Scott and Jack Leary, Friday

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott sits down for his first session with Jack since Jean's return. Clearly, the number of Difficult Conversations he's been having since coming back from Tibet are giving him some food for thought, and not always in the good way.


"... and so, Jean decided to come home," Scott said, coming to the end of the story of their Tibetan adventure. Jack was just listening, looking as fully attentive as he had when Scott had started. "She seems... more centered, is the word she used. I think sitting on a mountaintop for four months has done her good."

It seemed strange to be sitting here and only telling Jack about this now. And even stranger when he thought about it and realized that Jean had only been back for a grand total of ten days. Maybe that's a good sign? She's back, and it feels like she's been there all along... Only that wasn't quite true, was it?

Jack nodded, noting the even tone Scott had maintained in telling the story. "Well, it's good to hear that Tibet has been good for her. But you still haven't told me how this is affecting you."

"I'm glad to have her home?" Wait, there wasn't supposed to be a question mark at the end of that sentence. "I mean, I am glad to have her home," Scott amended, not quite hastily. "I've missed her. I mean, I really have." The stiffness was gone from his tone on the last words, because it was only the truth. He was more than glad to have her home, and it would be even better if he could stop pinching himself from time to time.

Raising an eyebrow, Jack steepled his hands together. "I know you've missed her. That's not what I asked. Remember that you don't need to justify your feelings to me."

"Well, I..." Scott trailed off, but didn't feel at all awkward about the silence. Jack didn't want a fast answer as much as he wanted an honest one, and if it took him a few moments to gather his thoughts, then it took a few moments for him to gather his thoughts. "I am glad she's back. But it... took me off guard, I guess? I'd kind of..." He was aware that he was flushing, but he went on doggedly. "... put her, our relationship, into a box and put it away for the time being. So that I didn't expect anything."

Jack waited patiently for Scott to find his words. "That makes sense. You adjusted to life without her in order to make sense of your life. And now, here she is, and you can't keep the lid on that box anymore."

He didn't want to. Did he? Of course he didn't! Stop running in circles, brain... "I've been thinking about how badly we handled things, when she came back after... being Jane," Scott said, for lack of a better description. "Trying to just go back to the way things were... going off on that honeymoon. Pretending everything was going to be fine just because she was back in control of herself." He sighed, rubbing at his scars. "Mutual consensual blindness, yay, as the kids would say."

"If you could go back and do things differently, what would you change?" Jack asked.

Scott was silent for another long moment. "I'd have been more honest with her," he finally said. "Our link was broken, afterwards... we had to talk about what was going through our heads. In some ways that was really good. In other ways it was bad. It let me... lie." And not just to her, but himself, as well.

Jack nodded, an understanding look on his face. "Well, let's make sure we focus on both parts of that. What were the good things about the absence of the link? And what did you lie about that you wish you hadn't?"

"Good things... it really made us both think about communicating, properly. About what words meant, and how they'd be taken, and how well they could convey what we were thinking. Rather than just reaching down the link and interpreting the raw thoughts," Scott said with a faintly wry twist of his mouth. "As for what I lied about... that I was able to put aside what had happened. At that point, I mean."

"So the link being gone allowed you to improve your verbal communication, but it also let you withhold information that you wouldn't have been able to previously." Jack leaned back in his chair, dropping his hands to his lap. "And you aren't happy with how you took advantage of that."

"No. And not just because of the situation itself, either," Scott said, and peculiarly, felt more relaxed as he went on. It was good to say this aloud, finally. "What happened with Jane... Jean and Bobby wasn't the first time that particular... theme had come up, in our relationship."

"That's the first time you've shared that with me," Jack said, his voice carefully neutral. "I know how hurt you felt about Jean and Bobby. If it occurred before, I can only imagine how that feeling must have been magnified."

"It wasn't like that, what happened..." Scott was slouching a little in the chair, staring at the carpet. "I've mentioned Logan to you plenty of times. When he first showed up, years ago... he was attracted to Jean. Very strongly attracted. She was drawn to him, too. She could never really explain why, to me..."

