xp_logs | Just cause

Piotr and Jono hang out for a bit and talk. And Jono smiles. Twice. *g*

Hopefully this looks okay, I'm feeling very sleepy.

There were a lot of rooms, but none of them seemed quite suitable, and Jono wondered if he should have stayed in the dorm room after all. He shifted his grip on the (still unnamed) guitar, and decided if the next room wasn't it, he'd go back.

Piotr stepped out of the room Jono had been considering. He was carrying a sketch pad and some pencils, and smiled when he saw Jono. "Hello Jono..." after noticing the guitar, he added, "Are you going to play?"

"Maybe," Jono says in his was and it feels vaguely like a flipper ball inside Piotr's head. "What are you doing."

Piotr touches his head briefly, in an automatic response to the feeling. "I am looking for things to draw," he raises the sketch pad up a bit to show.

"I didn't know you could draw," Jono states the obvious.

He smiles a bit bashfully, "I do not show many people. Maybe if you played your guitar I could draw you playing? I like to draw people the most of all."

Jono shrugs uncomfortably with one shoulder. "Who am I to stop you." He peers into the room Piotr had just been leaving, then walks in, looking around.

"I would not draw you if you said no." He follows Jono into the room. It's some kind of sitting room, it looks like a nice place to have tea. Perhaps it could be, or even is, used as a classroom.. Piotr doesn't know. He motions to the large window. "I was looking outside. I wanted to be alone."

"Me too," the words come out flatly, but then, they always do. "This place is too full of," there's a bit of hesitation, "mutants."

He smirks a bit, and sits on the edge of a chair. "Would it be better if they were not mutants, or is it just any kind of people?"

Jono sets the little amp he'd also been carrying on a table and starts plugging the guitar into it. "I don't want people to see me like this," he says finally, gesturing at his chest.

Piotr nods a bit, "Yeah... they would not understand, I guess." He sighs a bit. "Sometimes it feels like.. this is not real somehow. We are away from.. er.. normal people.. so I start to think of us as normal. Then something happens like the school getting attacked.. or I hear about what people lived like before the school.. and.. I do not know really how to say this in English. But it feels strange."

"Yeah, it does" Jono nods, flinging the guitar strap over his shoulders. "How long have you been like this."

Piotr slides down into the chair so he isn't sitting on the arm anymore. "How long have I knowed of my powers, or how long have I been at the school?"

"Either," Jono shrugs, twanging out a chord.

"I have found out of my powers when I was young.. a teenager I think maybe of thirteen years old. It scared me a lot at first. Nobody else on the farm was a mutant. We were such a small place, though, that they did not hate me or were scared of me. They all knew me when I was a baby. Professor Xavier came and got me, I think a little more than a year ago. I was sad to leave home... what about you?"

"I wasn't sad to leave home," it's all Jono says for a while. He starts to slowly pick out Metallica's Nothing Else Matters from the guitar. "I haven't been a mutant even for one month," he continues while playing. "Everyone back in England looked at me like I was a monster.. and I agree with them."

Piotr glances up from his paper every other moment, sketching and looking relaxed... enjoying the company and playing. "But we are not monsters. 'We are human and we need to be loved, just like everybody else does'." He grins a bit, "Do you know the song that is from?"

Jono shakes his head. "What is it."

He laughs, "Now I feel embarrassed. It is from the song How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths. They are a band I like."

There's only the sound of Jono's playing for a while, until he stops. "I don't think we're human," he says.

Piotr stretches in the chair, and considers. "Because we are called mutants? But our powers is the only thing that is different."

"I don't think that's the only thing that's different," Jono fiddles with his guitar before starting to play another Metallica song. "At least not with me."

"Will you tell me what you mean?" He looks unsure, and studies Jono for a long moment, comparing it to what he's drawn.

"I mean I can't be human," Jono looks down at the guitar past the glow from his chest.

"Yes, you can... Jono, part of your body is..." he takes a moment to remember the right word, "gone. But that is all. You are still you..."

Jono's playing falters and he stops again, this time lifting the guitar off and setting it against the wall. He sits down on the edge of a sofa, staring down at the floor. "I'm not me at all anymore. I was normal."

Piotr sets the sketch pad flat on his lap, pausing in his drawing to look up at Jono. He smiles warmly, "Normal is.. well, we have to make our own normal. My normal is waking up here, and learning, and being with my friends.. that is my life now. I know you went through a horrible thing.. it must be hard. But there are things to like here. It is a hard normal sometimes, but not many people get an easy life."

"I envy you," Jono says. "You make it sound so easy. Like you really believe in that."

He blinks. "I do believe it, or I would not have said it." He doesn't say anything for a long moment, and adds a few things to the drawing. "I hope you can be happy here, too. I do not think you deserved such a horrible thing to happened to you, but I do not think it is fair that you let it ruin the rest of your life."

"Maybe it'll get better from now on," Jono rubs his forehead, showing more hope about the future than he has for a long time.

Piotr smiles, feeling better than he has for most of the day, "It will..." He holds out the drawing to show Jono. It's a sketch of him looking down at his hands as he plays the guitar.

Jono looks at the drawing for a good while, then glances at Piotr. His eyes are a little bit crinkled from the corners, like he was trying to smile. "It's really good."

Piotr's smile turns into a bit of a grin. "Thank you... you can have it if you want."

"I don't know what I'd do with it," Jono touches the drawing with a fingertip. "But thanks."

"I guess there really is nothing to do with them. I keep mine in a drawer. It is not like music... I think if I played the guitar like you I would not want to put it down."

Jono glanced at the guitar automatically, then back at the drawing. "I've played since I was five.. How long have you been drawing."

Piotr looks impressed, "Wow.. that is a long time of playing. I did not know such little of kids could do that." He pauses a moment, looking thoughtful, "I have been drawing for seriously since I was about thirteen years old, when I got my powers. It felt good.. it was something that made sense to me. It was simple and not strange and .. um..." he shakes his head a bit, unable to think of what he wants to say. "It made me feel better."

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean. It's.. comforting," Jono pauses briefly. "Of course I didn't play the guitar all that well when I was five, but it's when I started to get interested."

He laughs a bit, "Can you remember back that far?"

"Only because I got my first guitar then," Jono raises his hands to indicate a length. "It was only a little one. Meant for children."

"Was it black?" Piotr grins. "Or maybe pink?"

"Not funny," Jono says, but his eyes crinkle again. "It was blue, actually."

"Blue... that is a good color. What could you play? I will bet you played a good "Itsy Bitsy Spider." He can't help it, and laughs, imagining a little Jono, wearing all black and already jaded in his mind, with a little blue guitar, playing rock and roll nursery rhymes.

Jono waits until Piotr stops laughing before speaking. "I didn't really know how to play anything then."

"Oh well.. the picture in my head is still funny." He grins again, and then sobers, looking up at the clock. "I had better go... I have my class with Ms Frost soon." He stands, and cracks his neck. "See you later, Jono..."