Kurt and Scott, Tuesday evening

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Kurt comes upon Scott running a very particular tactical review in the Situation Room, and the conversation that ensues is... something that the two of them should be very glad no one else is there to hear. Scott is angry, Kurt is depressed, and the flavor of the day is doubt.


It had taken about an hour of programming to set up this particular tactical review. Scott was almost sure that some of the details were wrong. He'd been working from Alex's account, and his brother wasn't a trained observer - and hadn't been in the best of headspace to observe things carefully , either.

But it would do. The table had shaped itself into a model of a certain street, in downtown Salem Center. Scott stared down at it flatly, remembering standing on that building over there, watching the alley Lyman had indicated.

This was the key moment, he thought. The one where he should have made a different choice.

Kurt had slipped unnoticed into the room while Scott was focused on the table, and stepped to the other man's side now. "What is this?" he asked quietly.

"Salem Center, the day I traded myself for Alex." Scott's voice wasn't so much expressionless as cold, although the chill wasn't directed at Kurt. "I turned it into a tactical review. Figured it was a worthwhile exercise."

Kurt nodded slowly, studying the scene laid out in front of him. "An exercise for who? The trainees, or you?"

Scott looked sideways at him. "Myself," he said, then turned back to the simulation, his fingers moving over the keyboard. "Let's see what the computer has to say about the probabilities of me rescuing Alex if I knocked out Lyman on the roof right here..."

It took the system five seconds, no more, to calculate the variables, and Scott stared stonily at the screen. "Dead hostage," he said quietly. "I wouldn't have been able to get down to street level in time. I should have realized that."

"Lyman", Kurt said quietly, "knew very well what he was doing, in the business of hostage taking. Whether for leverage, or..."

Scott reset the simulation, back to when he'd first been approached by Lyman outside the electronics store. "We don't have enough of a psych profile of him for a proper probability assessment on whether he'd have coughed up Alex's location if I'd dragged him into the alley at the outside and beaten the crap out of him. Pity, because that's about the only other point I can see where I did have a choice." Scott was silent for a long moment, staring at the table. "I should have tried it anyway."

"Perhaps", came the flat answer. "Or perhaps the men in his command would have killed Alex at the first sign that you were not doing as predicted."

"And maybe I should have taken that risk."

Kurt gave him a sideways look. "After all you risked to save Alex's life, I find it hard to believe you would have done such a thing."

Scott raised an eyebrow. The line of his jaw was oddly bitter, suddenly. "What if they'd wanted to know details about the school, Kurt? About our security system, circa 2006? That didn't even occur to me, when I decided to go with Lyman. It was all about Alex, and saving Alex... and it's only pure fucking dumb luck that what they wanted was four years old and didn't threaten the school directly." He looked back at the table. "I made the decision out of guilt," he said, his voice low and savage. "I went with Lyman because Alex was in trouble, and Alex had suffered so much already and I hadn't been able to do anything... it was the wrong choice."

"And yet it ended well", Kurt reminded him softly. "You are alive, Alex is alive, nothing was revealed of the school that could cause damage... it could have gone so much worse." He reached for the keyboard in turn, with a glance to Scott for permission.

Scott shrugged, leaning aside to let Kurt at the keyboard. "It ended well, but it poses a problem," he said cryptically.

"What problem is that?" Kurt asked, working to bring up a simulation that had clearly been programmed well in advance.

"It's sort of the ultimate example of a thinking process that's been going wrong for a long time now. Something I'm going to have to sort out if I'm going to come back to the team."

The scene forming on the table was a certain room in a building on Youra, with just three figures in it. Kurt looked up from his intent study of the keyboard for a moment. "...if?"

Scott gave him a level look. "I won't if I can't make the right choices in the crunch," he said, more harshly than he'd intended. "You're better off without me, if I don't get my head on straight - I don't mean just as a field leader, either. I mean entirely." He turned back to the table. "I have a plan of attack," he said more quietly. "For the problem, I mean. We'll see how it goes."

"I suppose we will." He looked back at the table. "I have never found a way I could have made this scenario end better than it did. And I have tried."

Scott glanced at the screen. "This is Youra," he said. "You and Radonic."

"And Madelyn", Kurt agreed neutrally. "Yes, it is."

"I've run this before. When it was you... no, there was no other 'better' way to end it. Substitute someone with a different mix of powers," Scott said, "and the variables shift."

Kurt was staring at the figures on the screen, and there was an odd strained note in his voice when he answered. "I have not tried it with anyone other than myself. I wanted to know, if..."

Scott's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked sideways at Kurt. Over a year later... Then again, there was no time limit on these things, was there? "If you want my opinion," he said more softly, "no. There was no other way unless you'd broken off the fight entirely. And I don't think that was feasible, given the circumstances."

Kurt nodded briefly, still not looking up. "Every variable", he began in a low voice, "ends with my death. Or Madelyn's death, or both. Or Radonic's death."

"There's a difference, you know. You did what you could in a situation where you had limited choices. I chose not to see the choices that I had," Scott said, still no edge in his voice.

"Or, perhaps... both of us felt the choice we took was the best available, if not the only." He sounded vaguely defeated, now.

"Kurt..." Scott shook his head, then reached out and shut down the simulation entirely. The table reverted back to its flat state. "Think about it this way," he said. "You are not liable to be in a situation like that again, ever. Where you're dealing with an opponent ready to kill you who will not go down." He left unsaid that it was entirely likely that they would find themselves facing people using noncombatant family, friends, or students for leverage again. It was such a successful strategy, after all.

"And for that, I suppose I should thank God for small mercies."

"I'm going to focus, I think, on moving forward," Scott said and knew he sounded angry. At Kurt? No... or not quite, at least. What's wrong, Summers, did he interrupt your second-guessing session? "This rerunning crap is too emotionally charged."

Kurt laughed a little. "If you find a way to successfully stop, please tell me how."

Scott got up. "You stop, Kurt," he said, wrestling with the anger he still couldn't quite keep out of his voice. "You get tired of shredding yourself for no good reason, and you stop." He hurt. Getting out of the chair had set his muscles protesting, and Scott's jaw clenched, not in anger but in pain. "I should go and find some dinner." And some painkillers.

Kurt didn't move from the side of the table, but at least didn't reach to turn it back on yet. "All right. I will see you later, then."