like he was going for a run. He wasn't sure if it was necessary, considering it was powers training, but he figured it wouldn't hurt to limber up. It also gave him something to do while Lorna wandered around the quarry. It was a wonder he didn't ask her about Magneto the first time he saw her after that day with Amanda in the park. Instead, he held his tongue and bided his time, because how did you ask about that, really?
After she was satisfied with the state of the quarry, Lorna lifted herself back to the top and alighted next to Julio. "So, have you been reading those books I gave you? I think it's pretty important to understand the how of our mutations as much as we can until we get to the point where it all just stops making sense." She grinned. "Yours at least seem to be fairly straightforward which is nice."
"Yes, it is 'shake things,' pretty easy to understand," Julio grunted while he finished stretching his calves, then he stood and twisted from side to side. "Although, it is hard to read a science text when you are having to look up a lot of the words." He'd finally cheated and used one of Forge's translator programs. He dropped his arms to his sides and looked expectantly at his teacher. "Are we ready?"
"We are if you are. Learning the vocabulary will come with time. As long as you get the concepts, it's all good." Lorna paused, chewing on her lower lip and thinking about how she wanted to do this. "Okay, so I think that first we need to move back from the edge. If things go tumbling, I'd rather not have to try to catch you. Then we'll go ahead and start with some focusing exercises. There are some that I learned...last year...and I think they'll really help." There were times when she stumbled over the idea of using anything she learned while in Florida but there was nothing evil about the techniques in and of themselves...right?
The "That is when you were with Magneto?" popped out before Julio could stop himself. He clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, but it was too late. "Stupid!" He chided himself, slapping his forehead.
Lorna looked startled and it was a moment before she nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, that was. How did you hear about that?" She caught most of the gossip around the mansion and she didn't know that that was still a topic of conversation. It wasn't current like Scott's recent torture, nor was it flashy like the Askani. It didn't amuse or have the shock value of the invasions or the demons. Mostly it just wasn't talked about, though she didn't do anything really to encourage or discourage that.
Julio scuffed the ground with a bare foot. "Amanda told me. She said to look it up on the journals. And I did." He shrugged his shoulders in an embarrassed way. "I wasn't sure how to bring it up, but I just did." A small silence passed while a slight breeze tugged at their clothes. "I'm sorry."
She sighed and dragged a hand through her hair, "So am I." Amanda, well, that made perfect sense. Anything that made Lorna look worse. God, the girl was never actually going to stop hating her, was she? "It's okay. You can ask about it. There aren't many people who know what it's like, having been around him. I'll answer any questions you like. The most important thing for you to know is that I'm not going to hurt you. Ever. It's not like he still has any influence over me, okay?"
Julio nodded and cracked his knuckles, thinking. "It is not something to brag about. I should not have been surprised, it seems he has a history with half the people in the school," he said wryly. There was a hundred things he wanted to ask Lorna, but he figured he should probably ask the most important one first.
"Do...Do you ever stop being scared? I mean, that you'll turn the corner and there he'll be? And that you'll have to go with him all over again and there's nothing you can say or do to stop it?" He was sacrificing his pride here, but dammit, this was important. And she would know.
Lorna rubbed her neck, a habit she'd never fully broken from the days after getting the collar off. Some days she felt like it was still there. "The whole truth? No, you don't. It's...it becomes livable. And you eventually get to the point where you tell yourself...if he's there, I can handle it. I can do something about it. But you really don't know how true that is. For me...he was never overtly cruel. He let the others do that. But if I did turn the corner and he was there, I know I'd be terrified. I don't...it gets better. It really does. I can look back now and...it's not as bad as it was." She gave him a sad little smile, "Does that help?"
The younger boy scratched his head and sighed. "I got him all to myself," Julio said quietly. "It seems everyone else just saw the others, never him. I got to see, what he's really like." Julio rubbed the back of his hand where the i.v. scar was. "I'm scared to death of him. And I don't like it. Kids will joke, and call him 'buckethead' but...." Julio trailed off, it was killing him to admit this, "I'm still so afraid. He made me-" he swallowed, "helpless."
"I saw him. I saw him everyday. He like cilantro. A lot. And parcheesi. He's very good at coming off as this...kind old man. It's strange." Lorna took a deep breath and paced back a few steps. She usually avoided thinking about this but it would be unfair to Julio to deny him the chance to talk about it. "I lived with him for three months. I don't know how much you know about what happened to me but...there was a collar, and it was an inhibitor but it was also, well, it's complicated but suffice to say that I wasn't wholly myself a lot of the time. And when I was...myself, I didn't have any powers. When I did, he taught me...a great deal. I say he was never overtly cruel but...that's just to me. He doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He has no problem at all letting someone else do unto others." She lifted her chin and for a moment looked, hard and cold and anything but fragile then it all vanished, "I remember very much being helpless. I've got the scars to prove it too. Being helpless isn't something that you are forever though. You get stronger."
Julio clenched his fists and frowned, "It was so strange. He kept acting like a gentleman to me, right up until....but everyone else. He-he killed a lot of people to get to me," he dropped his hands to his sides. "And when I wouldn't give him what he wanted, he had no problems hitting me until I did," the last he admitted dully, not looking Lorna in the face. His lip trembled ever so slightly. "It makes me so angry to see people talking about him, agreeing with him. Like he's some sort of intellectual. He's not. He's a monster. And I hate him for what he's done." Julio finally looked Lorna in the eyes. "A part of me wants to see him again, just so I can kill him."
