xp_logs | Scott and Kurt, Saturday evening

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Scott and Kurt have the conversation they promised each other on boxing night. The spiked eggnog facilitates.

It had been a couple of days since 'fight night' - long enough for him to stop feeling quite so much like an octogenarian with severe arthritis every time he moved, but it would take a while longer for the bruises to fade. Scott was, oddly, okay with that. It wasn't as if any of them were doing heavy training this close to Christmas anyway.

It was snowing out there again, and he'd worked later than he'd intended in his office. A touch on the link had told him that Jean was still working in the infirmary, so he'd decided to go ahead and see what he could find, food-wise, in the kitchen.

He had not, however, expected to walk into the kitchen and find Kurt adding rum to a glass of eggnog. Scott paused, blinking at his friend.

Kurt glanced up, not pausing in what he was doing, and offered Scott a faint smile. "It has been a hard year. Would you like some?"

Scott opened his mouth, then closed it again, smiling just as faintly, even if there was a spark of real humor behind it. "That it has. Yes, I think a glass would go over very well."

Kurt reached up to the cabinet above him for another glass, then for the jug of eggnog and the bottle, topping the glass up liberally with both. "How are the bruises?"

"Better. Although I think, really, I should have stopped with our bout and not gone on to let Logan beat the crap out of me..." Scott settled carefully on one of the stools, taking the glass with a nod of thanks when Kurt passed it over.

"Letting Logan beat you up is almost never a good plan, no", Kurt agreed. "Why did you?"

Scott opened his mouth - then closed it again for a moment, his expression faintly quizzical. "Seemed like a good idea at the time," he murmured. "Proving that I could keep my cool but still go three rounds with Logan..."

"Many things", Kurt said pensively, lifting his glass, "seem like a good idea at the time."

"And some things you don't think through, at the time." Scott took a sip of his eggnog. "Jean and I were both mildly concussed that day," he said. "Did that make it around with the rest of the rumors? She'd been unconscious for a while before she made it down to the mansion to call me. And then your mother bounced my head off a door when she came into that safehouse after the Rose."

"It did not", Kurt said slowly. "And it does explain some things... but you were not there alone. Where were Marie and Logan?"

"Out of the safehouse already. We'd invaded Tibet, remember, Kurt... we were there out of leathers, trying to get in and out as quickly as we could, without being identified. As soon as they got the Rose, we told them to get out using the nearest available exit and meet us back at the plane." Scott stared down at his eggnog, which had to be at least half-rum, and took another sip. "Just after that was when Mystique showed up."

"So the Rose was safe by then... but you were still inside the house." The 'why?' was implicit.

"We were in the control room. We'd shut down the security system and wiped the footage - we were just leaving when Jean sensed someone coming in. I guess... she'd had the same idea as we did."

Kurt frowned in confusion. "But then... you went out without Jean to see who it was?"

Scott shook his head slowly. "She couldn't tell. Mystique's mind is hard to read. Literally, it was about three seconds from the moment Jean said someone was there to when Mystique came through the door." Scott winced slightly, remembering. "I'd just been reaching for the door. She had me on the floor in about three moves."

"I have seen her in action", Kurt said neutrally, more than able to believe it. "And what do you know of what happened after that?"

"What happened immediately after that - not much. Like I said, I hit my head. I remember seeing her and Jean fighting, and then she was on the ground..." Scott straightened slightly where he was sitting. "I won't lie to you," he said, stiffly. "Even right then, when Jean helped me up and we ran, I knew we were possibly leaving her in Chinese custody. I just didn't think about what that could mean until later."

Kurt's eyes closed briefly at that admission, and at the reminder, before he put it out of his mind. "And if you had thought, at the time, of what it might mean?"

"I... don't know. I've been trying to rationalize it since, but that's rationalizing a decision that couldn't be unmade in any case. I really don't know," Scott said again, heavily, and met Kurt's gaze. "I'm not as idealistic... not as ethical as I used to be. I know she's your mother, but she's done terrible things. We could have had her in Smichov if we hadn't played by the rules, and all of this was about her trying to take something to Magneto that would make him even more dangerous. You have it in your head, Kurt, that you owed her something, in Chicago - that by keeping you away from the Brotherhood and Magneto, she'd redeemed her enough that you felt obligated to help her escape justice for what she'd done before."

"For one time", Kurt said instantly. "Just for one time. And if you turn it around, it comes out that she has done terrible things, but not only terrible things, and she is my mother. You had already kept her from doing what she wished to do there, and if you did not want to let her go free, there were still better options than leaving her to them."

"And I still want to know," Scott said almost tiredly, "why it was our job to protect her."

"Because..." Kurt started, then stopped, trying to get his words together. "...because once you had made her unconscious so that she could neither run or protect herself, she was your prisoner. And because that is what we are supposed to do. Is it not?"

"We're not the police, Kurt." It sounded a little feeble, even to him. "We were there to get the Rose away to somewhere safe. Right now, neither she nor the Chinese have any idea where it is." He took a deep breath, bruised ribs protesting a little. "And you're forgetting something. We don't know that they even managed to take her into custody. The soldiers in that safehouse were not the brightest bulbs. Even if they woke up before she did, that's no guarantee that they managed to hold onto her."

"And it is no guarantee that they did not", Kurt said quietly. "And unless or until she resurfaces, there will be no way to know."

"True," Scott said after a moment. "But I can't..." He stopped, took another deep breath. "I won't believe the worst just out of guilt, because it's not honest guilt, Kurt."

"Then what is it?" He took a deep drink of eggnog, waiting for the answer.

"Empathy. Maybe misplaced empathy, because we don't know what happened to her. And all of that's counterbalanced by the fact that I cannot-" There was something very odd in Scott's voice, a sort of half-strangled shame. "-convince myself that I should have saved her from herself, Kurt. That doesn't say good things about me as a person, but it's like I said to you in the ring. I didn't put her there. And after everything she's done, I cannot feel for her, that she might have to face consequences for once."