"Would it change things, if she could?" Jack asked.

"I don't know. I'm not sure I want the answer." Scott fell into another pensive, if brief silence. "Logan is a lot of things I'm not," he said. "He's got all the personality characteristics you'd expect from a feral mutation. He's a creature of instinct. He wants, he doesn't think. He does what he feels like, and takes on the world if it doesn't shape itself in the way he wants." Scott's jaw clenched. "And he will not," he said, almost in a growl himself, "stop mooning over my wife."

"And that frustrates you - especially since you can't stop it," Jack said, knowing he was stating the obvious, but also knowing that it needed to be done.

"He's not trying to initiate anything." Anymore, was the unspoken corollary to that. "He wants, I think, to be her friend. He was trying to do that while she was recovering back in the spring."

"And how will you handle things if they do form a friendship?" Jack asked, watching Scott's nonverbals carefully.

"Probably very poorly. If she had one overwhelming, inexplicable, and mostly sexual attraction develop with him, what's to stop it from happening again?" Scott muttered, folding his arms across his chest.

"So you don't trust her and her return is causing your anxiety to increase?" Jack said, the question clear in his tone.

Scott opened his mouth and then closed it again. Put that way, he thought, it sounded horrible. "I don't trust him," he responded, a bit feebly.

Jack nodded, not agreeing or disagreeing. This was about how Scott saw the situation. "So your distrust of Logan is what's affecting your anxiety," he amended. "How are you going to cope with being on the same team now?"

"... I am back on the team now, too." Scott blinked, looking very slightly bemused. The bemusement shifted into irritation almost immediately. "Oh, no wonder I hadn't heard anything about that from the others, I'm sure the circumstances are so reassuring. After four months away I grab the plane and head off on a mission without a second thought because of a personal relationship." Keeping the details of the retrieval of the Rose off the books didn't mean that it hadn't gotten around.

"Oh? So your entire mission to Tibet was about Jean?" Jack asked.

"Well, no. Mystique would have taken that artifact right to Magneto and he's had quite enough fun this year, I think..." But Scott smiled, tightly and grudgingly, at Jack's point. "You're right. And I actually hadn't gotten any comments about it. I suppose I was being overly negative."

Jack smiled at Scott's acknowledgement. The man was always such a harsh judge of his own actions and sometimes needed help being less critical. "So we've been jumping across a few topics. I'm wondering if we should stick with one, the one that's causing you the most distress right now."

Scott looked down at his hand, where his wedding ring was in its proper place once again. "I didn't tell her I'd taken it off," he said, more quietly. He had actually put it back on a week or so before she'd called from Tibet. He'd opened that drawer in his office, and it had been staring up at him, and his head had been considerably clearer than the day he'd taken it off... "I didn't... it wasn't really about her. Just finding out about Terry and Bobby... I got very sour on the whole idea of marriage for a little while there."

"Which was a completely natural reaction, given your situation," Jack assured him. "You were at a point in your marriage of uncertainty and then two of your former students got married in a manner that raised concerns for you at a time that you were extremely sensitive about the topic as a whole."

"I came so very close to complimenting Bobby for how far he'd come on the idea of marriage in six months, in that conversation," Scott muttered, then laughed somewhat harshly. "Part of me wishes I had."

"What would you have said to him?" Jack asked, sensing that there was something Scott needed to get out.

Scott's gaze was back on the carpet. "I never... I held back so much with him, too, after he and Jean... he was just so damned guilty, and I wasn't going to be responsible for making that worse. But I should have. I really should have." The anger was creeping back into Scott's voice as he thought about the conversation with Terry. Maybe if he had reacted the way he'd wanted to, right from the start, he'd have all this out of his system by now. Or maybe not.

"You didn't answer my question," Jack pointed out. "Pretend I'm Bobby. I just told you that Terry and I got married, somewhat accidentally." He looked at Scott expectantly.