Lorna looked away, out over the quarry, to something she couldn't quite see because it was only in her mind. "He never hit me. He let Sabertooth do that. Or Mystique. It...I think he wanted me to trust him. He told me that I was his daughter, you know. I didn't know then if it was true or not." She blinked rapidly then finally turned back to the boy, "I understand wanting to kill him. I couldn't do it, myself. I...he taught me how...it's so easy to just turn people off. I swore I'd never use that. It's okay to hate him, Julio. It's okay to want him to pay for all the hurt that he's brought but we can't become what he is. And part of that is treating lives like disposable commodities. We can't kill people, even if they really really deserve it."
We can't kill people. Julio crossed his arms and looked down into the quarry. What Lorna said rang true, killing Magneto would make him a even more of a murderer as well, but perhaps it was worth damning his soul to save the hundreds that Magneto would kill in the future. Julio ran his hands through his hair and sighed again. "Right," he said, "You are right."
"It's not fair. In a lot of ways, I know." Lorna sighed, "Believe me, Julio, if there was a way to stop him, I'd be first in line. But we're doing the best we can without just replacing him with us. It's not just about stopping him. It's about stopping the whole philosophy. He's got followers and we can't kill them all even if we did take him out." She paused and bowed her head, "There are people who think the solution is killing. But those people...generally they don't believe that good things happen."
A part of Julio wanted to ask, 'What good things?' but he knew. The good things were here at this school. Even being bothered by the reporter and seeing the memorial in central park hadn't been enough to ruin the trip to New York. He'd sat next to Sooraya on the way in, and somehow managed to explain New York to her. And Kyle had managed to eat at exactly 37 different hot dog stands. Julio was amazed at how normal that day felt, how normal he felt. And he would do anything to keep it that way.
"This school is one of those good things, yes? Even if it is not always safe, it is still better than the alternative." He bend down and picked up a piece of gravel, and absently flung it towards the quarry.
Lorna nodded, "The school, people who are willing to devote their lives to making things better. Not like the X-men do, that's not really that impressive. But...people like Moira--she spends all her time at Muir, studying ways to make lives just a little bit easier for those kids who weren't lucky enough to have a mutation that didn't turn on them. Sometimes, it's hard to remember that there are lots of good things in the world. And when you lose sight of those things, when you start to see the world as dark and painful--that's when killing becomes a real option. Because you don't have anything left to really value."
"I wonder then," Julio said quietly, "How he has lost the things that he valued. I read Forge's book, all of it, finally, and yes he lost a lot. But," Julio cracked his knuckles again. "That still isn't a reason for hurting so many people. For using us." All the sharing was starting to make Julio feel uncomfortable. He was letting Lorna have a peek at where he was still raw and angry and unhealed, and already he felt he had said too much.
"No, it's not. And you can't blame circumstances for making you what you are." Although it was tempting, too often it was tempting. "Horrible things happen to lots of people. The way you come through them...it's not just as simple as a matter of choice but a lot of it has to do with that. Are you going to let things change you? Are you going to embrace the way that you were treated? Or are you going to get mad and fight it, refuse to let it break you down to their level." Lorna shrugged one shoulder, "You can't ever make things like nothing ever happened. When I got back...I hated myself. I wanted so much to just...well, I had a lot of people around me who refused to let me give up. I think the hardest thing is being alone with your pain. Because then it's just an echo chamber."
Julio shoved his hands into the pockets of his yellow training shorts and frowned. He didn't want to share this pain with anyone, mostly because it was wrapped up in a tight little ball of anger. Sometimes Julio would get so angry he would frighten himself. "I don't want to make it like it never happened, I don't like who I was before." Stupid, selfish, and immature. "But, I wish people would stop treating me like I am broken. I am not. I'm just-" he rubbed his face irritably, "I am different. But I am not broken. He couldn't break me. I won't let him have that."
"Good," Lorna said calmly, "That's a good attitude. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't deal with what happened. You're not broken. And you did nothing wrong. So there's not anything wrong with taking care of yourself after. Talk to someone about this, don't just shove it all down." She could read the frustration in his posture and tried to figure out some way that she could give him something proactive to do. Anything that would make him feel like he was in control now. Her tone shifted, became more light-hearted and teasing, "We really should be practicing. Don't think that I don't see through your attempts to get out of class time."
The boy smiled wryly. "I would never try to get out of class time. I am a good student. For the most part." He shrugged, and let his public persona slip back on. The cheerful, smiling boy who seemed like he had never met Magneto and had been irreparably changed. Perhaps, if he kept it up enough, the angry, hopeless feelings would fade. He could only hope they would. He rubbed his hands together. "What do I get to destroy first?"
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Date: 2006-08-28 10:21 pm (UTC)Amanda: Actually it was more a way of letting Julio know there was someone else at the mansion who could understand a bit more intimately what he'd gone through. *shrugs* Not always about you, Lorna, but I'm flattered you'd think I'd make the effort.
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Date: 2006-08-28 10:28 pm (UTC)I have faith in your ability to do more than one thing at a time.
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Date: 2006-08-28 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 10:37 pm (UTC)Riiiiiight. Yeah, we'll get right on that on about the tenth of, oh, never...
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Date: 2006-08-29 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 03:34 am (UTC)Thank you very much, I got an up close and personal with Mr. Erik Lehnsherr myself. Doesn't get much closer than inside my skull. *shudders*