"Even those consequences?" was the quiet response. "Do you honestly believe she would deserve those?"

Scott's hands went white-knuckled around the glass of eggnog. There was something different about the look on his face suddenly. It was distant and strained, and his real eye was as empty as the prosthetic.

Kurt blinked, not having expected quite so extreme a reaction, or wanted it. "...Scott?"

His chest felt tight. It dawned on Scott that he was skating perilously close to the edge of... something he didn't want to have happening in the kitchen, and he focused just on breathing for a moment, breathing and listening to the sounds around him. Kurt's breathing, muffled shouts from outside in the snow, distant voices outside in the hall.

"I'm sorry," he could finally say, his voice a little tight. "I didn't... I don't remember what you asked."

"I think perhaps I had better not ask it again", Kurt said, watching him warily. "Not if it is what set off... that."

They'd been talking about Mystique. Whether she'd... Scott's mind, somewhat sluggishly, reoriented itself. "I've been thinking," he said very slowly, "about the possibilities. Long-term. If they hold onto her, if she's... if she comes out angrier, more convinced than ever that non-mutants need to be wiped off the face of the earth. But it might be... different. It might make her think twice, instead, about relying on our ethics as a way to manipulate us. Might even make Magneto think twice."

He knew what he was doing. Thinking strategically, so that he didn't have to think personally. But there was a dark place deep inside his mind, and the door to it was still standing open, so he couldn't think personally.

"And", Kurt said slowly, still watching him, "do you think that is altogether a good thing? If our ethics are... brought in doubt?"

Scott realized he was rubbing at the scars on the side of his face, rather hard as a matter of fact, and made himself lower his hand back to the table. "I don't know. I really don't. All I know," he said, his voice still very slightly unsteady, "is that we made the decision and we have to live with it. Whatever the consequences were. Maybe she got away. Maybe she didn't."

Scott forced himself to meet Kurt's eyes. "But if she didn't," he said, "and if they're... if she..." What was it with the intermittent difficulty with the word that he was still having? "If what you see as the worst case scenario comes to pass," he said, finally settling on the euphemism, "I know that I helped put her there. And if you think that's going to be easy for me to live with, Kurt..."

"I do not think I ever said it was", Kurt said quietly, not looking away. "But it... disturbed me. Not just because of my relation to her."

"Well. It disturbed me too," Scott said, and took a sip of the eggnog, his hands shaking slightly as he brought the glass to his lips. "But you know exactly what happened now. I don't blame you if you question my judgement, and Jean's."

"No more than I question anyone's", Kurt assured him quickly. "If you had made the decision while not concussed, it would have worried me more."

He was feeling a little light-headed. He didn't think he'd had that much rum just yet. "I'm not going to go around second-guessing myself about this, Kurt," he said. "I did what I did, and so did Jean. And so did your mother. If the consequences come back to bite us - they should, if there are consequences, and we'll deal with them then."

Kurt nodded, worried yellow eyes on him. "Then that is how it will be."

Shake it off, Summers. Scott took another sip of the eggnog, closing his eyes for a moment. His voice was more normal-sounding when he finally spoke again. "I am sorry, Kurt. To have left you wondering, like this... whatever else she is, she is your mother."

"I am still trying to work out what she is to me", Kurt said pensively. "But whatever she is, she is a human being... and I think not beyond redemption."

Scott set his glass back down, rotating it a half-turn counterclockwise on the counter. "I used to wonder how things would have been different if I'd aimed for Erik's head on Liberty Island," he said. "If I'd done that, and hadn't held back. I wondered that quite a bit this summer in San Diego, especially."

"Too different to imagine by now, I think", was all Kurt could offer.

"We play by the rules. We're honorable people... and when we're not quite as honorable as we know we should be, we're left wondering, and angsting..." Scott trailed off, shaking his head, and picked his glass back up. "I try to find a happy medium, in my head. A way to be able to accomplish things and yet be able to look at ourselves in the mirror, too. And one of the only answers I've ever found is that you don't have to be free to find redemption, Kurt. You can do it inside a prison cell, too, where you can't hurt anyone else. Lots of people have." He looked up at Kurt, his expression not quite dull enough to hide the emotion beneath. "And yes. It's easier to say that about some prison cells than others."

Kurt looked back at him, eyes softening. "I just hope... we may find what is best. For everyone."

"I can drink to that." If not really believe that it would ever happen. Scott found himself staring the realization that he really wasn't an idealist anymore right in the face - and he didn't really like the feeling. "This is a very depressing conversation, you know," he said, taking a couple of healthy gulps of his drink. "For this close to Christmas."

Kurt was more desperately clinging to his idealism than confident in it, by this point. He nodded and blatantly changed the subject. "What are you doing for Christmas?"

"Phillip and Deborah will be here tomorrow. We're just... sticking around here," Scott said, more lightly. "Going up to see Jean's family, too. Possibly celebrating our first anniversary, odd as that is."

"It sounds like a fine plan", Kurt said a little wistfully, not at all unaware of the fact that this would be his first year without the clan since... ever.

"You?"

"I... do not know. I had thought to spend it with Amanda, but since she cannot leave the house... and it will be my birthday." At that realization, he had a sudden, sharp, pang of loneliness.

"Oh, that's right." Scott suddenly smiled, and if there was still something a little strained about the expression, there was something vaguely conspiratorial, too.

Kurt eyed him. "Is there something I should know?"

"Oh, no." Scott turned his attention to his drink. "Good eggnog."

Kurt stared at him for a second longer, then laughed. "I suppose I will find out, when it comes to it. And yes, it is."