Scott stared at Jack, his hands shaking a little as he tried to gather his thoughts. Imagining how differently that conversation with the newlyweds would have gone if Terry hadn't been in the room. "I'd ask you," he said, slowly, "whether you really expected me to be happy for you. What kind of crack you were on if you actually expected me to think that this was a good thing." He leaned forward slightly, warming to the exercise. "And when you told me that you loved her and would make this work, I'd ask you to explain, in small words so that I could understand, precisely what had changed in the last six months. How you were different from the selfish little idiot who'd broken up with his girlfriend and slept with my wife."

"And what are you really angry about Scott?" Jack asked calmlu. "That 'I' married Terry or that 'I' slept with your wife?"

Scott met Jack's calm gaze for a long moment, and then looked away. "The latter," he muttered grudgingly, his fingers tapping out an aggravated rhythm on the arm of his chair. "I don't actually give a damn what makes Terry happy, so long as something does." He had been honest with her, in the Situation Room. He did want to see her happy. Maybe, deep down, part of him even wanted to see Bobby happy, too.

"What will it take for you to forgive Jean? Or Bobby?" Jack asked, slipping out of his role now that he'd gotten Scott to admit the real problem.

"I just need to know that Jean's with me because she wants to be with me," Scott said after a moment, the shadow of pain crossing his face as he thought of some of the things 'Jane' had said to him. There was still part of him that was terrified of the idea of Jean seeing him in any kind of a weak moment, obsessively certain that part of her would see it as him needing her too much, again. He wasn't ready to share that with Jack, however. "It's not just all about Jean and Bobby, or Jean and Logan, I guess. It's just a part of it. I want to believe she's here and wants to be here and that she'll stay... I want to believe it so much. It's just that I see the way Logan looks at her, and I can't get the part of me that worries to shut up. And it's not really worrying anymore, that part - it's angry." He sighed, hands palms-up in a helpless gesture. "As for Bobby, I don't know. I can work with him now, and be civil... I don't think we're going to get much better than that. He's moved on. Quite clearly." Whatever Terry had said.

"What he has or hasn't done isn't really what's important," Jack said before responding to the first part of Scott's reply. "How will you be able to tell that Jean's with you because she wants to be?"

"The link's back. It... fired back up again, in Wyoming." Scott closed his eyes for a moment, another look of pain moving across his features as the memory of his rescue came flooding back. "I'll be able to tell all kinds of things," he said with a sigh. "Bad and good. But I know how fast it can all fall apart, so I don't know. I guess I work on believing it day by day."

"That is really all you can do," Jack replied. "Work on things everyday. But I guess I'm wondering about this link. Is it truly how you want to tell? To rely on something outside yourself for the answers?"

Scott shrugged, not answering for a long moment. "I'm afraid that as she gets to know me again, she won't want to stay," he said finally. Stiffly, as if it was an effort to admit. It wasn't a direct answer to Jack's question, but then... it was. The link was the only way he'd really know how she was reacting to what she was seeing - and perceiving, from her end of the link. "I've told you I feel more emotionally detached than I was, before Wyoming. And I know that's what drew her to Logan. Jean needs... a little fire in her life, and I'm not sure I can give that to her anymore."

Jack nodded, then leaned forward slightly. "And what about you? Can Jean still give you what you need?"

"... I don't know what I need, at this point. I know I want to be with her. She makes me happy, bizarre as that might be to say after the conversation we've just had." Scott smiled a bit, almost wistfully. "I had to all but slap myself so that I'd remember to keep my mind on the mission when I first saw her in Tibet." That first moment... it had been like the whole world had stopped.

"I can see that you care greatly for her," Jack said and then paused. "And I think you realize the importance of communicating within your relationship now."

"I think that's a fair statement, yes." Scott sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. "One day at a time," he said.


(OOC: Thanks to Avital for socking Jack!)